The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers Part 9

"We put in a new gla.s.s," said the keeper.

"During the storm?"

"We haven't got any business to worry about storms, we've only got to keep the light goin'," was the reply. "If the End o' the World was scheduled to come off in the middle of the night, you can bet it would find the Tillamook Rock Light burnin'! Storm! Takes a sight more than a sixty mile gale an' a ragin' sea to stop a Lighthouse crowd. You know that yourself, or you oughter, with your folks. No, sir! There's no storm ever invented that can crimp the Service. We had that broken gla.s.s out and a new one in place, in just exactly eighteen minutes. It was some job, too! The chaps workin' on the outside had to be lashed on to the platform."

"Why, because of the wind?"

"Just the wind. That little breeze would have picked up a two-hundred-pound man like a feather."

"Weren't you scared?"

"No," said the light-keeper, "didn't have time to think of it. Cookie was scared, all right."

"Have you a cook on the rock?" said Eric in surprise, "I thought you all took turns to cook."

"The men do, in most o' the lighthouses," was the reply, "but Tillamook's so cut off from everything that we've five men on the post. That means quite a bit o' cookin', an' so we have a chef all our own. Didn't you ever hear the story o' Cookie?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: SLIDING DOWN TO WORK.

Lighthouse-builders on cableway from top of cliff to platform beside reef, unapproachable by boats.]

"Never," said the boy, "go ahead!"

"Quite a while ago," the light-keeper began, "the Service hired a cook for Tillamook. He was a jim-dandy of a cook an' could get good money ash.o.r.e. But he'd been crossed in love, or he'd lost his money, or something, I don't remember what, an' so he wanted to forget his sorrows in isolation."

"Sort of hermit style?" suggested Eric.

"That's it, exactly. Well, Cookie took the job, an' the tender tried to land him here. Three times the tender came out, an' each trip the sea was kickin' up didoes so that he couldn't land. He got scared right down to his toes an' they couldn't make him get into the boat. But each time he went back to town, after having renigged that way, his friends used to josh the life out of him.

"So, one day, when it was fairly calm, he said he would go. He'd been teased into it. The captain o' the tender chuckled, for he knew there was quite a sea running outside, but they started all right. Sure enough, soon as they rounded the cape, the sea was runnin' a bit. It didn't look so worse from the deck o' the tender, an' Breuger--that was the cook's name--was telling the first officer how the world was going to lose the marvelous cookin' that he alone could do.

"But, as soon as Tillamook Rock come in sight, Cookie's courage began to ooze. He talked less of his cookin' and more o' what he called 'the perils of the sea.' As soon as the tender come close to the rock, he fell silent. The boat was swung out an' Cookie was told to get in. As before, he refused.

"'That's all right,' said the skipper, who had been expectin' him to back out. 'We'll help you. It's a bit hard climbing with the rheumatism.'"

"Did he have rheumatism?" asked the boy, grinning in antic.i.p.ation.

"You couldn't prove he didn't have it!" responded the light-keeper with an answering flicker of a smile. "The captain turned to a couple of sailors. 'Give him a hand,' he said, 'he needs it.'

"Two husky A.B.'s chucked Breuger into the boat, an' before Cookie realized what was happenin', the boat was in the water an' cast off from the side o' the tender. But he had some sense, after all, for he saw there was no use makin' a fuss then. It was a bad landin' that day, four or five times worse than this afternoon, an' I guess it looked dangerous enough to a landsman to be a bit scarin'. One of the men went up with him, holdin' on to him, so he wouldn't get frightened an' drop, an' in a minute or two he was swung in to the landin'-place.

"There was one of our fellows here who was as funny as a goat, an' we had an awful time to keep him from raggin' Cookie. But we knew that Breuger was goin' to fix our grub for quite a spell and keepin' him in a good humor was a wise move. Anyway, when you're goin' to live in quarters as small as a lighthouse, you can't afford to have any quarrelin'. A funny man's all right, but he needs lots of room.

"So, instead of hazin' him for showin' the white feather so often, I praised Cookie for having made so brave a landin' on such an awful day.

Quick as a wink, his manner changed. He just strutted. He slapped himself on the chest an' boasted of his line of warlike ancestors--seemed to go back to somewhere about the time of Adam. It never once struck him that every one else on the rock had had to make a landin' there, too. He gave himself the airs of bein' the sole hero on Tillamook. There were days when this was a bit tryin', but we forgave him. He could cook. Shades of a sea-gull! How he could cook! We used to threaten to put an extra padlock on the lens, lest he should try to frica.s.see it!"

"Easy there!" protested Eric.

"Well," said the other, "you know the big Arctic gull they call the Burgomaster?"

"Yes, I've seen it in winter once or twice."

"Breuger could cook that oily bird so's it would taste like a pet squab.

He used to take a pride in it, too, an' he liked best the men who ate most. Now I was real popular with Cookie. Those were the days for eats!"

and the light-keeper sighed regretfully.

"How long did he stay?" queried the boy.

"That's just the point," the other answered. "He never went back."

"Never?"

"Not alive," responded the light-keeper. "He'd had one experience of landin' an' he'd never risk another. He stayed on Tillamook for over eighteen years, never leavin' it, even for a day. An' he died here."

"Well," the boy commented, "this is where I'm going to differ from Cookie, for there's Father coming down." He looked over the edge. "It would make a great dive," he said, "if it weren't for the surf."

"It'd be your last," was the response. "n.o.body could get out alive from that poundin'. More'n one good man's been drowned there. The first man that ever tried to build a lighthouse on this rock got washed off. That was the end of him."

"Tell me about it?" pleaded the boy. "There's just time enough!"

"Ask your dad," said the other; "he's got the early history o' Tillamook by heart. Meantime, I wish you all sorts of luck, lad, an' if ever you're in a Coast Guard vessel on this coast and see Tillamook flashin', don't forget the boys that never let a light go out!"

"Father," said Eric, a little later, when they had boarded the lighthouse-tender and got into dry clothes, "tell me the story of the building of Tillamook Lighthouse. They told me, over there, that you knew all about it."

"I ought to," the inspector replied, "I helped build it. And it was a job! I suppose Tillamook would be cla.s.sed among the dozen hardest lighthouse-building jobs of the world."

"What would be the others?"

"Well, in America, on the Pacific Coast there's St. George's Reef.

Spectacle Reef in the Great Lakes, and Minot's Ledge off Boston, were bad. There are a lot around England and Scotland, like Eddystone, Wolf Rock, the Long Ships, and Bell Rock--that's the old 'Inchcape Rock' you read about in school--and there was a particularly bad one called Or-Mar, in the Bay of Biscay. It took the engineer one year and a week before he could make the first landing on Or-Mar."

"Over a year!"

"A year and a week," the inspector repeated. "And Tillamook wasn't much better. It was in December 1878 that we got orders for a preliminary survey of the reef for the purpose of choosing a lighthouse site. After a dozen or more attempts, the engineer returned baffled. In the following June, six months later, the rock was still unviolated. No human foot had ever trodden it.

"Then the Department began to make demands. Washington got insistent.

Urgent orders were issued that the rock would have to be scaled. The engineer was instructed to make a landing. Fortunately, toward the end of the month there came a spell of calm weather."

"Like the calm to-day?"

"Just about. That's as calm as Tillamook ever gets. After several more attempts, lasting nearly a week, the boat was run close to the rocks and two sailors got ash.o.r.e. A line was to be thrown to them. No sooner were they ash.o.r.e than the boat backed away, to keep from being stove in.

Remembering that it had been six months before the boat had a chance of getting as near the rock as it had the minute before, the two sailors became panicky at seeing the boat back away. Both being powerful swimmers, they threw themselves into the sea and the boat managed to pick them up before the surf caught them.

"This had been enough to show that landing was not impossible. With the evidence that two sailors had ventured, the engineer could not withdraw.

He was a bold and daring fellow himself. Two days later, although the sea was not nearly as calm, the boat was brought up to the rock again, and at almost the same landing-place as before, he succeeded in getting ash.o.r.e.

"One of the things that makes Tillamook so dangerous is that you can never tell when it is suddenly going to change from its ordinary wildness to a pitch of really savage fury. A ground swell, hardly perceptible on the surface of the sea, will kick up no end of a smother on the rock. The engineer lost no time in his survey. He had already made a study of the rock from every point of the sea around it, so that he was able to do his actual survey ash.o.r.e quickly. Less than an hour was enough. By that time he had every detail needed for his report.