. At first I could not
tell what this new sound was, nor whence it came, and now it seemed a
little noise close by, and now a great noise in the distance. And then it
grew nearer and more defined, and in a moment I knew it was the sound of
voices talking. They must have been a long way off at first, and for a
minute, that seemed as an age, they came no nearer. What a minute was
that to me! Even now, so many years after, I can recall the anguish of
it, and how I stood with ears pricked up, eyes starting, and a clammy
sweat upon my face, waiting for those speakers to come. It was the
anguish of the rabbit at the end of his burrow, with the ferret's eyes
gleaming in the dark, and gun and lurcher waiting at the mouth of the
hole. I was caught in a trap, and knew beside that contraband-men had a
way of sealing prying eyes and stilling babbling tongues; and I
remembered poor Cracky Jones found dead in the churchyard, and how men
_said_ he had met Blackbeard in the night.

These were but the thoughts of a second, but the voices were nearer, and
I heard a dull thud far up the passage, and knew that a man had jumped
down from the churchyard into the hole. So I took a last stare round,
agonizing to see if there was any way of escape; but the stone walls and
roof were solid enough to crush me, and the stack of casks too closely
packed to hide more than a rat. There was a man speaking now from the
bottom of the hole to others in the churchyard, and then my eyes were led
as by a loadstone to a great wooden coffin that lay by itself on the top
shelf, a full six feet from the ground. When I saw the coffin I knew that
I was respited, for, as I judged, there was space between it and the wall
behind enough to contain my little carcass; and in a second I had put out
the candle, scrambled up the shelves, half-stunned my senses with dashing
my head against the roof, and squeezed my body betwixt wall and coffin.
There I lay on one side with a thin and rotten plank between the dead man
and me, dazed with the blow to my head, and breathing hard; while the
glow of torches as they came down the passage reddened and flickered on
the roof above.

CHAPTER 4

IN THE VAULT

Let us hob and nob with Death--_Tennyson_

Though nothing of the vault except the roof was visible from where I
lay, and so I could not see these visitors, yet I heard every word
spoken, and soon made out one voice as being Master Ratsey's. This
discovery gave me no