And I knew Ratsey would be there, and Damen, Tewkesbury, and Laver, and like enough Parson Glennie, and perhaps--and at that perhaps, my thoughts came back to where we were, for I heard Elzevir speaking to me: 'Look,' he said, 'there's a light!' 'Twas but the faintest twinkle, or not even that; only something that told there was a light behind drift and darkness.

It grew clearer as we looked at it, and again was lost in the mirk, and then Elzevir said, 'Maskew's Match!' It was a long-forgotten name that came to me from so far off, down such long alleys of the memory, that I had, as it were, to grope and grapple with it to know what it should mean.

Then it all came back, and I was a boy again on the trawler, creeping shorewards in the light breeze of an August night, and watching that friendly twinkle from the Manor woods above the village.

Had she not promised she would keep that lamp alight to guide all sailors every night till I came back again; was she not waiting still for me, was I not coming back to her now?
But what a coming back! No more a boy, not on an August night, but broken, branded convict in the November gale! 'Twas well, indeed, there was between us that white fringe of death, that she might never see what I had fallen to.
'Twas likely Elzevir had something of the same thoughts, for he spoke again, forgetting perhaps that I was man now, and no longer boy, and using a name he had not used for years.

'Johnnie,' he said, 'I am cold and sore downhearted.