While Bang went below to complete his weeping, and to find some plaster, I began to take accurate observation of these Braunton Burrows, of which I had often heard before from the Devonshire men, who frequent our coast for the purpose of stealing coal or limestone. An up-and-down sort of a place it appeared, as I made it out with my spy-glass; and I could not perceive that it beat our sands, as those good people declared of it. Only I noticed that these sandhills were of a different hue from ours. Not so bare and yellow-faced, not so swept by western winds, neither with their tops thrown up like the peak of a new volcano. Rushes, spurge, and goose-foot grasses, and the rib-leafed iris, and in hollow places cat's-mint, loose-strife, and low eye-bright--these and a thousand other plants seemed to hold the flaky surface so as not to fly like ours. Ike broke silence, which to him was worse than breaking his own windows, and said that all for leagues around was full of giants and great spectres. Moreover, that all of it long had been found an unkid and unholy place, bad for a man to walk in, and swarming with great creatures, striped the contrary way to all good-luck, and having eight legs every side, and a great horn crawling after them. And their food all night was known to be travellers' skulls and sailors' bones. Having seen a good deal of land-crabs, I scarcely dared to deny the story, and yet I could hardly make it out. Therefore, without giving vent to opinions of things which might turn out otherwise, I levelled my spy-glass again at the region of which I had heard such a strange account. And suddenly here I beheld a man of no common appearance, wandering in and out the hollows, as if he never meant to stop; a tall man with a long grey beard, and wearing a cocked-hat like a colonel. There was something about him that startled me, and drew my whole attention. Therefore, with my perspective glass not long ago cleaned, and set ship-shape by a man who understood the bearings--after that rogue of a Hezekiah had done his best to spoil it--with this honest magnifier (the only one that tells no lies) I carefully followed up and down the figure, some three cables'-lengths away, of this strange walker among the sandhills. We were in smooth water now, gliding gently up the river, with the mainsail paying over just enough for steerage-way; and so I got my level truly, and could follow every step.