Chapter V - Of His Subsequent Thoughts, No Written Record Survives
Log Entry: 18 July, 1852
Latitude: 58° 35′ N
Conditions: Overcast. Light chop. Westerly wind at 12 knots.
Initial survey of the lighthouse complete. Structure sound. Lantern mechanism requires minor adjustment - rotation uneven by 0.75 seconds per sweep, likely due to salt crust on inner gear teeth. Applied light oil and corrected.
Signal equipment functioning. I performed a test pattern toward the western shipping lane (pattern: long-short-short). Received no visual acknowledgement, though visibility was reduced to ~3.2 NM. Will attempt again tomorrow.
Barometric pressure holding steady at 30.08 inHg. Humidity 82%.
Commenced celestial charting at 20:47 local time. Observed Arcturus and Vega in expected positions. Polaris steady. Slight lag in chronometer reading (−1.2s) against stellar transit, possibly due to temperature shift during transit.
Note: The gulls here are silent at dusk. Unlike the birds at Whitby or Dover. Curious.
— N.H.
The first fortnight passed in a rhythm so crisp it bordered on musical. Harrow rose early - not out of duty, but pleasure, and began each day with ceremony: a small brass pot of coffee perched on the stove, the same chipped porcelain cup warmed before pouring. He’d sit facing east, boots tucked beneath him on the bench, and wait for the sun to thread its first seam through the clouds. The light pleased him - for its warmth but also for the way it teased colour from the greys: slate to silver, mist to pearl. There was a promontory on the northern end of the Rock, a stub of ancient stone shaped like a bent knuckle, where waves struck with a cadence all their own. On days when the sea behaved, Harrow would take his coffee there, his notebook balanced on one knee, collar up, wind in his hair. “It reminds me of Dorset,” he once wrote, “if Dorset were narrowed to a single breath.”
His days were full but unhurried. After breakfast came the winding of the chronometer - 07:02 precisely. He performed the task gently, as one might wind a child’s toy, with fingers that knew better than to overdo it. The regulator clock on the wall would be cross-referenced, then adjusted, never without notation. Noon meant sun angle measurements; evenings, celestial alignment. When the skies were clear, he sketched the stars in pencil, drawing thin circles and arcs, his own private cosmos, tidy and obedient. But he did not live solely in numbers. Harrow kept a personal journal, distinct from his logs, and its entries spoke often of sound: the scrape of gulls on the dome above, the echo of waves rebounding through the iron stairwell, the peculiar “tick” the oil lamp gave just before settling into a glow. These things delighted him. He noted, too, the odd comfort of isolation. “There’s a calm,” he wrote, “in being alone with structures that serve a single purpose. No distraction. No ambiguity. A lighthouse does not second-guess itself.”
It was in this mood that he received the first supply vessel - three weeks in. He welcomed the crew with polite detachment, accepted the parcel handed to him, and offered in return a sealed envelope for his mother. He did not linger. When pressed for conversation, he deflected with dry humour. “The stars have all the best lines,” he said, “I merely take dictation.”
Inside the parcel lay a letter penned in his mother’s familiar, looping hand, the ink just faded enough to suggest hesitation before each word. Beneath it, a pair of knitted gloves, and his long-lost copy of De Rerum Natura, the well-thumbed Lucretius volume she must have retrieved from the foot of his writing desk. Harrow unfolded the letter slowly, reading it once with scholarly detachment, and then again - more slowly this time, as if to catch the ghost of her voice between the lines. A smile, slight and involuntary, crept to the edge of his mouth. He placed the letter reverently beneath the marine chronometer on his desk, carefully aligning its corners. The gloves he pulled on at once, flexing his fingers against the soft resistance of wool still faintly scented with lavender and coal smoke.
Later that evening, he returned to the northern promontory, now windswept and salt-scoured, though he made no complaint. The sea below had grown restless and the breeze no longer carried warmth but something colder, more contemplative. He drank his tea in small, deliberate sips, watching as the first silver rim of the moon crested the horizon. It was brighter than he expected, and oddly high. Harrow, at that moment, noted only its beauty - not the discrepancy in its ascent. He did not yet realise that it had risen nine minutes ahead of schedule.
Celestial Observation Journal, 10 August 1852]
10 August, Observational Notes — 22:00, local time
Conditions: clear sky, waning gibbous moon, visibility excellent.
I began this evening with the western quadrant - Arcturus sharp and obliging, if slightly lower on the horizon than expected. Vega, ever the prima donna, insisted on arriving 0.6° north of her predicted path. I double-checked my quadrant, which appears innocent for now, though it may be sulking after yesterday’s oiling.
Polaris remains stoic and well-behaved. A comfort, frankly. There's something deeply reassuring about an object so indifferent to the rest of us.
Quadrant VII, however, offered a small surprise. In addition to the expected Deneb and Altair, I noted the presence of a fourth body - faint, blue, and unfamiliar. Magnitude perhaps 2.7. No stutter, no tail, no drift. It simply appeared, precisely at 22:13, and lingered for twenty-three minutes before fading without ceremony.
I’ve reviewed my charts and consulted my more annotated references, but none account for its presence. I’ve sketched its position - southwest of Vega, roughly triangular in arrangement. Too symmetrical for accident, not quite regular enough for comfort. I’ve marked it provisionally as Ophion - a private indulgence. If it reappears tomorrow, I shall consider it promoted.
(Note to self: write to Sanderson at the Society, though he’ll no doubt dismiss it as “upper-atmospheric eccentricity” or, worse, “romanticism.”)
All else stable. The Rock continues to groan at dusk, though I suspect it’s only the metal expanding. One hopes.
—
The attached chart (not seen here) shows three familiar stars and a new one - faintly circled, unlabeled on any known sidereal map. His hand is precise, but there’s the faintest smudge near the unknown star, as if he had paused there. Perhaps longer than necessary.
Log Entry: 12 August, 1852]
Weather: overcast, light wind, sea state calm
Barometric pressure: 30.02 inHg
Visibility: 5.4 NM
09:26 – Vessel observed on northern horizon, bearing 031°.
09:31 – Confirmed course consistent with eastbound merchant shipping (likely Danish registry, though sail obscured).
09:33 – Initiated standard safe passage signal: long-short-short (3s–1s–1s), repeated at 20-second interval. Lantern response functional; rotation interval stable.
09:42 – No return signal observed. Possible failure to acknowledge. Possible protocol unfamiliarity. Possible indifference.
Recorded position and time in shipping log.
Will reattempt signalling upon return trajectory, should vessel reappear within 48 hours.
No anomalies to report.
— N.H.
Somewhere beyond the mist, the ship continued on, sails full, course steady. If they had seen the signal - and they must have seen it - they did not respond. The blink pattern from Grimleigh had been deliberate: long-short-short, a textbook salute. But what reached the vessel’s deck may not have matched what left the lens.
Later, when Admiralty logs were reviewed, that same ship - the Freja, registry Copenhagen - recorded a different pattern entirely. Four short flashes, followed by a long pause. A code not used since the days of semaphore. Translated, it meant only one thing:
Do not approach.
But Harrow had written no such warning.
What followed the entry of the twelfth has resisted tidy arrangement. No further logs were found in Harrow’s official ledger, though not for lack of attempts. In the small writing desk tucked beneath the spiral stair, an envelope had been wedged into the corner, brittle and yellowing. It bore no address, only a smeared marking - possibly a date - and a symbol resembling a quartered compass rose. Inside were loose pages: some torn from the log itself, others from personal notebooks, and one that appeared to be the backing of a star chart, repurposed as writing paper in haste. Each fragment bore the mark of a mind struggling to impose order on something no longer consenting to structure. Some entries were lucid, analytical even, as if Harrow believed he could still tame the anomaly by notation alone. Others deteriorated swiftly into near-ravings and then, more troubling still, into diagrams that made little sense to the eye but seemed, in their looping, recursive symbols, to echo a logic beyond Euclid.
His handwriting changed. At first subtly, a slightly more hurried hand, ink heavier in pressure, but soon it veered wildly. Some notes were inscribed vertically along the margins, others upside-down. One began in English and ended in Latin. Another used the shorthand of naval navigators, dense with ciphers and glyphs that had not been taught in any British academy. And then there were the letters.
Three of them, addressed to his father, postmarked but never sent. The first was apologetic in tone, rational in content. It spoke of “gravitational drift” and “magnetic deviation affecting the chronometer’s precision” - the kind of problems a man of Harrow’s training would have relished diagnosing. The second was shakier. He referenced an “impossible star,” charted in three successive nights and then gone without trace. He wrote of pendulums refusing to swing in rhythm, and the uncanny sensation that the phases of the moon were not progressing in the expected manner, as if time itself had developed a stammer.
The third letter was barely a letter at all. It began with a plea: “If you receive this, tell them not to send another man. The rock doesn’t forget. It only replays.” The remainder descended into overlapping lines, some scratched out violently, others written in what appeared to be mirror script. A section of the page had been singed, the burn forming a perfect ring, too perfect to be accidental.
We cannot, in good conscience, claim to know what happened in the days that followed 12 August. But we do know this: the ships that passed in the fortnight thereafter received no intelligible signal. One captain reported seeing the lantern lit in broad daylight; another claimed to have seen the lighthouse flash backwards, repeating a Morse sequence in reverse. When queried, the Admiralty confirmed discrepancies between the lighthouse’s signal logs and the shipboard records. Whatever occurred on Grimleigh Rock, it no longer obeyed the principles Harrow had been trained to trust.
Though the surviving documents were discovered out of order, and often marred by water, fire, or frantic redactions, one among them bore the calm voice of its author still intact. It is not our place to speculate beyond the bounds of evidence - and so, for the sake of fidelity and transparency, we present Nathaniel Harrow’s own words as they were found, unaltered and without editorial intrusion.
Unsent Letter – Dated 17 August, 1852
Addressed to Mr. Elias Harrow, Bath, Somerset
Not sent. Discovered folded within a leather-bound notebook, bearing the watermark of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich.
Dearest Father,
I trust this finds you well, though I cannot claim the same of myself - not for want of health, but for clarity. There is, I fear, an anomaly here.
I noticed it first in the chronometer. Minor fluctuations at first - perhaps a few seconds gained over a 24-hour period. I recalibrated using both the backup and the coastal signal received from Aberdeen, but the deviation persisted. At first I assumed moisture, perhaps salt infiltration. But on opening the housing, I found the mechanism dry and intact. Too intact, in truth - as though time itself had passed it by.
On the night of the 14th, the pendulum clock slowed by three beats per minute, then abruptly corrected itself after midnight. The barograph, too, recorded a pressure shift I cannot correlate to any observed storm or front. The sea remained flat. Even the gulls were silent.
I climbed to the lantern room for perspective - to clear my head, perhaps. But while noting the light’s rotation, I observed a fixed star on the eastern horizon that I could not identify by any chart in my possession. It shone with a dull crimson hue, not unlike Antares, but too far north. I charted it on three successive nights. On the fourth, it was gone. No clouds. No haze. Just absence.
You would say - and perhaps rightly - that fatigue has crept in. I am, after all, the sole keeper on this rock, with no company but gulls and the occasional seal who stares too long. Yet I sleep, I eat, I write. My instruments are maintained. I signal the passing vessels - some return the gesture, others do not.
And still… the feeling lingers. That something is off-axis. Not broken - not yet - but misaligned. As if the world has tilted by the width of a hair, and we have not yet felt the full consequence.
I shall continue to observe, to record, and to report. But if you hear from the Board of Trade or the Admiralty regarding unusual signals, do write back and let me know. I suspect my instruments may not be the only ones affected.
Yours in affection,
Nathaniel
The letter that follows was recovered under unusual circumstances: folded and wedged behind the brass housing of the station’s primary chronometer. How it came to be there is unclear - whether placed deliberately, or tucked away in a moment of confusion. The handwriting is recognisably Harrow’s, but sharper, more angular. Gone is the composure of his earlier note; what remains is a voice wrestling with inconsistency - not only in his surroundings, but in the very architecture of time.
From this point on, Harrow’s writings become erratic. Dates repeat. Descriptions contradict one another. One fragment speaks of calm seas while another, allegedly written the same night, mentions a “howling squall” and “shadows crawling inland.” We shall not attempt to resolve these contradictions. They are presented here as they were found, not for explanation, but for witness.
Unsent Letter – Dated 21 August, 1854
Addressed to Mr. Elias Harrow, Bath, Somerset
Recovered from inside the chronometer case, folded tightly, edges torn as if by haste.
Father —
I write again, though I cannot say to what end. I begin to wonder whether any of these will reach the mainland at all. I imagine them swept into the sea, or looped into some eddy of time where they are read before they are written, or never read at all.
The days are misbehaving. I mean this quite literally. Yesterday - what I believed to be yesterday - I recorded the passing of a barque at 15:42 and signalled accordingly: two long, one short. Today, while inspecting the log, I find the same entry repeated under a different date. Same time. Same wind direction. Same ship name.
The tide comes in early. Or late. Or both. The sun hovers on the horizon a beat too long. The stars… Father, the stars are no longer where I left them!
That red one has returned. It was absent for three nights, I was certain of it. I marked its coordinates: RA 17h 31m, Dec -22°. An impossible position for this latitude, and yet there it hangs. It pulses faintly. I cannot tell whether its light is constant or whether it simply flickers with the instability of my own mind.
I have taken to walking the perimeter of the rock at night. The sound of the sea is… distorted. It echoes back words I do not recall speaking.
The chronometer struck 11:39 precisely - and then struck again. I do not mean it chimed. I mean it repeated the same second. Not like a stutter. Like a decision being unmade.
I write these things down, and yet even as I do, I feel them evaporating. As if they belong not to memory but to rumour.
Is this what madness feels like, Father? Not roaring or raving - just the steady erosion of certainty? The peeling away of coordinates until only the question remains?
There are diagrams I wish to show you. Perhaps I shall include them next time. For now, I shall monitor the lantern’s rotation again. If nothing else, its orbit remains faithful.
— N.
The third letter exists in fragments only. It was found singed at the edges, folded into quarters, and stuffed inside a tin of oilskin patches beneath the lantern stair. Parts of it are water-streaked; others appear to have been written over more than once, as though the author had forgotten what he had already said, or believed it hadn’t yet been said at all.
The handwriting varies wildly in pressure and angle. Sections are scratched out or replaced with cryptic symbols. A few lines are written in reverse, as if meant for a mirror. One margin contains a single Latin phrase, repeated seven times: lux in tenebris clamat.
We reproduce what can be transcribed. Interpretations must remain the reader’s burden.
Unsent Letter – No Date
Recovered in fragments. Scorch marks on lower edge. Ink smeared and reapplied in parts. Some words reversed, some crossed out, others circled repeatedly.
—tell them not to send another
the signal repeats / the light turns / but I am not certain the light is mine
15:42 again / again / again
[crossed out: “I saw it land. It did not disturb the water.”]
The stars are moving too fast. I charted Andromeda where Cassiopeia should be. The quadrant is folded. The quadrant is folded.
[a sketch here: a spiral coiled into itself, labelled “not gravity – hunger?”]
My voice returned to me by way of the stones. Not an echo. I said nothing. Yet it spoke.
11:39
11:39
11:39[written upside-down:]
They have not left. They were never ships. They were clocks with sails.Lux in tenebris clamat
Lux in tenebris clamat
Lux in tenebris cla [the line breaks off in ink bleed][written in the margin:]
If the sea is time then this rock is its wound. A scab that will not form.I marked the signal book. I wrote the correct flags. They answered with fire.
[final visible line, barely legible, written in mirror script:]
They are coming from inside the hour.
In the weeks following the disappearance of signals from Grimleigh Rock, the Admiralty received a series of letters from Mr Elias Harrow of Bath. The first, dated 4 September 1854, was brief and courteous. He inquired whether any communication had been received from his son, who had maintained regular correspondence until mid‑August. The reply, signed by a clerk of the Trinity House Board, assured him that “minor lapses in transmission” were not uncommon during northern gales and that there was “no cause for alarm.”
Ten days later a second letter arrived, written in a firmer, more anxious hand. Mr Harrow noted that even during the Arctic voyages his son had never allowed a fortnight’s silence. He urged the Board to investigate, enclosing a clipping from The Times that reported an unusual absence of coastal signals along the Dogger Bank. His plea went unanswered.
The resupply cutter Ternfold made harbour at Grimleigh Rock on 29 September, its approach delayed by fog and contrary currents. From a distance the lighthouse appeared in good order: the lantern revolving, its beam pale in daylight. Yet no response came to their flag salute, and no keeper appeared on the gallery. The men launched a small boat and climbed the slippery iron ladder to the platform. The door hung open. Inside, the air was dry, still, and faintly metallic. The oil drums were half‑full. The galley held a single teacup on the shelf above the sink. A chair had been pushed back from the desk. The logbook lay open to the entry of 12 August, the pen beside it crusted with ink. Nothing beyond that date was written.
When the sailors ascended the spiral stair to the lantern room, they found a body. It was seated beneath the eastern pane of glass, the head bowed forward, the legs drawn close as though against cold. The skin was sallow, the features aged far beyond their years; the hair had turned a spectral white. The fingers were rigid around a shattered chronometer whose hands stood motionless at 11:39. The mechanism gave no resistance when touched, as though its springs had long since lost the will to move. The attending physician, summoned several days later, recorded signs of acute starvation and systemic fatigue. The pupils were dilated far beyond normal response to darkness. The body’s condition, he wrote, was “consistent with a man decades older than Harrow’s known age,” though no adequate explanation could be offered. There were no wounds, no trace of violence, no evidence of intrusion.
The cutter’s captain reported the death to the Admiralty, and within days Mr Harrow travelled north to identify the remains. He reached the coastal station at Scarborough just as the body was brought ashore. Witnesses described him as composed, almost detached, until the small parcel of personal effects was placed before him: a pocket compass, two notebooks soaked through with brine, and a small silver brooch depicting a streaking comet - oval, finely engraved, delicately ridged at the edges, its surface dimmed but untarnished. It had been found pinned to the inner lining of the dead man’s collar. Mr Harrow recognised it at once; it had been a gift from Nathaniel’s mother on the day he left Bath for Greenwich - “to keep him steady by the stars,” she had said. The clasp was still warm when unpinned.
The Admiralty’s report lists the cause of death as indeterminate. No storms had passed within fifty miles of the Rock that week, and no structural fault was found in the lantern tower. The official account closes with the sentence: “Station left in order; keeper deceased. Signal irregularities noted in associated quadrant: see file 78-Delta-A.”
In the months that followed, Mr Harrow pressed the Board for access to his son’s recovered papers. He was permitted to view them under supervision. Among the materials were three unsent letters addressed to him - one calm, one erratic, and one scarcely coherent - none ever dispatched. The Admiralty offered no explanation for their retention.
The remaining documents and diagrams were sealed in a file marked Grimleigh Rock — 1854 and transferred to the Royal Maritime Archive at Greenwich, where they remain. Most depict celestial maps that do not correspond to known constellations. One page shows the lighthouse itself drawn over and over, each repetition slightly altered: staircases reversed, windows misplaced, angles inverted, as though the structure were redrawn from another dimension.
And on a final sheet, written twice in red ink, appear the words:
REPEATS. REPEATS.
Of Nathaniel Harrow’s final thoughts,
no written record survives.
Only a flame
that turned for seven nights
without a keeper,
and a father
who stood on the quay beneath its light,
listening for a signal
that never came.
~ to be continued ~
🕯️
⚜️ previous chapter ⚜️