He laughed and pulled at the rope again. “They ought to,” he answered gaily, “they’re big enough. Come and see.”
The seaward end of the cable was attached to a doorway thirty feet above the base of the lighthouse. One of the under-keepers met them here with a lantern. He stared when he caught sight of the second figure in the cradle, but touched his cap to the mistress of Carwithiel.
“Here’s Mrs. Vyell, Trevarthen, come to do honour to our opening night.”
“Proudly welcome, ma’am,” said Trevarthen. “You’ll excuse the litter we’re in. This here’s our cellar, but you’ll find things more ship-shape upstairs. Mind your head, ma’am, with the archway—better let me lead the way perhaps.”
The archway was indeed low, and they were forced to crouch and almost crawl up the first short flight of steps. But after this Honoria, following Trevarthen’s lantern round and up the spiral way, found the roof heightening above her, and soon emerged into a gloomy chamber fitted with cupboards and water-tanks—the provision room. From this a ladder led straight up through a man-hole in the ceiling to the light-room store, set round with shining oil-tanks and stocked with paint-pots, brushes, cans, signalling flags, coils of rope, bags of cotton waste, tool-chests.... A second ladder brought them to the kitchen, and a third to the sleeping-room; and here the light of the lantern streamed down on their heads through the open man-hole above them. They heard, too, the roar of the ventilator, and the ting-ting, regular and sharp, of the small bell reporting that the machinery revolved.
Above, in the blaze of the great lenses, old Pezzack and the second under-keeper welcomed them. The pair had been watching and discussing the light with true professional pride; and Taffy drew up at the head of the ladder and stared at it, and nodded his slow approbation. The glare forced Honoria back against the glass wall, and she caught at its lattice for support.
But she pulled herself together, ashamed of her weakness, and glad that Taffy had not perceived it.
“This satisfies you?” she whispered.
He faced round on her with a slow smile. “No,” he said, “this light-house is useless.”
“Useless?”