Moonfleet, John Meade Falkner [books for students to read .TXT] 📗

three or four rousing texts such as spectres fear more than a burned child does the fire. I will learn them all to thee some day, but for the moment take this Latin which I got by heart: "Abite a me in ignem etenum qui paratus est diabolo at angelis ejus." Englished it means: "Depart from me into eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels," but hath at least double that power in Latin. So get that after me by heart, and use it freely if thou art led to think that there are evil presences near, and in such lonely places as this cave.' I humoured him by doing as he desired; and that the rather because I hoped his thoughts would thus be turned away from the writing; but as soon as I had the spell by rote he turned back to the parchment, saying, 'He was but a poor divine who wrote this, for beside choosing ill-fitting verses, he cannot even give right numbers to them. For see here, "The days of our age are three-score years and ten; and though men be so strong that they come to four-score years, yet is their strength then but labour and sorrow, so soon passeth it away and we are gone", and he writes Psalm 90,21. Now I have said that Psalm with parson verse and verse about for every sleeper we have laid to rest in churchyard mould for thirty years; and know it hath not twenty verses in it, all told, and this same verse is the clerk's verse and cometh tenth, and yet he calls it twenty-first. I wish I had here a Common Prayer, and I would prove my words.'

He stopped and flung me back the parchment scornfully; but I folded it and slipped it in my pocket, brooding all the while over a strange thought that his last words had brought to me. Nor did I tell him that I had by me my aunt's prayer-book, wishing to examine for myself more closely whether he was right, after he should have gone.

'I must be away,' he said at last, 'though loath to leave this good fire and liquor. I would fain wait till Elzevir was back, and fainer till this gale was spent, but it may not be; the nights are short, and I must be out of Purbeck before sunrise. So tell Block what I say, that he and thou must flit; and pass the flask, for I have fifteen miles to walk against the wind, and must keep off these midnight chills.'

He drank again, and then rose to his feet, shaking himself like a dog; and walking briskly across the cave twice or thrice to make sure, as I thought, that the Ararat milk had not confused his steps. Then he shook my hand warmly, and disappeared in the deep shadow of the passage-mouth.

The wind was blowing more fitfully than before, and there was some sign of a lull between the gusts. I stood at the opening of the passage, and listened till the echo of Ratsey's footsteps died away, and then returning to the corner, flung more wood on the fire, and lit the candle. After that I took out again the parchment, and also my aunt's red prayer-book, and sat down to study them. First I looked out in the book that text about the 'days of our life', and found that it was indeed in the ninetieth Psalm, but the tenth verse, just as Ratsey said, and not the twenty-first as it was writ on the parchment. And then I took the second text, and here again the Psalm was given correct, but the verse was two, and not six, as my scribe had it. It was just the same with the other three—the number of the Psalm was right but the verse wrong. So here was a discovery, for all was painfully written smooth and clean without a blot, and yet in every verse an error. But if the second number did not stand for the verse, what else should it mean? I had scarce formed the question to myself before I had the answer, and knew that it must be the number of the word chosen in each text to make a secret meaning. I was in as great a fever and excitement now as when I found the locket in the Mohune vault, and could scarce count with trembling fingers as far as twenty-one, in the first verse, for hurry and amaze. It was 'fourscore' that the number fell on in the first text, 'feet' in the second, 'deep' in the third, 'well' in the fourth, 'north' in the fifth.

Fourscore—feet—deep—well—north.

There was the cipher read, and what an easy trick! and yet I had not lighted on it all this while, nor ever should have, but for Sexton Ratsey and his burial verse. It was a cunning plan of Blackbeard; but other folk were quite as cunning as he, and here was all his treasure at our feet. I chuckled over that to myself, rubbing my hands, and read it through again:

Fourscore—feet—deep—well—north.

'Twas all so simple, and the word in the fourth verse 'well' and not 'vale' or 'pool' as I had stuck at so often in trying to unriddle it. How was it I had not guessed as much before? and here was something to tell Elzevir when he came back, that the clue was found to the cipher, and the secret out. I would not reveal it all at once, but tease him by making him guess, and at last tell him everything, and we would set to work at once to make ourselves rich men. And then I thought once more of Grace, and how the laugh would be on my side now, for all Master Ratsey's banter about her being rich and me being poor!

Fourscore—feet—deep—well—north.

I read it again, and somehow it was this time a little less clear, and I fell to thinking what it was exactly that I should tell Elzevir, and how we were to get to work to find the treasure. 'Twas hid in a well—that was plain enough, but in what well?—and what did 'north' mean? Was it the north well, or to north of the well—or, was it fourscore feet north of the deep well? I stared at the verses as if the ink would change colour and show some other sense, and then a veil seemed drawn across the writing, and the meaning to slip away, and be as far as ever from my grasp. Fourscore—feet—deep—well—north: and by degrees exulting gladness gave way to bewilderment and disquiet of spirit, and in the gusts of wind I heard Blackbeard himself laughing and mocking me for thinking I had found his treasure. Still I read and re-read it, juggling with the words and turning them about to squeeze new meaning from them.

'Fourscore feet deep in the north well,'—'fourscore feet deep in the well to north'—'fourscore feet north of the deep well,'—so the words went round and round in my head, till I was tired and giddy, and fell unawares asleep.

It was daylight when I awoke, and the wind had fallen, though I could still hear the thunder of the swell against the rock-face down below. The fire was yet burning, and by it sat Elzevir, cooking something in the pot. He looked fresh and keen, like a man risen from a long night's sleep, rather than one who had spent the hours of darkness in struggling against a gale, and must afterwards remain watching because, forsooth, the sentinel sleeps.

He spoke as soon as he saw that I was awake, laughing and saying: 'How goes the night, Watchman? This is the second time that I have caught thee napping, and didst sleep so sound it might have taken a cold pistol's lips against thy forehead to awake thee.'

I was too full of my story even to beg his pardon, but began at once to tell him what had happened; and how, by following the hint that Ratsey dropped, I had made out, as I thought, a secret meaning in these verses. Elzevir heard me patiently, and with more show of interest towards the end; and then took the parchment in his hands, reading it carefully, and checking the errors of numbering by the help of the red prayer-book.

'I believe thou art right,' he said at length; 'for why should the figures all be false if there is no hidden trickery in it? If't had been one or two were wrong, I would have said some priest had copied them in error; for priests are thriftless folk, and had as lief set a thing down wrong as right; but with all wrong there is no room for chance. So if he means it, let us see what 'tis he means. First he says 'tis in a well. But what well? and the depth he gives of fourscore feet is over-deep for any well near Moonfleet.'

I was for saying it must be the well at the Manor House, but before the words left my mouth, remembered there was no well at the manor at all, for the house was watered by a runnel brook that broke out from the woods above, and jumping down from stone to stone ran through the manor gardens, and emptied itself into the Fleet below.

'And now I come to think on it,' Elzevir went on, ''tis more likely that the well he speaks of was not in these parts at all. For see here, this Blackbeard was a spendthrift, squandering all he had, and would most surely have squandered the jewel too, could he have laid his hands on it. And yet 'tis said he did not, therefore I think he must have stowed it safe in some place where afterwards he could not get at it. For if't had been near Moonfleet, he would have had it up a hundred times. But thou hast often talked of Blackbeard and his end with Parson Glennie; so speak up, lad, and let us hear all that thou know'st of these tales. Maybe 'twill help us to come to some judgement.'

So I told him all that Mr. Glennie had told me, how that Colonel John Mohune, whom men called Blackbeard, was a wastrel from his youth, and squandered all his substance in riotous living. Thus being at his last turn, he changed from royalist to rebel, and was set to guard the king in the castle of Carisbrooke. But there he stooped to a bribe, and took from his royal prisoner a splendid diamond of the crown to let him go; then, with the jewel in his pocket, turned traitor again, and showed a file of soldiers into the room where the king was stuck between the window bars, escaping. But no one trusted Blackbeard after that, and so he lost his post, and came back in his age, a broken man, to Moonfleet. There he rusted out his life, but when he neared his end was filled with fear, and sent for a clergyman to give him consolation. And 'twas at the parson's instance that he made a will, and bequeathed the diamond, which was the only thing he had left, to the Mohune almshouses at Moonfleet. These were the very houses that he had robbed and let go to ruin, and they never benefited by his testament, for when it was opened there was the bequest plain enough, but not a word to say where was the jewel. Some said that it was all a mockery, and that Blackbeard never had the jewel; others that the jewel was in his hand when he died, but carried off by some that stood by. But most thought, and handed down the tale, that being taken suddenly, he died before he could reveal the safe place of the jewel; and that in his last throes he struggled hard to speak as if he had some secret to unburden.

All this I told Elzevir, and he listened close as though some of it was new to him. When I was speaking of Blackbeard being at Carisbrooke, he made a little quick move as though to speak, but did not, waiting till I had finished the tale. Then he broke out with: 'John, the diamond is yet at Carisbrooke. I wonder I had not thought of Carisbrooke before you spoke; and there he can get fourscore feet, and twice and thrice fourscore, if he list, and none to stop him. 'Tis Carisbrooke. I have heard of that well from childhood, and once saw it when a boy. It is dug in the Castle Keep, and goes down fifty fathoms or