THE CASKETS.
It was indeed the Caskets light.
A lighthouse of the nineteenth century is a high cylinder of masonry,
surmounted by scientifically constructed machinery for throwing light.
The Caskets lighthouse in particular is a triple white tower, bearing
three light-rooms. These three chambers revolve on clockwork wheels,
with such precision that the man on watch who sees them from sea can
invariably take ten steps during their irradiation, and twenty-five
during their eclipse. Everything is based on the focal plan, and on the
rotation of the octagon drum, formed of eight wide simple lenses in
range, having above and below it two series of dioptric rings; an
algebraic gear, secured from the effects of the beating of winds and
waves by glass a millimetre thick[6], yet sometimes broken by the
sea-eagles, which dash themselves like great moths against these
gigantic lanterns. The building which encloses and sustains this
mechanism, and in which it is set, is also mathematically constructed.
Everything about it is plain, exact, bare, precise, correct. A
lighthouse is a mathematical figure.
In the seventeenth century a lighthouse was a sort of plume of the land
on the seashore. The architecture of a lighthouse tower was magnificent
and extravagant. It was covered with balconies, balusters, lodges,
alcoves, weathercocks. Nothing but masks, statues, foliage, volutes,
reliefs, figures large and small, medallions with inscriptions. _Pax in
bello_, said the Eddystone lighthouse. We may as well observe, by the
way, that this declaration of peace did not always disarm the ocean.
Winstanley repeated it on a lighthouse which he constructed at his own
expense, on a wild spot near Plymouth. The tower being finished, he shut
himself up in it to have it tried by the tempest. The storm came, and
carried off the lighthouse and Winstanley in it. Such excessive
adornment gave too great a hold to the hurricane, as generals too
brilliantly equipped in battle draw the enemy’s fire. Besides whimsical
designs in stone, they were loaded with whimsical designs in iron,
copper, and wood. The ironwork was in relief, the woodwork stood out. On
the sides of the lighthouse there jutted out, clinging to the walls
among the arabesques, engines of every description, useful and useless,
windlasses, tackles, pulleys, counterpoises, ladders, cranes, grapnels.
On the pinnacle around the light delicately-wrought ironwork held great
iron chandeliers, in which were placed pieces of rope steeped in resin;
wicks which burned doggedly, and which no wind extinguished; and from
top to bottom the tower was covered by a complication of sea-standards,
banderoles, banners, flags, pennons, colours which rose from stage to
stage, from story to story, a medley of all hues, all shapes, all
heraldic devices, all signals, all confusion, up to the light chamber,
making, in the storm, a gay riot of tatters about the blaze. That
insolent light on the brink of the abyss showed like a defiance, and
inspired shipwrecked men with a spirit of daring. But the Caskets light
was not after this fashion.
It was, at that period, merely an old barbarous lighthouse, such as
Henry I. had built it after the loss of the _White Ship_--a flaming pile
of wood under an iron trellis, a brazier behind a railing, a head of
hair flaming in the wind.
The only improvement made in this lighthouse since the twelfth century
was a pair of forge-bellows worked by an indented pendulum and a stone
weight, which had been added to the light chamber in 1610.
The fate of the sea-birds who chanced to fly against these old
lighthouses was more tragic than those of our days. The birds dashed
against them, attracted by the light, and fell into the brazier, where
they could be seen struggling like black spirits in a hell, and at times
they would fall back again between the railings upon the rock, red hot,
smoking, lame, blind, like half-burnt flies out of a lamp.
To a full-rigged ship in good trim, answering readily to the pilot’s
handling, the Caskets light is useful; it cries, “Look out;” it warns
her of the shoal. To a disabled ship it is simply terrible. The hull,
paralyzed and inert, without resistance, without defence against the
impulse of the storm or the mad heaving of the waves, a fish without
fins, a bird without wings, can but go where the wind wills. The
lighthouse shows the end--points out the spot where it is doomed to
disappear--throws light upon the burial. It is the torch of the
sepulchre.
To light up the inexorable chasm, to warn against the inevitable, what
more tragic mockery!