ent out!

"I knowed it! always the way!" cried Dove, with a look of
disappointment. "Come, lad, up with the bellows now, and don't forget
the tongs."

In a few minutes more the boats pushed off and returned to the
Pharos, three and a half hours of good work having been accomplished
before the tide drove them away.

Soon afterwards the sea overflowed the whole of the rock, and
obliterated the scene of those busy operations as completely as
though it had never been!

CHAPTER IX

STORMS AND TROUBLES

A week of fine weather caused Ruby Brand to fall as deeply in love
with the work at the Bell Rock as his comrades had done.

There was an amount of vigour and excitement about it, with a dash of
romance, which quite harmonized with his character. At first he had
imagined it would be monotonous and dull, but in experience he found
it to be quite the reverse.

Although there was uniformity in the general character of the work,
there was constant variety in many of the details; and the spot on
which it was carried on was so circumscribed, and so utterly cut off
from all the world, that the minds of those employed became
concentrated on it in a way that aroused strong interest in every
trifling object.

There was not a ledge or a point of rock that rose ever so little
above the general level, that was not named after, and intimately
associated with, some event or individual. Every mass of seaweed
became a familiar object. The various little pools and inlets, many
of them not larger than a dining-room table, received high-sounding
and dignified names--such as _Port Stevenson, Port, Erskine, Taylor's
Track, Neill's Pool_, &c. Of course the fish that frequented the
pools, and the shell-fish that covered the rock, became subjects of
much attention, and, in some cases, of earnest study.

Robinson Crusoe himself did not pry into the secrets of his
island-home with half the amount of assiduity that was displayed at
this time by many of the men who built the Bell Rock Lighthouse. The
very fact that their time was limited acted as a spur, so that on
landing each tide they rushed hastily to the work, and the amateur
studies in natural history to which we have referred were prosecuted
hurriedly during brief intervals of rest. Afterwards, when the beacon
house was erected, and the men dwelt upon the rock, these studies (if
we may not call them amusements) were continued more leisurely, but
with unabated ardour, and furnishe