onnor ironically.

"Don't try to put us in the dismals," said Jamie Dove, knocking the
ashes out of his pipe, and refilling that solace of his leisure
hours. "Let us hear about the Eddystone, Bremner; it'll cheer up our
spirits a bit."

"Will it though?" said Bremner, with a look that John Watt described
as "awesome". "Well, we shall see."

"You must know, boys----"

'"Ere, light your pipe, my 'earty," said Dumsby.

"Hold yer tongue, an' don't interrupt him," cried one of the men,
flattening Dumsby's cap over his eyes.

"And don't drop yer Aaitches," observed another, "'cause if ye do
they'll fall into the sea an' be drownded, an' then yell have none
left to put into their wrong places when ye wants 'em."

"Come, Bremner, go on."

"Well, then, boys," began Bremner, "you must know that it is more
than a hundred years since the Eddystone Lighthouse was begun--in the
year 1696, if I remember rightly--that would be just a hundred and
thirteen years to this date. Up to that time these rocks were as
great a terror to sailors as the Bell Rock is now, or, rather, as it
was last year, for now that this here comfortable beacon has been put
up, it's no longer a terror to nobody----"

"Except Geordie Forsyth," interposed O'Connor.

"Silence," cried the men.

"Well," resumed Bremner, "as you all know, the Eddystone Rocks lie in
the British Channel, fourteen miles from Plymouth and ten from the
Ram Head, an' open to a most tremendious sea from the Bay o' Biscay
and the Atlantic, as I knows well, for I've passed the place in a
gale, close enough a'most to throw a biscuit on the rocks.

"They are named the Eddystone Rocks because of the whirls and eddies
that the tides make among them; but for the matter of that, the Bell
Rock might be so named on the same ground. Howsever, it's six o' one
an' half a dozen o' t'other. Only there's this difference, that the
highest point o' the Eddystone is barely covered at high water, while
here the rock is twelve or fifteen feet below water at high tide.

"Well, it was settled by the Trinity Board in 1696, that a lighthouse
should be put up, and a Mr. Winstanley was engaged to do it. He was
an uncommon clever an' ingenious man. He used to exhibit wonderful
waterworks in London; and in his house, down in Essex, he used to
astonish his friends, and frighten them sometimes, with his queer
contrivances. He had invented an easy chair which laid hold of anyone
that sat down in it, and held