The surface of the rock is called twelve feet above the level of high water, that is, in smooth weather; but in tempestuous seas, and when the waves are rolling in from the south-west, it is as many feet below it. The party had landed from their cutter, and had got a long iron rod worked a few feet into the rock, when the weather suddenly got "dirty." The wind and the sea rose together, and the cutter had to sheer off lest she should be wrecked. The men on the rock clung, as best they might, to the half-fastened shaft, and a desperate struggle ensued between brute nature and that passive fortitude which is greater than brute nature,—all through the night into the morning, all through the day into the night again, until the third day, when the storm abated and they were saved.
Nothing daunted, it was agreed that it was just as well to know the worst. One hint was immediately taken, and rings and holding bars were let into various parts of the rock, to which the men could lash themselves and each other on similar occasions. It was soon found that iron pillars would not do, that they were not sufficiently elastic; and great pains were taken to find heart of oak that would be equal to resist the angry forces of the waters. That the present structure would stand for ever, may be doubted, except by a process analogous to the repair of the Irishman's stocking,—first a new foot, and then a fresh leg. Anyhow, it has been recently thought better to build a granite tower, which, once well done, may be said, humanly speaking, to be done for ever. The light will be exhibited at a greater elevation, which gives it an extended range, and the size of the lantern will admit of a larger and more powerful apparatus. The mode of procedure is of course very different from that adopted by Mr. Whiteside. Where formerly there was a poor fiddle-maker, with half-a-dozen Cornish miners, and a ship's carpenter or two, there is now a civil engineer, a clerk, thirty-eight granite masons, four carpenters, eight smiths, thirteen seamen, four bargemen, two miners and eight labourers; a commodious wharf, a steam vessel, a tender, and some barges. There may be nothing so pathetic or so heroic as that long cling of nine forlorn human creatures round the first iron bar; it would be shame to the engineer if it should be so; but there is real work to do, and it is being thoroughly well done.
The story of the present structure at the Eddystone has been told with quaint simplicity by the man who raised it. Smeaton had this advantage over Whiteside, that he had precursors in his work: but then the work was harder, and was done more enduringly. Whiteside's work at the Smalls is coming away in the course of a season or two; Smeaton's, at the Eddystone, is to remain the pattern lighthouse of the world for ever. The first Eddystone, built in 1696, was a strange affair—something like a Chinese pagoda, or a belvedere in some suburban tea-gardens, with open galleries and projecting cranes. The architect was Henry Winstanley, and he has depicted himself complacently fishing out of his kitchen window; but how he ever expected his queer mansion to stand the winter storms is simply a marvel. It was completed in 1699,
