The windows of the old grey mansion gleamed in the fading western light, but we descried no smoke or movement, neither any life or variance, only a dreary pile of loneliness in the middle of yellow sands. Then I rigged out my perspective glass, and levelled it on the cuddy chimney--for the ketch was a half-decker--to spy if the little one might so chance to be making her solitary play, as she was used to do all day, and most of all ere bedtime. And if she should so happen, I knew how wild her delight would be to discover a vessel so near the shore; because whenever a sail went by, even at two or three leagues of distance, there was no containing her. Out she would rush with her face on fire, and curly hair all jogging, and up would go two little hands, spread to the sky and the vast wide sea. "Mammy dear, I 'ants 'a so. Dear papa, I has yaited so yong. Ickle bother, such a lot of things Bardie's got to tell 'a." And thus she would run on the brink of the waves with hope and sadness fluctuating on her unformed countenance, until the sail became a speck. However, now I saw no token of this little rover, unless it were some washed clothes flapping on the rushen tufts to dry; and Jose called me back to my spell at the helm before I had finished gazing. And in less than half an hour the landmark of the ancient house was fading in the dew-fog. Our ship's company amounted to no less than four, all hands told--viz., Captain Bethel Jose, _alias_ Fuzzy; Isaac Hutchings, the mate; my humble self (who found it my duty to supersede Ikey and appoint myself); and a boy of general incapacity, and of the name of "Bang." Making fine weather as we did, and with myself at the helm all night, and taking command (as my skill required), we slanted across Channel very sweetly; and when the grey of morning broke, Lundy Isle was on our lee-bow. Hereupon I gave the helm to old Ike, for beyond this was unknown to me, and Providence had never led me over Barnstaple bar as yet. So I tumbled in, and turned up no more until we were close on the bar itself, about ten o'clock of the forenoon. This is a thoroughly dangerous place, a meeting of treacherous winds and waters, in amongst uncertain shoaling, and would be worse than our Sker-weathers if it lay open to south-west gales. We waited for the tide, and then slipped over very cleverly, with Hartland Point on our starboard beam; and presently we found ourselves in a fine broad open water, with plenty of grey stretch going along it, and green hills tufting away from it. Everything looked so mild and handsome, that I wondered whether these men of Devonshire might not be such fools for bragging after all, when tested.