Of incidents connected with the history of the Eddystone under their ownership we do not hear much; Rudyerd’s structure was obviously more secure than Winstanley’s, yet for many years it was not without considerable anxiety that the friends of those in charge of the lighthouse awaited tidings of the safety of the building after any particularly heavy storm had swept the Channel. But as year by year these left the lighthouse unshaken such alarms subsided, and we find that the post of keeper of the Eddystone lights was one keenly sought after. The principal thing those stationed on the rock had to complain of was occasional shortness of their food supply. For a considerable time the provision of this was left to the owners’ agent, one Pentecost Barker, whose diary has been preserved. Now, whether from Mr. Barker’s bad management or from his employers’ stinginess, those on the rock, according to the entries in his journal were left much too often with insufficiency of food and insufficiency of candles for the lantern. See what he enters under December 8, 1729: it was ‘a day of terrible perplexity’ to him, for the ‘people on the Eddystone’ had no candles. Without casting a slur on his memory, we cannot but think that this was his own fault, for, says he, this ‘so teazed and fretted’ him that he had a fit. This was very sad; but there are other entries in his diary which suggest that the fit may have been produced not so much by mental agitation as by what he took to allay it! As most of us know, Rudyerd’s lighthouse was entirely destroyed by fire in December, 1755, after an existence of forty-eight years. How this fire originated is uncertain; probably the candle-flames, blown by an unusually strong gust of wind, came in contact with the woodwork of the lantern and set it alight. The fire was discovered at two in the morning, as one of the keepers went from the watching-room to snuff the candles, and it spread with amazing rapidity. There were then three keepers on the rock, and these had, each of them, very narrow escapes from burning; yet only one death could be directly attributed to the fire. This was of an old man of ninety who, as he stood on the rock gazing open-mouthed at the progress of the flames, swallowed a portion of molten lead. Helpless with agony he was lifted into the relief boat that came out to the rock, and on its reaching Plymouth was carried to the hospital, where he lingered for several days; after death, the surgeons opened his body, and found in it a lump of lead weighing seven ounces. CHAPTER XIV THE THIRD AND FOURTH LIGHTHOUSES AT THE EDDYSTONE