Moonfleet | Page 3

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