So, in due course, the alterations were made, the new lanterns completed, lit with oil, and a better and steadier light given than had been obtained before—a light so good and so steady that, as they saw it, some of the inhabitants were heard actually to complain of it. The light given by Fonnereau’s coal fire was so fitful that it had not really spoiled _business_ very much; but with the new lights—why, a wreck would never happen at all! It was the Trinity House now, and not Sir John Killegrew, that took God’s grace from these simple Cornish fisher-folk! Oil was burned at the Lizard till the spring of the year 1878, when—after numerous experiments had been made—the complete system of electric lighting now in use was introduced at a cost of very nearly £15,000, and a fog-horn erected equalling, if not exceeding, in the discordancy of its note, that at Dungeness. CHAPTER XVI THE WOLF, THE LAND’S END, AND THE LONGSHIPS Soon after a lighthouse had been built at the Lizard, the dangers of the Wolf Rock, that lies between that point and the Land’s End attracted the attention of the Trinity House. The rock takes its name from the wolf-like howling of the waves that once washed through it—noises that were silenced, years before the lighthouse was proposed there, by the superstitious fishermen, who, caring not for such uncanny music, filled up the cavity with stones. At first the idea of a lighthouse on the Wolf seemed impossible; the Eddystone lighthouse had been difficult enough to erect, and here were far greater difficulties to be encountered—less space on which to build, and less capability of landing materials. It was therefore proposed to fix on the rock the copper figure of a wolf, which was to be so constructed that the air passing through it would produce the howling sounds which in times past had, to a certain extent, acted as a safeguard to mariners by warning them of the presence of danger. The figure was duly constructed, but the force of the waves that, even in smooth weather, broke over the rock, rendered all efforts to fix it ineffectual, and the idea had to be abandoned. Then a bell-buoy—similar to that which the venerable abbot had placed on the Inchcape Rock—was suggested for the Wolf. But the fishermen did not like this; it would, they said, frighten the fish, and they threatened, were it put there, to cut it away. The fact is, the fishermen at the Land’s End were, like their neighbours at the Lizard, not over anxious for any indication of danger—anything that would _prevent_ shipwreck.