Perhaps the good folk who lived along the coast gave a no more genial welcome to Whiteside and his workmen than had the men and women of the Lizard and of Scilly to the lighthouse builders of the seventeenth century; perhaps they avowed that a light upon the Smalls which would warn vessels from their doom, would take ‘God’s grace’ from them; any way they do not seem to have given the fiddle-maker many useful hints as to the vagaries of the waves that washed around the Smalls. They told him the rock stood twelve feet above high-water level, and on that assurance he and his men set to work through the calm days of summer, finding but little to hinder them in their labour. From summer they worked into autumn, and on till October winds ruffled the waters of the Atlantic from hillocks into mountains, and drove an occasional wave as many feet above the Smalls as Whiteside and his men had been used to see them wash below it. The first big storm came up somewhat suddenly: the men were at work, and had so far progressed that they were getting into position the first of the iron rods that were to support the structure. To this they clung as shipwrecked sailors cling to the masts of their shattered ships. Their cutter, whose crew had evidently no sympathy with the workmen or their work, made sail on the approach of the danger, and left Whiteside and his men to shift for themselves. All through that night the storm raged, every hour that passed angering the waves, driving them over the rocks with greater fury and drenching those clinging to the bending iron rod. Only when the tide had ebbed to its lowest dared they relinquish their hold. Escape from the rock was impossible, for no vessel could come near them in such a storm; but Fortune smiled, and before the close of the next day the sea had so far calmed down that their boat came to them and, wonderful to relate, every man was brought safe to shore. Their experience taught them that some material more elastic than iron would have to be used in the construction of the lighthouse if it was to stand against an Atlantic gale. As soon, therefore, as he got to shore, Whiteside set about obtaining the requisite heart of oak, and with this he and his builders returned to work, but before beginning to set up their supports they soldered into the rock a number of iron rings, to which they could lash themselves for safety should another storm—such as that they had tasted—drive the waves over the surface of the rock. History does not record if this happened or not, but it probably did before the completion of the work, for that was not accomplished till just before August 1776, when the light in the lantern was first lit, and showed at a distance of seven or eight leagues. Strange and fragile-looking enough, as the reader may see, was this lighthouse built by Whiteside, but it was ‘seaworthy,’ and stood till recently.