The old man led the way to the sturdy stone structure on top of which were the great horns which sound the warning in foggy weather to ships at sea. He was proud of the lighthouse, of which he was the principal keeper; and just before he started to explain to me the wonders of the compressed-air engines, he remarked:—

"First, you must know that a lighthouse-keeper's job is to watch for a fog."

"What's your name?" I asked. He was the first real lighthouse-keeper I had met.

The lighthouseman looked at me and then at one of the coast-watchers. He was a slender man of about sixty years, who, I had been told, was enjoying the work he had set out to do long, long before there was a thought of a great war.

"T. G. Cutting," he replied, "the P.K. here."

It was on the western Cornish coast, where, as in other places in and off English shores, the lighthouses, war or no war, from sunset to sunrise cut the darkness with their long beams of whiteness and, when necessary, sound the foghorn. You do not see any young men who are not in khaki or navy blue, and the old men are wonders, with their binoculars and telescopes. Mr. Cutting had been within sound of the sea ever since he was born. First, he had seen service on a lighthouse on the rocks, as they say, and from the rocks he graduated to a land job, and thence back to the rocks, and again on to the land. We read stories of the lighthouse-keeper; but little is written on the modern man of this species. Mr. Cutting is not accustomed to the glare of the city's lights, but he knows the glare of a lighthouse-lantern and all the various wonders of the work.

Inside the annex to the lighthouse were the duplicate engines for filling tanks with compressed air. This air is used for blowing the foghorns, and when they sound everybody in the locality knows it.

"Enough air is stored in those tanks," declared Mr. Cutting, "to keep the foghorns going for twenty minutes. That gives us time to get the engines running."

He went into details of the engines, showing that he knew them by heart, and I could almost imagine the blurring, deafening sound which for seven seconds rent the air through the roar of winds every minute and a half.

"Fog, as you know, is the dread of every sea captain," said Mr. Cutting. "Out yonder you see the 'Three Stone Orr Rocks.' This is a dangerous bit of scenery in foggy weather. When we have a fog, two men are on duty; one if it is clear."

We then went to the lighthouse tower, which stands nearly 200 feet above high water. To the right, on entering that building, was a blacksmith's shop, with an anvil, forge, and various implements. This forge is occasionally needed to make repairs, spare parts, and accessories of the engines of the lighthouse. To the right, in a corridor, were speaking-tubes.

"Those tubes go to the bedside of every man employed here," said Mr. Cutting. "We have only to blow, and in a few minutes he comes up to the lighthouse. Our houses are over there, in the same structure as the tower. They are practically the lower portion of the main building."

He conducted the way up the narrow, winding stairs. At the head of the first flight I saw a green-covered book, in which every man on watch makes his entry of the weather, the velocity of the wind, and so forth.

"Many a man's word has been corrected by that book," said the P.K. "And here's the book for privileged visitors, for nobody comes here without the proper credentials."

There were names of famous persons inscribed in the book, which was kept as neatly and cleanly as everything else in the place.

"Now we'll go up to the lantern," said the old man. Old, but lithe, strong, and keen-eyed. He is particularly fond of this lantern, and was remarkably lucid in explaining everything concerning the working of it.

"Does the sea ever come up as high as this?" I asked.

"We get the spray, and that is all," answered the P.K. "It's dirty weather when that happens. But the water usually has spent its force when it reaches this height."

The exterior windows of the lantern were diamond shaped and of plate glass. In the middle of the lantern was the large concentric-ringed glass of great magnifying power.

"You can turn it round with your little finger," said the P.K. "That's because it floats in a mercury bath. And in turning that you are moving four tons. When the lantern is lighted, it shows dark for seven and a half seconds, then two sets of four flashes, making a complete revolution every half-minute. They can see the light at sea on a clear night for nineteen miles. The light is worked by vaporised oil. The compressed air drives the oil to the lantern, up through that burner in a hole hardly big enough to take a pin point. It is nearly half a million candle-power. This type of light is considered even better than electricity. In the old-style oil-lights they burned five quarts in the same time that this one consumes a pint with better results."

The actual burner of the lantern is disappointing, as one expects to see a giant burner. Really, it is only about twice the size of the average household one.

Mr. Cutting observed that the light was carefully timed, and called attention to the half-minute hand on the clock in the tower. Persons are always asking the P.K. how he spends his time, and he wondered why. He believed that anybody ought to see that there was plenty for a man to do while he is on a four hours' watch in the tower. The turning of the light, showing black outside and then flashing its warnings, after his many years of experience of such things, is only taken for granted by this P.K.

"And when I've finished lighting the lamp, trimming up things a bit," said the P.K., "I sit down like anybody else. Lots of people seem to forget that the lighthouse-keeper is not the coast-guard or the head of the crew of a life-saving station. They have their work to attend to, but we watch for fogs night and day. When a man is stationed at a lighthouse like the Longships, which is a little distance out on a rock, he may be a couple of months without being relieved. But he has others with him, and a good stock of food. If he wishes to communicate with the land, he does so by signals; and that's the way men over there talk with their wives who live in cottages on shore. The telephone has not been found feasible, wires breaking all the time; so their wives have learned to wig-wag to them.

"One night they got a scare on shore; thought that the men on the Longships were sending up distress signals. It was bad weather, and every now and again the coast-watcher saw a green light on the Longships. And what do you think that green light was? Just the water running over the bright light when it flashed! As it washed the glasses it showed up green."

There were curtains of sailcloth put over the windows to obscure the sunlight. I asked the P.K. about this, and he told me that the great magnifying lens of the light would burn things if the sun got on it for long enough. So, much as they like the sun in Cornwall, they have to keep it out.

"I shall be on duty to-night from twelve until four o'clock," observed the P.K. "But I've got accustomed to the running of the machinery."

So down we went. The last I saw of the P.K. was when the old Cornishman, emptying cans of oil into the tank to supply the light which warns mariners, shouted:—

"Getting pretty fresh now. Hope to see you again."