LIFE IN THE BEACON--STORY OF THE EDDYSTONE LIGHTHOUSE
Some time after this a number of the men took up their permanent
abode in the beacon house, and the work was carried on by night as
well as by day, when the state of the tide and the weather permitted.
Immense numbers of fish called poddlies were discovered to be
swimming about at high water. So numerous were they, that the rock
was sometimes hidden by the shoals of them. Fishing for these
thenceforth became a pastime among the men, who not only supplied
their own table with fresh fish, but at times sent presents of them
to their friends in the vessels.
All the men who dwelt on the beacon were volunteers, for Mr.
Stevenson felt that it would be cruel to compel men to live at such
a post of danger. Those who chose, therefore, remained in the
lightship or the tender, and those who preferred it went to the
beacon. It is scarcely necessary to add, that among the latter were
found all the "sea-sick men!"
These bold artificers were not long of having their courage tested.
Soon after their removal to the beacon they experienced some very
rough weather, which shook the posts violently, and caused them to
twist in a most unpleasant way.
But it was not until some time after that a storm arose, which caused
the stoutest-hearted of them all to quail more than once.
It began on the night of as fine a day as they had had the whole
season.
In order that the reader may form a just conception of what we are
about to describe, it may not be amiss to note the state of things at
the rock, and the employment of the men at the time.
A second forge had been put up on the higher platform of the beacon,
but the night before that of which we write, the lower platform had
been burst up by a wave, and the mortar and forge thereon, with all
the implements, were cast down. The damaged forge was therefore set
up for the time on its old site, near the foundation-pit of the
lighthouse, while the carpenters were busy repairing the
mortar-gallery.
The smiths were as usual busy sharpening picks and irons, and making
bats and stanchions, and other iron work connected with the building
operations. The landing-master's crew were occupied in assisting the
millwrights to lay the railways to hand, and joiners were kept almost
constantly employed in fitting picks to their handles, which latter
were very frequently broken.
Nearly all the miscellaneous work was done by seamen. There was no
such character on the Bell Rock as the common labourer. The sailors
cheerfully undertook the work usually performed by such men, and they
did it admirably.
In consequence of the men being able to remain on the beacon, the
work went on literally "by double tides"; and at night the rock was
often ablaze with torches, while the artificers wrought until the
waves drove them away.
On the night in question there was a low spring-tide, so that a
night-tide's work of five hours was secured. This was one of the
longest spells they had had since the beginning of the operations.
The stars shone brightly in a very dark sky. Not a breath of air was
felt. Even the smoke of the forge fire rose perpendicularly a short
way, until an imperceptible zephyr wafted it gently to the west. Yet
there was a heavy swell rolling in from the eastward, which caused
enormous waves to thunder on Ralph the Rover's Ledge, as if they
would drive down the solid rock.
Mingled with this solemn, intermittent roar of the sea was the
continuous clink of picks, chisels, and hammers, and the loud clang
of the two forges; that on the beacon being distinctly different from
the other, owing to the wooden erection on which it stood rendering
it deep and thunderous. Torches and forge fires cast a glare over
all, rendering the foam pale green and the rocks deep red. Some of
the active figures at work stood out black and sharp against the
light, while others shone in its blaze like red-hot fiends. Above all
sounded an occasional cry from the sea-gulls, as they swooped down
into the magic circle of light, and then soared away shrieking into
darkness.
"Hard work's not easy," observed James Dove, pausing in the midst of
his labours to wipe his brow.
"True for ye; but as we've got to arn our brid be the sweat of our
brows, we're in the fair way to fortin," said Ned O'Connor, blowing
away energetically with the big bellows.
Ned had been reappointed to this duty since the erection of the
second forge, which was in Ruby's charge. It was our hero's hammer
that created such a din up in the beacon, while Dove wrought down on
the rock.
"We'll have a gale to-night," said the smith; "I know that by the
feelin' of the air."
"Well, I can't boast o' much knowledge o' feelin'," said O'Connor;
"but I believe you're right, for the fish towld me the news this
mornin'."
This remark of Ned had reference to a well-ascertained fact, that,
when a storm was coming, the fish invariably left the neighbourhood
of the rock; doubtless in order to seek the security of depths which
are not affected by winds or waves.
While Dove and his comrade commented on this subject, two of the
other men had retired to the south-eastern end of the rock to take a
look at the weather. These were Peter Logan, the foreman, whose
position required him to have a care for the safety of the men as
well as for the progress of the work, and our friend Bremner, who
had just descended from the cooking-room, where he had been
superintending the preparation of supper.
"It will be a stiff breeze, I fear, to-night," said Logan.
"D'ye think so?" said Bremner; "it seems to me so calm that I would
think a storm a'most impossible. But the fish never tell lies."
"True. You got no fish to-day, I believe?" said Logan.
"Not a nibble," replied the other.
As he spoke, he was obliged to rise from a rock on which he had
seated himself, because of a large wave, which, breaking on the outer
reefs, sent the foam a little closer to his toes than was agreeable.
"That was a big one, but yonder is a bigger," cried Logan.
The wave to which he referred was indeed a majestic wall of water. It
came on with such an awful appearance of power, that some of the men
who perceived it could not repress a cry of astonishment.
In another moment it fell, and, bursting over the rocks with a
terrific roar, extinguished the forge fire, and compelled the men to
take refuge in the beacon.
Jamie Dove saved his bellows with difficulty. The other men, catching
up their things as they best might, crowded up the ladder in a more
or less draggled condition.
The beacon house was gained by means of one of the main beams, which
had been converted into a stair, by the simple process of nailing
small battens thereon, about a foot apart from each other. The men
could only go up one at a time, but as they were active and
accustomed to the work, they were all speedily within their place of
refuge. Soon afterwards the sea covered the rock, and the place where
they had been at work was a mass of seething foam.
Still there was no wind; but dark clouds had begun to rise on the
seaward horizon.
The sudden change in the appearance of the rock after the last
torches were extinguished was very striking. For a few seconds there
seemed to be no light at all. The darkness of a coal mine appeared to
have settled down on the scene. But this soon passed away, as the
men's eyes became accustomed to the change, and then the dark loom of
the advancing billows, the pale light of the flashing foam, and
occasional gleams of phosphorescence, and glimpses of black rocks in
the midst of all, took the place of the warm, busy scene which the
spot had presented a few minutes before.
"Supper, boys!" shouted Bremner.
Peter Bremner, we may remark in passing, was a particularly useful
member of society. Besides being small and corpulent, he was a
capital cook. He had acted during his busy life both as a groom and a
house-servant; he had been a soldier, a sutler, a writer's clerk, and
an apothecary--in which latter profession he had acquired the art of
writing and suggesting recipes, and a taste for making collections in
natural history. He was very partial to the use of the lancet, and
quite a terrible adept at tooth-drawing. In short, Peter was the
factotum of the beacon house, where, in addition to his other
offices, he filled those of barber and steward to the admiration of
all.
But Bremner came out in quite a new and valuable light after he went
to reside in the beacon--namely, as a storyteller. During the long
periods of inaction that ensued, when the men were imprisoned there
by storms, he lightened many an hour that would have otherwise hung
heavily on their hands, and he cheered the more timid among them by
speaking lightly of the danger of their position.
On the signal for supper being given, there was a general rush down
the ladders into the kitchen, where as comfortable a meal as one
could wish for was smoking in pot and pan and platter.
As there were twenty-three to partake, it was impossible, of course,
for all to sit down to table. They were obliged to stow themselves
away on such articles of furniture as came most readily to hand, and
eat as they best could. Hungry men find no difficulty in doing this.
For some time the conversation was restricted to a word or two. Soon,
however, as appetite began to be appeased, tongues began to loosen.
The silence was first broken by a groan.
"Ochone!" exclaimed O'Connor, as well as a mouthful of pork and
potatoes would allow him; "was it _you_ that groaned like a dyin'
pig?"
The question was put to Forsyth, who was holding his head between his
hands, and swaying his body to and fro in agony.
"Hae ye the oolic, freen'?" enquired John Watt, in a tone of
sympathy.
"No--n--o," groaned Forsyth, "it's a--a--to--tooth!"
"Och! is that all?"
"Have it out, man, at once."
"Bam a red-hot skewer into it."
"No, no; let it alone, and it'll go away."
Such was the advice tendered, and much more of a similar nature, to
the suffering man.
"There's nothink like 'ot water an' cold," said Joe Dumsby in the
tones of an oracle. "Just fill your mouth with bilin' 'ot water, an'
dip your face in a basin o' cold, and it's sartain to cure."
"Or kill," suggested Jamie Dove.
"It's better now," said Forsyth, with a sigh of relief. "I scrunched
a bit o' bone into it; that was all."
"There's nothing like the string and the red-hot poker," suggested
Ruby Brand. "Tie the one end o' the string to a post and t'other end
to the tooth, an' stick a red-hot poker to your nose. Away it comes
at once."
"Hoot! nonsense," said Watt. "Ye might as weel tie a string to his
lug an' dip him into the sea. Tak' my word for't, there's naethin'
like pooin'."
"D'you mean pooh pooin'?" enquired Dumsby. Watt's reply was
interrupted by a loud gust of wind, which burst upon the beacon house
at that moment and shook it violently.
Everyone started up, and all clustered round the door and windows to
observe the appearance of things without. Every object was shrouded
in thick darkness, but a flash of lightning revealed the approach of
the storm which had been predicted, and which had already commenced
to blow.
All tendency to jest instantly vanished, and for a time some of the
men stood watching the scene outside, while others sat smoking their
pipes by the fire in silence.
"What think ye of things?" enquired one of the men, as Ruby came up
from the mortar-gallery, to which he had descended at the first gust
of the storm.
"I don't know what to think," said he gravely. "It's clear enough
that we shall have a stiffish gale. I think little of that with a
tight craft below me and plenty of sea-room; but I don't know what to
think of a _beacon_ in a gale."
As he spoke another furious burst of wind shook the place, and a
flash of vivid lightning was speedily followed by a crash of
thunder, that caused some hearts there to beat faster and harder
than usual.
"Pooh!" cried Bremner, as he proceeded coolly to wash up his dishes,
"that's nothing, boys. Has not this old timber house weathered all
the gales o' last winter, and d'ye think it's goin' to come down
before a summer breeze? Why, there's a lighthouse in France, called
the Tour de Cordouan, which rises right out o' the sea, an' I'm told
it had some fearful gales to try its metal when it was buildin'. So
don't go an' git narvous."
"Who's gittin' narvous?" exclaimed George Forsyth, at whom Bremner
had looked when he made the last remark.
"Sure ye misjudge him," cried O'Connor. "It's only another twist o'
the toothick. But it's all very well in you to spake lightly o' gales
in that fashion. Wasn't the Eddy-stone Lighthouse cleared away wan
stormy night, with the engineer and all the men, an' was niver more
heard on?"
"That's true," said Ruby. "Come, Bremner, I have heard you say that
you had read all about that business. Let's hear the story; it will
help to while away the time, for there's no chance of anyone gettin'
to sleep with such a row outside."
"I wish it may be no worse than a row outside," said Forsyth in a
doleful tone, as he shook his head and looked round on the party
anxiously.
"Wot! another fit o' the toothick?" enquired O'Connor ironically.
"Don't try to put us in the dismals," said Jamie Dove, knocking the
ashes out of his pipe, and refilling that solace of his leisure
hours. "Let us hear about the Eddystone, Bremner; it'll cheer up our
spirits a bit."
"Will it though?" said Bremner, with a look that John Watt described
as "awesome". "Well, we shall see."
"You must know, boys----"
'"Ere, light your pipe, my 'earty," said Dumsby.
"Hold yer tongue, an' don't interrupt him," cried one of the men,
flattening Dumsby's cap over his eyes.
"And don't drop yer Aaitches," observed another, "'cause if ye do
they'll fall into the sea an' be drownded, an' then yell have none
left to put into their wrong places when ye wants 'em."
"Come, Bremner, go on."
"Well, then, boys," began Bremner, "you must know that it is more
than a hundred years since the Eddystone Lighthouse was begun--in the
year 1696, if I remember rightly--that would be just a hundred and
thirteen years to this date. Up to that time these rocks were as
great a terror to sailors as the Bell Rock is now, or, rather, as it
was last year, for now that this here comfortable beacon has been put
up, it's no longer a terror to nobody----"
"Except Geordie Forsyth," interposed O'Connor.
"Silence," cried the men.
"Well," resumed Bremner, "as you all know, the Eddystone Rocks lie in
the British Channel, fourteen miles from Plymouth and ten from the
Ram Head, an' open to a most tremendious sea from the Bay o' Biscay
and the Atlantic, as I knows well, for I've passed the place in a
gale, close enough a'most to throw a biscuit on the rocks.
"They are named the Eddystone Rocks because of the whirls and eddies
that the tides make among them; but for the matter of that, the Bell
Rock might be so named on the same ground. Howsever, it's six o' one
an' half a dozen o' t'other. Only there's this difference, that the
highest point o' the Eddystone is barely covered at high water, while
here the rock is twelve or fifteen feet below water at high tide.
"Well, it was settled by the Trinity Board in 1696, that a lighthouse
should be put up, and a Mr. Winstanley was engaged to do it. He was
an uncommon clever an' ingenious man. He used to exhibit wonderful
waterworks in London; and in his house, down in Essex, he used to
astonish his friends, and frighten them sometimes, with his queer
contrivances. He had invented an easy chair which laid hold of anyone
that sat down in it, and held him prisoner until Mr. Winstanley set
him free. He made a slipper also, and laid it on his bedroom floor,
and when anyone put his foot into it he touched a spring that caused
a ghost to rise from the hearth. He made a summer house, too, at the
foot of his garden, on the edge of a canal, and if anyone entered
into it and sat down, he very soon found himself adrift on the canal.
"Such a man was thought to be the best for such a difficult work as
the building of a lighthouse on the Eddystone, so he was asked to
undertake it, and agreed, and began it well. He finished it, too, in
four years, his chief difficulty being the distance of the rock from
land, and the danger of goin' backwards and forwards. The light was
first shown on the 14th November, 1698. Before this the engineer had
resolved to pass a night in the building, which he did with a party
of men; but he was compelled to pass more than a night, for it came
on to blow furiously, and they were kept prisoners for eleven days,
drenched with spray all the time, and hard up for provisions.
"It was said the sprays rose a hundred feet above the lantern of this
first Eddystone Lighthouse. Well, it stood till the year 1703, when
repairs became necessary, and Mr. Winstanley went down to Plymouth to
superintend. It had been prophesied that this lighthouse would
certainly be carried away. But dismal prophecies are always made
about unusual things. If men were to mind prophecies there would be
precious little done in this world. Howsever, the prophecies
unfortunately came true. Winstanley's friends advised him not to go
to stay in it, but he was so confident of the strength of his work
that he said he only wished to have the chance o' bein' there in the
greatest storm that ever blew, that he might see what effect it would
have on the buildin'. Poor man! he had his wish. On the night of the
26th November a terrible storm arose, the worst that had been for
many years, and swept the lighthouse entirely away. Not a vestige of
it or the people on it was ever seen afterwards. Only a few bits of
the iron fastenings were left fixed in the rocks."
"That was terrible," said Forsyth, whose uneasiness was evidently
increasing with the rising storm.
"Ay, but the worst of it was," continued Bremner, "that, owing to the
absence of the light, a large East Indiaman went on the rocks
immediately after, and became a total wreck. This, however, set the
Trinity House on putting up another which was begun in 1706, and the
light shown in 1708. This tower was ninety-two feet high, built
partly of wood and partly of stone. It was a strong building, and
stood for forty-nine years. Mayhap it would have been standin' to
this day but for an accident, which you shall hear of before I have
done. While this lighthouse was building, a French privateer carried
off all the workmen prisoners to France, but they were set at liberty
by the King, because their work was of such great use to all nations.
"The lighthouse, when finished, was put in charge of two keepers,
with instructions to hoist a flag when anything was wanted from the
shore. One of these men became suddenly ill, and died. Of course his
comrade hoisted the signal, but the weather was so bad that it was
found impossible to send a boat off for four weeks. The poor keeper
was so afraid that people might suppose he had murdered his companion
that he kept the corpse beside him all that time. What his feelin's
could have been I don't know, but they must have been awful; for,
besides the horror of such a position in such a lonesome place, the
body decayed to an extent----"
"That'll do, lad; don't be too partickler," said Jamie Dove.
The others gave a sigh of relief at the interruption, and Bremner
continued--
"There were always _three_ keepers in the Eddystone after that. Well,
it was in the year 1755, on the 2nd December, that one o' the
keepers went to snuff the candles, for they only burned candles in
the lighthouses at that time, and before that time great open grates
with coal fires were the most common; but there were not many lights
either of one kind or another in those days. On gettin' up to the
lantern he found it was on fire. All the efforts they made failed to
put it out,' and it was soon burned down. Boats put off to them, but
they only succeeded in saving the keepers; and of them, one went mad
on reaching the shore, and ran off, and never was heard of again; and
another, an old man, died from the effects of melted lead which had
run down his throat from the roof of the burning lighthouse. They did
not believe him when he said he had swallowed lead, but after he died
it was found to be a fact.
"The tower became red-hot, and burned for five days before it was
utterly destroyed. This was the end o' the second Eddystone. Its
builder was a Mr. John Rudyerd, a silk mercer of London.
"The third Eddystone, which has now stood for half a century as firm
as the rock itself, and which bids fair to stand till the end of
time, was begun in 1756 and completed in 1759. It was lighted by
means of twenty-four candles. Of Mr. Smeaton, the engineer who built
it, those who knew him best said that 'he had never undertaken
anything without completing it to the satisfaction of his
employers'.
"D'ye know, lads," continued Bremner in a half-musing tone, "I've
sometimes been led to couple this character of Smeaton with the text
that he put round the top of the first room of the
lighthouse--'Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain
that build it'; and also the words, 'Praise God', which he cut in
Latin on the last stone, the lintel of the lantern door. I think
these words had somethin' to do with the success of the last
Eddystone Lighthouse."
"I agree with you," said Robert Selkirk, with a nod of hearty
approval; "and, moreover, I think the Bell Rock Lighthouse stands a
good chance of equal success, for whether he means to carve texts on
the stones or not I don't know, but I feel assured that _our_
engineer is animated by the same spirit."
When Bremner's account of the Eddystone came to a close, most of the
men had finished their third or fourth pipes, yet no one proposed
going to rest.
The storm without raged so furiously that they felt a strong
disinclination to separate. At last, however, Peter Logan rose, and
said he would turn in for a little. Two or three of the others also
rose, and were about to ascend to their barrack, when a heavy sea
struck the building, causing it to quiver to its foundation.