“Now be aisy, boy,” said Ned O’Connor, whose sympathies were easily roused.

“Once more,” said Bremner, as the unhappy man opened his mouth.  “Be still, and it will be all the sooner over.”

Again Bremner inserted the instrument, and fortunately caught the right tooth.  He gave a terrible tug, that produced its corresponding howl; but the tooth held on.  Again! again! again! and the beacon house resounded with the deadly yells of the unhappy man, who struggled violently, despite the strength of those who held him.

“Och! poor sowl!” ejaculated O’Connor.

Bremner threw all his strength into a final wrench, which tore away the pincers and left the tooth as firm as ever!

Forsyth leaped up and dashed his comrades right and left.

“That’ll do,” he roared, and darted up the ladder into the apartment above, through which he ascended to the barrack-room, and flung himself on his bed.  At the same time a wave burst on the beacon with such force that every man there, except Forsyth, thought it would be carried away.  The wave not only sprang up against the house, but the spray, scarcely less solid than the wave, went quite over it, and sent down showers of water on the men below.

Little cared Forsyth for that.  He lay almost stunned on his couch, quite regardless of the storm.  To his surprise, however, the toothache did not return.  Nay, to make a long story short, it never again returned to that tooth till the end of his days!

The storm now blew its fiercest, and the men sat in silence in the kitchen listening to the turmoil, and to the thundering blows given by the sea to their wooden house.  Suddenly the beacon received a shock so awful, and so thoroughly different from any that it had previously received, that the men sprang to their feet in consternation.

Ruby and the smith were looking out at the doorway at the time, and both instinctively grasped the woodwork near them, expecting every instant that the whole structure would be carried away; but it stood fast.  They speculated a good deal on the force of the blow they had received, but no one hit on the true cause; and it was not until some days later that they discovered that a huge rock of fully a ton weight had been washed against the beams that night.

While they were gazing at the wild storm, a wave broke up the mortar-gallery altogether, and sent its remaining contents into the sea.  All disappeared in a moment; nothing was left save the powerful beams to which the platform had been nailed.

There was a small boat attached to the beacon.  It hung from two davits, on a level with the kitchen, about thirty feet above the rock.  This had got filled by the sprays, and the weight of water proving too much for the tackling, it gave way at the bow shortly after the destruction of the mortar-gallery, and the boat hung suspended by the stern-tackle.  Here it swung for a few minutes, and then was carried away by a sea.  The same sea sent an eddy of foam round towards the door and drenched the kitchen, so that the door had to be shut, and as the fire had gone out, the men had to sit and await their fate by the light of a little oil-lamp.