Notwithstanding these horrors, this island is not a desert. At the summit of the rock, there rises a round tower where every evening a light is kindled, so contrived as, at intervals of some seconds, to throw a brilliant light upon the points where the fretted waves rage and boil round a hidden rock, and to light the dangerous channel which separates the island from its sister isles, and to warn the pilot to avoid by every means the perilous labyrinth. The keeper of the lighthouse did not live alone in this wild place; his wife followed him there; his family increased, and the cradle has rocked again and again. Grace Darling, the eldest of the seven children, has just reached her twenty-second year, and all the family are rejoicing at the festival, for every anniversary is religiously kept by the little company that animates the solitude of Longstone. Every one is gone out to seek something by which he may take his part in the festivity, and prepare a surprise for the well-beloved sister. The mother remains at home kneading a nice cake to gratify the appetite of the little marauders. "Mother, Mother!" cried John, who returned the first; "see what a superb lobster the rising sea has brought up and left in the crevice of a rock, which I call my fish-trap. Might not one say that the sea knew that it was Grace's feast day?" "I have only some shrimps," said William; "but they are very fine ones, I hope. I took them, with a net at the end of the little creek." "Imprudent boy!" said their mother; "your father has told you a hundred times not to venture to fish on that side of the island; the rock is too steep, and the water is more than a hundred fathoms deep." "Yes, but, in a turning, there is a little platform which I have shown to my father, and he has consented to my going there at low water. Then I know the rock, and the sea knows me; neither of them wish to hurt me. You have more reason for scolding Jenny; she is not afraid of any thing; she climbs like a cat all along the crevices to collect sea weed, which she burns in order to enrich the hole which she calls her garden, and to cultivate--what? nothing that one can eat--some good-for-nothing flowers, which grow only in consequence of shelter and great care." "And you count it for nothing to be able to present to Grace a rose like that?" said Jenny, who just then came in bringing a rose of a dull white, surrounded by vigorous leaves of a dark green. "What a pleasure to have been able to keep it till now, even here, and to see it blossom so exactly at the right time. I do not regret the pains I have taken with it, I assure you."