Moonfleet John Meade Falkner (children's ebooks free online TXT) 📖

since you may know, by my telling it, that all went well? for what man would sit down to write a history that ended in his own discomfiture? All that great wealth came to my hands, and if I do not say how great it was, ’tis that I may not wake envy, for it was far more than ever I could have thought. And of that money I never touched penny piece, having learnt a bitter lesson in the past, but laid it out in good works, with Mr. Glennie and Grace to help me. First, we rebuilt and enlarged the almshouses beyond all that Colonel John Mohune could ever think of, and so established them as to be a haven forever for all worn-out sailors of that coast. Next, we sought the guidance of the Brethren of the Trinity, and built a lighthouse on the Snout, to be a Channel beacon for seagoing ships, as Maskew’s match had been a light for our fishing-boats in the past. Lastly, we beautified the church, turning out the cumbrous seats of oak, and neatly pewing it with deal and baize, that made it most commodious to sit in of the Sabbath. There was also much old glass which we removed, and reglazed all the windows tight against the wind, so that what with a high pulpit, reading-desk, and seat for Master Clerk and new Commandment boards each side of the Holy Table, there was not a church could vie with ours in the countryside. But that great vault below it, with its memories, was set in order, and then safely walled up, and after that nothing was more ever heard of Blackbeard and his lost Mohunes. And as for the landers, I cannot say where they went; and if a cargo is still run of a dark night upon the beach, I know nothing of it, being both Lord of the Manor and Justice of the Peace.

The village, too, renewed itself with the new almshouses and church. There were old houses rebuilt and fresh ones reared, and all are ours, except the Why Not? which still remains the Duchy Inn. And that was let again, and men left the Choughs at Ringstave and came back to their old haunt, and any shipwrecked or travel-worn sailor found board and welcome within its doors.

And of the Mohune Hospital⁠—for that was what the alms-houses were now called⁠—Master Glennie was first warden, with fair rooms and a full library, and Master Ratsey head of the Bedesmen. There they spent happier days, till they were gathered in the fullness of their years; and sleep on the sunny side of the church, within sound of the sea, by that great buttress where I once found Master Ratsey listening with his ear to ground. And close beside them lies Elzevir Block, most faithful and most loved by me, with a text on his tombstone: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend,” and some of Mr. Glennie’s verses.

And of ourselves let me speak last. The Manor House is a stately home again, with trim lawns and terraced balustrades, where we can sit and see the thin blue smoke hang above the village on summer evenings. And in the Manor Woods my wife and I have seen a little Grace and a little John and little Elzevir, our firstborn, play; and now our daughter is grown up, fair to us as the polished corners of the Temple, and our sons are gone out to serve King George on sea and land. But as for us, for Grace and me, we never leave this our happy Moonfleet, being well content to see the dawn tipping the long cliff-line with gold, and the night walking in dew across the meadows; to watch the spring clothe the beech boughs with green, or the figs ripen on the southern wall: while behind all, is spread as a curtain the eternal sea, ever the same and ever changing. Yet I love to see it best when it is lashed to madness in the autumn gale, and to hear the grinding roar and churn of the pebbles like a great organ playing all the night. ’Tis then I turn in bed and thank God, more from the heart, perhaps, than, any other living man, that I am not fighting for my life on Moonfleet Beach. And more than once I have stood rope in hand in that same awful place, and tried to save a struggling wretch; but never saw one come through the surf alive, in such a night as he saved me.

Colophon

Moonfleet
was published in 1898 by
John Meade Falkner.

This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Michael Atkinson,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2004 by
Riikka Talonpoika, Mary Meehan, and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans available at the
HathiTrust Digital Library.

The cover page is adapted from
A Shipwreck on the Coast of Norway,
a painting completed in 1832 by
Johan Christian Dahl.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.

The first edition of this ebook was released on
December 27, 2018, 9:42 p.m.
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