who left the roadstead of Stromness
without paying his offering to propitiate Bessie Millie! Her fee was
extremely moderate, being exactly sixpence, for which she boiled her
kettle and gave the bark the advantage of her prayers, for she
disclaimed all unlawful acts. The wind thus petitioned for was sure,
she said, to arrive, though occasionally the mariners had to wait
some time for it. The woman's dwelling and appearance were not
unbecoming her pretensions. Her house, which was on the brow of the
steep hill on which Stromness is founded, was only accessible by a
series of dirty and precipitous lanes, and for exposure might have
been the abode of Eolus himself, in whose commodities the inhabitant
dealt. She herself was, as she told us, nearly one hundred years old,
withered and dried up like a mummy. A clay-coloured kerchief, folded
round her neck, corresponded in colour to her corpse-like complexion.
Two light blue eyes that gleamed with a lustre like that of insanity,
an utterance of astonishing rapidity, a nose and chin that almost met
together, and a ghastly expression of cunning, gave her the effect of
Hecate. Such was Bessie Millie, to whom the mariners paid a sort of
tribute with a feeling between jest and earnest."

II

From about the beginning of the century up to 1807 Robert Stevenson was
in partnership with Thomas Smith. In the last-named year the partnership
was dissolved; Thomas Smith returning to his business, and my
grandfather becoming sole engineer to the Board of Northern Lights.

I must try, by excerpts from his diary and correspondence, to convey to
the reader some idea of the ardency and thoroughness with which he threw
himself into the largest and least of his multifarious engagements in
this service. But first I must say a word or two upon the life of
lightkeepers, and the temptations to which they are more particularly
exposed. The lightkeeper occupies a position apart among men. In
sea-towers the complement has always been three since the deplorable
business in the Eddystone, when one keeper died, and the survivor,
signalling in vain for relief, was compelled to live for days with the
dead body. These usually pass their time by the pleasant human expedient
of quarrelling; and sometimes, I am assured, not one of the three is on
speaking terms with any other. On shore stations, which on the Scottish
coast are sometimes hardly less isolate