groan in anticipation! Alarmed
lest he should struggle too soon, Bremner made a sudden grasp and
caught the tooth. A wrench followed; a yell was the result, and the
pincers slipped! This was fortunate, for he had caught the wrong
tooth.

"Now be aisy, boy," said Ned O'Connor, whose sympathies were easily
roused.

"Once more," said Bremner, as the unhappy man opened his mouth. "Be
still, and it will be all the sooner over."

Again Bremner inserted the instrument, and fortunately caught the
right tooth. He gave a terrible tug, that produced its corresponding
howl; but the tooth held on. Again! again! again! and the beacon
house resounded with the deadly yells of the unhappy man, who
struggled violently, despite the strength of those who held him.

"Och! poor sowl!" ejaculated O'Connor.

Bremner threw all his strength into a final wrench, which tore away
the pincers and left the tooth as firm as ever!

Forsyth leaped up and dashed his comrades right and left.

"That'll do," he roared, and darted up the ladder into the apartment
above, through which he ascended to the barrack-room, and flung
himself on his bed. At the same time a wave burst on the beacon with
such force that every man there, except Forsyth, thought it would be
carried away. The wave not only sprang up against the house, but the
spray, scarcely less solid than the wave, went quite over it, and
sent down showers of water on the men below.

Little cared Forsyth for that. He lay almost stunned on his couch,
quite regardless of the storm. To his surprise, however, the
toothache did not return. Nay, to make a long story short, it never
again returned to that tooth till the end of his days!

The storm now blew its fiercest, and the men sat in silence in the
kitchen listening to the turmoil, and to the thundering blows given
by the sea to their wooden house. Suddenly the beacon received a
shock so awful, and so thoroughly different from any that it had
previously received, that the men sprang to their feet in
consternation.

Ruby and the smith were looking out at the doorway at the time, and
both instinctively grasped the woodwork near them, expecting every
instant that the whole structure would be carried away; but it stood
fast. They speculated a good deal on the force of the blow they had
received, but no one hit on the true cause; and it was not until some
days later that they discovered that a huge rock of fully a ton
weight had been washed again