fire. Then Hazel told
her that it was now of prodigious size and height. Some six months before
he was crippled he had added and added to it.

"That bonfire," said he, "will throw a ruddy glare over the heavens that
they can't help seeing on board the steamer. Then, as they are not on a
course, but on a search, they will certainly run a few miles southward to
see what it is. They will say it is either a beacon or a ship on fire;
and, in either case, they will turn the boat's head this way. Well,
before they have run southward half a dozen miles, their lookout will see
the bonfire, and the island in its light. Let us get to the boat, my
lucifers are there."

She lent him her arm to the boat, and stood by while he made his
preparations. They were very simple. He took a pine torch and smeared it
all over with pitch; then put his lucifer-box in his bosom and took his
crutch. His face was drawn pitiably, but his closed lips betrayed
unshaken and unshakable resolution. He shouldered his crutch, and hobbled
up as far as the cavern. Here Helen interposed.

"Don't you go toiling up the hill," said she. "Give me the lucifers and
the torch and let me light the beacon. I shall be there in half the time
you will."

"Thank you! thank you!" said Hazel, eagerly, not to say violently.

He wanted it done; but it killed him to do it. He then gave her his
instructions.

"It is as big as a haystack," said he, "and as dry as a chip; and there
are eight bundles of straw placed expressly. Light bundles to windward
first, then the others; it will soon be all in a blaze."

"Meanwhile," said Helen, "you prepare our supper. I feel quite faint--for
want of it."

Hazel assented.

"It is the last we shall--" he was going to say it was the last they
would eat together; but his voice failed him, and he hobbled into the
cavern, and tried to smother his emotion in work. He lighted the fire,
and blew it into a flame with a palmetto-leaf, and then he sat down
awhile, very sick at heart; then he got up and did the cooking, sighing
all the time; and, just when he was beginning to wonder why Helen was so
long lighting eight bundles of straw, she came in, looking pale.

"Is it all right?" said he.

"Go and look," said she. "No, let us have our supper first."

Neither had any appetite. They sat and kept casting strange looks at one
another.

To divert this anyhow, Hazel looked up at the roof, and said faintly, "If
I had known, I would have made