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 seaweed clung to its base, and storm-birds⁠—born of the wind, one might suppose, as seaweed 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 figurehead of an old ship might be⁠—struck up a sturdy song that was like a gale in itself.