Again, a quarter of a century later, the watch was kept by two keepers; and for four months the weather shut them off from all communication with the land. The method of talking by signals was not developed anywhere into the complete system it has now become, and does not appear to have been in use at all among the lighthouse people; but in the course of a week or two after the storm had set in, it was rumoured at several of the western ports that something was wrong at the Smalls. Passing vessels reported that a signal of distress was out, but that was all they knew. Many attempts to approach the rock were made, but fruitlessly. The boats could not get near enough to hail, they could only return to make the bewildered agent and the anxious relatives of the keepers more bewildered and more anxious by the statement that there was always what seemed to be the dim figure of a man in one corner of the outside gallery, but whether he spoke or moved, or not, they could not tell. Night after night the light was watched for with great misgiving whether it would ever show again. But the light failed not. Punctually as the sun set it seemed to leave a fragment of its fire gleaming in the lantern glasses, which burnt there till it rose again, showing this much at least, that some one was alive at the Smalls; but whether both the men, or which, no anxious mother or loving wife could tell. Four months of this, and then, in calmer weather, a Milford boat brought into the agency at Solva one light-keeper and one dead man.