making the balls of his eyes and his teeth look still whiter. At length a savage from Greenock threw a tumbler at him. Sambo, quick as a lizard, covered his face with his arm. The tumbler falling from it, struck Gibbie on the head — not severely, but hard enough to make him utter a little cry. At that sound, the latent fierceness came wide awake in Sambo. Gently as a nursing mother he set Gibbie down in a corner behind him, then with one rush sent every Jack of the company sprawling on the floor, with the table and bottles and glasses atop of them. At the sight of them his good humor instantly returned, he burst into a great hearty laugh and proceeded at once to lift the table from off them. That effected, he caught up Gibbie in his arms, and carried him with him to bed.
In the middle of the night Gibbie half woke, and, finding himself alone, sought his father's bosom; then, in the confusion between sleeping and waking, imagined his father's death come again. Presently he remembered it was in Sambo's arms he fell asleep, but where he was now he could not tell: certainly he was not in bed. Groping, he pushed a door, and a glimmer of light came in. He was in a closet of the room in which Sambo slept — and something was to do about his bed. He rose softly and peeped out. There stood several men, and a struggle was going on — nearly noiseless. Gibbie was half-dazed, and could not understand; but he had little anxiety about Sambo, in whose prowess he had a triumphant confidence. Suddenly came the sound of a great gush, and the group parted from the bed and vanished. Gibbie darted towards it. The words, "O Lord Jesus!" came to his ears, and he heard no more: they were poor Sambo's last in this world. The light of a street lamp fell upon the bed: the blood was welling, in great thick throbs, out of his huge black throat. They had bent his head back, and the gash gaped wide.
For some moments Gibbie stood in ghastly terror. No sound except a low gurgle came to his ears, and the horror of the stillness overmastered him. He never could recall what came next. When he knew himself again, he was in the street, running like the wind, he knew not whither. It was not that he dreaded any hurt to himself; horror, not fear, was behind him.
LIGHTHOUSES .
Lighthouses are of great antiquity, but were long of a very imperfect kind; originally nothing more than open fires on the ground. Faraday says that the first idea of a lighthouse was the candle in the cottage window, lighting the husband across the water, or the pathless moor. At an early period in the history of commerce the necessity for such structures must have been felt, and the ancients paid great attention to their construction. The most celebrated lighthouse of antiquity was that of Pharos, near Alexandria, built by Ptolemy Philadelphus, b.c. 280. Josephus states that its light could be distinguished at forty-five miles distance; it fell so recently as a.d. 1303. From this building pharos came to be the general name for lighthouse, and still exists in the French phare.
The Romans were diligent builders of lighthouses, and were the first to introduce them into England. On the summit of Dover Mount still stands the Roman pharos which is supposed to have lighted vessels from the coast of France. Authentic records have come to us of lighthouses at Ostea, Caprea, Ravenna, Puteoli, at the mouth of the Chrysorhoas, on the Bosphorus, Boulogne; and Pennant gives a plate of what is supposed to have been a Roman tower at Gaireg, in Wales.
During the Middle Ages many such towers were erected, the most beautiful of which, as an architectural structure, is that of Genoa. The old English towers were rough and homely, and Lambarde describes them before the reign of Edward III. as "merely great stacks of wood."
The general management of lighthouses and buoys in England is entrusted to the Corporation of the Elder Brethren of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, known as Trinity House. This body was first incorporated in the year 1515, in the reign of Henry VIII., but for many years little was done to ensure the safety of ships by means of lights. With the increase of commerce and navigation, however, they became a matter of necessity, and in the time of James I. the first lighthouse was erected on Dungeness Point.
The first stone lighthouse in Europe was the celebrated Tour de Condouran, built on a flat rock off the mouth of the Garonne, in the Bay of Biscay. It was finished and lit up more than two hundred and fifty years ago, but still continues one
