f Tyree and Mull, and then to begin the foundation of the tower on the
only one of the gneiss rocks of the reef which was broad enough for the
purpose, and this is but barely so, for at high water little remains
around the tower's base but a narrow band of a few feet of rugged rocks,
washed into gullies by the sea, which plays through them almost
incessantly.

Everything had to be thought of and provided for beforehand; even so
small a matter as the want of a little clay for tamping holes might have
stopped the work for a time.

Piers were built at Mull where the granite was quarried, and all sorts of
conveniences and contrivances for the vessels and tug in use.

The poor workmen suffered dreadfully from seasickness when compelled to
live on their vessel, so they erected a temporary wooden barrack on the
rock, but it was completely swept away in a November gale, destroying the
work of a season in a single night. The dauntless men went to work again,
however, and built another shelter which stood so successfully that it
was finally taken down several years after the Light-house was completed.

Alan Stevenson tells us of their life in this wave-washed eyrie, where he
was perched forty feet above the sea-beaten rock with a goodly company of
thirty men, where often for many a weary night and day they were kept
prisoners by the weather, anxiously looking for supplies from the shore.
At such times they were generally obliged to stay in bed, where alone
they found an effectual shelter from the wind and spray which searched
every cranny in their walls. More than once the fearfulness of the storm
drove the more timid from their frail abode, which the sea threatened to
overwhelm, out on the bare rock where the roofless wall of the
Light-house offered a safer defence against the perils of the wind and
waves.

Innumerable were the delays and disappointments which tried the courage
and faith of Stevenson and his brave band. It was a good lesson in the
school of patience, and they learned to trust in something stronger than
an arm of flesh. More than once their cranes and materials were swept
away by the waves, and the workmen left, desponding and idle. They
incurred daily risks in landing and in blasting the splintery gneiss, and
in the falling of heavy bodies in the narrow space to which they were
confined. For all, they met with no loss of life or limb, and maintained
good health in spite of being obliged to live on salt provi