The Keeper's Light
A ship's bell is tolling from the water below your lighthouse, and there is no ship.
Skarra Light, a granite tower on a reef in the northern sea, on the night of the worst gale in forty years. You are Ines Brandt, the keeper, alone except for old Tobias Fenn, the relief keeper, asleep downstairs. At 11:40, between blasts of the foghorn, a ship's bell begins tolling out in the fog, close to the reef, impossibly close, with no light showing. Forty years ago tonight the steamer Halcyon went down on this reef with all hands because the lamp went out, and the keeper that night was your grandfather. He never spoke of it again. Above you the great lens turns in its bath of mercury, and it can be unclutched and swung by hand. The logbook lies open with tonight's entry half-written. The bell is ringing from the black water directly below the gallery.
