"Kill Lily," cried Adam, angrily. "They'd have me to kill first; nothing on this place is going to be slaughtered while I can protect it." He went on more slowly, a little ashamed of his heat, "I feel a sense of kinship with all these creatures that would make it impossible to kill them. It's like the woman whose Newfoundland died, and a friend asked if she was going to have him stuffed. 'Stuffed!' she said; 'I'd as soon think of stuffing my husband!'"
Robin laughed, and leaning over tweaked Lassie's ear. "If we are to be stuffed, we prefer to have it an ante-mortem performance, don't we, little dog?"
The sun dropped behind the tall peaks, but its dying light still covered sea and shore. They rose as if for the benediction, and looked out at the waters before them. Then they looked at each other and grew white to the lips, and Robin knelt down and flinging her arms around Lassie sobbed and laughed. Adam never took his eyes from the coming ship.
Every ship brings a word; Well for those who have no fear, Looking seaward well assured That the word the vessel brings Is the word they wish to hear.
The ship bore steadily toward them, but night was coming on so rapidly that her lines were obscured. They could not even tell whether it was a sailing vessel or propelled by steam.
"There's one thing certain," said Adam, excitedly: "it was coming this way, but very slowly. I suppose that is to be expected of a ship sailing unknown waters. They have nothing to go by, though they know, of course, just what part of the round globe they are on."
She answered almost apathetically, as if she found it difficult to talk, "It seems as if good sailors would lay by at night, when they do not know their course, and there is land in sight,--land that has never been explored."
"It does seem strange she should come right on," he assented. "For surely no ship has ever sailed these seas before. Perhaps--"
"Perhaps she has been clear around; perhaps this is the only bit of land left above a world ocean."
Robin shivered a little, and Adam turned toward the beacon, that had glowed in vain for a year. It had been built on a high, altar-shaped rock, across the gorge, where it could be kept up without leaving the park. Robin went with him, and they gathered a pile of timber that insured the brilliancy of their signal until morning. Adam piled on the logs till the blaze leaped far up in the darkness; then they went back to the boulder and sat down to think and wait.