the sea is greatly roused, something from out the midst of night and
darkness calls them by name. If the infinity of the sea may call out
thus, perhaps when a man is growing old, calls come to him, too, from
another infinity still darker and more deeply mysterious; and the more
he is wearied by life the dearer are those calls to him. But to hear
them quiet is needed. Besides old age loves to put itself aside as if
with a foreboding of the grave. The light-house had become for Skavinski
such a half grave. Nothing is more monotonous than life on a beacon-
tower. If young people consent to take up this service they leave it
after a time. Light-house keepers are generally men not young, gloomy,
and confined to themselves. If by chance one of them leaves his light-
house and goes among men, he walks in the midst of them like a person
roused from deep slumber. On the tower there is a lack of minute
impressions which in ordinary life teach men to adapt themselves to
everything. All that a light-house keeper comes in contact with is
gigantic, and devoid of definitely outlined forms. The sky is one whole,
the water another; and between those two infinities the soul of man is
in loneliness. That is a life in which thought is continual meditation,
and out of that meditation nothing rouses the keeper, not even his work.
Day is like day as two beads in a rosary, unless changes of weather form
the only variety. But Skavinski felt more happiness than ever in life
before. He rose with the dawn, took his breakfast, polished the lens,
and then sitting on the balcony gazed into the distance of the water;
and his eyes were never sated with the pictures which he saw before him.
On the enormous turquoise ground of the ocean were to be seen generally
flocks of swollen sails gleaming in the rays of the sun so brightly that
the eyes were blinking before the excess of light. Sometimes the ships,
favored by the so-called trade winds, went in an extended line one after
another, like a chain of sea-mews or albatrosses. The red casks
indicating the channel swayed on the light wave with gentle movement.