father as cheerful as cheerful--but never letting her eyes rest on
me, I noticed, and I saw what that meant; and when it came to
goodbye, there was more in the tightening of her arms about me than
I'd ever read in it before.

The old man, I reckon, had a wisht time with me, the next two or
three weeks; but, by the mercy of God, the weather behaved furious
all the while, leaving a man no time to mope. 'Twas busy all, and
busy enough, to keep a clear light inside the lantern, and warm souls
inside our bodies. All through February it blew hard and cold from
the north and north-west, and though we lay in the very mouth of the
Gulf Stream, for ten days together there wasn't a halliard we could
touch with the naked hand, nor a cloth nor handful of cotton-waste
but had to be thawed at the stove before using. Then, with the
beginning of March, the wind tacked round to south-west, and stuck
there, blowing big guns, and raising a swell that was something
cruel. It was one of these gales that tore away the bell from the
lighthouse, though hung just over a hundred feet above water-level.
As for us, I wonder now how the little boat held by its two-ton
anchors, even with three hundred fathom of chain cable to bear the
strain and jerk of it; but with the spindrift whipping our faces, and
the hail cutting them, we didn't seem to have time to think of
_that_. Bathsheba thought of it, though, in her bed at home--as I've
heard since--and lay awake more than one night thinking of it.

But the third week in March the weather moderated; and soon the sun
came out and I began to think. On the second afternoon of the fair
weather I climbed up under the cage and saw the Islands for the first
time; and coming down, I said to my father: