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Updated: May 23, 2025
Peter's on the first day of May, before bonfires begin to blaze from all the country towns on the mountain-sides, showing like great beacons. This is a custom founded in great antiquity, and common to the North and South.
The naked spots of the two islands are hideous in their sterility: melancholy bits of wreck-wood their only relief, save for one or two grotesque beacons, and, most bizarre of all, a great church-tower, standing actually in the water, on the north side of Wangeroog, a striking witness to the encroachment of the sea.
They ate dogs, cats, and rats, the weeds from the churchyards, old saddles, and old shoes, and, when all was gone, they began to eat each other. The small children diminished rapidly in numbers, while beacons and signals of distress were fired day and night, that the obdurate Spinola, only a few miles off, might at last move to their relief.
Imagine beacons flaming, rockets blazing, yards manned, ships and forts saluting with their thunder, every steamer and vessel, every town and village from Ramsgate to Gravesend, swarming with happy gratulation; young girls with flowers, scattering roses before her; staid citizens and aldermen pushing and squeezing and panting to make the speech, and bow the knee, and bid her welcome!
The square was a centre of gaiety. Theatres and music halls lined two of its sides, and the gas on their facades and the beacons on their roofs were beginning to burn brightly in the fading daylight.
"But if so, what men have we to oppose to them?" "The sheriff has promised that the levies shall appear in case of need." "Does he realise the danger?" "I hardly think he believes in it; but the beacons will give sufficient warning." "Who has arranged the guards and chosen the sites for the beacons?" "Edric, of course, as general of the forces under the king."
In a record dated June 21, 1588, the month before the Spanish Armada was sighted in the English Channel, a list is given of the beacons in the East Riding, and instructions as to when they should be lighted, and what action should be taken when the warning was seen. It says briefly: 'Flambrough, three beacons uppon the sea cost, takinge lighte from Bridlington, and geving lighte to Rudstone.
The practice of defraying out of the Treasury of the United States the expenses incurred by the establishment and support of light-houses, beacons, buoys, and public piers within the bays, inlets, harbors, and ports of the United States, to render the navigation thereof safe and easy, is coeval with the adoption of the Constitution, and has been continued without interruption or dispute.
Thus her vigil began. The time crept by. Twelve, one, two o'clock. Seth had not returned. She gave him the exact ten minutes' grace. Then, her face pale and a little drawn by the unaccustomed strain, she went out and lit the beacons. She obeyed implicitly. There was no haste, no fear. Her heart was thumping hard in her bosom as she came and went, but it was not with fear.
The big, round-shouldered sand-dunes were the sleeping giants of some old northern tale. The lights that glimmered palely across the harbor were the delusive beacons on some coast of fairyland. Anne pleased herself with a hundred fancies as she wandered through the mist. It was delightful romantic mysterious to be roaming here alone on this enchanted shore. But was she alone?
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