Here was a tower to be
built, and a star lighted, for the conduct of seamen. But as the
rock was small, and hard of access, and far from land, the work
would be one of years; and my father was now looking for a shore
station, where the stones might be quarried and dressed, the men
live, and the tender, with some degree of safety, lie at anchor.
I saw Earraid next from the stern thwart of an Iona lugger, Sam
Bough and I sitting there cheek by jowl, with our feet upon our
baggage, in a beautiful, clear, northern summer eve. And behold!
there was now a pier of stone, there were rows of sheds, railways,
travelling-cranes, a street of cottages, an iron house for the
resident engineer, wooden bothies for the men, a stage where the
courses of the tower were put together experimentally, and behind
the settlement a great gash in the hillside where granite was
quarried. In the bay, the steamer lay at her moorings. All day
long there hung about the place the music of chinking tools; and
even in the dead of night, the watchman carried his lantern to and
fro in the dark settlement and could light the pipe of any midnight
muser. It was, above all, strange to see Earraid on the Sunday,
when the sound of the tools ceased and there fell a crystal quiet.
All about the green compound men would be sauntering in their
Sunday's best, walking with those lax joints of the reposing
toiler, thoughtfully smoking, talking small, as if in honour of the
stillness, or hearkening to the wailing of the gulls.
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