Part 8 (2/2)

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 ain:

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 Hoas it I had not guessed asto 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 hi, and ould set to work at once to ht once h would be onrich andpoor!

Fourscore-feet-deep-well-north

I read it again, and somehoas this ti what it was exactly that I should tell Elzevir, and hoere to get to work to find the treasure 'Twas hid in a well-that was plain enough, but in ell?-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 see to slip away, and be as far as ever frorees exulting gladness gave way to bewilderusts of wind I heard Blackbeard hi I had found his treasure Still I read and re-read it, juggling with the words and turning the 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 iddy, 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 so in the pot He looked fresh and keen, like a ht's sleep, rather than one who had spent the hours of darkness in struggling against a gale, andbecause, forsooth, the sentinel sleeps

He spoke as soon as he saw that I ake, laughing and saying: 'How goes the night, Watch, and didst sleep so sound it ainst thy forehead to awake thee'

I was too full of an at once to tell hi the hint that Ratsey dropped, I hadin these verses Elzevir heard me patiently, and with more show of interest towards the end; and then took the parch the errors of nu 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 trong, I would have said some priest had copied them in error; for priests are thriftless folk, and had as lief set a thing dorong 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 ell? 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 atered by a runnel brook that broke out fro down froardens, 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 Blackboard 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 soet 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 coement'

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 fro in the castle of Carisbrooke But there he stooped to a bribe, and took from his royal prisoner a splendid diao; then, with the jewel in his pocket, turned traitor again, and showed a file of soldiers into the roo But no one trusted Blackbeard after that, and so he lost his post, and cae, 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 clergyive him consolation And 'twas at the parson's instance that he made a will, and bequeathed the dia 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 testah, 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 jeas in his hand when he died, but carried off by soht, 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 so of Blackbeard being at Carisbrooke, he h to speak, but did not, waiting till I had finished the tale Then he broke out with: 'John, the diaht 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 fro in the Castle Keep, and goes down fifty fathoms or more into the bowels of the chalk below It is so deep no man can draw the buckets on a winch, but they must have an ass inside a tread-wheel to hoist them up Nohy this Colonel John Mohune, e call Blackbeard, should have chosen a well at all to hide his jewel in, I cannot say; but given he chose a well, 'twas odds he would choose Carisbrooke 'Tis a known place, and I have heard that people come as far as from London to see the castle and this well'

He spoke quick and with more fire than I had known hiht It seeh that if Blackbeard was to hide the diamond in a well, it would be in the well of that very castle where he had earned it so evilly

'When he says the ”well north”,' continued Elzevir, ”tis clear he hty feet in the well-side below that point will lie the treasure I fixed yesterday with the Bonaventure's ht, if the sea be sht is their hour, and I said eight days on, to give thy leg a ith to strengthen I thought to make for St Malo, and leave thee at the eperon d'Or with old Chauvelais, where thou couldst learn to patter French until these evil times have blown by But now, if thou art set to hunt this treasure up, and hast a mind to run thy head into a noose; why, I am not so old but that I too can play the fool, and ill let St Malo be, and make for Carisbrooke I know the castle; it is not two miles distant frole, which is an inn addicted to the contraband The king's writ runs but laht, and if ear some other kit than this, maybe we shall find Newport as safe as St Malo'

This was just what I wanted, and so we settled there and then that ould get the Bonaventure to land us in the Isle of Wight instead of at St Malo Since man first walked upon this earth, a tale of buried treasure must have had a master-power to stir his blood, and h he did not show it, was ht, at heart; and we chafed in our cave prison, and those eight days earily enough Yet 'twas not tier; and like a hich I saw once in a cage at Dorchester Fair, I spent hours in our in ain, but in spite of what he said, ot s he needed It was aftera long whip in one hand, and in the other a bundle which held clothes to mask us in the next scene There was a carter's smock for him, white and quilted over with needlework, such as carters wear on the Down fars all to match We tried them on, and were for all the world carter and carter's boy; and I laughed long to see Elzevir stand there and practise how to crack his whip and cry 'Who-ho' as carters do to horses And for all he was so grave, there was a smile on his face too, and he showed me how to twist a wisp of straw out of the bed to bind above s He had cut off his beard, and yet lost nothing of his looks; for his jaw and deep chin showed fir walnut leaves and twigs, and tanned my hands and face with it a ruddy brown, so that I looked a different lad

CHAPTER 13

AN INTERVIEW

No huo or come, No face looked forth from shut or open casen of home From parapet to basement-Hood And so the days went on, until there cahts more before ere to leave our cave Now I have said that the delay chafed us, because ere i else that vexed me and made me more unquiet with every day that passed And this was that I had resolved to see Grace before I left these parts, and yet knew not how to tell it to Elzevir But on this evening, seeing the tirown so short, I knew that I must speak or droplike the sea-birds on the ledge outside our cave, looking towards St Alban's Head and watching the last glow of sunset The evening vapours began to sweep down Channel, and Elzevir shrugged his shoulders 'The night turns chill,' he said, and got up to go back to the cave So then I thoughthim inside said:

'Dear Master Elzevir, you have watched over me all this while and tended me kinder than any father could his son; and 'tis to you I owe ain Yet I aive me leave to climb the shaft and walk abroad It is twobut stone walls, and I would gladly tread once more upon the Down'