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The outside steamers shriek from off the Point, as they feel their way at live of noon, groping as though it were dead of night, and stars and coast-lights all were smitten dark, and every pilot were a stranger to his chart. A stranger to my chart, I, doubtful, put about, and make the untried coast.
Let me remind you of that passage in which Rabelais borrowing, I believe, from Lucian brings the good Pantagruel and his fellow-voyagers to a port which he calls the Port of Lanterns. Also we saw the Lanterns of Pharos, of Nauplia, and of the Acropolis of Athens, sacred to Pallas, and so on; whence I draw the moral that coast-lights are good, yet, multiplied, they complicate navigation."
The system was soon introduced into England; and one of the first acts of the Northern Lights’ Board, so early as 1786, was to substitute reflectors in place of coast-lights, which till then had been the only beacons on the Scotch coast. In the improved lights the best spermaceti oil and the Argand lamp have been introduced.
Slowly the coast-lights fade, and now the rote of the sea among the lonely ledges of the Shoals salutes his attentive ear. A little longer and he nears Appledore, the first island, and now he passes by the snow-covered, ice-bound rock, with the long buildings showing clear in the moonlight. He must have looked at them as he went past.
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