The Lighthouse

Thus the work went on, each man labouring with all his might, until this important erection was completed.

The raising of the first beams took place on a Sunday. Indeed, during the progress of the works at the Bell Rock, the men were accustomed to work regularly on Sundays when possible; but it is right to say that it was not done in defiance of, or disregard to, God’s command to cease from labour on the Sabbath day, but because of the urgent need of a lighthouse on a rock which, unlighted, would be certain to wreck numerous vessels and destroy many lives in time to come, as it had done in time past. Delay in this matter might cause death and disaster, therefore it was deemed right to carry on the work on Sundays.2

An accident happened during the raising of the last large beam of the beacon, which, although alarming, fortunately caused no damage. Considering the nature of the work, it is amazing, and greatly to the credit of all engaged, that so few accidents occurred during the building of the lighthouse.

When they were in the act of hoisting the sixth and last log, and just about to cant it into its place, the iron hook of the principal purchase-block gave way, and the great beam, measuring fifty feet in length, fell upon the rock with a terrible crash; but although there were fifty-two men around the beacon at the time, not one was touched, and the beam itself received no damage worth mentioning.

Soon after the beacon had been set up, and partially secured to the rock, a severe gale sprang up, as if Ocean were impatient to test the handiwork of human engineers. Gales set in from the eastward, compelling the attending sloops to slip from their moorings, and run for the shelter of Arbroath and Saint Andrews, and raising a sea on the Bell Rock which was described as terrific, the spray rising more than thirty feet in the air above it.

In the midst of all this turmoil the beacon stood securely, and after the weather moderated, permitting the workmen once more to land, it was found that no damage had been done by the tremendous breaches of the sea over the rock.

That the power of the waves had indeed been very great, was evident from the effects observed on the rock itself, and on materials left there. Masses of rock upwards of a ton in weight had been cast up by the sea, and then, in their passage over the Bell Rock, had made deep and indelible ruts. An anchor of a ton weight, which had been lost on one side of the rock, was found to have been washed up and over it to the other side. Several large blocks of granite that had been landed and left on a ledge, were found to have been swept away like pebbles, and hurled into a hole at some distance; and the heavy hearth of the smith’s forge, with the ponderous anvil, had been washed from their places of supposed security.

From the time of the setting up of the beacon a new era in the work began. Some of the men were now enabled to remain on the rock all day, working at the lighthouse when the tide was low, and betaking themselves to the beacon when it rose, and leaving it at night; for there was much to do before this beacon could be made the habitable abode which it finally became; but it required the strictest attention to the state of the weather, in case of their being overtaken with a gale, which might prevent the possibility of their being taken off the rock.

At last the beacon was so far advanced and secured that it was deemed capable of withstanding any gale that might blow. As yet it was a great ungainly pile of logs, iron stanchions, and bracing-chains, without anything that could afford shelter to man from winds or waves, but with a platform laid from its cross-beams at a considerable height above high-water mark.

The works on the rock were in this state, when two memorable circumstances occurred in the Bell Rock annals, to which we shall devote a separate chapter.

Chapter Fifteen

Ruby has a Rise in Life, and a Fall

James Dove, the blacksmith, had, for some time past, been watching the advancing of the beacon-works with some interest, and a good deal of impatience. He was tired of working so constantly up to the knees in water, and aspired to a drier and more elevated workshop.

One morning he was told by the foreman that orders had been given for him to remove his forge to the beacon, and this removal, this “flitting”, as he called it, was the first of the memorable events referred to in the last chapter.

“Hallo! Ruby, my boy,” cried the elated son of Vulcan, as he descended the companion ladder, “we’re goin’ to flit, lad. We’re about to rise in the world, so get up your bellows. It’s the last time we shall have to be bothered with them in the boat, I hope.”

“That’s well,” said Ruby, shouldering the unwieldy bellows; “they have worn my shoulders threadbare, and tried my patience almost beyond endurance.”

“Well, it’s all over now, lad,” rejoined the smith. “In future you shall have to blow up in the beacon yonder; so come along.”

“Come, Ruby, that ought to comfort the cockles o’ yer heart,” said O’Connor, who passed up the ladder as he spoke; “the smith won’t need to blow you up any more, av you’re to blow yourself up in the beacon in futur’. Arrah! there’s the bell again. Sorrow wan o’ me iver gits to slape, but I’m turned up immadiately to go an’ poke away at that rock—faix, it’s well named the Bell Rock, for it makes me like to bellow me lungs out wid vexation.”

“That pun is below contempt,” said Joe Dumsby, who came up at the moment.

“That’s yer sort, laddies; ye’re guid at ringing the changes on that head onyway,” cried Watt.

“I say, we’re gittin’ a belly-full of it,” observed Forsyth, with a rueful look. “I hope nobody’s goin’ to give us another!”

“It’ll create a rebellion,” said Bremner, “if ye go on like that.”

“It’ll bring my bellows down on the head o’ the next man that speaks!” cried Ruby, with indignation.

“Don’t you hear the bell, there?” cried the foreman down the hatchway.

There was a burst of laughter at this unconscious continuation of the joke, and the men sprang up the ladder,—down the side, and into the boats, which were soon racing towards the rock.

The day, though not sunny, was calm and agreeable, nevertheless the landing at the rock was not easily accomplished, owing to the swell caused by a recent gale. After one or two narrow escapes of a ducking, however, the crews landed, and the bellows, instead of being conveyed to their usual place at the forge, were laid at the foot of the beacon.

The carriage of these bellows to and fro almost daily had been a subject of great annoyance to the men, owing to their being so much in the way, and so unmanageably bulky, yet so essential to the progress of the works, that they did not dare to leave them on the rock, lest they should be washed away, and they had to handle them tenderly, lest they should get damaged.

“Now, boys, lend a hand with the forge,” cried the smith, hurrying towards his anvil.

Those who were not busy eating dulse responded to the call, and in a short time the ponderous matériel of the smithy was conveyed to the beacon, where, in process of time, it was hoisted by means of tackle to its place on the platform to which reference has already been made.

When it was safely set up and the bellows placed in position, Ruby went to the edge of the platform, and, looking down on his comrades below, took off his cap and shouted in the tone of a Stentor, “Now, lads, three cheers for the Dovecot!”

This was received with a roar of laughter and three tremendous cheers.

“Howld on, boys,” cried O’Connor, stretching out his hand as if to command silence; “you’ll scare the dove from his cot altogether av ye roar like that!”

“Surely they’re sendin’ us a fire to warm us,” observed one of the men, pointing to a boat which had put off from the Smeaton, and was approaching the rock by way of Macurich’s Track.

“What can’d be, I wonder?” said Watt; “I think I can smell somethin’.”

“I halways thought you ’ad somethink of an old dog in you,” said Dumsby.

“Ay, man!” said the Scot with a leer, “I ken o’ war beasts than auld dowgs.”

“Do you? come let’s ’ear wat they are,” said the Englishman.

“Young puppies,” answered the other.

“Hurrah! dinner, as I’m a Dutchman,” cried Forsyth.

This was indeed the case. Dinner had been cooked on board the Smeaton and sent hot to the men; and this,—the first dinner ever eaten on the Bell Rock,—was the second of the memorable events before referred to.

The boat soon ran into the creek and landed the baskets containing the food on Hope’s Wharf.

The men at once made a rush at the viands, and bore them off exultingly to the flattest part of the rock they could find.

“A regular picnic,” cried Dumsby in high glee, for unusual events, of even a trifling kind, had the effect of elating those men more than one might have expected.

“Here’s the murphies,” cried O’Connor, staggering over the slippery weed with a large smoking tin dish.

“Mind you don’t let ’em fall,” cried one.

“Have a care,” shouted the smith; “if you drop them I’ll beat you red-hot, and hammer ye so flat that the biggest flatterer as ever walked won’t be able to spread ye out another half-inch.”

“Mutton! oh!” exclaimed Forsyth, who had been some time trying to wrench the cover off the basket containing a roast leg, and at last succeeded.

“Here, spread them all out on this rock. You han’t forgot the grog, I hope, steward?”

“No fear of him: he’s a good feller, is the steward, when he’s asleep partiklerly. The grog’s here all right.”

“Dinna let Dumsby git haud o’t, then,” cried Watt. “What! hae ye begood a’ready? Patience, man, patience. Is there ony saut?”

“Lots of it, darlin’, in the say. Sure this shape must have lost his tail somehow. Och, murther! if there isn’t Bobby Selkirk gone an’ tumbled into Port Hamilton wid the cabbage, av it’s not the carrots!”

“There now, don’t talk so much, boys,” cried Peter Logan. “Let’s drink success to the Bell Rock Lighthouse.”

It need scarcely be said that this toast was drunk with enthusiasm, and that it was followed up with “three times three.”

“Now for a song. Come, Joe Dumsby, strike up,” cried one of the men.

O’Connor, who was one of the most reckless of men in regard to duty and propriety, here shook his head gravely, and took upon himself to read his comrade a lesson.

“Ye shouldn’t talk o’ sitch things in workin’ hours,” said he. “Av we wos all foolish, waake-hidded cratures like you, how d’ye think we’d iver git the lighthouse sot up! Ate yer dinner, lad, and howld yer tongue.”

“O Ned, I didn’t think your jealousy would show out so strong,” retorted his comrade. “Now, then, Dumsby, fire away, if it was only to aggravate him.”

Thus pressed, Joe Dumsby took a deep draught of the small-beer with which the men were supplied, and began a song of his own composition.

When the song was finished the meal was also concluded, and the men returned to their labours on the rock; some to continue their work with the picks at the hard stone of the foundation-pit, others to perform miscellaneous jobs about the rock, such as mixing the mortar and removing débris, while James Dove and his fast friend Ruby Brand mounted to their airy “cot” on the beacon, from which in a short time began to proceed the volumes of smoke and the clanging sounds that had formerly arisen from “Smith’s Ledge.”

While they were all thus busily engaged, Ruby observed a boat advancing towards the rock from the floating light. He was blowing the bellows at the time, after a spell at the fore-hammer.

“We seem to be favoured with unusual events to-day, Jamie,” said he, wiping his forehead with the corner of his apron with one hand, while he worked the handle of the bellows with the other, “yonder comes another boat; what can it be, think you?”

“Surely it can’t be tea!” said the smith with a smile, as he turned the end of a pickaxe in the fire, “it’s too soon after dinner for that.”

“It looks like the boat of our friends the fishermen, Big Swankie and Davy Spink,” said Ruby, shading his eyes with his hand, and gazing earnestly at the boat as it advanced towards them.

“Friends!” repeated the smith, “rascally smugglers, both of them; they’re no friends of mine.”

“Well, I didn’t mean bosom friends,” replied Ruby, “but after all, Davy Spink is not such a bad fellow, though I can’t say that I’m fond of his comrade.”

The two men resumed their hammers at this point in the conversation, and became silent as long as the anvil sounded.

The boat had reached the rock when they ceased, and its occupants were seen to be in earnest conversation with Peter Logan.

There were only two men in the boat besides its owners, Swankie and Spink.

“What can they want?” said Dove, looking down on them as he turned to thrust the iron on which he was engaged into the fire.

As he spoke the foreman looked up.

“Ho! Ruby Brand,” he shouted, “come down here; you’re wanted.”

“Hallo! Ruby,” exclaimed the smith, “more friends o’ yours! Your acquaintance is extensive, lad, but there’s no girl in the case this time.”

Ruby made no reply, for an indefinable feeling of anxiety filled his breast as he threw down the fore-hammer and prepared to descend.

On reaching the rock he advanced towards the strangers, both of whom were stout, thickset men, with grave, stern countenances. One of them stepped forward and said, “Your name is—”

“Ruby Brand,” said the youth promptly, at the same time somewhat proudly, for he knew that he was in the hands of the Philistines.

The man who first spoke hereupon drew a small instrument from his pocket, and tapping Ruby on the shoulder, said—

“I arrest you, Ruby Brand, in the name of the King.”

The other man immediately stepped forward and produced a pair of handcuffs.

At sight of these Ruby sprang backward, and the blood rushed violently to his forehead, while his blue eyes glared with the ferocity of those of a tiger.

“Come, lad, it’s of no use, you know,” said the man, pausing; “if you won’t come quietly we must find ways and means to compel you.”

“Compel me!” cried Ruby, drawing himself up with a look of defiance and a laugh of contempt, that caused the two men to shrink back in spite of themselves.

“Ruby,” said the foreman, gently, stepping forward and laying his hand on the youth’s shoulder, “you had better go quietly, for there’s no chance of escape from these fellows. I have no doubt it’s a mistake, and that you’ll come off with flyin’ colours, but it’s best to go quietly whatever turns up.”

While Logan was speaking, Ruby dropped his head on his breast, the officer with the handcuffs advanced, and the youth held out his hands, while the flush of anger deepened into the crimson blush of shame.

It was at this point that Jamie Dove, wondering at the prolonged absence of his friend and assistant, looked down from the platform of the beacon, and beheld what was taking place.

The stentorian roar of amazement and rage that suddenly burst from him, attracted the attention of all the men on the rock, who dropped their tools and looked up in consternation, expecting, no doubt, to behold something terrible.

Their eyes at once followed those of the smith, and no sooner did they see Ruby being led in irons to the boat, which lay in Port Hamilton, close to Sir Ralph the Rover’s Ledge, than they uttered a yell of execration, and rushed with one accord to the rescue.

The officers, who were just about to make their prisoner step into the boat, turned to face the foe,—one, who seemed to be the more courageous of the two, a little in advance of the other.

Ned O’Connor, with that enthusiasm which seems to be inherent in Irish blood, rushed with such irresistible force against this man that he drove him violently back against his comrade, and sent them both head over heels into Port Hamilton. Nay, with such momentum was this act performed, that Ned could not help but follow them, falling on them both as they came to the surface and sinking them a second time, amid screams and yells of laughter.

O’Connor was at once pulled out by his friends. The officers also were quickly landed.

“I ax yer parding, gintlemen,” said the former, with an expression of deep regret on his face, “but the say-weed is so slippy on them rocks we’re almost for iver doin’ that sort o’ thing be the merest accident. But av yer as fond o’ cowld wather as meself ye won’t objec’ to it, although it do come raither onexpected.”

The officers made no reply, but, collaring Ruby, pushed him into the boat.

Again the men made a rush, but Peter Logan stood between them and the boat.

“Lads,” said he, holding up his hand, “it’s of no use resistin’ the law. These are King’s officers, and they are only doin’ their duty. Sure am I that Ruby Brand is guilty of no crime, so they’ve only to enquire into it and set him free.”

The men hesitated, but did not seem quite disposed to submit without another struggle.

“It’s a shame to let them take him,” cried the smith.

“So it is. I vote for a rescue,” cried Joe Dumsby.

“Hooray! so does I,” cried O’Connor, stripping off his waist-coat, and for once in his life agreeing with Joe.

“Na, na, lads,” cried John Watt, rolling up his sleeves, and baring his brawny arms as if about to engage in a fight, “it’ll niver do to interfere wi’ the law; but what d’ye say to gie them anither dook?”

Seeing that the men were about to act upon Watt’s suggestion, Ruby started up in the boat, and turning to his comrade, said:

“Boys, it’s very kind of you to be so anxious to save me but you can’t—”

“Faix, but we can, darlin’,” interrupted O’Connor.

“No, you can’t,” repeated Ruby firmly, “because I won’t let you. I don’t think I need say to you that I am innocent,” he added, with a look in which truth evidently shone forth like a sunbeam, “but now that they have put these irons on me I will not consent that they shall be taken off except by the law which put them on.”

While he was speaking the boat had been pushed off, and in a few seconds it was beyond the reach of the men.

“Depend upon it, comrades,” cried Ruby, as they pulled away, “that I shall be back again to help you to finish the work on the Bell Rock.”

“So you will, lad, so you will,” cried the foreman.

“My blessin’ on ye,” shouted O’Connor. “Ach! ye dirty villains, ye low-minded spalpeens,” he added, shaking his fist at the officers of justice.

“Don’t be long away, Ruby,” cried one.

“Never say die,” shouted another, earnestly.

“Three cheers for Ruby Brand!” exclaimed Forsyth, “hip! hip! hip!—”

The cheer was given with the most vociferous energy, and then the men stood in melancholy silence on Ralph the Rover’s Ledge, watching the boat that bore their comrade to the shore.

Chapter Sixteen

New Arrangements—The Captain’s Philosophy in Regard to Pipeology

That night our hero was lodged in the common jail of Arbroath. Soon after, he was tried, and, as Captain Ogilvy had prophesied, was acquitted. Thereafter he went to reside for the winter with his mother, occupying the same room as his worthy uncle, as there was not another spare one in the cottage, and sleeping in a hammock, slung parallel with and close to that of the captain.

On the night following his release from prison, Ruby lay on his back in his hammock meditating intently on the future, and gazing at the ceiling, or rather at the place where he knew the ceiling to be, for it was a dark night, and there was no light in the room, the candle having just been extinguished.

We are not strictly correct, however, in saying that there was no light in the room, for there was a deep red glowing spot of fire near to Captain Ogilvy’s head, which flashed and grew dim at each alternate second of time. It was, in fact, the captain’s pipe, a luxury in which that worthy man indulged morning, noon, and night. He usually rested the bowl of the pipe on and a little over the edge of his hammock, and, lying on his back, passed the mouthpiece over the blankets into the corner of his mouth, where four of his teeth seemed to have agreed to form an exactly round hole suited to receive it. At each draw the fire in the bowl glowed so that the captain’s nose was faintly illuminated; in the intervals the nose disappeared.

The breaking or letting fall of this pipe was a common incident in the captain’s nocturnal history, but he had got used to it, from long habit, and regarded the event each time it occurred with the philosophic composure of one who sees and makes up his mind to endure an inevitable and unavoidable evil.

“Ruby,” said the captain, after the candle was extinguished.

“Well, uncle?”

“I’ve bin thinkin’, lad,—”

Here the captain drew a few whiffs to prevent the pipe from going out, in which operation he evidently forgot himself and went on thinking, for he said nothing more.

“Well, uncle, what have you been thinking?”

“Eh! ah, yes, I’ve bin thinkin’, lad (pull), that you’ll have to (puff)—there’s somethin’ wrong with the pipe to-night, it don’t draw well (puff)—you’ll have to do somethin’ or other in the town, for it won’t do to leave the old woman, lad, in her delicate state o’ health. Had she turned in when you left the kitchen?”

“Oh yes, an hour or more.”

“An’ Blue Eyes,—

“‘The tender bit flower that waves in the breeze,And scatters its fragrance all over the seas.’

“Has she turned in too?”

“She was just going to when I left,” replied Ruby; “but what has that to do with the question?”

“I didn’t say as it had anything to do with it, lad. Moreover, there ain’t no question between us as I knows on (puff); but what have you to say to stoppin’ here all winter?”

“Impossible,” said Ruby, with a sigh.

“No so, lad; what’s to hinder?—Ah! there she goes.”

The pipe fell with a crash to the floor, and burst with a bright shower of sparks, like a little bombshell.

“That’s the third, Ruby, since I turned in,” said the captain, getting slowly over the side of his hammock, and alighting on the floor heavily. “I won’t git up again if it goes another time.”

After knocking off the chimney-piece five or six articles which appeared to be made of tin from the noise they made in falling, the captain succeeded in getting hold of another pipe and the tinder-box, for in those days flint and steel were the implements generally used in procuring a light. With much trouble he re-lit the pipe.

“Now, Ruby, lad, hold it till I tumble in.”

“But I can’t see the stem, uncle.”

“What a speech for a seaman to make! Don’t you see the fire in the bowl?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Well, just make a grab two inches astarn of the bowl and you’ll hook the stem.”

The captain was looking earnestly into the bowl while he spoke, stuffing down the burning tobacco with the end of his little finger. Ruby, acting in rather too prompt obedience to the instructions, made a “grab” as directed, and caught his uncle by the nose.

A yell and an apology followed of course, in the midst of which the fourth pipe was demolished.

“Oh! uncle, what a pity!”

“Ah! Ruby, that comes o’ inconsiderate youth, which philosophers tell us is the nat’ral consequence of unavoidable necessity, for you can’t put a young head on old shoulders, d’ye see?”

From the tone in which this was said Ruby knew that the captain was shaking his head gravely, and from the noise of articles being kicked about and falling, he became aware that the unconquerable man was filling a fifth pipe.

This one was more successfully managed, and the captain once more got into his hammock, and began to enjoy himself.

“Well, Ruby, where was I? O ay; what’s to hinder you goin’ and gettin’ employed in the Bell Rock workyard? There’s plenty to do, and good wages there.”

It may be as well to inform the reader here, that although the operations at the Bell Rock had come to an end for the season about the beginning of October, the work of hewing the stones for the lighthouse was carried on briskly during the winter at the workyard on shore; and as the tools, etcetera, required constant sharpening and mending, a blacksmith could not be dispensed with.

“Do you think I can get in again?” enquired Ruby.