that always happens. As long as you wait--you don’t get it. Start doing something else, and there you are! Moral is--never wait. Always do something else. May as well tack, Crow--here’s the wind too; breeze getting up with the tide of course!"

So the white yawl, leaning over very gently, gathered speed, and skimming through the smooth placid sea, made two tacks and picked up her moorings easily in half an hour.

The interest of this event is--what happened to Hughie, the human messenger.

Hughie, silent at all times, and almost as keen an observer as his sister Pamela, said nothing when this arrangement was made. At the same time he was well pleased to be put ashore with the responsibility of this small excursion upon his own shoulders. It was an adventure, and to Hughie, whose imagination was riotous, it might lead into all kinds of strange happenings.

Adrian landed him in the tiny cove beyond the great headland, on the point of which was a kind of fortress...

...smooth, round, and amazingly strong. Looking up at this as they rowed in Hughie felt a thrill--next to being a sailor like his father, he would have wished to be a lighthouse man--but this was a secret.

In the steep little cove lay the scattered bones of an old ship; weed grew in the staring ribs...

...This was nothing new. The wreck had been there many years; it was that kind of thing that made Government build such a lighthouse. The Beak in old days had been one of the most relentless murderers of all the western headlands.

"There you are, old chap. Cut along home now, and tell Mother we’ll be there before you," instructed Adrian as he pushed off, looking behind him as he went.

Hughie nodded, picked his way over the strewn wreckage, and went up the broken sloping steep at the back of the cove till he reached the road on the top. This went from the small village, Ramsworthy, over Hawksdown--which was the bare lovely height on the moor above the lighthouse--and down into Bell Bay. Several roads branched off; one went along the point to the lighthouse settlement; one led away back across Ramsworthy moor to the station at Five Trees. Yet another went to Clawtol, the Ensors’ farm, and on..."Pam!" he shouted again, with greater energy. The girl checked. She looked up and round, but not back. She seemed by the movements of her head to be listening. "Hullo-o-o!" hailed 

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