Often near the · a · lamp · it · island · in

Mentioned 28 times on 9 pages

  1. words Every page is plain text that anyone can write on, and it begins with its own word.
  2. words Write a word anywhere and it has a page of its own, listing everywhere it's mentioned.
  3. tide A storm on a spring tide is what the keeper fears most: waves have broken over the island and reached the lighthouse door.
  4. tide The tide rises and falls twice a day, and the keeper writes both times in the log.
  5. storm After a storm comes the work: glass to clean, the landing to clear, and often a fog that settles on the island for a day.
  6. storm The keeper stays up through a storm, watching the lamp, keeping the lens turning, and writing in the log every hour.
  7. storm The wind finds every gap in the windows of the lamp room, and the whole tower sways a little, as it was built to.
  8. lighthouse When the fog comes in and the beam can't reach the water, the fog bell takes over, one stroke every twenty seconds until the air clears.
  9. lighthouse Its keeper climbs the steps at dusk to light the lamp and again at dawn to put it out.
  10. lighthouse Ships have steered by it for a hundred and forty years.
  11. lamp A fingerprint on the glass is a dimmer beam, and in fog every bit of light counts.
  12. lamp The lens floats on a bath of mercury and turns once every thirty seconds, so ships see a flash, then darkness, and know which lighthouse they're looking at.
  13. keeper The keeper knows the tide by the sound it makes on the rocks, and a storm by the way the gulls go quiet an hour before it.
  14. keeper …climbs the lighthouse, trims the wick, winds the clockwork that turns the lamp, and writes the weather in the log: wind, sea, visibility, ships seen.
  15. keeper The keeper has lived on the island for eleven years, alone apart from the gulls and, once a fortnight, the supply boat.
  16. island There's a vegetable garden behind a wall, a rain tank, a shed of paraffin for the lamp, and more gulls than anyone has counted.
  17. island The island is half a mile of granite, grass and thrift, with the lighthouse at one end and a stone landing at the other, where the supply boat ties up.
  18. fog bell Sailors say they hear the fog bell before they see the island, and that its sound is the best thing about coming home.
  19. fog bell It weighs as much as three people, and its note carries farther than the lamp can shine in thick fog.
  20. fog Fog often follows a storm, when the sea is still warm and the air has turned cold, and it lifts with the morning tide.
  21. fog The keeper starts the fog bell and keeps it ringing through the night, listening for the horns of ships answering.
  22. fog Fog arrives without wind, rolling in off the cold water until the island disappears and the lighthouse stands in a white room of its own.
and