s and the ends of his feet."

"My word," said Eric, "it must have had some timber in it!"

"It had a lot of weight to support," said the other. "After a while, it
was launched--I was there--and dropped into the bay near Sparrow's
Point. On it were built the first two courses of the iron cylinder which
was to be the lower part of the lighthouse. Although that wooden caisson
weighed over a hundred tons, so heavy and solid was the cylinder that it
sank the wooden structure out of sight."

"How big was the cylinder?" queried the boy.

"It was thirty feet in diameter and each of the courses was six feet
high. That's twelve feet for the two courses. Inside the big cylinder
was a second smaller one, like an air-shaft, five feet in diameter. A
pump was rigged on the edge of the cylinder for the journey down the
bay, in case any water should splash over the sides from the wake of the
tug.

"When the springtime came and there was a reasonable prospect of fair
weather, quite a fleet set out for Baltimore with Father and me in the
leading tug. I felt as proud of myself as if I'd been an admiral! I
wasn't quite sure," he added, laughing, "whether Father was the boss of
the job or whether I was, myself.

"We had a large ocean-going tug towing the caisson, but we went ahead
at very slow speed. Besides the big tug there were two tugs towing seven
barges with the iron work, with building materials, stone, cement, and
all that sort of thing. It made quite a gallant show.

"I want to tell you right now, we missed our guess when we supposed that
Chesapeake Bay was being coddled by any of the softening influences of
the gentle springtime! It was only lying low! It took us three days to
get to the site of the lighthouse, which was marked by a buoy. We
reached there on a quiet and peaceful evening, the sort that landlubber
poets write about. A little after sundown it began to breeze up, and by
four bells of the first watch, there was a stiffish wind, which at
midnight began to climb into half a gale.

"Then the sea began to rise. It only takes a capful of wind to make
things nasty on the bay, and that iron cylinder began to toss like a
cork. We'd left four men aboard the cylinder and by half an hour after
midnight they were pumping for their lives. There was a big searchlight
on the tug and Father came tumbling up from below and ordered the
searchlight turned on to the cylinder.

"I tell you, that was a sight. There was nothing to b