Alongside It Are A White-Painted, Red-Roofed House For The
Lighthouse Keeper, And A Store For Its Oil.
The light is either a
flashing or a revolving or a stationary one, when it is alight.
One
must be accurate about these things, and my knowledge regarding it
is from information received, and amounts to the above. I cannot
throw in any personal experience, because I have never passed it at
night-time, and seen from Glass it seems just steady. Most
lighthouses on this Coast give up fancy tricks, like flashing or
revolving, pretty soon after they are established. Seventy-five per
cent. of them are not alight half the time at all. "It's the
climate." Gombi, however, you may depend on for being alight at
night, and I have no hesitation in saying you can see it, when it is
visible, seventeen miles out to sea, and that the knoll on which the
lighthouse stands is a grass-covered sand cliff, about forty or
fifty feet above sea-level. As we pass round Gombi point, the
weather becomes distinctly rough, particularly at lunch-time. The
Move minds it less than her passengers, and stamps steadily along
past the wooded shore, behind which shows a distant range of blue
hills. Silence falls upon the black passengers, who assume
recumbent positions on the deck, and suffer. All the things from
under the saloon seats come out and dance together, and play puss-
in-the-corner, after the fashion of loose gear when there is any sea
on. As the night comes down, the scene becomes more and more
picturesque. The moonlit sea, shimmering and breaking on the
darkened shore, the black forest and the hills silhouetted against
the star-powdered purple sky, and, at my feet, the engine-room
stoke-hole, lit with the rose-coloured glow from its furnace,
showing by the great wood fire the two nearly naked Krumen stokers,
shining like polished bronze in their perspiration, as they throw in
on to the fire the billets of red wood that look like freshly-cut
chunks of flesh. The white engineer hovers round the mouth of the
pit, shouting down directions and ever and anon plunging down the
little iron ladder to carry them out himself. At intervals he
stands on the rail with his head craned round the edge of the sun
deck to listen to the captain, who is up on the little deck above,
for there is no telegraph to the engines, and our gallant
commander's voice is not strong. While the white engineer is
roosting on the rail, the black engineer comes partially up the
ladder and gazes hard at me; so I give him a wad of tobacco, and he
plainly regards me as inspired, for of course that was what he
wanted. Remember that whenever you see a man, black or white,
filled with a nameless longing, it is tobacco he requires. Grim
despair accompanied by a gusty temper indicates something wrong with
his pipe, in which case offer him a straightened-out hairpin.
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