WRECKS AND MI.XOT LIGHT. 



479 



summer, when we could not land there at all." But once well above 

 the hungry water, the difficulties of the task were lessened, and the 

 last 26 courses were laid in 377 hours during the year 1859. 



Captain Cook loved his joke, and upon one occasion, while in 

 charge of the men at the ledge, he solemnly inquired of a recent 

 comer, a lank stripling from Vermont, " Can you swim, sir?" 

 " No, sir, I cannot. Why do you ask?" 



The mischievous skipper looked nervously around and replied : 

 " Well, if Captain Alexander knew you were at work here and 

 unable to swim, I — I should be a little afraid he might discharge 

 ye. Now, just you strap one of these life preservers on to you, 

 and if you get washed off we'll pick you up." 



A number of the clumsy old " hourglass " style of life preserv- 

 ers were lying upon the deck of the schooner which attended the 

 cutters, and throughout part of one day 

 the luckless youth labored with his ungainly 

 incubus strapped, bustle 

 fashion, to his back. Pres- 

 ently some one announced, i 

 "Red boat coming;" and / 

 what excuse the master joker \ 

 advanced for the removal of 



Floor o^ lantern. ^^^^ ^^^^^^^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^^^ Co.n.ce course. 



man settled with him ashore, is not stated. 



Each stone having been approved, and the courses actually laid 

 upon the island, the work at the ledge was simply a repetition, 

 although the conditions out upon the bosom of the heaving 

 Atlantic must have given a rare zest to the undertaking, not to be 

 found ashore. The shaft is purely a frustum of a cone, the useless 

 tree shape at the base being discarded. 



Like a page of fiction runs the anecdote of one Noyes, who 

 was employed upon both the iron and granite towers. Owing 

 to some petty official friction he ceased work and for a time 

 disappeared. During the Rebellion a fine clipper ship, the 

 Golden Fleece, with Cohasset men aboard of her, fell a prey to 

 the marauding Alabama. As the men filed aboard their con- 

 (lueror, one glanced up the side, and there, leaning over the 

 poop rail, in the uniform of a Confederate naval officer, was 

 the renegade Noyes. 



