Placing their letter in a bottle, Whiteside and his men flung it into the sea, offering up a prayer as they did so that it might reach land and come to those able to help, ere it was too late; let us hope that their prayer was answered. At all events there is no record of the dwellers on the Smalls having perished on their insular home. Let us hope, too, that after this a more generous allowance of food for the keepers and of oil for the lamps was permitted. But all we know for certain about the subsequent management of the lighthouse is that only two keepers were kept there. This, no doubt, was economical, but the system possessed serious drawbacks, as we shall see by the following incident—one of the most exciting and melancholy in lighthouse history. Some five-and-twenty years after the erection of the lighthouse at the Smalls, there came about, one autumn, a spell of exceptionally stormy weather, and no communication was had with the rock for four months. People on shore grew naturally anxious, and the lighting of the light was eagerly watched for as each day closed in. Would the stock of oil hold out another night? or would the food supplies for the unhappy men enable them to keep body and soul together, so that they might discharge their duties? These were the questions on every one’s lips, and the safety of the lighthouse keepers at the Smalls was the talk of every town and village in the neighbourhood. Time after time efforts were made to carry relief to the lighthouse, but all were fruitless; for miles round the rock the sea ran so high that no boat could possibly have lived in it. All that could be learnt was that crouched in the corner of the gallery running round the lantern was one of the keepers; despite the blinding snow and bitter cold, there he was whenever a boat got within sight of the building. What could it mean? Had the wretched man lost his reason, and been driven by privation and the ceaseless cry of the tempest into a hopeless lunatic who refused to quit the station he had taken up? It was idle to speculate; all that was certain was that at least one whole and sane man remained upon the rock, for the light was regularly lit at nightfall, as could be seen from the shore, and those that brought news of the crouching figure seen in the lighthouse gallery declared that no light was burning in the lantern by day.