When the Scandinavian liner _Norge_, while on her way to the United States in July, 1904, fouled the terrible Rockall and lost 750 of her passengers, the outcry about the absence of all means of indicating this spot to the navigator vibrated round the world. Yet it was a useless agitation. Rockall is a no-man’s land; no nation has planted its flag upon its cone of granite; no Power cares whether it continues its harvest of human lives or otherwise. The various countries appear to think that it is too much off the map to be worthy of a moment’s thought; its existence is brought home only by a holocaust. After this heartrending disaster, Messrs. D. and C. Stevenson adumbrated a promising means of indicating this awful graveyard to the seafarer. They suggested that two automatic unattended lightships should be constructed, and that one should relieve the other every six months. The project was eminently practicable, but every country seemed to shirk responsibility in the expense of its adoption. But Rockall is a unique danger spot; in no other part of the known world does such a formidable isolated peak of granite rise from the ocean depths, for it is in mid-Atlantic, 160 miles west of St. Kilda, and 290 miles off the Scottish mainland. It may be away from the great steamship lanes of the Atlantic, yet a vast volume of shipping passes within sight of its curious formation. Seeing that the foremost maritime Powers defray between them the cost of maintaining the light off Cape Spartel, surely the dictates of humanity are sufficiently pressing to secure the indication of this islet. The maintenance of an unattended automatic beacon, such as Messrs. Stevenson advocated, would not impose a severe strain upon the treasuries of the leading Powers of the world, whose interests are associated intimately with the North Atlantic. The perfection of the unattended lightship, working automatically, has provided the lighthouse engineer with a powerful weapon for marking the most exposed and out-of-the-way danger spots. When the new development is carried to its uttermost lengths, no graveyard of the ocean, no matter how remote and inaccessible, need be without means of warning shipping of its whereabouts. CHAPTER XXIII THE LIGHT-KEEPER AND HIS LIFE