Robert Michael Ballantyne
The Lighthouse
Chapter Five
The Bell Rock Invaded
A year passed away. Nothing more was heard of Ruby Brand, and the burglary was believed to be one of those mysteries which are destined never to be solved.
About this time great attention was being given by Government to the subject of lighthouses. The terrible number of wrecks that had taken place had made a deep impression on the public mind. The position and dangerous character of the Bell Rock, in particular, had been for a long time the subject of much discussion, and various unsuccessful attempts had been made to erect a beacon of some sort thereon.
There is a legend that in days of old one of the abbots of the neighbouring monastery of Aberbrothoc erected a bell on the Inchcape Rock, which was tolled in rough weather by the action of the waves on a float attached to the tongue, and thus mariners were warned at night and in foggy weather of their approach to the rock, the great danger of which consists in its being a sunken reef, lying twelve miles from the nearest land, and exactly in the course of vessels making for the firths of Forth and Tay. The legend further tells how that a Danish pirate, named Ralph the Rover, in a mischievous mood, cut the bell away, and that, years afterwards, he obtained his appropriate reward by being wrecked on the Bell Rock, when returning from a long cruise laden with booty.
Whether this be true or not is an open question, but certain it is that no beacon of any kind was erected on this rock until the beginning of the nineteenth century, after a great storm in 1799 had stirred the public mind, and set springs in motion, which from that time forward have never ceased to operate.
Many and disastrous were the shipwrecks that occurred during the storm referred to, which continued, with little intermission, for three days. Great numbers of ships were driven from their moorings in the Downs and Yarmouth Roads; and these, together with all vessels navigating the German Ocean at that time, were drifted upon the east coast of Scotland.
It may not, perhaps, be generally known that there are only three great inlets or estuaries to which the mariner steers when overtaken by easterly storms in the North Sea—namely, the Humber, and the firths of Forth and Moray. The mouth of the Thames is too much encumbered by sand-banks to be approached at night or during bad weather. The Humber is also considerably obstructed in this way, so that the Roads of Leith, in the Firth of Forth, and those of Cromarty, in the Moray Firth, are the chief places of resort in easterly gales. But both of these had their special risks.
On the one hand, there was the danger of mistaking the Dornoch Firth for the Moray, as it lies only a short way to the north of the latter; and, in the case of the Firth of Forth, there was the terrible Bell Rock.
Now, during the storm of which we write, the fear of those two dangers was so strong upon seamen that many vessels were lost in trying to avoid them, and much hardship was sustained by mariners who preferred to seek shelter in higher latitudes. It was estimated that no fewer than seventy vessels were either stranded or lost during that single gale, and many of the crews perished.
At one wild part of the coast, near Peterhead, called the Bullers of Buchan, after the first night of the storm, the wrecks of seven vessels were found in one cove, without a single survivor of the crews to give an account of the disaster.
The “dangers of the deep” are nothing compared with the dangers of the shore. If the hard rocks of our island could tell the tale of their experience, and if we landsmen could properly appreciate it, we should understand more clearly why it is that sailors love blue (in other words, deep) water during stormy weather.
In order to render the Forth more accessible by removing the danger of the Bell Rock, it was resolved by the Commissioners of Northern Lights to build a lighthouse upon it. This resolve was a much bolder one than most people suppose, for the rock on which the lighthouse was to be erected was a sunken reef, visible only at low tide during two or three hours, and quite inaccessible in bad weather. It was the nearest approach to building a house in the sea that had yet been attempted! The famous Eddystone stands on a rock which is never quite under water, although nearly so, for its crest rises a very little above the highest tides, while the Bell Rock is eight or ten feet under water at high tides.
It must be clear, therefore, to everyone, that difficulties, unusual in magnitude and peculiar in kind, must have stood in the way of the daring engineer who should undertake the erection of a tower on a rock twelve miles out on the stormy sea, and the foundation of which was covered with ten or twelve feet of water every tide; a tower which would have to be built perfectly, yet hastily; a tower which should form a comfortable home, fit for human beings to dwell in, and yet strong enough to withstand the utmost fury of the waves, not merely whirling round it, as might be the case on some exposed promontory, but rushing at it, straight and fierce from the wild ocean, in great blue solid billows that should burst in thunder on its sides, and rush up in scarcely less solid spray to its lantern, a hundred feet or more above its foundation.
An engineer able and willing to undertake this great work was found in the person of the late Robert Stevenson of Edinburgh, whose perseverance and talent shall be commemorated by the grandest and most useful monument ever raised by man, as long as the Bell Rock lighthouse shall tower above the sea.
It is not our purpose to go into the details of all that was done in the construction of this lighthouse. Our peculiar task shall be to relate those incidents connected with this work which have relation to the actors in our tale.
We will not, therefore, detain the reader by telling him of all the preliminary difficulties that were encountered and overcome in this “Robinson Crusoe” sort of work; how that a temporary floating lightship, named the Pharos, was prepared and anchored in the vicinity of the rock in order to be a sort of depot and rendezvous and guide to the three smaller vessels employed in the work, as well as a light to shipping generally, and a building-yard was established at Arbroath, where every single stone of the lighthouse was cut and nicely fitted before being conveyed to the rock. Neither shall we tell of the difficulties that arose in the matter of getting blocks of granite large enough for such masonry, and lime of a nature strong enough to withstand the action of the salt sea. All this, and a great deal more of a deeply interesting nature, must remain untold, and be left entirely to the reader’s imagination.1
Suffice it to say that the work was fairly begun in the month of August, 1807; that a strong beacon of timber was built, which was so well constructed that it stood out all the storms that beat against it during the whole time of the building operations; that close to this beacon the pit or foundation of the lighthouse was cut down deep into the solid rock; that the men employed could work only between two and three hours at a time, and had to pump the water out of this pit each tide before they could resume operations; that the work could only be done in the summer months, and when engaged in it the men dwelt either in the Pharos floating light, or in one of the attending vessels, and were not allowed to go ashore—that is, to the mainland, about twelve miles distant; that the work was hard, but so novel and exciting that the artificers at last became quite enamoured of it, and that ere long operations were going busily forward, and the work was in a prosperous and satisfactory state of advancement.
Things were in this condition at the Bell Rock, when, one fine summer evening, our friend and hero, Ruby Brand, returned, after a long absence, to his native town.
Chapter Six
The Captain Changes His Quarters
It was fortunate for Ruby that the skipper of the vessel ordered him to remain in charge while he went ashore, because he would certainly have been recognised by numerous friends, and his arrival would speedily have reached the ears of the officers of justice, who seem to be a class of men specially gifted with the faculty of never forgetting. It was not until darkness had begun to settle down on the town that the skipper returned on board, and gave him leave to go ashore.
Ruby did not return in the little coaster in which he had left his native place. That vessel had been wrecked not long after he joined her, but the crew were saved, and Ruby succeeded in obtaining a berth as second mate of a large ship trading between Hull and the Baltic. Returning from one of his voyages with a pretty good sum of money in his pocket, he resolved to visit his mother and give it to her. He therefore went aboard an Arbroath schooner, and offered to work his passage as an extra hand. Remembering his former troubles in connexion with the press-gang, he resolved to conceal his name from the captain and crew, who chanced to be all strangers to him.
It must not be supposed that Mrs Brand had not heard of Ruby since he left her. On the contrary, both she and Minnie Gray got letters as frequently as the postal arrangements of those days would admit of; and from time to time they received remittances of money, which enabled them to live in comparative comfort. It happened, however, that the last of these remittances had been lost, so that Mrs Brand had to depend for subsistence on Minnie’s exertions, and on her brother’s liberality. The brother’s power was limited, however, and Minnie had been ailing for some time past, in consequence of her close application to work, so that she could not earn as much as usual. Hence it fell out that at this particular time the widow found herself in greater pecuniary difficulties than she had ever been in before.
Ruby was somewhat of an original. It is probable that every hero is. He resolved to surprise his mother by pouring the money he had brought into her lap, and for this purpose had, while in Hull, converted all his savings into copper, silver, and gold. Those precious metals he stowed separately into the pockets of his huge pea-jacket, and, thus heavily laden, went ashore about dark, as soon as the skipper returned.
At this precise hour it happened that Mrs Brand, Minnie Gray, and Captain Ogilvy were seated at their supper in the kitchen of the cottage.
Two days previously the captain had called, and said to Mrs Brand—
“I tell ’ee what it is, sister, I’m tired of livin’ a solitary bachelor life, all by myself, so I’m goin’ to make a change, lass.”
Mrs Brand was for some moments speechless, and Minnie, who was sewing near the window, dropped her hands and work on her lap, and looked up with inexpressible amazement in her sweet blue eyes.
“Brother,” said Mrs Brand earnestly, “you don’t mean to tell me that you’re going to marry at your time of life?”
“Eh! what? Marry?”
The captain looked, if possible, more amazed than his sister for a second or two, then his red face relaxed into a broad grin, and he sat down on a chair and chuckled, wiping the perspiration (he seemed always more or less in a state of perspiration) from his bald head the while.
“Why, no, sister, I’m not going to marry; did I speak of marryin’?”
“No; but you spoke of being tired of a bachelor life, and wishing to change.”
“Ah! you women,” said the captain, shaking his head—“always suspecting that we poor men are wantin’ to marry you. Well, pr’aps you ain’t far wrong neither; but I’m not goin’ to be spliced yet-a-while, lass. Marry, indeed!
“‘Shall I, wastin’ in despair,
Die, ’cause why? a woman’s rare?’”
“Oh! Captain Ogilvy, that’s not rightly quoted,” cried Minnie, with a merry laugh.
“Ain’t it?” said the captain, somewhat put out; for he did not like to have his powers of memory doubted.
“No; surely women are not rare,” said Minnie.
“Good ones are,” said the captain stoutly.
“Well; but that’s not the right word.”
“What is the right word, then?” asked the captain with affected sternness, for, although by nature disinclined to admit that he could be wrong, he had no objection to be put right by Minnie.
“Die because a woman’s f—,” said Minnie, prompting him.
“F—, ‘funny?’” guessed the captain.
“No; it’s not ‘funny,’” cried Minnie, laughing heartily.
“Of course not,” assented the captain, “it could not be ‘funny’ nohow, because ‘funny’ don’t rhyme with ‘despair;’ besides, lots o’ women ain’t funny a bit, an’ if they was, that’s no reason why a man should die for ’em; what is the word, lass?”
“What am I?” asked Minnie, with an arch smile, as she passed her fingers through the clustering masses of her beautiful hair.
“An angel, beyond all doubt,” said the gallant captain, with a burst of sincerity which caused Minnie to blush and then to laugh.
“You’re incorrigible, captain, and you are so stupid that it’s of no use trying to teach you.”
Mrs Brand—who listened to this conversation with an expression of deep anxiety on her meek face, for she could not get rid of her first idea that her brother was going to marry—here broke in with the question—
“When is it to be, brother?”
“When is what to be, sister?”
“The—the marriage.”
“I tell you I ain’t a-goin’ to marry,” repeated the captain; “though why a stout young feller like me, just turned sixty-four, shouldn’t marry, is more than I can see. You know the old proverbs, lass—‘It’s never too late to marry;’ ‘Never ventur’, never give in;’ ‘John Anderson my jo John, when we was first—first—’”
“Married,” suggested Minnie.
“Just so,” responded the captain, “and everybody knows that he was an old man. But no, I’m not goin’ to marry; I’m only goin’ to give up my house, sell off the furniture, and come and live with you.”
“Live with me!” ejaculated Mrs Brand.
“Ay, an’ why not? What’s the use o’ goin’ to the expense of two houses when one’ll do, an’ when we’re both raither scrimp o’ the ready? You’ll just let me have the parlour. It never was a comf’rable room to sit in, so it don’t matter much your givin’ it up; it’s a good enough sleepin’ and smokin’ cabin, an’ we’ll all live together in the kitchen. I’ll throw the whole of my treemendous income into the general purse, always exceptin’ a few odd coppers, which I’ll retain to keep me a-goin’ in baccy. We’ll sail under the same flag, an’ sit round the same fire, an’ sup at the same table, and sleep in the same—no, not exactly that, but under the same roof-tree, which’ll be a more hoconomical way o’ doin’ business, you know; an’ so, old girl, as the song says—
“‘Come an’ let us be happy together,
For where there’s a will there’s a way,
An’ we won’t care a rap for the weather
So long as there’s nothin’ to pay.’”
“Would it not be better to say, ‘so long as there’s something to pay?’” suggested Minnie.
“No, lass, it wouldn’t,” retorted the captain. “You’re too fond of improvin’ things. I’m a stanch old Tory, I am. I’ll stick to the old flag till all’s blue. None o’ your changes or improvements for me.”
This was a rather bold statement for a man to make who improved upon almost every line he ever quoted; but the reader is no doubt acquainted with parallel instances of inconsistency in good men even in the present day.
“Now, sister,” continued Captain Ogilvy, “what d’ye think of my plan?”
“I like it well, brother,” replied Mrs Brand with a gentle smile. “Will you come soon?”
“To-morrow, about eight bells,” answered the captain promptly.
This was all that was said on the subject. The thing was, as the captain said, settled off-hand, and accordingly next morning he conveyed such of his worldly goods as he meant to retain possession of to his sister’s cottage—“the new ship”, as he styled it. He carried his traps on his own broad shoulders, and the conveyance of them cost him three distinct trips.
They consisted of a huge sea-chest, an old telescope more than a yard long, and cased in leather; a quadrant, a hammock, with the bedding rolled up in it, a tobacco-box, the enormous old Family Bible in which the names of his father, mother, brothers, and sisters were recorded; and a brown teapot with half a lid. This latter had belonged to the captain’s mother, and, being fond of it, as it reminded him of the “old ooman”, he was wont to mix his grog in it, and drink the same out of a teacup, the handle of which was gone, and the saucer of which was among the things of the past.
Notwithstanding his avowed adherence to Tory principles, Captain Ogilvy proceeded to make manifold radical changes and surprising improvements in the little parlour, insomuch that when he had completed the task, and led his sister carefully (for she was very feeble) to look at what he had done, she became quite incapable of expressing herself in ordinary language; positively refused to believe her eyes, and never again entered that room, but always spoke of what she had seen as a curious dream!
No one was ever able to discover whether there was not a slight tinge of underlying jocularity in this remark of Mrs Brand, for she was a strange and incomprehensible mixture of shrewdness and innocence; but no one took much trouble to find out, for she was so lovable that people accepted her just as she was, contented to let any small amount of mystery that seemed to be in her to remain unquestioned.
“The parlour” was one of those well-known rooms which are occasionally met with in country cottages, the inmates of which are not wealthy. It was reserved exclusively for the purpose of receiving visitors. The furniture, though old, threadbare, and dilapidated, was kept scrupulously clean, and arranged symmetrically. There were a few books on the table, which were always placed with mathematical exactitude, and a set of chairs, so placed as to give one mysteriously the impression that they were not meant to be sat upon. There was also a grate, which never had a fire in it, and was never without a paper ornament in it, the pink and white aspect of which caused one involuntarily to shudder.
But the great point, which was meant to afford the highest gratification to the beholder, was the chimney-piece. This spot was crowded to excess in every square inch of its area with ornaments, chiefly of earthenware, miscalled china, and shells. There were great white shells with pink interiors, and small brown shells with spotted backs. Then there were china cups and saucers, and china shepherds and shepherdesses, represented in the act of contemplating the heavens serenely, with their arms round each other’s waists. There were also china dogs and cats, and a huge china cockatoo as a centre-piece; but there was not a single spot the size of a sixpence on which the captain could place his pipe or his tobacco-box!
“We’ll get these things cleared away,” said Minnie, with a laugh, on observing the perplexed look with which the captain surveyed the chimney-piece, while the changes above referred to were being made in the parlour; “we have no place ready to receive them just now, but I’ll have them all put away to-morrow.”
“Thank’ee, lass,” said the captain, as he set down the sea-chest and seated himself thereon; “they’re pretty enough to look at, d’ye see, but they’re raither in the way just now, as my second mate once said of the rocks when we were cruising off the coast of Norway in search of a pilot.”
The ornaments were, however, removed sooner than anyone had anticipated. The next trip that the captain made was for his hammock (he always slept in one), which was a long unwieldy bundle, like a gigantic bolster. He carried it into the parlour on his shoulder, and Minnie followed him.
“Where shall I sling it, lass?”
“Here, perhaps,” said Minnie.
The captain wheeled round as she spoke, and the end of the hammock swept the mantelpiece of all its ornaments, as completely as if the besom of destruction had passed over it.
“Shiver my timbers!” gasped the captain, awestruck by the hideous crash that followed.
“You’ve shivered the ornaments at any rate,” said Minnie, half-laughing and half-crying.
“So I have, but no matter. Never say die so long’s there a shot in the locker. There’s as good fish in the sea as ever come out of it; so bear a hand, my girl, and help me to sling up the hammock.”
The hammock was slung, the pipe of peace was smoked, and thus Captain Ogilvy was fairly installed in his sister’s cottage.
It may, perhaps, be necessary to remind the reader that all this is a long digression; that the events just narrated occurred a few days before the return of Ruby, and that they have been recorded here in order to explain clearly the reason of the captain’s appearance at the supper table of his sister, and the position which he occupied in the family.
When Ruby reached the gate of the small garden, Minnie had gone to the captain’s room to see that it was properly prepared for his reception, and the captain himself was smoking his pipe close to the chimney, so that the smoke should ascend it.
The first glance through the window assured the youth that his mother was, as letters had represented her, much better in health than she used to be. She looked so quiet and peaceful, and so fragile withal, that Ruby did not dare to “surprise her” by a sudden entrance, as he had originally intended, so he tapped gently at the window, and drew back.
The captain laid down his pipe and went to the door.
“What, Ruby!” he exclaimed, in a hoarse whisper.
“Hush, uncle! How is Minnie; where is she?”
“I think, lad,” replied the captain in a tone of reproof, “that you might have enquired for your mother first.”
“No need,” said Ruby, pointing to the window; “I see that she is there and well, thanks be to God for that:– but Minnie?”
“She’s well, too, boy, and in the house. But come, get inside. I’ll explain, after.”
This promise to “explain” was given in consequence of the great anxiety he, the captain, displayed to drag Ruby into the cottage.
The youth did not require much pressing, however. He no sooner heard that Minnie was well, than he sprang in, and was quickly at his mother’s feet. Almost as quickly a fair vision appeared in the doorway of the inner room, and was clasped in the young sailor’s arms with the most thorough disregard of appearances, not to mention propriety.
While this scene was enacting, the worthy captain was engaged in active proceedings, which at once amused and astonished his nephew, and the nature and cause of which shall be revealed in the next chapter.
