“That won’t do, Pup,” said Bremner, shaking his head at the creature, whose countenance expressed deep contrition.  “Don’t go on like that, else you’ll fall into the sea and be drownded, and then I shall be left alone.  What a dark night it is, to be sure!  I doubt if it was wise of me to stop here.  Suppose the beacon were to be washed away?”

Bremner paused, and Pup wagged his tail interrogatively, as though to say, “What then?”

“Ah! it’s of no use supposin’,” continued the man slowly.  “The beacon has stood it out all winter, and it ain’t likely it’s goin’ to be washed away to-night.  But suppose I was to be took bad?”

Again the dog seemed to demand, “What then?”

“Well, that’s not very likely either, for I never was took bad in my life since I took the measles, and that’s more than twenty years ago.  Come, Pup, don’t let us look at the black side o’ things, let us try to be cheerful, my dog.  Hallo!”

The exclamation was caused by the appearance of a green billow, which in the uncertain light seemed to advance in a threatening attitude towards the beacon as if to overwhelm it, but it fell at some distance, and only rolled in a churning sea of milky foam among the posts, and sprang up and licked the beams, as a serpent might do before swallowing them.

“Come, it was the light deceived me.  If I go for to start at every wave like that I’ll have a poor night of it, for the tide has a long way to rise yet.  Let’s go and have a bit supper, lad.”

Bremner rose from the anvil, on which he had seated himself, and went up the ladder into the cook-house above.  Here all was pitch dark, owing to the place being enclosed all round, which the mortar-gallery was not, but a light was soon struck, a lamp trimmed, and the fire in the stove kindled.

Bremner now busied himself in silently preparing a cup of tea, which, with a quantity of sea-biscuit, a little cold salt pork, and a hunch of stale bread, constituted his supper.  Pup watched his every movement with an expression of earnest solicitude, combined with goodwill, in his sharp intelligent eyes.

When supper was ready Pup had his share, then, feeling that the duties of the day were now satisfactorily accomplished, he coiled himself up at his master’s feet, and went to sleep.  His master rolled himself up in a rug, and lying down before the fire, also tried to sleep, but without success for a long time.

As he lay there counting the number of seconds of awful silence that elapsed between the fall of each successive billow, and listening to the crash and the roar as wave after wave rushed underneath him, and caused his habitation to tremble, he could not avoid feeling alarmed in some degree.  Do what he would, the thought of the wrecks that had taken place there, the shrieks that must have often rung above these rocks, and the dead and mangled bodies that must have lain among them, would obtrude upon him and banish sleep from his eyes.