“On deck,” we are told,[37] “there was only one solitary individual looking out to give the alarm, in the event of the ship breaking from her moorings. The seamen on watch continued only two hours; he who kept watch at this time was a tall, slender man of a black complexion; he had no great-coat nor over-all of any kind, but was simply dressed in his ordinary jacket and trousers; his hat was tied under his chin with a napkin, and he stood aft the foremast, to which he had lashed himself with a gasket, or small rope round his waist, to prevent his falling upon deck or being washed overboard. When Mr. Stevenson looked up he appeared to smile, which afforded a further symptom of the confidence of the crew in their ship.”
[37] Stevenson, “Account of the Bell Rock Lighthouse,” p. 157.
About six o’clock in the evening the gale abated, and the sun rose the next morning in a comparatively serene sky. The waves still rolled very heavily, and at the Bell Rock they threw up their spray in columns of from forty to fifty feet in height. When Mr. Stevenson was able to visit the rock, he found abundant evidence of their force: six large blocks of granite had been removed from their places and flung over a rising ledge into a hole some twelve or fifteen paces distant. The ash-pan of the smith’s forge, with its weighty cast-iron back, had also been washed from their places of supposed security; the chain of attachment had been broken, and these ponderous articles were found on the very opposite side of the rock.
Such incidents as these stimulated Stevenson’s desire to complete the erection of the beacon, which would serve as a warning to the mariner, and as an asylum for the artificers on the rock. By dint of persevering exertions, it was at length completed; and soon afterwards, on the 6th of October 1807, the works were relinquished for the season. Though only about one hundred and thirty-three hours had been actually devoted to them, enough had been effected to afford an example of what may be accomplished under similar circumstances, when every heart and hand labour with conscientious zeal; for the artificers had wrought at the construction of the beacon as if for life, or like men stopping a breach in a wall to repress the inroads of a destroying flood.[38]