aliment
regularly allowed her by her late son, it was suggested that a younger
boy, a brother of the deceased, might be taken into the service. This
appeared to be rather a delicate proposition, but it was left to the
landing-master to arrange according to circumstances; such was the
resignation, and at the same time the spirit, of the poor woman, that
she readily accepted the proposal, and in a few days the younger Scott
was actually afloat in the place of his brother. On representing this
distressing case to the Board, the Commissioners were pleased to grant
an annuity of L5 to Scott's mother.

The _Smeaton_, not having been made fast to the buoy, had, with the
ebb-tide, drifted to leeward a considerable way eastward of the rock,
and could not, till the return of the flood-tide, be worked up to her
moorings, so that the present tide was lost, notwithstanding all
exertions which had been made both ashore and afloat with this cargo.
The artificers landed at six a.m.; but, as no materials could be got
upon the rock this morning, they were employed in boring trenail holes
and in various other operations, and after four hours' work they
returned on board the tender. When the _Smeaton_ got up to her moorings,
the landing-master's crew immediately began to unload her. There being
too much wind for towing the praams in the usual way, they were warped
to the rock in the most laborious manner by their windlasses, with
successive grapplings and hawsers laid out for this purpose. At six p.m.
the artificers landed, and continued at work till half-past ten, when
the remaining seventeen stones were laid which completed the third
entire course, or fourth of the lighthouse, with which the building
operations were closed for the season.

III

OPERATIONS OF 1809

Wednesday, 24th May.

The last night was the first that the writer had passed in his old
quarters on board of the floating light for about twelve months, when
the weather was so fine and the sea so smooth that even here he felt but
little or no motion, excepting at the turn of the tide, when the vessel
gets into what the seamen term the _trough of the sea_. At six a.m. Mr.
Watt, who conducted the operations of the railways and beacon-house, had
landed with nine artificers. At half-past one p.m. Mr. Peter Logan had
also landed with fifteen masons, and immediately proceeded to set up the
crane. The sheer-crane or apparatus for lifting the stones out of the
praam-b