Overhead fly the scurrying clouds before the storm. Below, the sea turns gray. A whitecap dots the surface of the water, and a sudden puff of wind leaves a ruffle of little waves as it passes. The clouds grow darker and the lightning flashes. The thunder snaps and roars and then comes the wind. Its voice is low at first as it whisks away the wave crests and tears them into spray. The tattered water slaps against the brown rock of the tower. The wind increases, blowing up the waves. They pound with growing strength against the foaming reef, and leap up higher toward the glass cage that marks the tall tower’s crest. [Illustration: CAPE RACE LIGHTHOUSE _A 1,100,000-candle-power light now marks the great Newfoundland headland of Cape Race. Near this cape lies the shortest sea route from the English Channel to Boston and New York, and ships entering the St. Lawrence River also must pass near it._ ] The lightning flashes more, the thunder roars again. The wind goes wild and shrieks like mad, tearing water from the sea and throwing it high over the summit of the tower. The great waves boom as they pile up on the rocks. They crash against the tower which shudders with the blows. Surge after surge pounds savagely on the great rocks of the reef, and finally a mighty wave that seems to be a giant effort of the madly tortured sea lifts a raging crest high up, and drops it in the roaring surf. A great rock splits beneath the blow, the wave runs up the tall thin shaft and dashes high above its top, and then drops swiftly down, while there, unharmed amid the vastness and the terror of the storm still stands the tower that puny man has built to warn ships from the dangers that surround it. The story of lighthouses is one to hold the interest of any one, and many books have been written telling it. “Lighthouses and Lightships,” by F. A. Talbot, is one of these, and from its pages one may take a new impression of the men who spend their lives in making the sea less dangerous for those who travel on it. My task is different. I have space only to devote to why lighthouses exist and how they help sailors. And with lighthouses I shall include lightships—which, of course, are merely lighthouses that float—and buoys, which are used for many things. Originally it is likely that lights were built ashore in order that sailors overtaken by night while on the sea could be directed to a landing place. Compasses, of course, were unknown, and while it is possible to sail a course by the stars, it is quite another matter to find a landing place by such means. Consequently, lights were built to mark shelving beaches or the entrances to harbours where ships could be landed. But the light erected in 805 by Bordeaux was for the opposite purpose. It marked a place to keep well clear of, and lighthouses do that to-day almost exclusively. [Illustration: MINOT’S LEDGE LIGHT