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 I" 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,
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 colic, freen'?" enquired John Watt, in a tone of sympathy.
"No-n-o," groaned Forsyth, "it's a--a--too-tooth!"
"Och! is that all?"
"Have it out, man, at once."
"Ram 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 light 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 Eddystone Lighthouse cleared away one 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 _h_aitches," observed another, "'cause if ye do
they'll fall into the sea an' be drownded, an' then ye'll 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.