The morning sun peeping in at the window of the lighthouse found the Doctor still working over the keeper where he lay at the foot of the tower stairs.  
"He's coming to," said Dab-Dab. "See, his eyes are beginning to blink."
 
"Get me some more clean water from the kitchen," said the Doctor, who was bathing a large lump on the side of the man's head.
 
Presently the keeper opened his eyes wide and stared up into the Doctor's face.
 
"Who?——What?"——he murmured stupidly. "The light!—I must attend to the light!—I must attend to the light!" and he struggled weakly to get up.
 
"It's all right," said the Doctor. "The light has been lit. And it's nearly day now. Here, drink this. Then you'll feel better."
 
And the Doctor held some medicine to his lips which he had taken from the little black bag.
 
In a short while the man grew strong enough to stand on his feet. Then, with the Doctor's help, he walked as far as the kitchen, where John Dolittle and Dab-Dab made him comfortable in an armchair, lit the stove and cooked his breakfast for him.
 
"I'm grateful to you, stranger, whoever you be," said the man. "Usually there's two of us here, me and my partner, Fred. But yesterday morning I let Fred go off with the ketch to get . That's why I'm alone. I was coming down the stairs about noon, from putting new wicks in the lamp, when my foot slipped and I took a tumble to the bottom. My head fetched up against the wall and knocked the senses right out of me. How long I lay there before you found me I don't know."
 
"Well, all's well that ends well," said the Doctor. "Take this; you must be nearly starved."
 
And he handed the keeper a large cup of steaming coffee.
 
About ten o'clock in the morning Fred, the partner, returned in the little sail-boat from his oyster-gathering expedition. He was very much worried when he heard of the accident which had happened while he had been off duty. Fred, like the other keeper, was a Londoner and a . He was a pleasant fellow and both he and his partner (who was now almost recovered from his injury) were very glad of the Doctor's company to break the dullness of their lonely life.
 
They took John Dolittle all over the lighthouse to see the workings of it. And outside they showed him with great pride the tiny garden of tomatoes and nasturtiums which they had planted near the foot of the tower.
 
They only got a holiday once a year, they told John Dolittle, when a government ship stopped near Stephen and took them back to England for six weeks' vacation, leaving two other men in their place to take care of the light while they were gone.
 
They asked the Doctor if he could give them any news of their beloved London. But he had to admit that he also had been away from that city for a long time. However, while they were talking Cheapside came into the lighthouse kitchen, looking for the Doctor. The city sparrow was delighted to find that the keepers were also Cockneys. And he gave them, through the Doctor, all the latest gossip of Wapping, Limehouse, the East India Docks and the and the of London River.
 
The two keepers thought that the Doctor was surely crazy when he started a conversation of with Cheapside. But from the answers they got to their questions they could see there was no fake about the news of the city which the sparrow gave.
 
Cheapside said the faces of those two Cockney were the best scenery he had looked on since he had come to Africa. And after that first visit he was always flying over to the lighthouse in his spare time to see his new friends. Of course, he couldn't talk to them, because neither of them knew sparrow talk—not even Cockney sparrow talk. But Cheapside loved being with them, anyway.
 
"They're such a nice, , change," he said, "after these 'ere 'eathen hidolaters. And you should just hear Fred sing 'See That My Grave's Kept Green.'"
 
The lighthouse keepers were sorry to have the Doctor go and they wouldn't let him leave till he promised to come and take dinner with them next Sunday.
 
Then, after they had loaded his canoe with a bushel of tomatoes and a of nasturtiums, the Doctor, with Dab-Dab and Cheapside, paddled away for Fantippo, while the keepers waved to them from the lighthouse door.
 
The Doctor had not paddled very far on his return journey to the post office when the seagull who had brought the news of the light overtook him.
 
"Everything all right now, Doctor?" he asked as he swept in circles around the canoe.
 
"Yes," said John Dolittle, a tomato. "The man got an awful crack on the head from that fall. But he will be all over it in a little while. If it hadn't been for the canary, though, who told us where the matches were—and for you, too, holding back the sailors—we would never have saved that ship."
 
The Doctor threw a tomato skin out of the canoe and the caught it in the air before it touched the water.
 
"Well, I'm glad we were in time," said the bird.
 
"Tell me," asked the Doctor, watching him thoughtfully as he and swung and curved around the tiny boat, "what made you come and bring me the news about the light? don't, as a rule, bother much about people or what happens to ships, do they?"
 
"You're mistaken, Doctor," said the gull, another skin with deadly accuracy. "Ships and the men in them are very important to us—not so much down here in the South. But up North, why, if it wasn't for the ships in the winter we gulls would often have a hard time finding enough to eat. You see, after it gets cold fish and sea foods become sort of scarce. Sometimes we make out by going up the rivers to towns and hanging about the artificial lakes in parks where fancy waterfowl are kept. The people come to the parks and throw biscuits into the lakes for the waterfowl. But if we are around the biscuits get caught before they hit the lake—like that," and the gull snatched a third tomato skin on the wing with a lightning lunge.
 
"But you were speaking of ships," said the Doctor.
 
"Yes," the gull went on—rather indistinctly, because his mouth was full of tomato skin—"we find ships much better for winter feeding. You see, it isn't really fair of us to go and bag all the food from the fancy waterfowl in parks. So we never do it unless we have to. Usually in win............