[26] It is obvious that this could never have happened had the modern regulation been in force which forbids the lantern, after the light is once exhibited, being left without the presence of a keeper.
Early in the morning the fire was descried by some fishermen, who carried the news ashore, and a well-manned boat was immediately dispatched to the relief of the poor keepers.
It reached the Eddystone at ten o’clock, when the fire had been burning eight hours. The light-keepers had been driven from the building to avoid the falling beams, and molten lead and red-hot iron; and were found, stupefied with terror, in a cave on the east side of the rock. With difficulty they were removed into the boat, and carried ashore. No sooner were they landed than one of them, strange to say, immediately made off, and was never afterwards heard of. So singular a circumstance naturally engendered a suspicion that he had originated the fire; but when we remember that a lighthouse affords no means of retreat for its inmates, and that the probability is they will perish with it, we can barely believe it to be the place which an incendiary would choose for his nefarious design. As Smeaton says, we would rather impute the man’s sudden flight to that kind of panic which sometimes, on important occasions, overpowers a weak mind; making it act without reason, and influencing it to commit unwittingly the most preposterous and injurious mistakes.
Of the other two light-keepers, one, named Henry Hall, met his death in an extraordinary manner. While engaged in throwing some buckets of water on the flaming roof of the cupola, he happened to look upwards, and a quantity of lead, melted by the heat, descended suddenly from the roof, and fell on his head, face, and shoulders, burning him severely. His mouth was open at the time, and he persisted in declaring that a portion of the lead had gone down his throat. The medical practitioner who attended him after his removal ashore not unnaturally regarded the story as incredible; but the man continued to grow worse, and on the twelfth day of his illness, after some violent spasms, expired. A post-mortem examination of his body was then made, and the poor man’s assertion found to be literally true, for in the stomach lay a flat oval piece of lead seven ounces and five drachms in weight.