exercise, a ramble on the sands, a climb to the rocky upland, or a pull
in the lighthouse boat, amply sufficed him. "Crank" as he was supposed
to be, he was sane enough to guard against any of those early lapses
into barbarism which marked the lives of some solitary gold-miners.
His own taste, as well as the duty of his office, kept his person and
habitation sweet and clean, and his habits regular. Even the little
cultivated patch of ground on the lee side of the tower was symmetrical
and well ordered. Thus the outward light of Captain Pomfrey shone forth
over the wilderness of shore and wave, even like his beacon, whatever
his inward illumination may have been.

It was a bright summer morning, remarkable even in the monotonous
excellence of the season, with a slight touch of warmth which the
invincible Northwest Trades had not yet chilled. There was still a faint
haze off the coast, as if last night's fog had been caught in the quick
sunshine, and the shining sands were hot, but without the usual dazzling
glare. A faint perfume from a quaint lilac-colored beach-flower, whose
clustering heads dotted the sand like bits of blown spume, took the
place of that smell of the sea which the odorless Pacific lacked. A few
rocks, half a mile away, lifted themselves above the ebb tide at varying
heights as they lay on the trough of the swell, were crested with foam
by a striking surge, or cleanly erased in the full sweep of the sea.
Beside, and partly upon one of the higher rocks, a singular object was
moving.

Pomfrey was interested but not startled. He had once or twice seen seals
disporting on these rocks, and on one occasion a sea-lion,--an estray
from the familiar rocks on the other side of the Golden Gate. But he
ceased work in his garden patch, and coming to his house, exchanged
his hoe for a telescope. When he got the mystery in focus he suddenly