The Story of the Rock Part 5

"Teddy Maroon: no less."

"What? an' 'im a' older man than yourself?"

"Ah, but it ain't the same Teddy. It's his eldest son, named after himself; an' so like what his father was when I last saw him, that I don't think I'd be able to tell which was which."

"Well, John, I'm glad to 'ear it; an' be sure that ye git 'ome, next relief before the thirty-first of October, for that's Tommy's wedding day, an' you know we fixed it a purpose to suit your time of being at 'ome. A sweet pair they'll make. Nora was born to be a lady: n.o.body would think but she is one, with 'er pretty winsome ways; and Tommy, who was twenty-five 'is very last birthday, is one of the 'andsomest men in Plymouth. I've a settled conviction, John, that he'll live to be a great man."

"You once had a settled conviction that he would come to a bad end,"

said Potter, with an arch smile.

"Go along with you, John!" retorted Mrs Potter.

"I'm just going," said John, rising and kissing his wife as he put on his hat; "and you may depend on it that I'll not miss dancing at our Tommy's wedding, if I can help it."

That night saw John Potter at his old post again--snuffing the candles on the Eddystone, and chatting with his old mate Dorkin beside the kitchen fire. One evening towards the end of October, John Potter and Isaac, having "lighted up," sat down to a game of draughts. It was blowing hard outside, and heavy breakers were bursting on the rock and sending thin spray as high as the lantern, but all was peace and comfort inside; even Isaac's grumpy spirit was calmer than usual.

"You seem dull to-night, mate," observed John, as they re-arranged the pieces for another game.

"I don't feel very well," said Dorkin, pa.s.sing his hand over his brow languidly.

"You'd better turn in, then; an' I'll take half of your watch as well as my own."

"Thank 'ee kindly," said Dorkin in a subdued voice: "I'll take yer advice. Perhaps," he added slowly, "you'll read me a bit out o' _the Book_."

This was the first time that Isaac had expressed a desire to touch on religious subjects, or to hear the Bible read; and John, you may be sure, was only too glad to comply. After his mate had lain down, he read a small portion; but, observing that he seemed very restless, he closed the Bible and contented himself with quoting the following words of our Lord Jesus: "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest;" and, "The blood of Jesus Christ G.o.d's Son, cleanseth us from all sin." Then in a sentence or two he prayed fervently that the Holy Spirit might apply these words.

John had a suspicion that his mate was on the verge of a serious illness, and he was not wrong. Next day, Dorkin was stricken with a raging fever, and John Potter had not only to nurse him day and night, but to give constant attention to the lantern as well. Fortunately, the day after that the relief boat would be out, so he consoled himself with that thought; but the gale, which had been blowing for some days, increased that night until it blew a perfect hurricane. The sea round the Eddystone became a tremendous whirlpool of foam, and all hope of communication with the sh.o.r.e was cut off. Of course the unfortunate lighthouse-keeper hung out a signal of distress, although he knew full well that it could not be replied to.

Meanwhile a wedding party a.s.sembled in Plymouth. The bride was blooming and young; the bridegroom--strong and happy; but there was a shade upon his brow as he approached a stout elderly female, and said, sadly, "I can't tell you, mother, how grieved I am that father is not with us to-day. I would be quite willing to put it off, and so would Nora, for a few days, but there is no appearance of the storm abating; and, indeed, if even it stopped this moment, I don't think the relief-boat could get off in less than a week."

"I know it, Tommy." (It seemed ridiculous to call a strapping, curly-haired, bewhiskered, six-foot man "Tommy"!) "I know it, Tommy; but it ain't of no use puttin' of it off. I've always 'ad a settled conviction that anythink as is put off is as good as given up altogether. No, no, my son; go on with the weddin'."

So the wedding went on, and Nora Vining, a dark-haired Plymouth maiden, became Mrs Thomas Potter; and the breakfast was eaten, and the healths were drunk, and the speeches made, and Mrs Potter, senior, wept profusely (for joy) nearly all the time, into a white cotton handkerchief, which was so large and strong that some of the guests entertained the belief to the end of their lives that the worthy woman had had it manufactured for her own special use on that great occasion.

Meanwhile the father, whose absence was regretted so much, and whose heart would have rejoiced so much to have been there, remained in his lonely dwelling, out among the mad whirlpools in the wildest past of the raging sea. All day, and every day, his signal of distress streamed horizontally in the furious gale, and fishermen stood on the sh.o.r.e and wondered what was wrong, and wished so earnestly that the gale would go down; but no one, not even the boldest among them all, imagined for a moment that a boat could venture to leave the sh.o.r.e, much less encounter the seething billows on the Eddystone. As each night drew on, one by one the lights glimmered out above the rock, until the bright beams of the fully illuminated lantern poured like a flood through the murky air, and then men went home to their firesides, relieved to know that, whatever might be wrong, the keepers were at all events able to attend to their important duties.

Day after day Isaac Dorkin grew worse: he soon became delirious, and, strong though he was, John Potter was scarcely able to hold him down in bed. When the delirium first came on, John chanced to be in the lantern just commencing to light up. When he was about to apply the light, he heard a noise behind him, and, turning hastily round, beheld the flushed face and blazing eyes of his mate rising through the trap door that communicated with the rooms below. Leaving his work, John hastened to his friend, and with some difficulty persuaded him to return to his bed; but no sooner had he got him into it and covered him up, than a new paroxysm came on, and the sick man arose in the strength of his agony and hurled his friend to the other side of the apartment. John sprang up, and grappled with him while he was rushing towards the door. It was an awful struggle that ensued. Both were large and powerful men; the one strong in a resolute purpose to meet boldly a desperate case, the other mad with fever. They swayed to and fro, and fell on and smashed the homely furniture of the place; sometimes the one and sometimes the other prevailing, while both gasped for breath and panted vehemently; suddenly Dorkin sank down exhausted. He appeared to collapse, and John lifted him with difficulty again into his bed; but in a few seconds he attempted to renew the struggle, while the whole building was filled with his terrific cries.

While this was going on, the shades of night had been falling fast, and John Potter remembered that none of the candles had been lit, and that in a few minutes more the rock would be a source of greater danger to shipping than if no lighthouse had been there, because vessels would be making for the light from all quarters of the world, in the full faith of its being kept up! Filled with horror at the thought that perhaps even at that moment vessels might be hurrying on to their doom, he seized a piece of rope that lay at hand, and managed to wind it so firmly round his mate as to render him helpless. Bounding back to the lantern, he quickly lighted it up, but did not feel his heart relieved until he had gazed out at the snowy billows below, and made sure that no vessel was in view. Then he took a long draught of water, wiped his brow, and returned to his friend.

Two days after that Isaac Dorkin died. And now John Potter found himself in a more horrible situation than before. The storm continued: no sooner did one gale abate than another broke out, so as to render approach to the rock impossible; while, day after day, and night after night, the keeper had to pa.s.s the dead body of his mate several times in attending to the duties of the lantern. And still the signal of distress continued to fly from the lighthouse, and still the people on sh.o.r.e continued to wonder what was wrong, to long for moderate weather, and to feel relief when they saw the faithful light beam forth each evening at sunset.

At last the corpse began to decay, and John felt that it was necessary to get rid of it, but he dared not venture to throw it into the sea. It was well known that Dorkin had been a quarrelsome man, and he feared that if he could not produce the body when the relief came, he might be deemed a _murderer_. He therefore let it lie until it became so overpoweringly offensive that the whole building, from foundation to cupola, was filled with the horrible stench. The feelings of the solitary man can neither be conceived nor described. Well was it for John that he had the Word of G.o.d in his hand, and the grace of G.o.d in his heart during that awful period.

For nearly a month his agony lasted. At last the weather moderated.

The boat came off; the "relief" was effected; and poor Dorkin's body, which was in such a condition that it could not be carried on sh.o.r.e, was thrown into the sea. Then John Potter returned home, and left the lighthouse service for ever.

From that time forward it has been the custom to station not fewer than three men at a time on all out-lying lighthouses of the kingdom.

Note. Reader, we have not drawn here on our imagination. This story is founded on unquestionable fact.

CHAPTER SIX.

THE END OF RUDYERD'S LIGHTHOUSE.

Thirty-Four years pa.s.sed away, and still Rudyerd's lighthouse stood firm as the rock on which it was founded. True, during that period it had to undergo occasional repairs, because the timber uprights at the base, where exposed to the full violence of the waves, had become weather-worn, and required renewing in part; but this was only equivalent to a ship being overhauled and having some of her planks renewed. The main fabric of the lighthouse remained as sound and steadfast at the end of that long period as it was at the beginning, and it would in all probability have remained on the Eddystone Rock till the present day, had not a foe a.s.sailed it, whose nature was very different indeed from that with which it had been built to contend.

The lighthouse was at this time in charge of Teddy Maroon: not the Teddy who had bewailed his fate so disconsolately in the French prison in days gone by, but his youngest son, who was now getting to be an elderly man.

We may, however, relieve the mind of the sympathetic reader, by saying that Teddy, senior, was not dead. He was still alive and hearty; though bent nearly double with extreme age; and dwelt on the borders of one of the Irish bogs, at the head of an extensive colony of Maroons.

One night Teddy the younger ascended to the lantern to trim the candles; he snuffed them all round and returned to the kitchen to have a pipe, his two mates being a-bed at the time. No one now knows how the thing happened, but certain it is that Teddy either dropped some of the burning snuff on the floor, or in some other way introduced more light into his lantern that night than it had ever been meant to contain, so that while he and his mates were smoking comfortably below, the lighthouse was smoking quietly, but ominously, above.

On sh.o.r.e, late that night, an elderly gentleman stood looking out of the window of a charmingly situated cottage in the village of Cawsand Bay, near Plymouth, which commanded a magnificent prospect of the channel.

"Father," he said, turning to a very old man seated beside the fire, who, although shrunken and wrinkled and bald, was ruddy in complexion, and evidently in the enjoyment of a green old age, "Father, the lighthouse is beautifully bright to-night; shall I help you to the window to look at it?"

"Yes, Tommy: I'm fond o' the old light. It minds me of days gone by, when you and I were young, Martha."

The old man gave a chuckle as he looked across the hearthstone, where, in a chair similar to his own, sat a very stout and very deaf and very old lady, smoothing the head of her grandchild, a little girl, who was the youngest of a family of ten.

Old Martha did not hear John Potter's remark, but she saw his kindly smile, and nodded her head with much gravity in reply. Martha had grown intellectually slow when she partially lost her hearing, and although she was not sad she had evidently become solemn. An English Dictionary and the Bible were the only books that Martha would look at now. She did not use the former as a help to the understanding of the latter. No one knew why she was so partial to the dictionary; but as she not unfrequently had it on her knee upside down while poring over it, her grandchild, little Nora, took up the idea that she had resolved to devote the latter days of her life to learning to read backwards!

Perhaps the fact that the dictionary had once belonged to her son James who was wrecked and drowned on the Norfolk coast, may have had something to do with it.

With the aid of his son's arm and a stick old John managed to hobble to the window.

"It is very bright. Why, Tommy," he exclaimed, with a start, "it's too bright: the lighthouse must be on fire!"

At that moment, "Tommy's" wife, now "fat, fair, and _fifty_" (or thereabouts), entered the room hurriedly, exclaiming, "Oh, Tom, what _can_ be the matter with the lighthouse, I never saw it so bright before?"

Tom, who had hastily placed his father in a chair, so that he could see the Eddystone, seized his hat, and exclaiming, "I'll go and see, my dear," ran out and proceeded to the sh.o.r.e.

"What's the matter?" cried Mrs Potter in a querulous voice, when little Nora rushed from her side.

Nora, senior, went to her at once, and, bending down, said, in a musical voice that retained much of its clearness and all its former sweetness: "I fear that the lighthouse is on fire, grandma!"

Mrs Potter gazed straight before her with vacant solemnity, and Nora, supposing that she had not heard, repeated the information.

Still Mrs Potter made no reply; but, after a few moments, she turned her eyes on her daughter-in-law with owlish gravity, and said; "I knew it! I said long ago to your father, my dear, I had a settled conviction that that lighthouse would come to a bad end."

It did indeed appear as though old Martha's prophecy were about to come true!

Out at the lighthouse Teddy Maroon, having finished his pipe, went up to the lantern to trim the candles again. He had no sooner opened the hatch of the lantern than a dense cloud of smoke burst out. He shouted to his comrades, one of whom, Henry Hall, was old and not fit for much violent exertion; the other, James Wilkie, was a young man, but a heavy sleeper. They could not be roused as quickly as the occasion demanded.

Teddy ran to the store-room for a leathern bucket, but before he could descend to the rock, fill it and re-ascend, the flames had got a firm hold of the cupola. He dashed the water into the lantern just as his horrified comrades appeared.

"Fetch bucketfulls as fast as ye can. Och, be smart, boys, if iver ye was," he shouted, while perspiration streamed down his face. Pulling off his coat, while his mates ran down for water, Teddy dashed wildly into the lantern, and, holding the coat by its arms, laid about him violently, but smoke and fire drove him but almost immediately. The buckets were long of coming, and when they did arrive, their contents were as nothing on the glowing cupola. Then Teddy went out on the balcony and endeavoured to throw the water up, but the height was too great. While he was doing this, Wilkie ran down for more water, but Hall stood gazing upwards, open-mouthed with horror, at the raging flames. At that moment the leaden covering of the roof melted, and rushed down on Hall's head and shoulders. He fell, with a loud shriek.

While Teddy tried to drag him down to the room below, he exclaimed that some of the melted lead had gone down his throat! He was terribly burned about the neck, but his comrades had to leave him in his bed while they strove wildly to check the flames. It was all in vain. The wood-work around the lantern, from years of exposure to the heat of twenty-four large candles burning at once, had become like tinder, and the fire became so fierce that the timber courses composing the top of the column soon caught. Then the keepers saw that any further efforts would be useless. The great exertions made to carry up even a few bucketsfull of water soon exhausted their strength, and they were driven from room to room as the fire descended. At last the heat and smoke became so intense that they were driven out of the lighthouse altogether, and sought shelter in a cavern or hollow under the ladder, on the east side of the rock. Fortunately it was low water at the time, and the weather was calm. Had it been otherwise, the rock would have been no place of refuge.