The Witch's Head

by H. Rider Haggard

“O, he would soon kill himself. Old Jack Tares, who lives at Kesterwick, and gets his living by rats and ferrets, used to be whip to grandfather’s hounds when he had them, and says that he always was a little mad about riding. One moonlight night he and grandfather went out to hunt a stag that had strayed here out of some park. They put the stag out of a little grove at a place called Claffton, five miles away, and he took them round by Starton and Ashleigh, and then came down the flats to the sea, about a mile and a half below here, just this side of the quicksand. The moon was so bright that it was almost like day, and for the last mile the stag was in view not more than a hundred yards in front of the hounds, and the pace was racing. When he came to the beach he went right through the waves out to the sea, and the hounds after him, and grandfather after them. They caught him a hundred yards out and killed him, and then grandfather turned his horse’s head and swam back with the hounds.”

“My eye!” was Ernest’s comment on this story. “And what did Jack Tares do?”

“O, he stopped on the beach and said his prayers; he thought that they would all be drowned.”

Then they passed through the old house, which was built on a little ness or headland that jutted beyond the level of the shore-line, and across which the wind swept and raved all the winter long, driving the great waves in cease-less thunder against the sandy cliffs. It was a desolate spot that the gray and massive house, of which the roof was secured by huge blocks of rock, looked out upon, nude of vegetation, save for rank, rush-like grass and plants of sea-holly. In front was the great ocean, rushing in continually upon the sandy bulwarks, and with but few ships to break its loneliness. To the left, as far as the eye could reach ran a line of cliff, out of which the waves had taken huge mouthfuls, till it was as full of gaps as an old crone’s jaw. Behind this stretched mile upon mile of desolate-looking land, covered for the most part with ling and heath, and cut up with dikes, whence the water was pumped by means of windmills, that gave a Dutch appearance to the landscape.

“Look,” said Dorothy, pointing to a small white house about a mile and a half away up the shore-line, “that is the lock-house where the great sluice-gates are, and beyond that is the dreadful quicksand in which a whole army was once swallowed up, like the Egyptians in the Red Sea.”

“My word!” said Ernest, much interested; “and, I say, did my uncle build this house?”

“You silly boy! why, it has been built for hundreds of years. Somebody of the name of Dum built it, and that is why it is called Dum’s Ness; at least I suppose so. There is an old chart that Reginald has, which was made in the time of Henry VII., and it is marked as Dum’s Ness there, so Dum must have lived before then. Look,” she went on, as, turning to the right, they rounded the old house and reached the road which ran along the top of the cliff, “there are the ruins of Titheburgh Abbey;” and she pointed to the remains of an enormous church with a still perfect tower, that stood within a few hundred yards of them, almost upon the edge of the cliff.

“Why don’t they build it up again?” asked Ernest.

Dorothy shook her head. “Because in a few years the sea will swallow it. Nearly all the graveyard has gone already. It is the same with Kesterwick, where we are going. Kesterwick was a great town once. The kings of East Anglia made it their capital, and a bishop lived there. And after that it was a great port, with thousands upon thousands of inhabitants. But the sea came on and on and choked up the harbour, and washed away the cliffs, and they could not keep it out, and now Kesterwick is nothing but a little village with one fine old church left. The real Kesterwick lies there, under the sea. If you walk along the beach after a great gale, you will find hundreds of bricks and tiles washed from the houses that are going to pieces down in the deep water. Just fancy, on one Sunday afternoon, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, three of the parish churches were washed over the cliff into the sea!”

And so she went on, telling the listening Ernest tale after tale of the old town, than which Babylon had not fallen more completely, till they came to a pretty little modern house bowered up in trees—that is, in summer, for there were no leaves upon them now—with which Ernest was destined to become very well acquainted in after years.