MR. SETH ATKINS

The stars, like incandescent lights fed by a fast weakening dynamo, grew
pale, faded, and, one by one, went out. The slate-colored sea, with its
tumbling waves, changed color, becoming a light gray, then a faint blue,
and, as the red sun rolled up over the edge of the eastern horizon, a
brilliant sapphire, trimmed with a silver white on the shoals and along
the beach at the foot of the bluff.

Seth Atkins, keeper of the Eastboro Twin-Lights, yawned, stretched,
and glanced through the seaward windows of the octagon-shaped,
glass-enclosed room at the top of the north tower, where he had spent
the night just passed. Then he rose from his chair and extinguished the
blaze in the great lantern beside him. Morning had come, the mists had
rolled away, and the dots scattered along the horizon--schooners,
tugs, and coal barges, for the most part--no longer needed the glare
of Eastboro Twin-Lights to warn them against close proximity to
the dangerous, shoal-bordered coast. Incidentally, it was no longer
necessary for Mr. Atkins to remain on watch. He drew the curtains over
the polished glass and brass of the lantern, yawned again, and descended
the winding iron stairs to the door at the foot of the tower, opened it
and emerged into the sandy yard.

Crossing this yard, before the small white house which the government
provided as a dwelling place for its lightkeepers, he opened the door of
the south tower, mounted the stairs there and repeated the extinguishing
process with the other lantern. Before again descending to earth,
however, he stepped out on the iron balcony surrounding the light
chamber and looked about him.

The view, such as it was, was extensive. To the east the open sea,
the wide Atlantic, rolling lazily in the morning light, a faint breeze
rippling the surfaces of the ground-swell. A few sails in sight, far
out. Not a sound except the hiss and splash of the surf, which, because
of a week of calms and light winds, was low even for that time of
year--early June.

To the north stretched the shores of the back of the Cape. High clay
bluffs, rain-washed and wrinkled, sloping sharply to the white sand
of the beach a hundred feet below. Only one building, except
those connected with the lighthouses, near at hand, this a small,
gray-shingled bungalow about two hundred yards away, separated from the
lights by the narrow stream called Clam Creek--Seth always spoke of it
as the "Crick"--which, turnin