The Story of the Rock by R. M. Ballantyne (best ebook reader for surface pro .TXT) 📕

Thirty-Four years passed away, and still Rudyerd’s lighthouse stood firm as the rock on which it was founded. True, during that period it had to undergo occasional repairs, because the timber uprights at the base, where exposed to the full violence of the waves, had become weather-worn, and required renewing in part; but this was only equivalent to a ship being overhauled and having some of her planks renewed. The main fabric of the lighthouse remained as sound and steadfast at the end of that long period as it was at the beginning, and it would in all probability have remained on the Eddystone Rock till the present day, had not a foe assailed it, whose nature was very different indeed from that with which it had been built to contend.

The lighthouse was at this time in charge of Teddy Maroon: not the Teddy who had bewailed his fate so disconsolately in the French prison in days gone by, but his youngest son, who was now getting to be an elderly man. We may, however, relieve the mind of the sympathetic reader, by saying that Teddy, senior, was not dead. He was still alive and hearty; though bent nearly double with extreme age; and dwelt on the borders of one of the Irish bogs, at the head of an extensive colony of Maroons.

One night Teddy the younger ascended to the lantern to trim the candles; he snuffed them all round and returned to the kitchen to have a pipe, his two mates being a-bed at the time. No one now knows how the thing happened, but certain it is that Teddy either dropped some of the burning snuff on the floor, or in some other way introduced more light into his lantern that night than it had ever been meant to contain, so that while he and his mates were smoking comfortably below, the lighthouse was smoking quietly, but ominously, above.

On shore, late that night, an elderly gentleman stood looking out of the window of a charmingly situated cottage in the village of Cawsand Bay, near Plymouth, which commanded a magnificent prospect of the channel.

“Father,” he said, turning to a very old man seated beside the fire, who, although shrunken and wrinkled and bald, was ruddy in complexion, and evidently in the enjoyment of a green old age, “Father, the lighthouse is beautifully bright to-night; shall I help you to the window to look at it?”

“Yes, Tommy: I’m fond o’ the old light. It minds me of days gone by, when you and I were young, Martha.”

The old man gave a chuckle as he looked across the hearthstone, where, in a chair similar to his own, sat a very stout and very deaf and very old lady, smoothing the head of her grandchild, a little girl, who was the youngest of a family of ten.

Old Martha did not hear John Potter’s remark, but she saw his kindly smile, and nodded her head with much gravity in reply. Martha had grown intellectually slow when she partially lost her hearing, and although she was not sad she had evidently become solemn. An English Dictionary and the Bible were the only books that Martha would look at now. She did not use the former as a help to the understanding of the latter. No one knew why she was so partial to the dictionary; but as she not unfrequently had it on her knee upside down while poring over it, her grandchild, little Nora, took up the idea that she had resolved to devote the latter days of her life to learning to read backwards! Perhaps the fact that the dictionary had once belonged to her son James who was wrecked and drowned on the Norfolk coast, may have had something to do with it.

With the aid of his son’s arm and a stick old John managed to hobble to the window.

“It is very bright. Why, Tommy,” he exclaimed, with a start, “it’s too bright: the lighthouse must be on fire!”

At that moment, “Tommy’s” wife, now “fat, fair, and fifty” (or thereabouts), entered the room hurriedly, exclaiming, “Oh, Tom, what can be the matter with the lighthouse, I never saw it so bright before?”

Tom, who had hastily placed his father in a chair, so that he could see the Eddystone, seized his hat, and exclaiming, “I’ll go and see, my dear,” ran out and proceeded to the shore.

“What’s the matter?” cried Mrs Potter in a querulous voice, when little Nora rushed from her side.

Nora, senior, went to her at once, and, bending down, said, in a musical voice that retained much of its clearness and all its former sweetness: “I fear that the lighthouse is on fire, grandma!”

Mrs Potter gazed straight before her with vacant solemnity, and Nora, supposing that she had not heard, repeated the information.

Still Mrs Potter made no reply; but, after a few moments, she turned her eyes on her daughter-in-law with owlish gravity, and said; “I knew it! I said long ago to your father, my dear, I had a settled conviction that that lighthouse would come to a bad end.”

It did indeed appear as though old Martha’s prophecy were about to come true!

Out at the lighthouse Teddy Maroon, having finished his pipe, went up to the lantern to trim the candles again. He had no sooner opened the hatch of the lantern than a dense cloud of smoke burst out. He shouted to his comrades, one of whom, Henry Hall, was old and not fit for much violent exertion; the other, James Wilkie, was a young man, but a heavy sleeper. They could not be roused as quickly as the occasion demanded. Teddy ran to the store-room for a leathern bucket, but before he could descend to the rock, fill it and re-ascend, the flames had got a firm hold of the cupola. He dashed the water into the lantern just as his horrified comrades appeared.

“Fetch bucketfulls as fast as ye can. Och, be smart, boys, if iver ye was,” he shouted, while perspiration streamed down his face. Pulling off his coat, while his mates ran down for water, Teddy dashed wildly into the lantern, and, holding the coat by its arms, laid about him violently, but smoke and fire drove him but almost immediately. The buckets were long of coming, and when they did arrive, their contents were as nothing on the glowing cupola. Then Teddy went out on the balcony and endeavoured to throw the water up, but the height was too great. While he was doing this, Wilkie ran down for more water, but Hall stood gazing upwards, open-mouthed with horror, at the raging flames. At that moment the leaden covering of the roof melted, and rushed down on Hall’s head and shoulders. He fell, with a loud shriek. While Teddy tried to drag him down to the room below, he exclaimed that some of the melted lead had gone down his throat! He was terribly burned about the neck, but his comrades had to leave him in his bed while they strove wildly to check the flames. It was all in vain. The wood-work around the lantern, from years of exposure to the heat of twenty-four large candles burning at once, had become like tinder, and the fire became so fierce that the