On shore, it was a well-established axiom that among the offshore keepers none died—and few retired.
Every few months each could get a leave of absence on full pay and spend the time in any manner he pleased. The supply-ship stopped off the reef twice each year, and the lighthouse tender traversed the district as high as Cape Canaveral if anything was wanted.
So at least three or four times a year the keepers would hold communication with the outside world and converse with their fellow men.
The ships passing up the Hawk's Channel from Key West went within a few miles of the reef, and steamers going north outside sometimes stood in close enough to be recognized: but the Carysfort and Alligator Reefs were good places to keep away from, and no vessels except the spongers remained long in sight.
The spongers consisted of small sloops and schooners, which hailed from Key West whose owners were the wreckers of the reef, and who spent the best part of the good weather in summer hunting the growths upon the coral which brought such good prices in the Northern drug-stores.
Few wreckers are piously inclined, some less so than others, but the outlying light was safe from thieves, for by hauling up the iron ladder the keepers were shut off completely from the world below. No one could, or would, climb those polished iron columns painted a dull red and as slippery as glass, unless something valuable was to be had at the top. So the keepers often left the trap-door open or unbolted, knowing their security.
Black Flanagan was the head keeper, a six-foot giant from Wisconsin, who had found his way to Florida while evading a Michigan sheriff. The work and confinement upon the light were not as irksome to him as might be expected.
His assistant was a preacher, a broken-down Methodist minister without a flock, whose religious tendencies were of an order which brooked solitude.
He had the reputation of being the most blasphemous man upon the Florida Reef, and his short sojourns ashore were marked by every excess capable of being committed by a human being within the law.