THE TOWN. 31

 had his victims felt a personal affront while his
 knife was at their throats. He seems to have
 grown drunk with glory and with blood: so did
 the passion for murder and for gain increase!
 One falls to thinking how such a soul could
 occupy itself after a certain "sharp distemper"
 had brought him to that last day, when his one
 possession was a sail-cloth, weighted, and the
 only noise he could make in the world the
 splash into the swinging water at the ship's
 bows, a bubble on the surface, and then the
 smooth and shining blue again. Surely he
 must have found it a weary thing to wake and
 find himself a naked soul in the gray silence
 of eternity!

 The wooden watch-tower on the island went
to pieces a hundred years ago, and a coquina
light-house took its place; but not very long
since, it, too, fell with an awful crash, in a great
hurricane. It could no longer deny the entreat-
ing sea, which had plucked at its foundations
for many a year, as though jealous that its own
shells should resist it.