ked scores of casks,
kegs, and runlets, from a storage butt that might hold thirty gallons
down to a breaker that held only one. They were marked all of them in
white paint on the end with figures and letters, that doubtless set forth
the quality to those that understood. Here indeed was a discovery, and
instead of picking up at the end of the passage a little brass or silver
casket, which had only to be opened to show Blackbeard's diamond gleaming
inside, I had stumbled on the Mohune's vault, and found it to be nothing
but a cellar of gentlemen of the contraband, for surely good liquor would
never be stored in so shy a place if it ever had paid the excise.

As I walked round this stack of casks my foot struck sharply on the edge
of a butt, which must have been near empty, and straightway came from it
the same hollow, booming sound (only fainter) which had so frightened us
in church that Sunday morning. So it was the casks, and not the coffins,
that had been knocking one against another; and I was pleased with
myself, remembering how I had reasoned that coffin-wood could never give
that booming sound.

It was plain enough that the whole place had been under water: the floor
was still muddy, and the green and sweating walls showed the flood-mark
within two feet of the roof; there was a wisp or two of fine seaweed that
had somehow got in, and a small crab was still alive and scuttled across
the corner, yet the coffins were but little disturbed. They lay on the
shelves in rows, one above the other, and numbered twenty-three in all:
most were in lead, and so could never float, but of those in wood some
were turned slantways in their niches, and one had floated right away and
been left on the floor upside down in a corner when the waters went back.

First I fell to wondering as to whose cellar this was, and how so much
liquor could have been brought in with secrecy; and how it was I had
never seen anything of the contraband-men, though it was clear that they
had made this flat tomb the entrance to their storehouse, as I had made
it my seat. And then I remembered how Ratsey had tried to scare me with
talk of Blackbeard; and how Elzevir, who had never been seen at church
before, was there the Sunday of the noises; and how he had looked ill at
ease whenever the noise came, though he was bold as a lion; and how I had
tripped upon him and Ratsey in the churchyard; and how Master Ratsey lay
with his ear to the wall: and putting a