Devils Lake weekly world. (Devils Lake, N.D.) 1911-1914, 1911-09-08
THE CHILDREN'S
HEROISM
By F. A. mitchell
Copyright by American Press Asso-
citation, 1911.
By F. A. mitchell

TheHBreton coast Of France is wild
but very beautiful region. Artists go
there to get subjects for their pic
lures, which they find not only in the
scenery, but in the simple peasantry
which lives there. On that coast are
/ lighthouses such as really protect
ships from going ashore in every civil
liZed country.
! One Of these lighthouses was recent
ly the scene of a story-a real story
such as few authors of fiction can in
vent, story full Of pathos, Of hero
ism, Of great work in protecting the
lives Of many who were sailing or
steaming over the ocean unconscious
Of what was going on under the light.
In the dwelling portion Of this light
house the keeper lay dying. He had
that morning been in his usual health.
but was suddenly taken i'll. Never
theless he kept at his work Of prepar-
ing the light against the evening. His
wife knew nothing about the lamps or
the machinery by which they We're
made to alternately shine and disap-
pear. His children were boy and
girl-the boy nine. the girl eleven years
old. There was no one near the light
house to call upon to take up the light
house keepers duties when the night
came.
Nor was there any doctor that could
administer to his physical ailments.
The keeper grew worse. Still he kept
at his work till the afternoon when he
was obliged to give up and go to bed.
He had cleaned the lamps, filled them
with oil and i'll every way got them
ready to be lighted, but either he had
not had time or the strength to wind
up the great weights that turned the
machinery, causing the revolutions
revolutions by which the light was
made to flash.
When night came on the keeper was
drawing his last breath. His wife
was praying by his bedside; his chill
dren were standing wondering at this
their first sight of death-death that
made their mother widow and them
| fatherless. There were a few: long
breaths, the intervals between them
growing greater, rattle in the throat
and the keeper was dead.
| AS soon as the widow could suffi-
GENTLY recover from the death scene
she thought of the lives that might
be wrecked from her husbands being
thus suddenly taken away from his
work of protection. 1t was danger
GUS coast. Shippers had been used to
seeing the light and counting the sec
onds between its flashes, and then they
knew where they were. If it failed to
shine they would run out of their
courses.
The widow reused herself, and, TAX
ing her children with her, went up into
the lighthouse. She lighted the lamps,
but she could not make the machinery
revolve. A light that did not flash in
the place where a flashlight should be
would be as misleading to sailors as no
light at all.
The little girl placed herself at the
revolving apparatus and found that it
turned easily. She pushed it around,
making the circuit under her mothers
direction in the time it was used to
revolve, then she said to her mother:
Mamma, go back to father. We
children will turn the machinery and
make the light flash"
So the mother, whose grief, more
keen than that Of childhood. sapped
her powers, went back to the bedside
of her dead husband to pray, leaving
her children the only barrier between
lives out on the ocean and the rocks
that were ready to engulf them. The
girl turned till she was tired, then her
little brother took up the work. When
he became tired she relieved him.
And so the children worked on while
their father lay dead below and their
mother prayed beside him. And the
captains and the sailors on the vessels
that passed, coming and going, looked
at the light and wondered that it now
lost, now gained, a few seconds. And
persons in their berths below slept
soundly, not dreaming that they owed
their lives to girl of eleven and
boy Of nine.
Midnight passed, the small hours of
the morning came, and the children,
toiling on, began to think of the rest
that day would bring them. How
they, especially the boy, kept awake is
a marvel. And now faint but well
come gray streak appears in the east.
A dim outline Of the uneven land be-
gins to be apparent. But the children
work on turninr ever turning What
though the interval between the flashes
lengthen as their little legs grow hard
to move and their steps shorter! The
dawn lightens, the white breakers first
grow plain, then the black promon-
tories against the sky, then both land
and ocean.
Mamma" called the girl. may we
not stop now?"
eyes, my child; it is light. The sail
ors can see where they are without
you children to tell them
There come persons who have heard
this story Of heroism and ask to see
the little hero and heroine. They find
family unconscious of having done
. anything remarkable. The children
open their eyes and wonder what 1t
means. They only turned the appara-
tus all night because without the light
the sailors would be lost on the black
ocean.
But they are not their own judges.
Their work is heralded in foreign
) lands-is flashed across the waters and
read by millions of peODle not on1v in