WATCHERS ON THE LONGSHIPS.'

(_Concluded from page 39._)

We shall now take a peep at the lighthouse and its first watcher. 'That
will never be finished,' said one of the wreckers, when he saw the work
slowly progressing on the lonely rock at Land's End. But it was
finished. Arthur Pendrean wrote to many rich ship-owners in London and
elsewhere, and at length, by the aid of their money and the toil of
skilful workmen, a light began to burn in the Longships Lighthouse on
September 29, 1795. Those were early days of lighthouses, and experience
had hardly yet proved the risk and the danger of leaving one man alone
on a solitary rock to attend to the lights, often cut off for days, or
even weeks, from all communication with the shore. In these days things
are very different. Three men, and sometimes four, are appointed to take
charge of lighthouses, such as the Longships, Eddystone, and others.

One night a furious gale from the south-west raged along the coast; many
were the watchers at Sennen and other villages along the shore, keeping
a sharp look-out for wrecks; but whether owing to the lighthouse or to
the fact that there were not many vessels about just then, the evil
hopes of those who were longing to profit by the misfortunes of others
were frustrated. Owen felt very anxious about the lonely
lighthouse-keeper, whom he could not help thinking of as trimming his
lamps on the solitary rock with the roar of the ocean around and below
him. He knew that one who had not been there could not possibly have any
idea of the awful noise on the Longships Rock occasioned by the roaring
and the raging of the waves in the caverns underneath. We cannot stay to
describe all that Jordan, the lighthouse-keeper, in his loneliness
experienced, nor to tell how the waves, leaping above the lighthouse,
sometimes completely covered it. We see him as he walks about, now up
and now down, almost terrified by the fierce yells and shrieks which
fell upon his ears, and at last watch him, in despair, fling himself
upon his bed. Oh, that he had never been tempted to come to this
accursed, haunted rock--for haunted he felt certain it was! Like most
sailors, he was more or less superstitious, and the angry roar in the
caverns beneath sounded to him like the roar of hundreds of imprisoned
wild beasts, until, by-and-by, losing all his presence of mind, his hair
turns white in a single night with terror, and he becomes a maniac. It
was thus that Art