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By Root 692 0

place the music of clinking 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. And it was strange to see our Sabbath services, held, as they were, in one of the bothies, with Mr Brebner reading at a table, and the congregation perched about in the double tier of sleeping bunks; and to hear the singing of the psalms, ‘the chapters,’ the inevitable Spurgeon’s sermon, and the old, eloquent lighthouse prayer.

Building work on the tower itself began in April 1867, although for several months, the weather remained so foul that little was achieved in the first year. The foundations to the workmen’s barracks were fixed to the rock, but here was no time even to bore holes for the diagonal struts before high seas made further digging impossible. When work started again in April 1868, the weather was so bad that the workmen were unable to make more than a snatched hour’s visit to the rock until late June. Even then, Tom glumly reported, they had only managed two days’ work in June, thirteen in July, and ten in August. Those few August days were as much by default as by design. Thirteen of the workmen under Brebner’s supervision had seized one of the few fine-weather opportunities and sailed out to the rock. Instead of returning to Earraid at dusk, Brebner took a gamble on the good conditions, and chose to stay on at the barracks for the night. That evening, caught unawares while they were making the last checks, a six-day storm broke over their heads. The workmen barely had time to collect their tools and run for shelter before they found themselves stuck in the middle of an Atlantic hurricane. There was no question of returning to the boats. The only option was to sit and wait it out. All fourteen of the men were stuck in their refuge for almost a week, ‘during the greater part of which time the sea broke so heavily over the Rock as to prevent all work,’ Tom reported to the Commissioners, ‘and during the height of the Storm the spray rose high above the Barrack, and the sea struck very heavily on the flooring of the lower apartment.’ At one moment, the sea swept in through the iron trapdoor at the base, swirled around the workmen and then disappeared through the hatch, taking with it most of their remaining food supplies. Most of the time, the workmen had been too terrified to sleep, and could only hunker down in a corner of the room for warmth. When they did finally return to Earraid, they were met by an apoplectic David, frantic with worry for their safety. Brebner, cowed, stuck rigidly to caution from then on.

The incident did at least prove exactly how intransigent Dhu Heartach could be. As Tom explained to the Commissioners, the barracks was sixty feet above high water, and should in theory have been safely out of the sea’s reach. But, as the last two years’ working seasons had revealed, the reef was proving to be just as difficult as Alan had found the one at Skerryvore. During the next two years, work on the rock remained sluggish, constantly interrupted by foul weather and heavy swells. The most temperamental part of the process – the landing of the moulded stones for the light – caused an endless series of problems and delays. Winching two-ton blocks of granite up the glass-smooth surface of the rock without a proper landing stage proved just as dangerous as David had found it in Shetland’s far more extreme conditions.

Tom appeared occasionally from Edinburgh to chivvy or instruct. During the 1869 season, he took Louis on the lighthouse inspection tour. They sailed round the east coast lights, up to Scapa Flow and then to Muckle Flugga, but Louis seemed far