grew strong, then stronger. He could see a few stars now as the
ragged dark clouds scudded across the heavens, and he hoped for the
late moon. The wind grew wild, then wilder. It took all his skill to
manage his clumsy boat. He no longer asked himself where he was or
who; he knew,--a man in the grasp of death. The wind was a gale now,
and the waves were pressed down flat by its force as it flew along.
Suddenly the man at the paddle, almost despairing, espied a light,
high up, steady, strong. 'A lighthouse on one of the islands,' he
said, and steered for it with all his might. Good luck was with him;
in half an hour he felt the beach under him, and landed on the shore;
but the light he saw no longer. 'I must be close in under it,' he
thought. In the train of the gale came thunder and lightning. Waring
sat under a bush watching the powers of the air in conflict, he saw
the fury of their darts and heard the crash of their artillery, and
mused upon the wonders of creation, and the riddle of man's existence.
Then a flash came, different from the others in that it brought the
human element upon the scene; in its light he saw a vessel driving
helplessly before the gale. Down from his spirit-heights he came at
once, and all the man within him was stirred for those on board, who,
whether or not they had ever perplexed themselves over the riddle of
their existence, no doubt now shrank from the violent solution offered
to them. But what could he do? He knew nothing of the shore, and yet
there must be a harbor somewhere, for was there not the light? Another
flash showed the vessel still nearer, drifting broadside on;
involuntarily he ran out on the long sandy point where it seemed that
soon she must strike. But sooner came a crash, then a grinding sound;
there was a reef outside then, and she was on it, the rocks cutting
her, and the waves pounding her down on their merciless edges.
'Strange!' he thought. 'The harbor must be on the other side I
suppose, and yet it seems as though I came this way.' Looking around,