He next visited Boyton and Sudbourn, and Orford. He lodged at the Mariner's Compass, then kept by an old weather-beaten sailor, who often put him across from the quay on the banks of the Alde, to the North Vere; and here he used to spend so many hours, that the coastguard, who kept a watch upon his movements, suspected that his countryman's dress was only a ruse to hide some sinister intention. They observed, however, that he did not avoid them, but rather sought opportunity for their acquaintance. A more dreary place than this North Vere is scarcely to be found on all the coast of Great Britain. It is a mass of shingle nearly twenty miles long, in some places nearly a mile broad, in others, only a few hundred yards. This wall of pebbles separates the river Alde from the ocean. The bank reaches from Hollesley Bay to Aldeburgh. The sea and the river are very deep along the shelving banks on either side. Thousands upon thousands of sea-birds build, or rather lay their eggs, upon this desolate bed of shingle. A few wild, straggling plants of seakale, and very long, thin, sickly spires of grass, occasionally shoot up through the stones; but there is no other vegetation, except here and there in some few hollows in this desert of stones, where a little clay, mixed with the sea-fowl dung, formed a green patch. These spots used to be much frequented by smugglers, which, from their sunken situations, used to hide both them and their goods from view. Nothing prominent can be seen for miles round this coast, except the Orford lights, which stand conspicuous enough about midway between Hollesley and Aldeburgh. The poor fellows who acted as preventive-service men in the coastguard had no sinecure in this dreadful situation. The sun burnt them by day, and the wind, from whatever quarter it blew, and especially in the winter nights, was cutting and cold; and from the exposure between two waters, the sea and the river, it roared like the discharge of batteries. In some of the hollows these poor men used to construct huts of such rude materials as came to hand; old pieces of wrecks, or broken-up boats, which they covered with seaweed, collected after a storm. These served to break the east winds which blew over the German Ocean, in their terrible night-watches, which they were forced to keep pretty constantly, as they were watched, though they were watchers. Many were the desperate struggles upon this wild beach between these brave men and the smugglers, in which hard fighting, and too often death-blows, told the desperate nature of the service. "Well, my man, what brings you upon this coast?" said one of the officers to Edward Catchpole, as he was sauntering lazily along the seaside. "Oh," replied Edward, "I have got a holiday, and I wish to spend a day or two by the seaside."