JANUARY FEBRUARY 1903. 



BRIGHT, sunny weather characterised the opening day of the 

 year, the sea assuming a suspicious placidity quite sumnier-like 

 in appearance but for the keen nip in the air perceptible out 

 of doors. This state of affairs, however, proved but ephemeral, 

 and for the remainder of the month we have experienced 

 most boisterous weather. Strong westerly winds occasionally 

 attained the force of a gale, accompanied with driving seas, 

 which roared and sang a lullaby scarcely compatible with 

 the shore-dwellers' sense of security, but which, strange to 

 say, has a more somnolent effect upon us than a breathless 

 stillness, though an occasional thumper of a sea, more forceful 

 than its fellows, demonstrates the stability of our domicile by 

 imparting a gentle tremor to the entire structure, awakening 

 in the sleeper a glimmer of consciousness and a hazy impression 

 of a traction-engine lumbering somewhere in the vicinity. 



Our entrance doorway thirty feet from the Rock faces 

 south-west, and is guarded by a heavy double leaved door, 

 which opens outwards, and held open against the building 

 by means of heavy brass thumb-snecks. An inner or vestibule 

 door of solid brass is placed six feet further inwards 

 the walls here, by the way, being seven feet thick, tapering 

 to one foot immediately beneath the balcony, sixty feet 

 higher up. This door is also double-leaved, with the upper 

 panels of heavy plate glass, frequently obscured by the strong 

 westerly wind whipping the tops of the seas as they rise 

 in front, and carrying them souse into the doorway. Stand- 

 ing here during the prevalence of a gale, the outlook is being 

 constantly darkened by a curtain of hissing foam drawn across 

 the doorway, as each sea breaks against the base of the 

 tower, flinging the spray high overhead. Fifteen miles in 

 front of us lies the Isle of May, with its castle-like lighthouse 

 crowning its summit, while on a lower level stands a white- 

 washed relic remnant of a time, not so long ago, when the 

 Island boasted a double light, and electricity had not as yet 

 usurped sole sway. Emerging from the right of the May 



