third
reef of the mainsail, and under this low canvas we soon reached St.
Andrews Bay, and got again under the lee of the land for the night. The
artificers, being sea-hardy, were quite reconciled to their quarters on
board of the Lighthouse yacht; but it is believed that hardly any
consideration would have induced them again to take up their abode in
the floating light.

Saturday, 26th Sept.

At daylight the yacht steered towards the Bell Rock, and at eight a.m.
made fast to her moorings; at ten, all hands, to the amount of thirty,
landed, when the writer had the happiness to find that the beacon had
withstood the violence of the gale and the heavy breach of sea,
everything being found in the same state in which it had been left on
the 21st. The artificers were now enabled to work upon the rock
throughout the whole day, both at low and high water, but it required
the strictest attention to the state of the weather, in case of their
being overtaken with a gale, which might prevent the possibility of
getting them off the rock.

Two somewhat memorable circumstances in the annals of the Bell Rock
attended the operations of this day: one was the removal of Mr. James
Dove, the foreman smith, with his apparatus, from the rock to the upper
part of the beacon, where the forge was now erected on a temporary
platform, laid on the cross beams or upper framing. The other was the
artificers having dined for the first time upon the rock, their dinner
being cooked on board of the yacht, and sent to them by one of the
boats. But what afforded the greatest happiness and relief was the
removal of the large bellows, which had all along been a source of much
trouble and perplexity, by their hampering and incommoding the boat
which carried the smiths and their apparatus.

Saturday, 3rd Oct.

The wind being west to-day, the weather was very favourable for
operations at the rock, and during the morning and evening tides, with
the aid of torchlight, the masons had seven hours' work upon the site of
the building. The smiths and joiners, who landed at half-past six a.m.,
did not leave the rock till a quarter-past eleven p.m., having been at
work, with little intermission, for sixteen hours and three-quarters.
When the water left the rock, they were employed at the lower parts of
the beacon, and as the tide rose or fell, they shifted the place of
their operations. From these exertions, the fixing and securing of the
beacon made rapid