ht captured all the vessels lying in
the haven. Others find in the peculiar formation of the crania proof
positive that the skulls originally came from Denmark.

But Saxon or Dane, or whatever they be, it is certain the skulls
were picked up on the beach, and after an interval were, with some
dim notion of decency, carried up to the church, where they lay
neglected in a vault. The church also going to decay, the
determination was taken to rebuild it, and being sorely pressed for
funds a happy thought occurred to a practical vicar. He had the
skulls piled up wall-like in an accessible chamber, caused the
passages to be swept and garnished, and then put on the impost
mentioned above, the receipts helping to liquidate the debt on
the building fund. Thus, by a strange irony of fate, after eight
centuries, all that is left of these heathens brings in sixpences
to build up a Christian church.

A good deal has happened in Hythe since the skulls first began to
bleach on the inhospitable shore. When Earl Godwin suddenly
appeared with his helm hard up for Hythe, the little town on the
hill faced one of the best havens on the coast. It was, as every
one knows, one of the Cinque Ports, and at the time of the
Conqueror undertook to furnish, as its quota of armament, five
ships, one hundred and five men, and five boys. Even in the time
of Elizabeth there was a fair harbour here. But long ago the sea
changed all that. It occupied itself in its leisure moments by
bringing up illimitable shingle, with which it filled up all water
ways, and cut Hythe off from communication with the sea as
completely as if it were Canterbury.

It is not without a feeling of humiliation that a burgess of the
once proud port of Hythe can watch the process of the occasional
importation of household coal. Where Earl Godwin swooped down over
twenty fathoms of water the little collier now painfully picks her
way at high water. On shore stand the mariners of Hythe (in number
four), manning the capstan. When the collier gets within a certain
distance a hawser is thrown out, the capstan turns more or less
merrily round, and the collier is beached, so that at low water
she will stand high and dry.

Thus ignominiously is coal landed at one of the Cinque Ports.

Of course this change in the water approaches has altogether
revolutionised the character of the place. Hythe is a port without
imports or exports, a harbour in which nothing takes refuge but
shingle.