ll these things together and
casting them up, I thought that Elzevir and Ratsey knew as much as any
about this hiding-place. These reflections gave me more courage, for I
considered that the tales of Blackbeard walking or digging among the
graves had been set afloat to keep those that were not wanted from the
place, and guessed now that when I saw the light moving in the churchyard
that night I went to fetch Dr. Hawkins, it was no corpse-candle, but a
lantern of smugglers running a cargo. Then, having settled these
important matters, I began to turn over in my mind how to get at the
treasure; and herein was much cast down, for in this place was neither
casket nor diamond, but only coffins and double-Hollands. So it was that,
having no better plan, I set to work to see whether I could learn
anything from the coffins themselves; but with little success, for the
lead coffins had no names upon them, and on such of the wooden coffins as
bore plates I found the writing to be Latin, and so rusted over that I
could make nothing of it.

Soon I wished I had not come at all, considering that the diamond had
vanished into air, and it was a sad thing to be cabined with so many dead
men. It moved me, too, to see pieces of banners and funeral shields, and
even shreds of wreaths that dear hearts had put there a century ago, now
all ruined and rotten--some still clinging, water-sodden, to the coffins,
and some trampled in the sand of the floor. I had spent some time in this
bootless search, and was resolved to give up further inquiry and foot it
home, when the clock in the tower struck midnight. Surely never was
ghostly hour sounded in more ghostly place. Moonfleet peal was known over
half the county, and the finest part of it was the clock bell. 'Twas said
that in times past (when, perhaps, the chimes were rung more often than
now) the voice of this bell had led safe home boats that were lost in the
fog; and this night its clangour, mellow and profound, reached even to
the vault. Bim-bom it went, bim-bom, twelve heavy thuds that shook the
walls, twelve resonant echoes that followed, and then a purring and
vibration of the air, so that the ear could not tell when it ended.

I was wrought up, perhaps, by the strangeness of the hour and place, and
my hearing quicker than at other times, but before the tremor of the bell
was quite passed away I knew there was some other sound in the air, and
that the awful stillness of the vault was broken