CHAPTER XXXIII

CONCLUSION

Facts are facts; there is no denying that.  They cannot be controverted; nothing can overturn them, or modify them, or set them aside.  There they stand in naked simplicity:  mildly contemptuous alike of sophists and theorists.

Immortal facts!  Bacon founded on you; Newton found you out; Dugald Stewart and all his fraternity reasoned on you, and followed in your wake.  What would this world be without facts?  Rest assured, reader, that those who ignore facts and prefer fancies are fools.  We say it respectfully.  We have no intention of being personal, whoever you may be.

On the morning after Ruby was cast on the Bell Rock, our old friend Ned O’Connor (having been appointed one of the lighthouse-keepers, and having gone for his fortnight ashore in the order of his course) sat on the top of the signal-tower at Arbroath with a telescope at his eye directed towards the lighthouse, and became aware of a fact,—­a fact which seemed to be contradicted by those who ought to have known better.

Ned soliloquized that morning.  His soliloquy will explain the circumstances to which we refer; we therefore record it here.  “What’s that?  Sure there’s something wrong wid me eye intirely this mornin’.  Howld on” (he wiped it here, and applying it again to the telescope, proceeded); “wan, tshoo, three, four!  No mistake about it.  Try agin.  Wan, tshoo, three, FOUR!  An’ yet the ball’s up there as cool as a cookumber, tellin’ a big lie; ye know ye are,” continued Ned, apostrophizing the ball, and readjusting the glass.

“There ye are, as bold as brass—­av ye’re not copper—­tellin’ me that everything goin’ on as usual, whin I can see with me two eyes (wan after the other) that there’s four men on the rock, whin there should be only three! Well, well,” continued Ned, after a pause, and a careful examination of the Bell Rock, which being twelve miles out at sea could not be seen very distinctly in its lower parts, even through a good glass, “the day afther to-morrow ’ll settle the question, Misther Ball, for then the Relief goes off, and faix, if I don’t guv’ ye the lie direct I’m not an Irishman.”

With this consolatory remark, Ned O’Connor descended to the rooms below, and told his wife, who immediately told all the other wives and the neighbours, so that ere long the whole town of Arbroath became aware that there was a mysterious stranger, a fourth party, on the Bell Rock!

Thus it came to pass that, when the relieving boat went off, numbers of fishermen and sailors and others watched it depart in the morning, and increased numbers of people of all sorts, among whom were many of the old hands who had wrought at the building of the lighthouse, crowded the pier to watch its return in the afternoon.

As soon as the boat left the rock, those who had “glasses” announced that there was an “extra man in her”.