"What's your name?" I asked. He was the first real lighthouse-keeper I had met.
The lighthouseman looked at me and then at one of the coast-watchers. He was a slender man of about sixty years, who, I had been told, was enjoying the work he had set out to do long, long before there was a thought of a great war.
"T. G. Cutting," he replied, "the P.K. here."
It was on the western Cornish coast, where, as in other places in and off English shores, the lighthouses, war or no war, from sunset to sunrise cut the darkness with their long beams of whiteness and, when necessary, sound the foghorn. You do not see any young men who are not in khaki or navy blue, and the old men are wonders, with their binoculars and telescopes. Mr. Cutting had been within sound of the sea ever since he was born. First, he had seen service on a lighthouse on the rocks, as they say, and from the rocks he graduated to a land job, and thence back to the rocks, and again on to the land. We read stories of the lighthouse-keeper; but little is written on the modern man of this species. Mr. Cutting is not accustomed to the glare of the city's lights, but he knows the glare of a lighthouse-lantern and all the various wonders of the work.
Inside the annex to the lighthouse were the duplicate engines for filling tanks with compressed air. This air is used for blowing the foghorns, and when they sound everybody in the locality knows it.
"Enough air is stored in those tanks," declared Mr. Cutting, "to keep the foghorns going for twenty minutes. That gives us time to get the engines running."
He went into details of the engines, showing that he knew them by heart, and I could almost imagine the blurring, deafening sound which for seven seconds rent the air through the roar of winds every minute and a half.
"Fog, as you know, is the dread of every sea captain," said Mr. Cutting. "Out yonder you see the 'Three Stone Orr Rocks.' This is a dangerous bit of scenery in foggy weather. When we have a fog, two men are on duty; one if it is clear."
We then went to the lighthouse tower, which stands nearly 200 feet above high water. To the right, on entering that building, was a blacksmith's shop, with an anvil, forge, and various implements. This forge is occasionally needed to make repairs, spare parts, and accessories of the engines of the lighthouse. To the right, in a corridor, were speaking-tubes.
"Those tubes go to the bedside of every man employed here," said Mr. Cutting. "We have only to blow, and in a few minutes he comes up to the lighthouse. Our houses are over there, in the same structure as the tower. They are practically the lower portion of the main building."