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Updated: June 9, 2025
"We must just try to be as cheery as we can, mates," said John Potter. "The Lord can deliver us out o' worse trouble than this if He sees fit." "Oh, it's all very well for you to talk like that," growled Isaac Dorkin, "but I don't believe the Almighty is goin' to pull down stone walls and iron gates to set us free, an' you know that we haven't a friend in all France to help us."
Our friend John Potter sat at the helm. Opposite to him sat his testy friend, Isaac Dorkin, pulling the stroke oar. Mr Rudyerd and his two assistant engineers sat on either hand, conversing on the subject that filled the thoughts of all. It was a long hard pull, even on a calm day, but stout oars and strong arms soon carried them out to the rock.
To this Martha replied, "Fiddlesticks;" and said that she didn't believe in the friendship of people who were always fighting and making it up again; that for her part she would rather have no friends at all, she wouldn't; and that she had a settled conviction, she had, that Isaac Dorkin would come to a bad end at last.
"You seem dull to-night, mate," observed John, as they re-arranged the pieces for another game. "I don't feel very well," said Dorkin, passing his hand over his brow languidly. "You'd better turn in, then; an' I'll take half of your watch as well as my own." "Thank 'ee kindly," said Dorkin in a subdued voice: "I'll take yer advice.
"Arrah! howld yer noise, an' I'll hear better," cried Teddy Maroon, looking over the top edge of the lighthouse. "My thumb's caught i' the chain!" yelled Dorkin. "Ease it off." "Och! poor thing," exclaimed Teddy, springing back and casting loose the chain. "Are ye aisy now?" he cried, again looking down at his friend.
It was well known that Dorkin had been a quarrelsome man, and he feared that if he could not produce the body when the relief came, he might be deemed a murderer. He therefore let it lie until it became so overpoweringly offensive that the whole building, from foundation to cupola, was filled with the horrible stench. The feelings of the solitary man can neither be conceived nor described.
He was well-known as one of the most rising men at the Clatterby works, who bade fair to become an overseer ere long. Bob called him Tomtit, but the men of the line styled him Mister Dorkin. He had brought with him an extremely wrinkled, dried-up old woman, who appeared to have suffered much, and to have been dragged out of the lowest depths of poverty.
That John's life in the lighthouse was not all that he had hoped for will become apparent in the next chapter. There were four rooms and a lantern in Rudyerd's lighthouse. The second room was that which was used most by John Potter and his mate Isaac Dorkin: it was the kitchen, dining room, and parlour, all in one. Immediately below it was the store-room, and just above it the dormitory.
It was an awful struggle that ensued. Both were large and powerful men; the one strong in a resolute purpose to meet boldly a desperate case, the other mad with fever. They swayed to and fro, and fell on and smashed the homely furniture of the place; sometimes the one and sometimes the other prevailing, while both gasped for breath and panted vehemently; suddenly Dorkin sank down exhausted.
Bounding back to the lantern, he quickly lighted it up, but did not feel his heart relieved until he had gazed out at the snowy billows below, and made sure that no vessel was in view. Then he took a long draught of water, wiped his brow, and returned to his friend. Two days after that Isaac Dorkin died. And now John Potter found himself in a more horrible situation than before.
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