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Updated: June 6, 2025
"You're all wrought up, but really I don't think it's so bad. See how quiet the ship is. I presume we're caught in a fog, or something. Just as likely as not we're off the light, yet, and that is a bell-buoy, or something." "Dear! I'd like to call a bell-boy, and ask," giggled Hope, a bit hysterical. "Hark! there's papa now."
Now and then we spend a day on it, the two of us together in the light rowing skiff, or perhaps with one of the boys to pull an extra pair of oars; we land for lunch at noon under wind-beaten oaks on the edge of a low bluff, or among the wild plum bushes on a spit of white sand, while the sails of the coasting schooners gleam in the sunlight, and the tolling of the bell-buoy comes landward across the waters.
The answer returned clear and sharp; then its echo cracked under the hollow cliff, and crossing and recrossing the ravine, it died at last far away, like the muffled peal of a bell-buoy. Again I heard the blended yelping of the hounds, and closer at hand. I saw a long, low cliff above, and decided that the hounds were running at the base of it.
When the wind dropped, as it did at brief intervals, the sea was heard moaning on the distant beach, strangely mingled with the desolate warning of the bell-buoy as it rocked to the waves. Then the wind rose again, and the noise of the sea was lost in the fierce gusts which, finding no obstacle on the open marshes, swept with their full fury upon the house by the creek.
We lay till morning, and there was only the fog, and ourselves, and a bell-buoy somewhere which tolled dolefully. And morning was but a weak infiltration into our prison. A steadfast inspection was necessary to mark even the dead water overside. The River was the same colour as the fog. For a fortnight we had been without rest.
By half-past three I was tearing past the moonlit hedgerows of Kent, with MacGillivray's best man on the seat beside me. Various Parties Converging on the Sea A pink and blue June morning found me at Bradgate looking from the Griffin Hotel over a smooth sea to the lightship on the Cock sands which seemed the size of a bell-buoy.
The pool was smooth as a mirror, and reflecting the drifting clouds. The tide was out. But, stay! It must be on the turn, for as she stood, there came the deep, tolling note of the bell-buoy. It sounded like a knell. As it struck solemnly over the water, the man straightened himself, and in a moment he saw her.
The sound of the bell could be heard clearly enough now the uncertain, hesitating clang of a bell-buoy rocked in the tideway with its melancholy note of warning. Indeed, there are few sounds on sea or land more fraught with lonesomeness and fear. Behind it and beyond it a faint "tap-tap" was now audible.
Wills disabled from strongly willing the good, consciences silenced as when the tongue is taken out of a bell-buoy on a shoal, tastes perverted and set seeking amid the transitory treasures of earth for what God only can give them, these are the 'cords' out of which are knotted the nets that hold so many of us captive, and hinder our feet from following after God, even the living God, in following and possessing whom is the only liberty of soul, the one real joy of life.
Each evening we got an issue of the official Bulletin six square inches of paper thankfully received. For the rest we had no change from the perpetual sound of the sea and the mournful note of the bell-buoy that marks the inshore shoal. Its "dong-dong, dong-dong-dong" created a perfect illusion of the call to a tiny church through the country lanes of England.
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