o a most tremendious sea from the Bay o' Biscay and the
Atlantic, as I knows well, for I've passed the place in a gale, close
enough a'most to throw a biscuit on the rocks.

"They are named the Eddystone Rocks because of the whirls and eddies
that the tides make among them; but for the matter of that, the Bell
Rock might be so named on the same ground. Howsever, it's six o' one
an' half a dozen o' t'other. Only there's this difference, that the
highest point o' the Eddystone is barely covered at high water, while
here the rock is twelve or fifteen feet below water at high tide.

"Well, it was settled by the Trinity Board in 1696, that a lighthouse
should be put up, and a Mr Winstanley was engaged to do it. He was an
uncommon clever an' ingenious man. He used to exhibit wonderful
waterworks in London; and in his house, down in Essex, he used to
astonish his friends, and frighten them sometimes, with his queer
contrivances. He had invented an easy chair which laid hold of anyone
that sat down in it, and held him prisoner until Mr Winstanley set him
free. He made a slipper also, and laid it on his bedroom floor, and
when anyone put his foot into it he touched a spring that caused a ghost
to rise from the hearth. He made a summer house, too, at the foot of
his garden, on the edge of a canal, and if anyone entered into it and
sat down, he very soon found himself adrift on the canal.

"Such a man was thought to be the best for such a difficult work as the
building of a lighthouse on the Eddystone, so he was asked to undertake
it, and agreed, and began it well. He finished it, too, in four years,
his chief difficulty being the distance of the rock from land, and the
danger of goin' backwards and forwards. The light was first shown on
the 14th November, 1698. Before this the engineer had resolved to pass
a night in the building, which he did with a party of men; but he was
compelled to pass more than a night, for it came on to blow furiously,
and they were kept prisoners for eleven days, drenched with spray all
the time, and hard up for provisions.

"It was said the sprays rose a hundred feet above the lantern of this
first Eddystone Lighthouse. Well, it stood till the year 1703, when
repairs became necessary, and Mr Winstanley went down to Plymouth to
superintend. It had been prophesied that this lighthouse would
certainly be carried away. But dismal prophecies are always made about
unusual things. If men were