SURROUNDED by hundreds of thousands of square miles of lifeless sand, the keeper of a gas station and lighthouse in the middle of the Sahara Desert has the world’s loneliest job. His lighthouse guides planes and motor coaches of the trans-Sahara traffic to a gasoline depot where they can obtain fuel. Once a week, a machine stops for an hour at the cache. But for long periods, the keeper is alone, the only human being in 750,000 square miles of sand. Within the hut where he lives, the temperature frequently rises to 140 degrees Fahrenheit during the day and drops to thirty-five degrees at night. The present lighthouse keeper is the fifth man to hold the job. One of his predecessors died of fever, a second perished in a gasoline explosion, a third went insane, and a fourth died of thirst.
