CHAPTER THREE
The Keeper's Ledger

The ledger had been kept in the same drawer for eighty years, and in eighty years nobody had thought to read it.
Nell found it on her second evening at the lighthouse, while looking for matches. It was bound in green cloth gone
grey at the corners, and the first entry was dated the fourteenth of October, in a hand so careful it looked
engraved.

"Wind north-west, strong. Lamp lit 5.12 p.m. Two steamers passed southbound. Mrs Harrow brought bread."

She turned the pages. The entries went on like that for years: weather, the time the lamp was lit, the ships, the
bread. Then, in the winter of the fourth year, the handwriting changed. It grew smaller and leaned to the right, as
if the writer were in a hurry or afraid of being seen.

"Saw the light again on the north reef. No vessel there. Did not report it."

Nell read the line twice. Outside, the beam swung over the water every eleven seconds, and in its passing she could
see the reef itself, a black shelf rising out of the foam. There was nothing on it. There had been nothing on it,
she was sure, for a very long time.

She told herself it was a story the old keepers told one another to pass the winters. She closed the ledger and put
it back in the drawer. Then she took it out again and carried it up the spiral stairs to the lamp room, where it
was warmer, and where she could watch the north reef while she read.

By midnight she had found eleven more entries about the light. The last one was different from the others. It did
not mention the weather, or the ships, or the bread.

"Tomorrow I will row out and see for myself."

The next page was blank, and so was every page after it.
