Moonfleet

MOONFLEET

J. Meade Falkner

Table of Contents

Title Page

History of Collins

Life & Times

Dedication

Epigraph

Chapter 1 In Moonfleet Village

Chapter 2 The Floods

Chapter 3 A Discovery

Chapter 4 In the Vault

Chapter 5 The Rescue

Chapter 6 An Assault

Chapter 7 An Auction

Chapter 8 The Landing

Chapter 9 A Judgement

Chapter 10 The Escape

Chapter 11 The Sea-Cave

Chapter 12 A Funeral

Chapter 13 An Interview

Chapter 14 The Well-House

Chapter 15 The Well

Chapter 16 The Jewel

Chapter 17 At Ymeguen

Chapter 18 In the Bay

Chapter 19 On the Beach

Classic Literature: Words and Phrases adapted from the Collins English Dictionary

Copyright

About the Publisher

History of Collins

In 1819, millworker William Collins from Glasgow, Scotland, set up a company for printing and publishing pamphlets, sermons, hymn books and prayer books. That company was Collins and was to mark the birth of HarperCollins Publishers as we know it today. The long tradition of Collins dictionary publishing can be traced back to the first dictionary William published in 1824, Greek and English Lexicon. Indeed, from 1840 onwards, he began to produce illustrated dictionaries and even obtained a licence to print and publish the Bible.

Soon after, William published the first Collins novel, Ready Reckoner, however it was the time of the Long Depression, where harvests were poor, prices were high, potato crops had failed and violence was erupting in Europe. As a result, many factories across the country were forced to close down and William chose to retire in 1846, partly due to the hardships he was facing.

Aged 30, William’s son, William II took over the business. A keen humanitarian with a warm heart and a generous spirit, William II was truly ‘Victorian’ in his outlook. He introduced new, up-to-date steam presses and published affordable editions of Shakespeare’s works and Pilgrim’s Progress, making them available to the masses for the first time. A new demand for educational books meant that success came with the publication of travel books, scientific books, encyclopaedias and dictionaries. This demand to be educated led to the later publication of atlases and Collins also held the monopoly on scripture writing at the time.

In the 1860s Collins began to expand and diversify and the idea of ‘books for the millions’ was developed. Affordable editions of classical literature were published and in 1903 Collins introduced 10 titles in their Collins Handy Illustrated Pocket Novels. These proved so popular that a few years later this had increased to an output of 50 volumes, selling nearly half a million in their year of publication. In the same year, The Everyman’s Library was also instituted, with the idea of publishing an affordable library of the most important classical works, biographies, religious and philosophical treatments, plays, poems, travel and adventure. This series eclipsed all competition at the time and the introduction of paperback books in the 1950s helped to open that market and marked a high point in the industry.

HarperCollins is and has always been a champion of the classics and the current Collins Classics series follows in this tradition – publishing classical literature that is affordable and available to all. Beautifully packaged, highly collectible and intended to be reread and enjoyed at every opportunity.

Life & Times

Piracy, Smuggling and Antiheroes

John Mead Falkner, the author of Moonfleet, owes a lot to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, published 15 years earlier, in 1883. Stevenson’s story is about pirates in search of gold on the high seas, while Falkner’s is a tale of smugglers striving to make their fortune from contraband on the English south coast. The two books share a similar theme of antiheroes doing their best to earn a living as outlaws, at a time when the stakes were high and capture resulted in capital punishment. Additionally, both novels are essentially children’s adventure stories.

Daphne du Maurier wrote a similarly themed novel in 1936, titled Jamaica Inn, based in Cornwall. In her story, the protagonists are wreckers. They make a living stealing the cargoes of ships that run aground on the English coast, after luring passing ships onto the rocks using lamps to imitate lighthouses and then killing any surviving seamen to avoid being identified. The first novel of Samual Rutherford Crocket, entitled The Raiders (1894), has a similar trope and is based in Galloway, Scotland. There is also The Smuggler (1845), by English novelist George Payne Rainsford James. Prosper Mérimée’s novel of the same year, Carmen, is also about smuggling; this time set in Spain. It was famously turned into an opera by the French composer Georges Bizet and librettists Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy.

As well as such literary influences, Falkner would have been inspired by true stories of smuggling along the English south coast. The motive behind smuggling was to avoid the revenue collected by the government, which was very high on certain goods. A profit could be made by purchasing goods in France and selling them on in England. The goods in question included tobacco, tea and various spirits, such as rum, gin and brandy. The revenue mark-up could be as much as six times the source cost, which is why smuggling was such a lucrative venture and punishment was severe.

Smuggling, wrecking and piracy were big business in places where the coast was difficult to patrol, enabling the perpetrators to go about their activities relatively risk free. The south coast was suitably rugged in places and faced France, making it useful for these clandestine careers. Smuggling became a problem as soon as governments began charging import duties. In England, this happened during the reign of King Edward I, in 1275. A customs-collection system was established and immediately people saw the fiscal benefit of smuggling those goods that were taxed the most.

Smuggling became part of English culture, not least because the authorities were never able to get the upper hand. The smugglers themselves were perceived as rather daring and brave ‘Robin Hood’ characters, because they were able to provide goods to the poor at reduced prices. Although they were roguish types, they were often protected by the general public, making it almost impossible for the government to deal with them. Some smugglers entered into English folklore, such was their infamy.

After 500 years, things reached a head when a battle was fought between a gang of smugglers and members of customs and excise at the town of Christchurch, on the Dorset coast. The Battle of Mudeford (1784), as it became known, was a conflict that saw the death of one of the customs officers. A smuggler named George Coombes was subsequently tried and hanged for murder. His body was chained up outside the local ale house, the Haven Inn, as a warning about the consequences of smuggling.

The Battle of Mudeford captured the public imagination, causing smuggling to be seen as both romantic and legendary. By the time Falkner was writing his novel, smuggling was in decline, which only served to mythologize it further. The smuggler had become an antihero in industrial Victorian England, not least because smuggling harked back to a pre-industrial era in which people were imagined to have lived with less social oppression. That Victorian longing for psychological freedom generated a ready market for stories about characters living their lives to the full. That is to say, their choices may have been high risk and illegal, but that also made for excitement and spontaneity.

About the Author

Falkner was something of a polymath and Renaissance man, and it would be fair to say that he dabbled in writing, rather than seeing it as a his calling or career. He was a rather successful businessman in later life and had formerly been a school master and private tutor. By 1915, during World War I, he had become chairman of Armstrong Whitworth, a leading armaments manufacturer. Moonfleet was the second of his three novels spanning an eight-year period, after which business work dominated his life. He did apparently write the greater part of a fourth novel, but he accidently left the draft on a train and never bothered with a rewrite. Falkner made several visits to the city of Bath, in southwest England, during his old age for the purpose of treating his ailments. He was so enamoured of the place that he wrote a book about Bath in 1918.

Falkner was a very tall man. At six foot nine inches, he had an imposing presence, which undoubtedly served him well in business. He was also the eldest son in his family and had a keen intellect, so he possessed an air of confidence that made him expect success at whatever he chose to pursue. He earned enough money in his early adulthood to put his four siblings through higher education. His sister, Anne Louise Falkner, became a talented and successful post-impressionist painter.

Falkner enjoyed a lasting marriage, but he and his wife, Evelyn, had no children. His own parents had died young, leaving the five children to fend for themselves, and it may have been the fear of doing the same to any potential offspring that made him reluctant to reproduce. Falkner was very Victorian and interested in academic pastimes. He was also a devout Christian and daily worshipper at Durham Cathedral. His house contained a vast library of ecclesiastical books, which were the product of his fascination with the church and church architecture.

Moonfleet

Moonfleet begins with the son of the village inn having recently lost his life during a skirmish between a smuggling boat and the authorities. This establishes the basic framework for the story and creates a vacancy for a new smuggler to enter the scene – the main character, John Trenchard. There is added tension thrown in by the attraction between John and the magistrate’s daughter Grace, as the magistrate is the sworn enemy of the smugglers and the one who killed the landlord’s son.

As the story unfolds, John finds himself in deeper and deeper trouble with his smuggling activities until he is eventually caught and sentenced to transportation to the Dutch colony of Batavia. However, he escapes due to a shipwreck and returns to Moonfleet. Upon meeting Grace once more, he repents for his wrongdoings by donating a windfall of money to the village. He marries Grace and they live on happily in Moonfleet.

Falkner is rather clever in the way that he weaves the plot. He allows John to live the life of adventure and danger associated with smuggling, but he then punishes him and has him go through a transformation so that he is able to marry Grace and win the hearts of the villagers. Thus, John is very much the reformed criminal, whom the villagers admire for having dared to take on the authorities and then paid his penance. In other words, Falkner conveys the message that smuggling is rather glamorous and daredevillish when all is said and done, while still managing to tell a captivating tale.

TO ALL MOHUNES OF FLEET AND MOONFLEET IN AGRO DORCESTRENSI LIVING OR DEAD

We thought there was no more behind

But such a day tomorrow as today

And to be a boy eternal.

–Shakespeare

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.