"There--this is my room; and now we will go up into the assistant's, your quarters. We will bring up your trunk directly," said the keeper. This room was furnished like the keeper's, only it had two chairs, and before the bed was a strip of woollen carpet.
"I can put my trunk anywhere, I suppose, Mr. Tolman?"
"Anywhere you please."
"Mother gave me a few pictures, too, that she said I could stick up, to make it look homelike."
"Just what I like to have you do. Now for the watch-room."
This was at the head of another iron stairway, and held a small table, a library-case, a green chest, two chairs, and a closet for the keeping of curtains that might be used in the lantern, and other useful apparatus.
"This room is where we can sit and watch the lantern," explained the keeper.
"And what is this?" asked Dave, pointing at a weight that hung down from the ceiling.
"That weight? It is a part of the machinery that turns round the lens in the lantern. Now, let us go up into the lantern."
The lantern was a circular room. The walls were of iron, up to the height of three feet, and cased with wood, and then there was a succession of big panes of the clearest glass, making a broad window that extended about all the lantern. In the centre was a lens of "the fourth order," shaped like a cone, and consisting of very strong magnifying prisms of glass. Within this lens was a kerosene-lamp.