boat found a
sort of temporary harbour. Here they landed, but not altogether without
mishap. Isaac Dorkin, who had made himself conspicuous, during the row
out, for caustic remarks, and a tendency to contradict, slipped his foot
on a piece of seaweed and fell into the water, to the great glee of most
of his comrades.

"Ah, then, sarves you right," cried Teddy Maroon, a little Irishman, one
of the joiners.

The others laughed, and so did John Potter; but he also stretched out a
helping hand and pulled Dorkin out of the sea.

This little incident tended to increase the spirits of the party as they
commenced preliminary operations.

The form of the little mass of rock on which they had to build was very
unfavourable. Not only was it small--so small that the largest circle
which it was possible to draw on it was only twenty-five feet six inches
in diameter, but its surface sloped so much as to afford a very insecure
foundation for any sort of building, even if the situation had been an
unexposed one.

The former builder, Winstanley, had overcome this difficulty by
fastening a circle of strong iron posts into the solid rock, but the
weight of his building, coupled with the force of the sea, had snapped
these, and thus left the structure literally to slide off its
foundation. The ends of these iron posts, and a bit of chain firmly
imbedded in a cleft of the rock, were all that the new party of builders
found remaining of the old lighthouse. Rudyerd determined to guard
against a similar catastrophe, by cutting the rock into a succession of
flat steps or terraces, so that the weight of his structure should rest
perpendicularly on its foundation.

Stormy weather interrupted and delayed him, but he returned with his men
again and again to the work, and succeeded in advancing it very
considerably during the first year--that is to say, during the few weeks
of the summer of that year, in which winds and waves permitted the work
to go on.

Many adventures, both ludicrous and thrilling, had these enterprising
men while they toiled, by snatches as it were, sometimes almost under
water, and always under difficulties; but we are constrained to pass
these by, in silence, in order to devote our space to the more important
and stirring incidents in the history of this the second lighthouse on
the Eddystone,--one of which incidents bade fair to check the progress
of the building for an indefinite period of time, and well-nigh b