[Illustration] [Illustration] BOOK VI. _LIFE IN THE LIGHTHOUSE._ CHAPTER I. THE LIGHTHOUSE-KEEPERS. The life of a lighthouse-keeper is not without a certain monotony; but it must be greatly cheered by the reflection that it is devoted to a high and holy service. There is about it a certain heroic simplicity—it is so completely separated from the commonplace aims and concerns of the work-day world; and it is characterized, moreover, by an austere regularity which reminds one of the existence formerly led in grotto and cavern by saint and hermit, though its end is much more useful, and it is in itself of far greater value to mankind. The first article of the instructions which every lighthouse-keeper is bound to obey—and to obey as implicitly as a soldier obeys the articles of war—runs thus:— “You are to light the lamps every evening at sun-setting, and keep them constantly burning, bright and clear, till sun-rising.” This is the primary condition of a lighthouse-keeper’s duty: for this he lives, for this he toils, for this he watches—that the helpful flame which has been the salvation of so many lives may steadily glow and brightly burn from sunset until sunrise. “Whatever else happens,” remarks a lively writer,[61] “he is to do this. He may be isolated through the long night-watches, twenty miles from land, fifty or a hundred feet above the level of the sea, with the winds and waves howling round him, and the sea-birds dashing themselves to death against the gleaming lantern, like giant moths against a candle; or it may be a calm, voluptuous, moonlight night, the soft air laden with the perfumes of the Highland heather or the Cornish gorse, tempting him to keep his watch outside the lantern, in the open gallery, instead of in the watch-room chair within; the Channel may be full of stately ships, each guided by his light; or the horizon may be bare of all signs of life, except, remote and far beneath him, the lantern of some fishing-boat at sea: but whatever may be going on outside, there is within for him the duty, simple and easy, by virtue of his moral method and orderly training, ‘to light the lamps every evening at sun-setting, and keep them constantly burning, bright and clear, till sun-rising.’” [61] “Cornhill Magazine,” vol. i., pp. 224, 225.