CHAPTER XI.
THE CASKETS.
It was indeed the Caskets light.
A lighthouse of the nineteenth century is a high cylinder of masonry,surmounted by scientifically constructed machinery for throwing light.The Caskets lighthouse in particular is a triple white tower, bearingthree light-rooms. These three chambers revolve on clockwork wheels,with such precision that the man on watch who sees them from sea caninvariably take ten steps during their irradiation, and twenty-fiveduring their eclipse. Everything is based on the focal plan, and on therotation of the octagon drum, formed of eight wide simple lenses inrange, having above and below it two series of dioptric rings; analgebraic gear, secured from the effects of the beating of winds andwaves by glass a millimetre thick[6], yet sometimes broken by thesea-eagles, which dash themselves like great moths against thesegigantic lanterns. The building which encloses and sustains thismechanism, and in which it is set, is also mathematically constructed.Everything about it is plain, exact, bare, precise, correct. Alighthouse is a mathematical figure.
In the seventeenth century a lighthouse was a sort of plume of the landon the seashore. The architecture of a lighthouse tower was magnificentand extravagant. It was covered with balconies, balusters, lodges,alcoves, weathercocks. Nothing but masks, statues, foliage, volutes,reliefs, figures large and small, medallions with inscriptions. _Pax inbello_, said the Eddystone lighthouse. We may as well observe, by theway, that this declaration of peace did not always disarm the ocean.Winstanley repeated it on a lighthouse which he constructed at his ownexpense, on a wild spot near Plymouth. The tower being finished, he shuthimself up in it to have it tried by the tempest. The storm came, andcarried off the lighthouse and Winstanley in it. Such excessiveadornment gave too great a hold to the hurricane, as generals toobrilliantly equipped in battle draw the enemy's fire. Besides whimsicaldesigns in stone, they were loaded with whimsical designs in iron,copper, and wood. The ironwork was in relief, the woodwork stood out. Onthe sides of the lighthouse there jutted out, clinging to the wallsamong the arabesques, engines of every description, useful and useless,windlasses, tackles, pulleys, counterpoises, ladders, cranes, grapnels.On the pinnacle around the light delicately-wrought ironwork held greatiron chandeliers, in which were placed pieces of rope steeped in resin;wicks which burned doggedly, and which no wind extinguished; and fromtop to bottom the tower was covered by a complication of sea-standards,banderoles, banners, flags, pennons, colours which rose from stage tostage, from story to story, a medley of all hues, all shapes, allheraldic devices, all signals, all confusion, up to the light chamber,making, in the storm, a gay riot of tatters about the blaze. Thatinsolent light on the brink of the abyss showed like a defiance, andinspired shipwrecked men with a spirit of daring. But the Caskets lightwas not after this fashion.
It was, at that period, merely an old barbarous lighthouse, such asHenry I. had built it after the loss of the _White Ship_--a flaming pileof wood under an iron trellis, a brazier behind a railing, a head ofhair flaming in the wind.
The only improvement made in this lighthouse since the twelfth centurywas a pair of forge-bellows worked by an indented pendulum and a stoneweight, which had been added to the light chamber in 1610.
The fate of the sea-birds who chanced to fly against these oldlighthouses was more tragic than those of our days. The birds dashedagainst them, attracted by the light, and fell into the brazier, wherethey could be seen struggling like black spirits in a hell, and at timesthey would fall back again between the railings upon the rock, red hot,smoking, lame, blind, like half-burnt flies out of a lamp.
To a full-rigged ship in good trim, answering readily to the pilot'shandling, the Caskets light is useful; it cries, "Look out;" it warnsher of the shoal. To a disabled ship it is simply terrible. The hull,paralyzed and inert, without resistance, without defence against theimpulse of the storm or the mad heaving of the waves, a fish withoutfins, a bird without wings, can but go where the wind wills. Thelighthouse shows the end--points out the spot where it is doomed todisappear--throws light upon the burial. It is the torch of thesepulchre.
To light up the inexorable chasm, to warn against the inevitable, whatmore tragic mockery!