CHAPTER XI.
The Lighthouse (continued).
The Bell Rock—The good Abbot of Arberbrothok—Ralph the Rover—Rennie’s grand Lighthouse—Perils of the Work—Thirty-two Men apparently doomed to Destruction—A New Form of Outward Construction—Its successful Completion—The Skerryvore Lighthouse and Alan Stevenson—Novel Barracks on the Rock—Swept Away in a Storm—The Unshapely Seal and Unfortunate Cod—Half-starved Workmen—Out of Tobacco—Difficulties of Landing the Stones—Visit of M. de Quatrefages to Héhaux—Description of the Lighthouse Exterior—How it Rocks—Practice versus Theory—The Interior—A Parisian Apartment at Sea.
Some eleven miles eastward from the mainland of Scotland, near the entrances to the Firths of Forth and Tay, lies an extensive ledge of very dangerous rocks, nearly two miles in length. This sunken reef was a source of much peril to the unfortunate sailors [pg 173]driven too near its nearly hidden dangers, and early in the fourteenth century the Abbot of Arbroath, or Arberbrothok, caused a bell to be placed upon the principal rock, so that—
“When the Rock was hid by the surge’s swell,
The mariners heard the warning bell;
And then they knew the perilous Rock,
And blessed the Abbot of Arberbrothok.”
Southey has, in his ballad of “The Inchcape Rock,” immortalised the tradition[56] that a notorious pirate cut the bell from the rock—
“Down sank the bell with a gurgling sound,