boat, and all
the other noises. Walter, I think... I think we shall die."

"Courage, brother, I have hope yet; and if we die we will die like this
together--I will not let you go. Our bodies shall be washed ashore
together--not separated, Charlie, even in death."

"You have been a dear, dear good brother to me. How I love you,
Walter!" and as he pressed yet closer to him, he said more bravely,
"What hope have you then, Walter?"

"Look up, Charlie; you see that light?"

"Yes; what is it?"

"Sharksfin Lighthouse; don't you remember seeing it sometimes at night
from Saint Win's? Yes; and those lights twinkling far-off are Saint
Win's. Those must be the school lights; and those long windows you can
just see are the chapel windows. They are in chapel now, or the lights
wouldn't be there. Perhaps some of our friends--Power, perhaps, and
Eden--are praying for us; they must have missed us since tea-time."

"How I wish we were with them!"

"Perhaps we may be again; and all the wiser and better in heart and life
for this solemn time, Charlie. If we are but carried by this wind and
current within hearing of the lighthouse!"

The Sharksfin Lighthouse is built on a sharp high rock two miles out at
sea. I have watched it from Bleak Point on a bright, warm summer's day,
when the promontory around me was all ablaze with purple heather and
golden gorse, and there was not breeze enough to shake the wing of the
butterfly as it rested on the blue-bell, or disturb the honey-laden bee
as it murmured in the thyme. Yet even then the waters were seething and
boiling in never-ended tumult about those hideous sunken rocks; and the
ocean all around was hoary as with the neesings of a thousand leviathans
floundering in its monstrous depths. You may guess what they are on a
wild February night--how, in the mighty rush of the Atlantic, the torn
breakers beat about them with tremendous rage, till the whole sea is in
angry motion like some demon caldron that seethes over roaring flame.

Drifting along, or rather flung and battered about on the current, they
passed within near sight of the lighthouse, and they might have thanked
God that they passed no nearer, for to have passed nearer would have
been certain death. The white waves dashed over it, enveloped its tall
strong pillar that buffeted them back, like a noble will in the midst of
calumny and persecution; _they_ fell back hissing and discomfited, and
could not dim its silve