I got sick, an' I've got that night stuck good an' fast
in my think-bank. There was a howlin' nor'wester comin' down. She'd
been blowin' plenty fresh for a couple o' weeks, but instead o' letting
up, the sea kep' on gettin' more wicked. The way some o' the big ones
would come dashin' in an' shinnin' up the rock as if they were a-goin'
to snatch the buildin' down, was sure wearin' on the nerves. That
winter, there was more'n once I thought the sea was goin' to nip off the
lighthouse like a ball takin' off the last pin in a bowlin' frame."

"Dashing up against the lighthouse!" exclaimed the boy. "Aren't you
putting that on a bit? Why you're over a hundred feet above sea level."

"In 'most any big storm the surf dashes up to the top o' the rock. But
on this day I'm talkin' of, there was one gee-whopper of a sea. It broke
off a chunk of rock weighin' every ounce o' half a ton, the way you'd
bite off a piece o' candy, an' just chucked that rock at the lantern,
breakin' a pane of glass, clear at the top of the tower."

The boy whistled incredulously.

"It's a dead cold fact," the other confirmed. "If you think I'm
stretchin' it a bit, you read the Annual Report an' you'll find it's
so."

"What did you do?"

"We put in a new glass," said the keeper.

"During the storm?"

"We haven't got any business to worry about storms, we've only got to
keep the light goin'," was the reply. "If the End o' the World was
scheduled to come off in the middle of the night, you can bet it would
find the Tillamook Rock Light burnin'! Storm! Takes a sight more than a
sixty mile gale an' a ragin' sea to stop a Lighthouse crowd. You know
that yourself, or you oughter, with your folks. No, sir! There's no
storm ever invented that can crimp the Service. We had that broken glass
out and a new one in place, in just exactly eighteen minutes. It was
some job, too! The chaps workin' on the outside had to be lashed on to
the platform."

"Why, because of the wind?"

"Just the wind. That little breeze would have picked up a
two-hundred-pound man like a feather."

"Weren't you scared?"

"No," said the light-keeper, "didn't have time to think of it. Cookie
was scared, all right."

"Have you a cook on the rock?" said Eric in surprise, "I thought you all
took turns to cook."

"The men do, in most o' the lighthouses," was the reply, "but
Tillamook's so cut off from everything that we've five men on the
post. That means quite a bit o' cookin', an