The Split Point Light

THE EVENING sky was a true prophet. Smoky-yellow cloud-fingers presented as clear a warning as the yellow-gloved hand of a traffic policeman, and all the birds obeyed the warning save the foolish one.

The cloud-fingers turned to crimson, and tinted the Southern Ocean with opalescent hues. The foolish one sported with the little fish, diving and turning in the colours, and when the colours had gone and the sea mirrored the stars, he slept contentedly on the deep.

The wind came before the day, came swift and cold and strong. The day brought rain to scat upon the grey water from the grey sky, and to reveal the land far distant and shrouded in sea-mist. Unlike the gulls and the gannets, the foolish one couldn’t fly, but he could swim, and with frantic haste he steered for the sanctuary of the shore.

His dinner suit kept him warm for a little while and gave him buoyancy, but steadily the white horses grew in number and in strength, charging down upon him, thrusting him deep beneath their salted hooves, each one taking a little of his buoyancy before speeding onward in the race for the land. The end was as inevitable as Greek drama: the price exacted for all foolishness. He became a spent and water-logged vessel, and the cold clamped about his valiant heart. Then lethargy quieted all his fears.

The sea surged him onward to the rocks footing the headland bearing high the Split Point Lighthouse. It failed to whiten more his shirt front, or dim the blackness of his dinner jacket, but its anger increased because its triumph was cheap and its revenge was thwarted by the currents which carried the body clear of the rocks, to deposit it at the feet of Napoleon Bonaparte.

The sea thundered its rage and the wind shrieked its fury. A gull cried with grief, and Detective-Inspector Bonaparte took up the half-grown penguin, carried it above high-water mark and buried it in the dry sand.