ghthouse
Service when I was about your age and I've given every bit of myself to
it ever since. I'm glad I did. I think the last fifty years has shown
the greatest development of safety at sea since the days of the
discovery of the compass."

"Yet you didn't want me to join!"

"Not now," the old inspector answered. "Conditions have changed. The
Lighthouse Service of to-day is a complete and perfected organization.
Every mile of United States territory is covered by a beacon light. We
were pioneers."

"I see," said the boy thoughtfully.

"It's a good deal the same sort of development that's struck the cattle
country," the Westerner said, meditatively. "When I was a youngster, a
cattle-puncher was really the wild and woolly broncho-buster that you
read about in books. In the days of the old Jones and Plummer trail,
when there wasn't a foot of barbed wire west of the Mississippi, a
cowboy's life was adventurous enough. A round-up gang might meet a bunch
of hostile Indians 'most any time, and a man had to ride hard and shoot
straight. But now the ranges are all divided up and fenced in. The
range-runner has given way to the stock-raiser. It's like comparing
Dan'l Boone to a commercial traveler!"

"I don't quite see how that fits the Lighthouse Service," said Eric,
smiling at the Daniel Boone comparison.

"Well, it does to a certain extent. When I first went into the Service,
half the coast wasn't protected at all. And even the important lights we
had were weak, compared with what we have now. Why, Eric, we've got
lights so powerful now that we can't even tell how strong they are!"

The boy looked up incredulously.

"It's an absolute fact," the old inspector continued. "The most powerful
light we have is on Navesink Highlands, near the entrance of New York
Harbor. It's reckoned at between two million and ten million
candle-power. Nobody's been able to measure it. The United States Bureau
of Standards was going to do it, but so far, they've left it severely
alone."

"How far can that be seen, Father?"

"All depends on the height of the ship's deck from the water," was the
reply. "The curvature of the earth determines that. Say, thirty miles on
a vessel of moderate size. But the reflection of the Navesink Light on
the sky has been seen as far away as eighty miles."

"White light?"

"Yes, white flashing," was the reply.

"I've noticed," the boy said thoughtfully, "that red is only used for
the smaller lights.