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Updated: June 12, 2025
He was a good man; and, knowing that men did not light beacon-fires on lonely islands merely for amusement, he resolved to lay-to till daylight, which was due in about an hour from the time the island was sighted. Meanwhile, he sounded his steam whistle.
At a very early period it was customary to light up beacon-fires along the most frequented coasts. These fires were kindled on the summits of lofty towers, which served the double purpose of lighthouses, and temples dedicated to the gods. Here sacrifices were offered to appease the storm, and prayers were made for the safety of the mariner.
It showed them that they were not forgotten, and it helped them to join in the prayer and the praise of those who were in their father-land. But the Samaritans annoyed the Jews and spoilt this beautiful old custom, by lighting false fires on other mountains, on wrong days, and at wrong hours, and thus confusing those who were watching by the beacon-fires.
Beacon-fires were also lighted in bow and stern and at amidships, so that the vivid red glare shed a lurid radiance over everything within a hundred yards. And by their light Douglas saw that the ship which he had attacked was not the Huascar at all; neither was the craft lying close to her the Union!
Night and day on the headland velites had been watching for the trireme of Antipater. A little before dawn their beacon-fires had flamed up. Since daylight all had been watching the far-come vessel of the son of Herod, and, as she came near, they could see the pattern of gold upon the royal vestments of Antipater. Now, presently, he would set foot upon the unhappy land of his inheritance.
After a time, so many mistakes were made by means of these false signals, that the Jews were compelled to give up the system of beacon-fires altogether, and to depend on the slower course of sending messengers. We have now come to the end of Nehemiah's story, and we have, at the very same time, come to the end of the history of the Old Testament.
It was nearly midnight when he passed into the streets. The tumult of assault on the walls had ceased. The long lines of beacon-fires on the walls showed only a few men in arms posted there. Without there came no sound of activity in the camp of the Roman. The streets below, lighted up by the ever-burning beacons, showed its usual restless tramping of houseless, hungry ones.
And in that direction also, blazing like gigantic beacon-fires upon the mountain tops, were the Theatre-Lyrique, the mairie of the fourth arrondissement, and more than thirty houses in the adjacent streets, to say nothing of the theater of the Porte-Saint-Martin, further to the north, which illuminated the darkness of its locality as a stack of grain lights up the deserted, dusky fields at night.
As he sailed from the island he saw the mountain-tops blazing with the beacon-fires of joy kindled by the blacks. From that day to this the island of Hayti has remained in the hands of the negro race. One dark night in the year 1813 a negro murderer crept stealthily into a house in Jamaica, where slept a man in a swinging hammock.
But it is more likely that he wished to lead us so close that he could, when he escaped, carry the news of our being in the neighbourhood, in time for the Welshmen to surround and cut us off before we could return. As she says that the beacon-fires were lighted in the evening he can have lost no time, and the country must be aroused. I wish we had the whole force here."
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