This look, branded upon the figure-head and smitten into her round staring pupils, had its effect upon the child. Often and often when there was a storm off Pemoquod and the green water ran fifty feet high with the spray twice as high, grinding and pounding over the rocks and even entering the bay, until its strong death-fingers reached her very feet, Rachel stared at the waters while a fierce exultation swelled her little heart. Persistent in her childish desires, imperious when they were crossed, at all other times gentle and tractable, Rachel up to her ninth year comprehended no force superior to that of which she was conscious in herself. Her grandfather she could sway by a word, and there were ways she knew of compelling Nora Gage; as for André, he was a slave, to be ruled by kindness for the most part and blows when necessary, blows aimed straight at his wild dark face. In her domain she tolerated no insubordination. But one night the pettiness of this domain and its purely human limits were revealed to her. When whiskey got the better of Captain Daniels at the lighthouse, and this happened occasionally, Lizzie Goodenough, with a strong arm, could draw the oil and tend the beacon. If truth were told, it was because he had recognised her possibilities for usefulness in this direction, that the captain, sixteen years before, had taken pity on the girl and her newly-born infant. At the time he was just recovering from what he termed "a bad spell," and Lizzie appealed to him as capable and sturdy; moreover, she was very handsome, with a frown set squarely between her brows and an ominous light in her glance. He had never married her. Now that her boy had grown large enough to go on watch at a pinch, the arrangement was even more advantageous. On the night in question, Rachel, after much worrying of her grandfather and Lizzie, obtained their consent to go on watch with André. She mounted with him to the lantern. The immense corrugated lenses flashed diamond tints of inconceivable brilliancy. There, in rims of living colour, in circles of crystal, that white gush of light that flooded the rocks below, was born. There was the glitter and clash of its nightly cradle. The tower creaked and the sea thundered like cannon, ghostly finger-tips tapped now and then on the glass; a night bird, allured by the radiance, beat out its brains on the costal. Presently André descended to the whitewashed room just below the lantern and Rachel stumbled after him. "The plunger won't need windin' again till morning," he told her; "we can rest now."