The Light at Kala Point

For thirty-one years, Hari had kept the light at Kala Point, and in that time the sea had never once surprised him.

He knew its moods the way a farmer knows his fields. He knew the soft grey sulk before a storm and the glassy calm that comes after it. He knew the exact sound of the waves on the rocks below the tower, a slow, heavy sigh, like a giant turning in his sleep.

That night the sea was quiet, and that was what made him uneasy.

At 1:10 a.m. the old radio on his desk crackled.

"Kala Point, Kala Point," said a voice. It was a smooth, unhurried voice, the kind that is used to being obeyed. "This is the fishing vessel Sagar Rani. We have an engine fault, three miles out. Your light is hurting our eyes. Switch it off for ten minutes, please."

Hari put down his tea.

In thirty-one years, nobody had ever asked him to turn off a lighthouse. It was a little like asking a rooster to stay quiet at dawn. A light that is switched off is a light that cannot warn anyone, and the rocks below Kala Point had eaten many a fishing boat.

"Sagar Rani, you are in no danger from the light," Hari said slowly. "Keep your bow north and stay clear of the rocks."

"We will not ask again, old man." The voice had lost some of its smoothness. "Ten minutes. We just want to rest our eyes."

He lifted the heavy binoculars and swept the dark water. There, to the south, were no navigation lights at all: just a long black shape sitting low in the water, with a thin glimmer of something pale at the stern. No fishing boat carries its lights so dim. And no engine fault explains why a vessel is creeping toward the one stretch of shore where nobody lives, where the old jetty lies broken and the road is a day's walk away.

He understood, and it did not frighten him so much as it sharpened him.

They did not want the light off for their eyes. They wanted the dark. They wanted to slip something onto the beach without the one tower on the coast watching them do it.

Hari looked at the telephone line. He had checked it at dusk, as he did every night. It was dead, a branch from last week's storm having cut it somewhere in the dunes.

He looked at the radio. A call to the coast guard would mean the men on the boat would hear it too, because he was on an open channel.

He looked at the great lamp above him, turning behind its thick glass, sweeping a white arm across the sea.

And then, slowly, he began to smile.

"Sagar Rani, Kala Point," he said into the microphone. "You have caught me on a long night. I am an old man and my ears are tired. Ten minutes, you say? Very well. I will switch off the main lamp. But the power may take a minute to go. Be patient."

"Good," said the voice, relaxing at last. "Good. You are sensible."

Hari climbed the iron stairs, one hundred and twelve steps, each ringing like a bell under his boots. At the top he turned off the great lamp. The sweeping white arm dwindled, flickered and vanished. The coast fell into utter darkness.

Out on the water, the dark shape quickened.

But Hari was not finished. In a locked cupboard beside the lamp stood an old signal lantern with a green lens, which his predecessor had used long before the electric light came to Kala Point. Green meant safe channel. Every fisherman on this coast knew the code, and, the smugglers hoped, nobody else did.

Hari lit the lantern and carried it to the seaward window. He held it low and steady, where it would show only to a boat that was looking for it: a small, green, friendly light, pointing to a gap in the rocks.

The boat saw it. Of course it did. Its captain was a man who had been promised an easy route and a clear night, and now here was a safe channel marked out for him in the old way, by a lighthouse keeper who had apparently decided to help. He swung the wheel and followed the green glow.

What Hari knew, and what the captain did not, was that the channel had silted up eleven years ago. At low tide, which it was, the gap was a gentle slope of sand, not much deeper than a man's knee.

There was a long, soft grinding noise, like a very large spoon scraping the bottom of a very large bowl.

Hari put down the lantern and walked back to the radio. He picked up the microphone with a hand that was perfectly steady.

"Sagar Rani, Kala Point," he said. "I am afraid I forgot to mention. The channel is closed for repairs."

The silence on the radio lasted almost a minute. Then came a stream of words that Hari chose not to put in the log.

He switched the great lamp back on. Its white arm swept the sea again, and this time it found the boat stuck fast on the sandbar, tilted like a sleepy cow, its crew shouting at one another on the deck.

Now that the boat could go nowhere, there was no harm in the whole coast hearing. Hari switched to the emergency channel and called the coast guard. The patrol took three hours to arrive, but they steered by his light the whole way, and they came with their own bright lamps and a boat that did not mind the sand.

"Quite the evening," said the young officer, climbing the iron stairs the next morning to take his statement. "They were carrying a number of things that should not have been carried. And all of them stuck on the one sandbar on the whole coast that nobody uses. What a coincidence."

Hari handed him a cup of tea.

"Thirty-one years," he said mildly. "The sea never surprises me. The men on it, sometimes."

That evening, as the sun went down and the great white arm began its slow turning, he looked at the little green lantern on the windowsill and gave it a quiet nod, the way one nods to an old friend who has done a good day's work.