176 



THE SEA. 



few broken and twisted iron stanchions, and attached to one of them a piece of a beam, so 

 shaken and rent by dashing against the rock as literally to resemble a bunch of laths. 

 Thus did one night obliterate the traces of a season's toil, and blast the hopes which the 

 workmen fondly cherished of a stable dwelling on the rock, and of refuge from the miseries 

 of sea-sickness, which the experience of the season had taught many of them to dread more 

 than death itself. A more successful attempt was subsequently made, and the second 

 erection braved the storm for several years after the works were finished. " Perched forty 

 feet above the wave-beaten rock/' says Stevenson, "in this singular abode, the writer of 



LIGHTHOUSE OX THE INCHOATE ROCK. 



this little volume* has spent many a weary day and night at those times when the sea 

 prevented any one going down to the rock, anxiously looking for supplies from the shore, 

 and earnestly longing for a change of weather favourable to the re-commencement of the 

 works. For miles around nothing could be seen but white foaming breakers, and nothing 

 heard but howling winds and lashing seas. At such seasons most of our time was spent 

 in bed ; for there alone we had effectual shelter from the winds and the spray, which 

 searched every cranny in the walls of the barrack. Our slumbers, too, were at times fearfully 

 interrupted by the sudden pouring of the sea over the roof, the rocking of the house on 

 its pillars, and the spirting of water through the seams of the doors and windows : symptoms 

 which, to one suddenly aroused from sound sleep, recalled the appalling fate of the former 

 barrack, which had been engulfed in the foam not twenty yards from our dwelling, and 

 for a moment seemed to summon us to a similar fate. On two occasions, in particular, 



" A Rudimentary Treatise on the History, Construction, and Illumination of Lighthouses." (Weale's Series.) 



