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 haitches,” 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.

  Chapter Twenty Three.

  The Storm.

  “’Tis a fearful night,” said Logan, pausing with his foot on the first step of the ladder. “Perhaps we had better sit up.”

  “What’s the use?” said O’Connor, who was by nature reckless. “Av the beacon howlds on, we may as well slape as not; an’ if it don’t howld on, why, we’ll be none the worse o’ slapin’ anyhow.”

  “I mean to sit up,” said Forsyth, whose alarm was aggravated by another fit of violent toothache.

  “So do I,” exclaimed several of the men, as another wave dashed against the beacon, and a quantity of spray came pouring down from the rooms above.

  This latter incident put an end to further conversation. While some sprang up the ladder to see where the leak had occurred, Ruby opened the door, which was on the lee-side of the building, and descended to the mortar-gallery to look after his tools, which lay there.

  Here he was exposed to the full violence of the gale, for, as we have said, this first floor of the beacon was not protected by sides. There was sufficient light to enable him to see all round for a considerable distance. The sight was not calculated to comfort him.

  The wind was whistling with what may be termed a vicious sound among the beams, to one of which Ruby was obliged to cling to prevent his being carried away. The sea was bursting, leaping, and curling wildly over the rocks, which were now quite covered, and as he looked down through the chinks in the boards of the floor, he could see the foam whirling round the beams of his trembling abode, and leaping up as if to seize him. As the tide rose higher and higher, the waves roared straight through below the floor, their curling backs rising terribly near to where he stood, and the sprays drenching him and the whole edifice completely.

  As he gazed into the dark distance, where the turmoil of waters seemed to glimmer with ghostly light against a sky of the deepest black, he missed the light of the Smeaton, which, up to that time, had been moored as near to the lee of the rock as was consistent with safety. He fancied she must have gone down, and it was not till next day that the people on the beacon knew that she had parted her cables, and had been obliged to make for the Firth of Forth for shelter from the storm.

  While he stood looking anxiously in the direction of the tender, a wave came so near to the platform that he almost involuntarily leaped up the ladder for safety. It broke before reaching the beacon, and the spray dashed right over it, carrying away several of the smith’s tools.

  “Ho, boys! lend a hand here, some of you,” shouted Ruby, as he leaped down on the mortar-gallery again.

  Jamie Dove, Bremner, O’Connor, and several others were at his side in a moment, and, in the midst of tremendous sprays, they toiled to secure the movable articles that lay there. These were passed up to the sheltered parts of the house; but not without great danger to all who stood on the exposed gallery below.

  Presently two of the planks were torn up by a sea, and several bags of coal, a barrel of small-beer, and a few casks containing lime and sand, were all swept away. The men would certainly have shared the fate of these, had they not clung to the beams until the sea had passed.