The sentinels of the coast did not sleep. In the darkness through the night, the lighthouses stood, flashing out their beams against the storm. Beneath their foundations the pounding waves jarred the cliffs. Wind and rain beat upon their towers. Low-flying scud veiled them in mist. Salt spray spattered windows that were two hundred feet above high tide. But still—flash, flash, darkness, flash—they sent the message through the night, and even when mist veiled the lights, the horns blared forth, and the subtle radio-beacons reached out to sea.

(This is the roll-call of the sentinels, whose names are partly English, and partly Spanish, as hard-pressed Viscaíno named them, sighting point beyond point through the fog and rain as he sailed north, that long-ago winter when the old queen lay dying and Hamlet was a new play at the Globe.)

Far to the north, St. George from its wave-swept reef flashed the warning seaward. Then Crescent City, Trinidad Head, and Table Bluff. High-placed and lonely, sending its beam twenty-eight miles to sea, Cape Mendocino stabbed the darkness. Blunt-nosed Punta Gorda. Then from the pure white tower Point Arena of the Sand flashed on toward where Point Reyes of the Kings stood firm on that long seaward-reaching finger of high rock above the seal-rookeries. Far at sea on the Isle of Cliffs the Farallon beam flared out; on the bar the light-ship rolled and pitched; Mile Rocks guarded the Golden Gate. Montara, Pigeon Point, Año Nuevo of the New Year.

Santa Cruz of the Holy Cross, Point Pinos of the Pine Trees, Point Sur of the South, Piedras Blancas of the White Rocks, its tapering white tower wreathed in rain. San Luis Obispo of the Bishop-Saint. Then from its long point, across twelve miles of foaming sea, Arguello cast its light on to Conception. And beyond Conception was only here and there a shower, with the clouds resting low on the mountains and in the long channel the waves heaving.

SEVENTH DAY

1

While as yet he scarce walked upright steadily, man fashioned for himself many gods—of earth and of sea, of the nether world, but (most of all) gods of the sky. Of these, sometimes he imagined gods of the farther air, high and serene, celestial in the empyrean. Sometimes they were of the middle air, rulers of the four winds, of thunder and lightning, of rain. Still again, they were demons of the lower air, malignant, haunting headland and cliff and rim-rock, pouncing in squall or sand-storm. But most often, each god had many aspects, being now the far master of the sky, now the rain-bringer, and again the spiteful demon crushing the corn-field with hail.