Robert Michael Ballantyne - The Story of the Rock

“At mischief again, of course: always at it.”

Mrs Potter said this angrily, and with much emphasis, as she seized her son by the arm and dragged him out of a pool of dirty water, into which he had tumbled.

“Always at mischief of one sort or another, he is,” continued Mrs Potter, with increasing wrath, “morning, noon, and night—he is; tumblin’ about an’ smashin’ things for ever he does; he’ll break my heart at last—he will. There: take that!”

“That,” which poor little Tommy was desired to take, was a sounding box on the ear, accompanied by a violent shake of the arm which would have drawn that limb out of its socket if the child’s bones and muscles had not been very tightly strung together.

Mrs Potter was a woman of large body and small brain. In respect of reasoning power, she was little better than the wooden cuckoo which came out periodically from the interior of the clock that stood over her own fireplace and announced the hours. She entertained settled convictions on a few subjects, in regard to which she resembled a musical box. If you set her going on any of these, she would harp away until she had played the tune out, and then begin over again; but she never varied. Reasons, however good, or facts, however weighty, were utterly powerless to penetrate her skull: her “settled convictions” were not to be unsettled by any such means. Men might change their minds; philosophers might see fit to alter their opinions; weaklings of both sexes and all ages might trim their sails in accordance with the gales of advancing knowledge, but Mrs Potter—no: never! her colours were nailed to the mast. Like most people who unite a strong will with an empty head, she was “wiser in her own conceit than eleven men that can render a reason:” in brief, she was obstinate.

One of her settled convictions was that her little son Tommy was “as full of mischief as a hegg is full of meat.” Another of these convictions was that children of all ages are tough; that it does them good to pull them about in a violent manner, at the risk even of dislocating their joints. It mattered nothing to Mrs Potter that many of her female friends and acquaintances held a different opinion. Some of these friends suggested to her that the hearts of the poor little things were tender, as well as their muscles and bones and sinews; that children were delicate flowers, or rather buds, which required careful tending and gentle nursing. Mrs Potter’s reply was invariably, “Fiddlesticks!” she knew better. They were obstinate and self-willed little brats that required constant banging. She knew how to train ’em up, she did; and it was of no manner of use, it wasn’t, to talk to her upon that point.

She was right. It was of no use. As well might one have talked to the wooden cuckoo, already referred to, in Mrs Potter’s timepiece.

“Come, Martha,” said a tall, broad-shouldered, deep-voiced man at her elbow, “don’t wop the poor cheeld like that. What has he been doin’—”

Mrs Potter turned to her husband with a half angry, half ashamed glance.

“Just look at ’im, John,” she replied, pointing to the small culprit, who stood looking guilty and drenched with muddy water from hands to shoulders and toes to nose. “Look at ’im: see what mischief he’s always gittin’ into.”

John, whose dress bespoke him an artisan, and whose grave earnest face betokened him a kind husband and a loving father, said:—

“Tumblin’ into dirty water ain’t necessarily mischief. Come, lad, speak up for yourself. How did it happen—”

“I felled into the water when I wos layin’ the foundations, faither,” replied the boy; pointing to a small pool, in the centre of which lay a pile of bricks.

“What sort o’ foundations d’ye mean, boy?”

“The light’ouse on the Eddystun,” replied the child, with sparkling eyes.

The man smiled, and looked at his son with interest.

“That’s a brave boy,” he said, quietly patting the child’s head. “Get ’ee into th’ouse, Tommy, an’ I’ll show ’ee the right way to lay the foundations o’ the Eddystun after supper. Come, Martha,” he added, as he walked beside his wife to their dwelling near Plymouth Docks, “don’t be so hard on the cheeld; it’s not mischief that ails him. It’s engineerin’ that he’s hankerin’ after. Depend upon it, that if he is spared to grow up he’ll be a credit to us.”

Mrs Potter, being “of the same opinion still,” felt inclined to say “Fiddlesticks!” but she was a good soul, although somewhat highly spiced in the temper, and respected her husband sufficiently to hold her tongue.

“John;” she said, after a short silence, “you’re late to-night.”

“Yes,” answered John, with a sigh. “My work at the docks has come to an end, an’ Mr Winstanley has got all the men he requires for the repair of the light’ouse. I saw him just before he went off to the rock to-night, an’ I offered to engage, but he said he didn’t want me.”

“What?” exclaimed Mrs Potter, with sudden indignation: “didn’t want you—you who has served ’im, off an’ on, at that light’ouse for the last six year an’ more while it wor a buildin’! Ah, that’s gratitood, that is; that’s the way some folk shows wot their consciences is made of; treats you like a pair of old shoes, they does, an’ casts you off w’en you’re not wanted: hah!”

Mrs Potter entered her dwelling as she spoke, and banged the door violently by way of giving emphasis to her remark.

“Don’t be cross, old girl,” said John, patting her shoulder: “I hope you won’t cast me off like a pair of old shoes when you’re tired of me! But, after all, I have no reason to complain. You know I have laid by a good lump of money while I was at work on the Eddystone; besides, we can’t expect men to engage us when they don’t require us; and if I had got employed, it would not have bin for long, being only a matter of repairs. Mr Winstanley made a strange speech, by the way, as the boat was shoving off with his men. I was standin’ close by when a friend o’ his came up an’ said he thowt the light’ouse was in a bad way an’ couldn’t last long. Mr Winstanley, who is uncommon sure o’ the strength of his work, he replies, says he— ‘I only wish to be there in the greatest storm that ever blew under the face of heaven, to see what the effect will be.’ Them’s his very words, an’it did seem to me an awful wish—all the more that the sky looked at the time very like as if dirty weather was brewin’ up somewhere.”

“I ’ope he may ’ave ’is wish,” said Mrs Potter firmly, “an’ that the waves may—”

“Martha!” said John, in a solemn voice, holding up his finger, “think what you’re sayin’.”

“Well, I don’t mean no ill; but, but—fetch the kettle, Tommy, d’ye hear? an’ let alone the cat’s tail, you mischievous little—”

“That’s a smart boy,” exclaimed John rising and catching the kettle from his son’s and, just as he was on the point of tumbling over a stool: “there, now let’s all have a jolly supper, and then, Tommy, I’ll show you how the real foundation of the Eddystun was laid.”

The building to which John Potter referred, and of which he gave a graphic account and made a careful drawing that night, for the benefit of his hopeful son, was the first lighthouse that was built on the wild and almost submerged reef of rocks lying about fourteen miles to the south-west of Plymouth harbour. The highest part of this reef, named the Eddystone, is only a few feet above water at high tide, and as it lies in deep water exposed to the full swell of the ocean, the raging of the sea over it in stormy weather is terrible beyond conception.