The Lighthouse at Ynys Graig

Source written for Revision Library (original, copyright-free). A short original story written specifically for this cloze worksheet; no existing text has been used or adapted.

Elsie stepped off the ferry and swung her canvas bag onto her shoulder. The little harbour of Aberllan smelled of salt and tar, and gulls wheeled overhead in lazy circles. Her grandmother, Non, was waiting by the harbour wall, her white hair streaming loose in the wind. 'You've grown,' Non said, folding Elsie into a hug that smelled of woodsmoke. Together they climbed up the cliff path towards the old lighthouse, its red and white stripes bright against the grey sky. Elsie had never known anywhere so quiet before. When they reached the door, Non took a heavy iron key from her pocket and fitted it into the lock.

By the third evening the sky had turned an ominous shade of purple, and Non said a storm was rolling in. Elsie helped her carry the storm lanterns up to the lamp room, her footsteps echoing on the worn stone stairs. Non explained that the light no longer worked by its old mechanism; a small electric bulb had replaced the enormous oil lamp decades before, though the brass gears still turned for show. As the wind battered against the windows, Elsie asked whether the lighthouse had ever failed to warn a ship in time. Non's expression grew solemn, and she told Elsie of a wreck from her own grandmother's day, when the keeper had fallen ill and the light had gone out for a single, fatal night. 'That is why we never abandon our watch,' Non said, 'no matter how tired or how wild the night.' Elsie nodded, and privately resolved that she would not betray her grandmother's trust, however long the storm might rage that night.

The storm broke just after midnight. Elsie woke to a sound she could not immediately place, a deep, grinding groan from somewhere below the cliffs. She found Non already dressed, listening at the open door with an intensity that made the older woman seem, for a moment, decades younger. Out in the bay, a small fishing boat was pitching helplessly, its navigation lights swallowed by the driving spray. Non did not hesitate. She flung open the shutter of the old lamp room and began to signal with a hand torch, her arm moving in short, deliberate bursts that Elsie recognised, after a moment, as Morse code. It was, Elsie realised with a shiver, the first time in years that the lighthouse had been needed for what it was built to do rather than for what tourists paid to see. When the boat finally limped into the shelter of the harbour an hour later, Non lowered the torch and said nothing at all, as though the whole event had been entirely unremarkable.