SAFEGUARDS OF THE SEA 83 



while friends and neighbours are within easy 

 reach. It is quite different in the case of the 

 houses far from shore on isolated reefs and 

 rocks where the keeper and his assistants are 

 cooped up in tiny buildings perched directly 

 over the sea and far from all friends and com- 

 panions. Here they must remain absolutely 

 alone and cut off from the rest of the world 

 for weeks at a time, while all about the seas 

 break and roar, the storms howl and the solid 

 steel and stone work of their lighthouse homes 

 shake and reverberate to the tremendous buf- 

 feting of the elements. Once in a while a 

 lighthouse-tender visits them, bringing sup- 

 plies, newspapers and magazines, but in many 

 places the whole long winter is passed with- 

 out a single visitor or a word from the outside 

 world, owing to the great ice-floes which 

 stretch on every hand and prevent any vessel 

 from approaching. In these outlying light- 

 houses life is terribly lonesome and monoto- 

 nous but on the floating lightships it is even 

 worse. The lighthouse keeper may be isolated, 

 cut off from his fellows and surrounded by 

 the tumbling waves and howling gales, but at 



