“On the way over Jackson told me how hard it was to get any one to stay at the light, and how he came across the two men who were now keepers.
“Two men had drifted ashore near the settlement lashed to the thwarts of a half-sunken whale-boat. They were all but dead and unable to speak. Finally, after careful nursing, one began to show some life, and he raved about a lost ship and the Cooper’s Hole.
“You see, over there in the South Orkneys there is a hole through the cliffs about a hundred feet wide, with the rocks rising straight up hundreds of feet on both sides. Inside this narrow passage, which is like an open door, is the great hole, miles around inside, with water enough for all the vessels afloat to lie in without fouling.
“This fellow raved about driving a ship through the hole during a storm. He talked of revenge, and would laugh when he raved about the captain of the ship.
“When these men were well again they told a straight story about the loss of the ship Indian. As near as they could make out, they had been fifteen days in that open boat, which they clung to when the vessel foundered off the Horn. They had nothing saved but the rags they came ashore in, so they were glad enough to take Jackson’s offer of two hundred pounds a year to tend the Le Maire light.
“We arrived off the light the next afternoon. There was no place to land except on the rocks, where the heave of the swell made it dangerous. It was dead calm this evening, so we got ashore all right. As we climbed the rocks towards the light the fellows there came out of the small house to meet us.
“The head keeper walked in front, and he was the queerest-looking critter that ever wore breeches. His hair was half a fathom long and the color of rope yarn, and his eye was as green and watery as a cuttlefish’s. The other fellow was somewhat younger, but he seemed taken up with the idea that his feet were the only things in nature worth looking at, so I paid little attention to him.
“The older fellow with long hair grunted something to Jackson and held out his hand, which the skipper shook heartily.
“‘Well,’ he roared, ‘how’s things on the rocks? Damme if I don’t wish I was a light-keeper myself, so’s I could sit around and admire the sun rise and set.’
“‘I wish to blazes you was,’ grunted the long-haired heathen; ‘as for me, I’m about tired of this here job, and you might as well tell the governor that if he gives me the whole East Falkland I wouldn’t stay here through another winter.’