Moonfleet | Page 6

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.
CHAPTER 2
THE FLOODS
Then banks came down with ruin and rout, Then beaten spray flew
round about, Then all the mighty floods were out, And all the world
was in the sea --Jean Ingelow
On the third of November, a few days after this visit to the Why Not?,
the wind, which had been blowing from the south-west, began about

four in the afternoon to rise in sudden strong gusts. The rooks had been
pitch-falling all the morning, so we knew that bad weather was due;
and when we came out from the schooling that Mr. Glennie gave us in
the hall of the old almshouses, there were wisps of thatch, and even
stray tiles, flying from the roofs, and the children sang:
Blow wind, rise storm, Ship ashore before morn.
It is heathenish rhyme that has come down out of other and worse times;
for though I do not say but that a wreck on Moonfleet beach was
looked upon sometimes as little short of a godsend, yet I hope none of
us were so wicked as to wish a vessel to be wrecked that we might
share in the plunder. Indeed, I have known the men of Moonfleet risk
their own lives a hundred times to save those of shipwrecked mariners,
as when the Darius, East Indiaman, came ashore; nay, even poor
nameless corpses washed up were sure of Christian burial, or perhaps
of one of Master Ratsey's headstones to set forth sex and date, as may
be seen in the churchyard to this day.
Our village lies near the centre of Moonfleet Bay, a great bight twenty
miles across, and a death-trap to up-channel sailors in a south-westerly
gale. For with that wind blowing strong from south, if you cannot
double the Snout, you must most surely come ashore; and many a good
ship failing to round that point has beat up and down the bay all day,
but come to beach in the evening. And once on the beach, the sea has
little mercy, for the water is deep right in, and the waves curl over full
on the pebbles with a weight no timbers can withstand. Then if poor
fellows try to save themselves, there is a deadly under-tow or rush back
of the water, which sucks them off their legs, and carries them again
under the thundering waves. It is that back-suck of the pebbles that you
may hear for miles inland, even at Dorchester, on still nights long after
the winds that caused it have sunk, and which makes people turn in
their beds, and thank God they are not fighting with the sea on
Moonfleet beach.
But on this third of November there was no wreck, only such a wind as
I have never known before, and only once since. All night long the
tempest grew fiercer, and I think no one in Moonfleet went to bed; for

there was such a breaking of tiles and glass, such a banging of doon and
rattling of shutters, that no sleep was possible, and we were afraid
besides lest the chimneys should fall and crush us. The wind blew
fiercest about five in the morning, and then some ran up the street
calling out a new danger--that the sea was breaking over the beach, and
that all the place was like to be flooded. Some of