The Beacon

"You couldn't have just come into port Sam, not in this fog. You should have looked in sooner," the friendly tavern keeper said as the sailor walked in. The hour was late, the oil lamps had been lit, and all but the most inebriated had long since departed.

The sailor walked up to the counter, and sat down wearily. "That's just what we've done, the nearest thing I've ever seen."

"I'll tell you the tale."

---

A mist lay over the shore, so heavily that it was impossible to see the stern of the ship from the mainmast. The seaman in the crow's nest couldn't make out the deck two hundred feet below him. The officers were all down below, listening for the sound of breakers on the reefs and rocks, trying to avoid the sound of rending wood.

There had once been a lighthouse on the point. For all they knew it had long since been abandoned or destroyed, but the Captain still ordered a look out aloft. He kept his watch well.

He constantly scanned from left to right, and right to left, high and low alert to the faintest glimmer in the all encompassing mist.

He looked to stern, to starboard, and then, there, in the darkness, was a bright gleam. He called down to the deck below. They knew where they were, they would live to see the dawn.

---

"So you see, if it hadn't been for that lighthouse, I'd be sleeping with the fishes by now."

An odd look came across the landlord's visage.

"That lighthouse burned down six months ago."