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But when after sunset the blue deepened to violet, always in the heart of it glowed the crimson light upon Off Island. Night after night I watched it from my window, and wondered what manner of people they were who tended it, living out yonder on a rock where no grass grew, and in a roar of tide which the inhabitants of the greater islands heard on still days in the few inland valleys where it was possible to lose sight of the sea. I knew that thousands of puffins bred there, and we were to visit the rock some day; but, what with the tides and an all but ceaseless ground swell, our opportunity was long in coming, and Old Seth (our boatman) kept putting it off until I began to disbelieve in it altogether.

It came, though, at last, with a cloudless morning and a north-easterly breeze, brisk and steady, the clearest day in a fortnight of clear days. We were heading northward close-hauled through a sound dividing two of the greater islands–Old Seth at the tiller, my father tending the sheet, and I perched on the weather gunwale and peering over and down on the purple reefs we seemed to avoid so narrowly–when Seth lifted his voice in a shout, and then, with a word of warning, paid out sheet, brought the boat’s nose round and ran her in towards a silver-white beach on our left. As we downed sail, I saw a girl on the bank above the beach, leaning on a hoe and gazing at us over a low hedge of veronica.

Seth hailed her again, and she came running to the waterside. There she stood and eyed us shyly: a dark-haired girl, bare-headed, and with the dust of the potato-patch on her shoes and ankles.

“Any message for Reub Hicks, my dear? We’m bound over to Off Island.”

She hesitated, looking from Seth to us; and while she hesitated a flush mounted to her tanned face and deepened there.

“Come,” Old Seth coaxed her, “you needn’ be afeard to trust us with your little secrets.”

She seemed, at all events, to have made up her mind to trust us. From the pocket of her skirt she drew a tattered, paper-covered book, opened it, and was about to tear out a couple of pages, but paused.

“I’d like to send it,” said she; but still paused, and at length passed the open book to Seth.

“I see.” He nodded. “Seems a pity–don’t it?–to tear up good printed stuff. Tell ‘ee what,” he suggested: “you leave me take the book over as ’tis, and this evenin’, if you’ll be waitin’ here, I’ll bring it back safe.”

She brightened at once. “That’ll do brave. Tell ‘en I hope he’s keepin’ well, and give my love to the others.”

“Right you are,” promised Seth cheerfully, pushing off.

“And don’t you forget!” she called after us.

Seth laughed. “That’s a very good girl, now,” he commented as he settled himself to the tiller again. “Must be a poor job courtin’ with a light-house man: not much walkin’ together for they. No harm, I s’pose, in your seem’ the maid’s book.” He handed it to my father, who shook his head.

“Aw,” went on Seth, guessing why he hesitated, “there’s no writin’ in it–only print.” He held the book open. It was a nautical almanack, and night by night the girl had pencilled out the hour of sunset. Night by night the first flash of the Off Island lamp carried her lover’s message to her, and, as Seth explained (but it needed no explanation), at that signal she blotted out yet one more of the days between her and the marriage day.

Off Island rose from the sea a sheer mass of granite, about a hundred and fifty feet in height, and all but inaccessible had it not been for a rock stair-way hewn out by the Brethren of the Trinity House. The keepers had spied our boat, and a tall young man stood on one of the lower steps to welcome us: not Reuben, but Reuben’s younger brother Sam. Reuben met us at the top of the staircase, where the puffins built so thickly that a false step would almost certainly send the foot crashing through the roof of one of their oddly shaped houses. He too was a tall youth; an inch or two taller, maybe, than his brother, whom we had left in charge of the boat. It would have puzzled you to guess their ages. Young they surely were, but much gazing in the face of the salt wind had creased the corners of their eyes, and their faces wore a beautiful gravity, as though they had been captured young and dedicated to some priestly service.