Extreme care was observed in the building operations, so that no workman might be exposed to any unnecessary risks, although the task at times bristled with unavoidable perils. As a matter of fact, the whole enterprise was attended by only three accidents on the rock. One man was cutting a tram-rail, when a piece of steel flew into one eye, completely blinding it. Another suffered a similar calamity from a chip of stone while quarrying. The third man met misfortune while at work at the windlass of the derrick. As a breaker rolled in, his companion dropped his handle, with the result that the other workman was knocked down and had one leg broken. There was a true Hibernian flavour about this last-named accident, in keeping with the setting in which it occurred. The man was incapacitated for some months, and then brought an action for compensation, claiming that he had been rendered unfit for any further manual labour. The sympathetic court solaced him with an award of £350, or $1,750. The amazement and disgust of the engineer may be imagined when, three months after the action, he suddenly espied the supposedly totally incapacitated workman assisting in the transference of coal from a barge to the tender! [Illustration: _By courtesy of the “Scientific American.”_ THE FASTNET, THE OUTPOST OF EUROPE. On the top of the rock is the first light, opened in 1854. At the side is the present noble tower, completed in 1906. The flashing beam of 750,000 candle-power has a range of 20 miles.] As the tower grew above the existing building, which it was to exceed in height, it obscured the light thrown from the latter in a certain direction. At this juncture, accordingly, a temporary scaffolding was erected upon the summit of the new shaft, on which were rigged two ordinary lightship lights, and these were kept going until the new lantern was completed. The last stone was set on June 3, 1903, after some four years’ labour. During the winter everything was brought virtually to a standstill, owing to the succession of gales, but the men on the rock never missed an opportunity to advance the undertaking. Kavanagh, the foreman, absolutely refused to go ashore so long as any work could be completed. Often he remained on the Fastnet the whole year round, and never was away for more than two months in the year, when work was impossible. Other workmen, when they had lived down the first feelings of loneliness, became imbued with the same spirit, and appeared loth to forsake the scene of their labours even for a day or two. When the men settled down to their toil, it was very seldom that a wish was expressed to be taken ashore more than once in three months.