I made no reply, and we stood silently watching the struggle of the vessel with the storm for perhaps ten minutes. At length it succeeded in tacking at the very moment when all seemed lost, and bore safely away. Agatha's eyes met mine for an instant; there were both smiles and tears in them. She kissed her pearl again and moved away. But my digression has already gone farther than I intended. Let us return to the stone bench beneath the eaves, and the hot July sunshine. II. "Mr. Poyntz," said I, clasping my hands behind my head, and crossing one knee over the other, "how happens your house to be set up directly opposite the Devil's Ribs, and at least a mile and a half from the village? It's well enough in summer of course, but in winter, when the snow is on the ground, I should think you'd want to be nearer your butcher, not to speak of the meeting-house." "Ay, surely!" answered Mr. Poyntz, taking the pipe from his mouth, and smoothing down the great sheaf of his beard. "But, d'ye see, sir, 'twas not I set the house here, nor my father before me, and maybe there was no butcher, nor yet no meeting-house along in those times. And another thing, since you've set me a-going, sir; you see the lighthouse on the point yonder?" indicating an abrupt rocky promontory half a mile to the right of our position, which lay athwart the shore like a vast wall, separating us from the little fishing hamlet on the other side. "Ye see the lighthouse on tip-end of Gloam's Point, don't ye? Well, sir, old as that lighthouse looks to you now, I, that am a deal older than you are, can remember when 'twa'nt there. And that brings me round to what I was going to say. Along in those times, sir, when there wa'nt no regular lighthouse, but no bit less danger of craft running ashore, they used to rig up a sort of a jury-light, if I might so call it, in the front of our old gable. Ye may see the fixings now if ye steps forward a bit and look up there. Ay, ay, every dark night, more especially every dirty night, some of us would mount the garret shrouds, d'ye see, and show the lantern. And many a ship we saved, no doubt; but they'd come ashore once in a while, for the best we could do." "That's a suggestive name--Devil's Ribs. I suppose the bones of many a good man and vessel lie swallowed up in them." "Ay, surely," returned the ancient mariner, swathing his head in a haze of tobacco-smoke. "The more since the currents and whirlpools thereabout mostly keep back the floating bits--spars, bodies, and such like--from getting to the beach. Whatever strikes there, sinks there, speaking in a general way. And forasmuch as there's five-and-thirty fathom clear water there, and always a tidy bit of surf on, 'tain't very popular work dredging." "That's an ugly thought," I observed; "a great ship might go down there, and nothing ever be found to show what she was or who sailed in her."