The Turning Light — hints

Straight up. The lantern room is seven moves from the landing — up to the set-off, north into the passage, then five flights. Look at the lamp and the machine when you get there; both of them are the game.

There is a store box bolted to the rock beside the derrick, east of the set-off. A keeper keeps a hand lantern in it, dry, because the oil store has no window and never has had.

Three separate things are wrong with it and the game names each one when you try. The reservoir is dry, the wick is charred to a crown, and you need a light. The trimmers are on a nail in the service room.

The reservoir key is carried by the Principal Keeper, and the Principal Keeper is at the foot of the oil store ladder. Search him. It is not a nice thing to do and it is the only way the light gets lit tonight.

Look at the Character gauge. The lamp burning is not the light working — the lens has to turn. wind the machine, in the lantern room.

The entrance door has stood open since October. It is five floors down, and there is an eight-foot pitch-pine bar on brackets four feet from it. shut door — it takes three goes, and more in deep water.

The seas come up the passage. The stair up is one move and it always works, and the game warns you three times standing in it. Shutting the door also stops the count, because your shoulder is in the gap.

The handle is unshipped. It is stowed dry on the shadow board in the water room, north off the entrance passage — which is also where you will notice something else is missing.

You are pumping the Atlantic. Bar the door first; then two inches a minute, and only while you are standing at it.

The sump grating in the oil store floor, which is under the water until you have pumped it out. Everything that has gone down that drain in five weeks is still in it.

They have been a month in a drain. There is a range in the living room. dry leaves three times, well back, and do not hurry it.

Three separate things prove it and each is in a different room: the barometer cards in the record locker (compare this year with last year), his spectacles (put them on), and the coal ledger in the coal store.

Salt in the train, and it will get worse. But look at the sheave in the lantern floor — that is the thing that will actually end you, and it is already working on the new rope.

Not with a ton of glass hanging on a taut rope. The rope has to be slack, and slack means the weight is on its buffer, which means stopping the light on purpose. release weight does it under the governor at a time you choose.

Chock the lens (lantern), unshackle and turn the rope (oil store), reeve it back down the tube (service room, at the inspection plate), shackle it on and light and wind (lantern). Every wrong order is refused rather than punished.

Yes, and the game means it. A stopped light that is written down is a repair. One that is not is exactly what happened here in October.

That is the point — there is no other side to clear it from. The gallery door is in the south glazing, on the lee side. You want the copper scraper off the lantern shelf in the provision store first.

Steel scratches the glazing, a scratched pane crazes, and there is no glazier eleven miles out. The game will not let you use anything else.

Three things share your time now: the machine wants winding every sixteen minutes, the glass wants scraping, and the range four floors down is the only thing that puts the heat back. Go in and warm before you have to.

Not for ever. The freezing stops at a fixed minute and the game says so out loud. Waiting the squall out indoors is a legitimate way to play this act.

Clear the east glazing and read it. They are asking whether all is well, and they have been asking for an hour. You can answer either of two true things with the hand lantern.

It is exhibited from sunset to sunrise and sunrise is at eight minutes to eight. The game tells you how many minutes are left. There is a wreck on a reef three miles away that is the reason that rule is written the way it is.

Two things, both outside, both reachable once the bar is off the door: the south rocks on the lee side, and the hollow by the water tank. One of them ends the story.

You can write it when you can support it — all seven of the things a report would have to rest on. The game tells you how many you have and the tower still holds the rest.

None of them, and that is deliberate. The truth clears Rees and costs Blair his name and his widow her pension. The mechanical account is true in every word and leaves Rees a deserter. What you saw hangs nobody and clears nobody. Closing the book is also an answer.