In the early part of the third year, 1698, the wooden pillar was raised, which, to the vane on the top, was eighty feet high. Being all finished, with the lantern and all the rooms in it, ‘we ventured,’ says Winstanley, ‘to lodge there, soon after midsummer, for the greater dispatch of the work.’ By so doing the engineer and his men received a sharply enforced lesson, which taught them to judge, by comparison, what a winter’s gale would be like on their sea-girt home, and what might be the isolation and privation of those whose lot it would be to dwell there during a considerable part of the year. The very night of taking up their residence on the rock, a fierce storm raged in the Channel; waves broke over the building, drenching the inmates and their scanty store of provisions, washing away their building material, and filling them, all unused to such exhibitions of Nature’s fury, with the wildest alarm. The storm continued for several days and nights, and it was only on the eleventh day that their boat from Plymouth was able to venture near the Eddystone. We can imagine with what thankful hearts Winstanley and his men came on board her, and returned for rest and refreshment in more secure quarters. Before long the engineer and his men returned to the rock, and must have laboured with considerable energy, since by November 14, 1698, the whole structure was complete, and the tallow candles—for such was the lighting power used in the first Eddystone lighthouse—lighted. It is not difficult to picture the satisfaction with which Winstanley watched the ray of light, slight and dim as it was, penetrating into the darkness of that November night, his triumph at the accomplishment of his task, and his charitable satisfaction at the thought of its benefit to his fellow-men. Here is the wonderful work which his fertile imagination had produced. One has only to glance at it to see how deficient it was in every requisite element of stability, how it was susceptible to the action of the storm. Its polygonal form rendered it peculiarly liable to be swept away by the waves; whilst the upper part courted every wind of heaven, being ornamented with large wooden candlesticks, and burdened with useless vanes, cranes, and other ‘top-hamper,’ to use a sailor’s phrase. Had Winstanley been seeking to erect a Chinese pagoda, his work would have been singularly successful.