MOONFLEET
J. MEADE FALKNER
1898
We thought there was no more behind
But such a day tomorrow as today
And to be a boy eternal.
Shakespeare
TO ALL MOHUNES
OF FLEET AND MOONFLEET
IN AGRO DORCESTRENSI
LIVING OR DEAD
CONTENTS
1 IN MOONFLEET VILLAGE
2 THE FLOODS
3 A DISCOVERY
4 IN THE VAULT
5 THE RESCUE
6 AN ASSAULT
7 AN AUCTION
8 THE LANDING
9 A JUDGEMENT
10 THE ESCAPE
11 THE SEA-CAVE
12 A FUNERAL
13 AN INTERVIEW
14 THE WELL-HOUSE
15 THE WELL
16 THE JEWEL
17 AT YMEGUEN
18 IN THE BAY
19 ON THE BEACH
Says the Cap'n to the Crew,
We have slipped the Revenue,
I can see the cliffs of Dover on the lee:
Tip the signal to the _Swan_,
And anchor broadside on,
And out with the kegs of Eau-de-Vie,
Says the Cap'n:
Out with the kegs of Eau-de-Vie.
Says the Lander to his men,
Get your grummets on the pin,
There's a blue light burning out at sea.
The windward anchors creep,
And the Gauger's fast asleep,
And the kegs are bobbing one, two, three,
Says the Lander:
The kegs are bobbing one, two, three.
But the bold Preventive man
Primes the powder in his pan
And cries to the Posse, Follow me.
We will take this smuggling gang,
And those that fight shall hang
Dingle dangle from the execution tree,
Says the Gauger:
Dingle dangle with the weary moon to see.
CHAPTER 1
IN MOONFLEET VILLAGE
So sleeps the pride of former days--_More_
The village of Moonfleet lies half a mile from the sea on the right or
west bank of the Fleet stream. This rivulet, which is so narrow as it
passes the houses that I have known a good jumper clear it without a
pole, broadens out into salt marshes below the village, and loses itself
at last in a lake of brackish water. The lake is good for nothing except
sea-fowl, herons, and oysters, and forms such a place as they call in the
Indies a lagoon; being shut off from the open Channel by a monstrous
great beach or dike of pebbles, of which I shall speak more hereafter.
When I was a child I thought that this place was called Moonfleet,
because on a still night, whether in summer, or in winter frosts, the
moon shone very brightly on the lagoon; but learned afterwards that 'twas
but short for 'Mohune-fleet', from the Mohunes, a great family who were
once lords of all these parts.
My name is John Trenchard, and I was fifteen years of age when this story
begins. My father and mother had both been dead for years, and I boarded
with my aunt, Miss Arnold, who was kind to me in her own fashion, but too
strict and precise ever to make me love her.
I shall first speak of one evening in the fall of the year 1757. It must
have been late in October, though I have forgotten the exact date, and I
sat in the little front parlour reading after tea. My aunt had few books;
a Bible, a Common Prayer, and some volumes of sermons are all that I can
recollect now; but the Reverend Mr. Glennie, who taught us village
children, had lent me a story-book, full of interest and adventure,
called the _Arabian Nights Entertainment_. At last the light began to
fail, and I was nothing loth to leave off reading for several reasons;
as, first, the parlour was a chilly room with horse-hair chairs and sofa,
and only a coloured-paper screen in the grate, for my aunt did not allow
a fire till the first of November; second, there was a rank smell of
molten tallow in the house, for my aunt was dipping winter candles on
frames in the back kitchen; third, I had reached a part in the _Arabian
Nights_ which tightened my breath and made me wish to leave off reading
for very anxiousness of expectation. It was that point in the story of
the 'Wonderful Lamp', where the false uncle lets fall a stone that seals
the mouth of the underground chamber; and immures the boy, Aladdin, in
the darkness, because he would not give up the lamp till he stood safe on
the surface again. This scene reminded me of one of those dreadful
nightmares, where we dream we are shut in a little room, the walls of
which are closing in upon us, and so impressed me that the memory of it
served as a warning in an adventure that befell me later on. So I gave up
reading and stepped out into the street. It was a poor street at best,
though once, no doubt, it had been finer. Now, there were not two hundred
souls in Moonfleet, and yet the houses that held them straggled sadly
over half a mile, lying at intervals along either side of the road.
Nothing was ever made new in the village; if a house wanted repair badly,
it was pulled down, and so there were toothless gaps in the street, and
overrun gardens with broken-down walls, and many of the houses that yet
stood looked as though they could stand but little longer.
The sun had set; indeed, it was already so dusk that the lower or
sea-end of the street was lost from sight. There was a little fog or
smoke-wreath in the air, with an odour of burning weeds, and that first
frosty feeling of the autumn that makes us think of glowing fires and
the comfort of long winter evenings to come. All was very still, but I
could hear the tapping of a hammer farther down the street, and walked
to see what was doing, for we had no trades in Moonfleet save that of
fishing. It was Ratsey the sexton at work in a shed which opened on the
street, lettering a tombstone with a mallet and graver. He had been
mason before he became fisherman, and was handy with his tools; so that
if anyone wanted a headstone set up in the churchyard, he went to Ratsey
to get it done. I lent over the half-door and watched him a minute,
chipping away with the graver in a bad light from a lantern; then he
looked up, and seeing me, said:
'Here, John, if you have nothing to do, come in and hold the lantern for
me, 'tis but a half-hour's job to get all finished.'
Ratsey was always kind to me, and had lent me a chisel many a time to
make boats, so I stepped in and held the lantern watching him chink out
the bits of Portland stone with a graver, and blinking the while when
they came too near my eyes. The inscription stood complete, but he was
putting the finishing touches to a little sea-piece carved at the top of
the stone, which showed a schooner boarding a cutter. I thought it fine
work at the time, but know now that it was rough enough; indeed, you may
see it for yourself in Moonfleet churchyard to this day, and read the
inscription too, though it is yellow with lichen, and not so plain as it
was that night. This is how it runs:
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF DAVID BLOCK
Aged 15, who was killed by a shot fired from the _Elector_ Schooner,
21 June 1757.
Of life bereft (by fell design),
I mingle with my fellow clay.
On God's protection I recline
To save me in the Judgement Day.
There too must you, cruel man, appear,
Repent ere it be all too late;
Or else a dreadful sentence fear,
For God will sure revenge my fate.
The Reverend Mr. Glennie wrote the verses, and I knew them by heart, for
he had given me a copy; indeed, the whole village had rung with the tale
of David's death, and it was yet in every mouth. He was only child to
Elzevir Block, who kept the Why Not? inn at the bottom of the village,
and was with the contrabandiers, when their ketch was boarded that June
night by the Government schooner. People said that it was Magistrate
Maskew of Moonfleet Manor who had put the Revenue men on the track, and
anyway he was on board the _Elector_ as she overhauled the ketch. There
was some show of fighting when the vessels first came alongside of one
another, and Maskew drew a pistol and fired it off in young David's face,
with only the two gunwales between them. In the afternoon of Midsummer's
Day the _Elector_ brought the ketch into Moonfleet, and there was a posse
of constables to march the smugglers off to Dorchester Jail. The
prisoners trudged up through the village ironed two and two together,
while people stood at their doors or followed them, the men greeting them
with a kindly word, for we knew most of them as Ringstave and Monkbury
men, and the women sorrowing for their wives. But they left David's body
in the ketch, so the boy paid dear for his night's frolic.
'Ay, 'twas a cruel, cruel thing to fire on so young a lad,' Ratsey said,
as he stepped back a pace to study the effect of a flag that he was
chiselling on the Revenue schooner, 'and trouble is likely to come to
the other poor fellows taken, for Lawyer Empson says three of them will
surely hang at next Assize. I recollect', he went on, 'thirty years ago,
when there was a bit of a scuffle between the _Royal Sophy_ and the
_Marnhull_, they hanged four of the contrabandiers, and my old father
caught his death of cold what with going to see the poor chaps turned off
at Dorchester, and standing up to his knees in the river Frome to get a
sight of them, for all the countryside was there, and such a press there
was no place on land. There, that's enough,' he said, turning again to
the gravestone. 'On Monday I'll line the ports in black, and get a brush
of red to pick out the flag; and now, my son, you've helped with the
lantern, so come down to the Why Not? and there I'll have a word with
Elzevir, who sadly needs the talk of kindly friends to cheer him, and
we'll find you a glass of Hollands to keep out autumn chills.'
I was but a lad, and thought it a vast honour to be asked to the Why
Not?--for did not such an invitation raise me at once to the dignity of
manhood. Ah, sweet boyhood, how eager are we as boys to be quit of thee,
with what regret do we look back on thee before our man's race is
half-way run! Yet was not my pleasure without alloy, for I feared even to
think of what Aunt Jane would say if she knew that I had been at the Why
Not?--and beside that, I stood in awe of grim old Elzevir Block, grimmer
and sadder a thousand times since David's death.
The Why Not? was not the real name of the inn; it was properly the Mohune
Arms. The Mohunes had once owned, as I have said, the whole of the
village; but their fortunes fell, and with them fell the fortunes of
Moonfleet. The ruins of their mansion showed grey on the hillside above
the village; their almshouses stood half-way down the street, with the
quadrangle deserted and overgrown; the Mohune image and superscription
was on everything from the church to the inn, and everything that bore it
was stamped also with the superscription of decay. And here it is
necessary that I say a few words as to this family badge; for, as you
will see, I was to bear it all my life, and shall carry its impress with
me to the grave. The Mohune shield was plain white or silver, and bore
nothing upon it except a great black 'Y'. I call it a 'Y', though the
Reverend Mr. Glennie once explained to me that it was not a 'Y' at all,
but what heralds call a _cross-pall. Cross-pall_ or no _cross-pall,_ it
looked for all the world like a black 'Y', with a broad arm ending in
each of the top corners of the shield, and the tail coming down into the
bottom. You might see that cognizance carved on the manor, and on the
stonework and woodwork of the church, and on a score of houses in the
village, and it hung on the signboard over the door of the inn. Everyone
knew the Mohune 'Y' for miles around, and a former landlord having called
the inn the Why Not? in jest, the name had stuck to it ever since.
More than once on winter evenings, when men were drinking in the Why
Not?, I had stood outside, and listened to them singing 'Ducky-stones',
or 'Kegs bobbing One, Two, Three', or some of the other tunes that
sailors sing in the west. Such songs had neither beginning nor ending,
and very little sense to catch hold of in the middle. One man would crone
the air, and the others would crone a solemn chorus, but there was little
hard drinking, for Elzevir Block never got drunk himself, and did not
like his guests to get drunk either. On singing nights the room grew hot,
and the steam stood so thick on the glass inside that one could not see
in; but at other times, when there was no company, I have peeped through
the red curtains and watched Elzevir Block and Ratsey playing backgammon
at the trestle-table by the fire. It was on the trestle-table that Block
had afterwards laid out his son's dead body, and some said they had
looked through the window at night and seen the father trying to wash the
blood-matting out of the boy's yellow hair, and heard him groaning and
talking to the lifeless clay as if it could understand. Anyhow, there had
been little drinking in the inn since that time, for Block grew more and
more silent and morose. He had never courted customers, and now he
scowled on any that came, so that men looked on the Why Not? as a
blighted spot, and went to drink at the Three Choughs at Ringstave.
My heart was in my mouth when Ratsey lifted the latch and led me into the
inn parlour. It was a low sanded room with no light except a fire of
seawood on the hearth, burning clear and lambent with blue salt flames.
There were tables at each end of the room, and wooden-seated chairs round
the walls, and at the trestle table by the chimney sat Elzevir Block
smoking a long pipe and looking at the fire. He was a man of fifty, with
a shock of grizzled hair, a broad but not unkindly face of regular
features, bushy eyebrows, and the finest forehead that I ever saw. His
frame was thick-set, and still immensely strong; indeed, the countryside
was full of tales of his strange prowess or endurance. Blocks had been
landlords at the Why Not? father and son for years, but Elzevir's mother
came from the Low Countries, and that was how he got his outland name and
could speak Dutch. Few men knew much of him, and folks often wondered how
it was he kept the Why Not? on so little custom as went that way. Yet he
never seemed to lack for money; and if people loved to tell stories of
his strength, they would speak also of widows helped, and sick comforted
with unknown gifts, and hint that some of them came from Elzevir Block
for all he was so grim and silent.
He turned round and got up as we came in, and my fears led me to think
that his face darkened when he saw me.
'What does this boy want?' he said to Ratsey sharply.
'He wants the same as I want, and that's a glass of Ararat milk to keep
out autumn chills,' the sexton answered, drawing another chair up to the
trestle-table.
'Cows' milk is best for children such as he,' was Elzevir's answer, as he
took two shining brass candlesticks from the mantel-board, set them on
the table, and lit the candles with a burning chip from the hearth.
'John is no child; he is the same age as David, and comes from helping me
to finish David's headstone. 'Tis finished now, barring the paint upon
the ships, and, please God, by Monday night we will have it set fair and
square in the churchyard, and then the poor lad may rest in peace,
knowing he has above him Master Ratsey's best handiwork, and the parson's
verses to set forth how shamefully he came to his end.'
I thought that Elzevir softened a little as Ratsey spoke of his son, and
he said, 'Ay, David rests in peace. 'Tis they that brought him to his end
that shall not rest in peace when their time comes. And it may come
sooner than they think,' he added, speaking more to himself than to us. I
knew that he meant Mr. Maskew, and recollected that some had warned the
magistrate that he had better keep out of Elzevir's way, for there was no
knowing what a desperate man might do. And yet the two had met since in
the village street, and nothing worse come of it than a scowling look
from Block.
'Tush, man!' broke in the sexton, 'it was the foulest deed ever man
did; but let not thy mind brood on it, nor think how thou mayest get
thyself avenged. Leave that to Providence; for He whose wisdom lets
such things be done, will surely see they meet their due reward.
"Vengeance is Mine; I will repay, saith the Lord".' And he took his
hat off and hung it on a peg.
Block did not answer, but set three glasses on the table, and then took
out from a cupboard a little round long-necked bottle, from which he
poured out a glass for Ratsey and himself. Then he half-filled the third,
and pushed it along the table to me, saying, 'There, take it, lad, if
thou wilt; 'twill do thee no good, but may do thee no harm.'
Ratsey raised his glass almost before it was filled. He sniffed the
liquor and smacked his lips. 'O rare milk of Ararat!' he said, 'it is
sweet and strong, and sets the heart at ease. And now get the
backgammon-board, John, and set it for us on the table.' So they fell to
the game, and I took a sly sip at the liquor, but nearly choked myself,
not being used to strong waters, and finding it heady and burning in the
throat. Neither man spoke, and there was no sound except the constant
rattle of the dice, and the rubbing of the pieces being moved across the
board. Now and then one of the players stopped to light his pipe, and at
the end of a game they scored their totals on the table with a bit of
chalk. So I watched them for an hour, knowing the game myself, and being
interested at seeing Elzevir's backgammon-board, which I had heard talked
of before.
It had formed part of the furniture of the Why Not? for generations of
landlords, and served perhaps to pass time for cavaliers of the Civil
Wars. All was of oak, black and polished, board, dice-boxes, and men, but
round the edge ran a Latin inscription inlaid in light wood, which I read
on that first evening, but did not understand till Mr. Glennie translated
it to me. I had cause to remember it afterwards, so I shall set it down
here in Latin for those who know that tongue, _Ita in vita ut in lusu
aleæ pessima jactura arte corrigenda est_, and in English as Mr. Glennie
translated it, _As in life, so in a game of hazard, skill will make
something of the worst of throws_. At last Elzevir looked up and spoke
to me, not unkindly, 'Lad, it is time for you to go home; men say that
Blackbeard walks on the first nights of winter, and some have met him
face to face betwixt this house and yours.' I saw he wanted to be rid of
me, so bade them both good night, and was off home, running all the way
thither, though not from any fear of Blackbeard, for Ratsey had often
told me that there was no chance of meeting him unless one passed the
churchyard by night.
Blackbeard was one of the Mohunes who had died a century back, and was
buried in the vault under the church, with others of his family, but
could not rest there, whether, as some said, because he was always
looking for a lost treasure, or as others, because of his exceeding
wickedness in life. If this last were the true reason, he must have been
bad indeed, for Mohunes have died before and since his day wicked enough
to bear anyone company in their vault or elsewhere. Men would have it
that on dark winter nights Blackbeard might be seen with an old-fashioned
lanthorn digging for treasure in the graveyard; and those who professed
to know said he was the tallest of men, with full black beard, coppery
face, and such evil eyes, that any who once met their gaze must die
within a year. However that might be, there were few in Moonfleet who
would not rather walk ten miles round than go near the churchyard after
dark; and once when Cracky Jones, a poor doited body, was found there
one summer morning, lying dead on the grass, it was thought that he had
met Blackbeard in the night.
Mr. Glennie, who knew more about such things than anyone else, told me
that Blackbeard was none other than a certain Colonel John Mohune,
deceased about one hundred years ago. He would have it that Colonel
Mohune, in the dreadful wars against King Charles the First, had deserted
the allegiance of his house and supported the cause of the rebels. So
being made Governor of Carisbrooke Castle for the Parliament, he became
there the King's jailer, but was false to his trust. For the King,
carrying constantly hidden about his person a great diamond which had
once been given him by his brother King of France, Mohune got wind of
this jewel, and promised that if it were given him he would wink at His
Majesty's escape. Then this wicked man, having taken the bribe, plays
traitor again, comes with a file of soldiers at the hour appointed for
the King's flight, finds His Majesty escaping through a window, has him
away to a stricter ward, and reports to the Parliament that the King's
escape is only prevented by Colonel Mohune's watchfulness. But how true,
as Mr. Glennie said, that we should not be envious against the ungodly,
against the man that walketh after evil counsels. Suspicion fell on
Colonel Mohune; he was removed from his Governorship, and came back to
his home at Moonfleet. There he lived in seclusion, despised by both
parties in the State, until he died, about the time of the happy
Restoration of King Charles the Second. But even after his death he could
not get rest; for men said that he had hid somewhere that treasure given
him to permit the King's escape, and that not daring to reclaim it, had
let the secret die with him, and so must needs come out of his grave to
try to get at it again. Mr. Glennie would never say whether he believed
the tale or not, pointing out that apparitions both of good and evil
spirits are related in Holy Scripture, but that the churchyard was an
unlikely spot for Colonel Mohune to seek his treasure in; for had it been
buried there, he would have had a hundred chances to have it up in his
lifetime. However this may be, though I was brave as a lion by day, and
used indeed to frequent the churchyard, because there was the widest
view of the sea to be obtained from it, yet no reward would have taken me
thither at night. Nor was I myself without some witness to the tale, for
having to walk to Ringstave for Dr. Hawkins on the night my aunt broke
her leg, I took the path along the down which overlooks the churchyard at
a mile off; and thence most certainly saw a light moving to and fro about
the church, where no honest man could be at two o'clock in the morning.