The headland runs out into the Atlantic for nearly two miles, and is a mile wide across its base. They grow oats there, for the ground is starved. Some of it, indeed, is so poor that the plough never furrows it, and only sheep stray upon the sward. Gorse grows plentifully, hiding many rabbits’ holes, and in summer near the cliff-edge at the Point the curled cast feathers of the gulls tremble in the wind.
At the Point the cliff drops almost sheer to the rocks three hundred and ten feet below, forming an indentation in the headland known as the Hole. Gulls dwell in colonies upon the ledges and in the crannies, and like drifting snowflakes a swirl of birds floats on the air, uprising from the sea and uttering gabbling cries of alarm when an intruder passes near the lip of the Hole.
The village historian told me the story one rainy night in the Nightcrow Inn. He was a great friend of mine, and universally known as “Muggy”; he had been in most places on the earth, returning eventually to his remembered village, happy in the open air with his simple livelihood. The returned wanderer did all kinds of jobs in the hamlets round about, gathered and sold watercress and mushrooms in their seasons, arranged for the purchase of patent manures by the farmers, representing many firms, and was also—“I be nothing if I be not up to date, zur, do ee see?”—an agent for fire insurance in the big town eight miles away. For generations his family had lived in the village; his grandfather had bought the wreckage of H.M.S. Weasel, that went on the rocks of the Hole over a century ago, all but one man being drowned. He had the newspaper cuttings of the wreck, and sure enough, his ancestor was mentioned. He cherished that cutting.
One night we had finished our game of whist with the frayed cards, and were talking. The Inn has a low ceiling of black oak beams, roughly shaped, and is lit by a paraffin lamp having a permanent black fringe to its orange flame. In a momentary silence we heard the sharp patter of rain flung against the window by a rapidly rising wind.
“It would be dangerous at the Point to-night,” I murmured, shivering.
Amid a chorus of assent my friend Muggy remembered the epic story of the climb of Raven Rock. Had I heard tell of it? No, I hadn’t, and I settled my elbows more comfortably on the oak table, and prepared for the yarn. More beer first, of course. Muggy would not have any; he drank but a pint every night, he said.
The pots were brought back, foaming with home-brew, the landlord adjusted the milled screw of the lamp so that less dark soot-shadows slipped against the whitewashed guard above, and we listened in silence while the wind drove hard against the western face of the house, bringing the rain-clouds straight from over the wild wastes of the Atlantic.
They had tried to get the robbers in many ways, but rarely were they seen. Evidence of their visitations was much against them. Dead lambs had been found in their pens—little gray bundles lying still while their mothers bleated above them. One morning Voley, the shepherd, came to the yeaning field and found that a ewe itself had been attacked, and had lost an eye. After that he carried the great ten-bore flighting gun that was usually brought out in the frosty winter when wildfowl haunted the great lonely wastes by the estuary formed of the confluence of two rivers. The robbers were too cunning, however, perceived him from invisibility, and never came near.
Muggy had a job at the time trapping rabbits for the bailiff of a gentleman’s farm. He was paid by results, being given so much a head for perfect rabbits; and rabbits did not pass as perfect to the dealer at the market town when half their heads had been battered as though by the blows of some mighty instrument. The curious thing was that he did not know for a long while what caused the damage. He thought of a fox, but a fox would not have mauled rabbits like that; he would have carried them away. The idea of a badger being the aggressor came to him, but he could find no spoor of a badger’s pad, which, once seen, is never forgotten. And still the mysterious depredations went on. Farmer Smith of Crowberry, later on in the year, lost seven chicks one morning, with no sign of how they had gone. He thought of hawks, and waited all that afternoon with a gun, but nothing came. He knew that had it been a kestrel the bird would have returned for more. Another morning he lost seventeen. Nine of them had been left—mutilated lumps of stained feathers. They looked as though a spike had been driven through their bodies. He knew that it was no ordinary thing that caused the destruction.