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Two years ago I had been there a year then I was sitting all alone in the watch-room, one gusty winter's night, chilled, numb, comfortless; drowsing gradually into unconsciousness; the sobbing of the wind and the slamming of distant shutters falling fainter and fainter upon my dulling ear each moment, when sharp and suddenly that dead-bell rang out a blood-curdling alarum over my head!
Two years ago I had been there a year then I was sitting all alone in the watch-room, one gusty winter's night, chilled, numb, comfortless; drowsing gradually into unconsciousness; the sobbing of the wind and the slamming of distant shutters falling fainter and fainter upon my dulling ear each moment, when sharp and suddenly that dead-bell rang out a blood-curdling alarum over my head!
My wife, Lord Rutland, and I waited in the watch-room above the castle gates for the coming of Dorothy and John; and when they came but I will not try to describe the scene. It were a vain effort. Tears and laughter well compounded make the sweetest joy; grief and joy the truest happiness; happiness and pain the grandest soul, and none of these may be described.
This room is fourteen feet in diameter and twenty-seven feet high; it is used as a watch-room by the light-keepers, and was probably intended as a place to which they could be admitted to hear prayers or mass on the occasion of a royal visit.
A fourth series took us to the bedroom, in which there are five berths; and by a fifth staircase of seventeen steps we reach the watch-room, immediately below the lantern; but there is no seat, as the keeper is not allowed to sit down during his watch. Sixteen more steps we mounted, making altogether one hundred and twenty-nine, when we arrived at the lantern.
Around a finger of each of these fifty still forms, both great and small, was a ring; and from the ring a wire led to the ceiling, and thence to a bell in a watch-room yonder, where, day and night, a watchman sits always alert and ready to spring to the aid of any of that pallid company who, waking out of death, shall make a movement for any, even the slightest, movement will twitch the wire and ring that fearful bell.
Around a finger of each of these fifty still forms, both great and small, was a ring; and from the ring a wire led to the ceiling, and thence to a bell in a watch-room yonder, where, day and night, a watchman sits always alert and ready to spring to the aid of any of that pallid company who, waking out of death, shall make a movement for any, even the slightest, movement will twitch the wire and ring that fearful bell.
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