The height of the building was at that time fully eighty feet.  While he was reading there a tremendous breaker struck the lighthouse with such force that it trembled distinctly.  Forsyth started up, for he had never felt this before, and fancied the structure was about to fall.  For a moment or two he remained paralysed, for he heard the most terrible and inexplicable sounds going on overhead.  In fact, the wave that shook the building had sent a huge volume of spray right over the top, part of which fell into the lighthouse, and what poor Forsyth heard was about a ton of water coming down through story after story, carrying lime, mortar, buckets, trowels, and a host of other things, violently along with it.

To plunge down the spiral stair, almost headforemost, was the work of a few seconds.  Forsyth accompanied the descent with a yell of terror, which reached the ears of his comrades in the beacon, and brought them to the door, just in time to see their comrade’s long legs carry him across the bridge in two bounds.  Almost at the same instant the water and rubbish burst out of the doorway of the lighthouse, and flooded the bridge.

But let us return from this digression, or rather, this series of digressions, to the point where we branched off:  the aspect of the beacon in the fog, and the calm of that still morning in June.

Some of the men inside were playing draughts, others were finishing their breakfast; one was playing “Auld Lang Syne”, with many extempore flourishes and trills, on a flute, which was very much out of tune.  A few were smoking, of course (where exists the band of Britons who can get on without that?), and several were sitting astride on the cross-beams below, bobbing—­not exactly for whales, but for any monster of the deep that chose to turn up.

The men fishing, and the beacon itself, loomed large and mysterious in the half-luminous fog.  Perhaps this was the reason that the sea-gulls flew so near them, and gave forth an occasional and very melancholy cry, as if of complaint at the changed appearance of things.

“There’s naethin’ to be got the day,” said John Watt, rather peevishly, as he pulled up his line and found the bait gone.

Baits are always found gone when lines are pulled up!  This would seem to be an angling law of nature.  At all events, it would seem to have been a very aggravating law of nature on the present occasion, for John Watt frowned and growled to himself as he put on another bait.

“There’s a bite!” exclaimed Joe Dumsby, with a look of doubt, at the same time feeling his line.

“Poo’d in then,” said Watt ironically.

“No, ’e’s hoff,” observed Joe.

“Hm! he never was on,” muttered Watt.

“What are you two growling at?” said Ruby, who sat on one of the beams at the other side.

“At our luck, Ruby,” said Joe.  “Ha! was that a nibble?” ("Naethin’ o’ the kind,” from Watt.) “It was! as I live it’s large; an ’addock, I think.”