What on earth are you doing there? For God's sake, get inside.

More about What on earth are you doing there? For God's sake, get inside.

The prompt is a journal entry, generated by DeepSeek AI, that describes a lighthouse keeper's perspective on the worst storm he has seen in 30 years.

AIVision is struggling with the density of a narrative text, and no wonder - it's not built for that.

Actual structure:

October 17th, 1815

The great storm has broken, and in the unnatural quiet, my hand trembles so that I can scarce hold this quill. For thirty years I have kept my watch on this black rock, a sentinel for the Admiralty, but never has the sea roared with such fury, nor the very firmament seemed so intent upon our obliteration.

It began yestereve, not with a gradual tempering of the winds, but with a sudden and violent veering of the same to the northwest. The glass, which had been falling steadily since dawn, plummeted as if dashed upon the stones. I knew then that this would be no common squall. By nightfall, the sea was a chaos of white water, and the wind a demon’s shriek in the guy-wires.

I lit the lamp at the appointed hour, the Argand burners flaring to life with a reassuring hiss. For a time, their steady glow, magnified a thousand-fold by the great lens, held the darkness at bay. But the sea soon mounted a more terrible assault. Great green walls of water, taller than the tower itself, would rise from the abyss and break upon the rock with a concussion that shook the very foundations. I felt the stone tremble beneath my feet, a sensation most unnerving.

For the entirety of the night, I remained in the lamp-room, my world reduced to that crystal cage of light and thunder. Spume, like driven snow, streamed horizontally across the panes, and through it, I could see the monstrous waves, their crests torn into a veil of spray. The tempest screamed as if it were a living thing, a leviathan enraged by the pinprick of my defiance. More than once, a great comber struck with such force I feared the glass would not hold, and I should be washed into the maelstrom, lamp and all.

My thoughts turned, as they often do in such vigils, to the men upon that raging sea. Did some poor vessel, timbers groaning, fight for its life in this very darkness? My light was their only hope, a single, unwavering star in a world gone mad. This thought alone kept the fear at bay. To let the lamp die was to surrender their souls to the deep.

Dawn brought no relief, only a sickly, grey light that revealed a ocean in perpetual convulsion. The storm did not abate until near noon, its fury spent as quickly as it had come. Now, as I look out, the sea is still a swollen, heaving mass, but the wind has softened to a mournful sigh. The rock is scoured clean, and a fishing smack, dashed to splinters, lies wedged between two crags below—a grim testament to the night’s work.

I am weary unto death, and my ears yet ring with the phantom roar. But the light burns still. It is a small victory, but in this lonely place, it is everything.

God preserve all poor mariners.

_Josiah Hemlock_