Residence in this tower was eerie. The men climbed the ladder and entered a small room, which served the purposes of kitchen, dining-room, and parlour. It was barely 12 feet across--quarters somewhat cramped for thirty men. When a storm was raging, the waves, as they combed over the rock, shook the legs violently and scurried under the floor in seething foam. Now and again a roller, rising higher than its fellows, broke upon the rock and sent a mass of water against the flooring to hammer at the door. Above the living-room were the sleeping-quarters, high and dry, save when a shower of spray fell upon the roof and walls like heavy hail, and occasionally percolated the joints of the woodwork. The men, however, were not perturbed. Sleeping, even under such conditions, was far preferable to doubtful rest in a bunk upon an attendant vessel, rolling and pitching with the motion of the sea. They had had a surfeit of such experience during the first season’s work, while the barrack was under erection. [Illustration: BARRA HEAD LIGHTHOUSE, SCOTLAND. The tower is 60 feet in height, but owing to its position on the cliffs, the white occulting light is 683 feet above high water, and is visible 33 miles.] [Illustration: By permission of the Lighthouse Literature Mission. THE HOMES OF THE KEEPERS OF THE SKERRYVORE AND DHU-HEARTACH LIGHTS. On the Island of Tiree, Argyllshire, 10 miles away.] Yet the men could not grumble. The engineer responsible for the work shared their privations and discomforts, for Alan Stevenson clung to the rock night and day while work was in progress, and he has given a very vivid impression of life in this quaint home on legs. He relates how he “spent many a weary day and night--at those times when the sea prevented anyone going down to the rock--anxiously looking for supplies from the shore, and earnestly looking for a change of weather favourable for prosecuting the works. For miles around nothing could be seen but white foaming breakers, and nothing heard but howling winds and lashing waves. At such seasons much of our time was spent in bed, for there alone we had effectual shelter from the winds and spray, which searched every cranny in the walls of the barrack. Our slumbers, too, were at times fearfully interrupted by the sudden pouring of the sea over the roof, the rocking of the house on its pillars, and the spurting of water through the seams of the doors and windows--symptoms which, to one suddenly aroused from sound sleep, recalled the appalling fate of the former barrack, which had been engulfed in the foam not 20 yards from our dwelling, and for a moment seemed to summon us to a similar fate.”