TRAGEDY IN A LIGHTHOUSE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 16, 4 September 1911, Page 7

TRAGEDY IN A LIGHTHOUSE.

KEEPER DIES BEFORE PUTTING MECHANISM IN ORDER. ORPHANS’ HEROISM AVERTS DANGER. Two French children have earned undying fame by a deed of quiet heroism which resulted in the saving of many ships and lives. These two, a gill of ten and a boy of eight, were the children of a man named Matelot, lighthouse keeper at Kerdonis, Belle-Tsle-en-Mer, Franco. One morning, while cleaning his lantern, Matelot was taken ill. His wife did all that she possibly could for him, but he got rapidly worse, and in a few hours there was no doubt ho was dying. Bis weeping wife and children gathered round his bed, thinking only of the husband and father they were about to lose. But Matelot remembered duty. “The light!” he whispered hoarsely. Mine. Matelot understood. Leaving the children by the side of the dying man, she climbed the tower of the lighthouse and lit the lantern.

When she returned Matelot could not speak, but his eyes asked the question his lips could not frame. “The lamp is alight,” said Mine. Matelot. The lighthouse keeper gave a sigh of content and fell back dead.

The bereaved wife sat for some time quietly sobbing beside the body of her husband. Then she was recalled to the duties of everyday life by one of the children, who, creeping to her side, whispered, “Mother, the light, is not turning.” The lantern of Kcrdonis Lighthouse is a revolving one, and the newly-made widow knew full well what the result would be if it failed ,to turn. Ships would mistake it for the fixed light of another point, and ( would bo dashed to pieces on the rocky coast., • Again Mine. Matelot ascended the winding staircase. The child was. right, the light was not turning, and, try as she would, Mine. Matolot could not make it revolve. Her husband had been cleaning the mechanism when ho was seized with illness, and had nob had time to set it properly. THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. For over an hour the woman laboured, trying to get the machinery to work, but in vain. She was almost in despair. A fierce storm was raging, and it was imperative that the light should lie kept burning. Her two eldest children solved tho difficulty. They had often watched their father prepare the light, and, though they could not see the machinery working, they knew the lamp could be turned by hand, and they resolved to keep it moving. Mrno. Matelot had returned to her husband’s side. Tho ten-year-old girl and tho eight-year-old hoy stole softly to her side, and tho girl whispered, “We are going to turn the light.” Tho mother was too possessed with her own grief to thoroughly understand what the children 'meant, but they knew, and, after kissing their dead father, they climbed the stairs to the lantern. Sailors whose vessels were passing near Kcrdonis that night, and who blessed the warning rays from tho ighthouso, little thought that hut for the heroism of two children they might never have reached port. But it was so. The wind screamed and howled round tho lonely tower, the rain lashed the glass of the lamp until it seemed as though the latter would be shivered, but through it all, from eight in the evening until seven the next morning, these heroic orphans sat there pushing the light from loft to right and right to left, while tho mother kept watch and ward over her dead. And their reward ? They were left to starve. There is no pension for a French lighthouse keeper’s widow; no provision for his children. Matolot had a little over £2 due to him at the time of his death (April Bth). But until certain formalities demanded by red tape had been complied with his starving widow could not got even that. After nearly two months, the Government Department responsible paid the paltry amount. This was sent, without any reference to the heroic night vigil, without a word of sympathy. The public are astonished at tho callousness and apathy of tho officials concerned, and in response to a subscription list on behalf of tho bereaved family opened by tho “Figaro” CBO lias been received. A debate is to take place in the Chamber on the subject.