ied to undermine the
earth.

Built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks, some league or so from
shore, on which the waters chafed and dashed, the wild year through,
there stood a solitary lighthouse. Great heaps of sea-weed clung to
its base, and storm-birds--born of the wind one might suppose, as
sea-weed of the water--rose and fell about it, like the waves they
skimmed.

But even here, two men who watched the light had made a fire, that
through the loophole in the thick stone wall shed out a ray of
brightness on the awful sea. Joining their horny hands over the rough
table at which they sat, they wished each other Merry Christmas in
their can of grog; and one of them: the elder, too, with his face all
damaged and scarred with hard weather, as the figure-head of an old
ship might be: struck up a sturdy song that was like a Gale in itself.

Again the Ghost sped on, above the black and heaving sea--on,
on--until, being far away, as he told Scrooge, from any shore, they
lighted on a ship. They stood beside the helmsman at the wheel, the
look-out in the bow, the officers who had the watch; dark, ghostly
figures in their several stations; but every man among them hummed a
Christmas tune, or had a Christmas thought, or spoke below his breath
to his companion of some bygone Christmas Day, with homeward hopes
belonging to it. And every man on board, waking or sleeping, good or
bad, had had a kinder word for another on that day than on any day in
the year; and had shared to some extent in its festivities; and had
remembered those he cared for at a distance, and had known that they
delighted to remember him.

It was a great surprise to Scrooge, while listening to the moaning of
the wind, and thinking what a solemn thing it was to move on through
the lonely darkness over an unknown abyss, whose depths were secrets
as profound as Death: it was a great surprise to Scrooge, while thus
engaged, to hear a hearty laugh. It was a much greater surprise to
Scrooge to recognise it as his own nephew's, and to find himself in a
bright, dry, gleaming room, with the Spirit standing smiling by his
side, and looking at that same nephew with approving affability!

[Illustration: Original manuscript of Page 42.]

"Ha, ha!" laughed Scrooge's nephew. "Ha, ha, ha!"

If you should happen, by any unlikely chance, to know a man more blest
in a laugh than Scrooge's nephew, all I can say is, I should like to
know him too. Introduce him to me, and I