Some men have gone mad, or nearly so, by dint of contemplating the same scenes and the same external impressions. About a mile and a quarter from the Land’s End, on a group of granite islets washed by the sea, stands the Longships Lighthouse, constructed in 1793. The particular rock on which it is built—the Carn-Bras—rises about forty-five feet above the level of low water. In winter both the rock and the building—as is the case at the Eddystone—will sometimes be covered for a few seconds by the leaping waters, which have even been known to surmount the lantern, and, on one occasion at least, to break through its crystal walls and extinguish the lamps.
One day, in 1862, two black flags floated from the summit of the tower. They were evidently intended as a signal of distress. What, then, had happened?
EDDYSTONE LIGHTHOUSE IN A STORM.
Of the three men who inhabited the lighthouse, the one whose turn it was to keep watch had thrust a knife into his breast. His companions attempted to stanch the blood by plugging up the wound with bits of tow. Three days passed by before the people on shore could reach the lighthouse; and the sea was then so rude and disembarkation so dangerous that the wounded man had to be lowered into the boat, suspended from a kind of impromptu crane. When he was conveyed ashore he received every attention which his condition demanded; but he lived only a few days. The jury, acting upon the evidence of his companions, declared that he had committed suicide under an attack of temporary insanity. Perhaps it is not astonishing that persons of a susceptible or excitable temperament should, under the influence of ever-murmuring seas and ever-blowing winds, and while living in a state of almost continual solitude and comparative monotony, feel the vertigo of the abyss ascend to their brain, so that the control of reason is loosened, and the mind yields to the first impulse which passes over it.
Let us now take a glance at lighthouse life from a French point of view.
Sagacious regulations and constant inspection have banished the dramatic and the surprising from the French as well as from the English lighthouse. Everything has been reduced to a system, and the keepers are under a discipline scarcely less rigid than that of soldiers. In France, indeed, veteran soldiers or tried seamen are generally selected to fill up any vacancies that may occur in the lighthouse administration. This is divided into two classes: the inspectors, who receive a thousand francs yearly (about £40), and are intrusted with the superintendence of several lighthouses; and the keepers, who are divided into six classes, and whose annual wages vary from 475 to 850 francs (say £18 to £34). Extra payment is awarded to those who serve in the sea lighthouses. Their number is never less than three in a lighthouse of the first class, or two in those of the second and third class lighthouses.