partition between me and danger. But to get out of the niche
was harder than to get in; for now that I had a candle to light me, I saw
that the coffin, though sound enough to outer view, was wormed through
and through, and little better than a rotten shell. So it was that I had
some ado to get over it, not daring either to kneel upon it or to bring
much weight to bear with my hand, lest it should go through. And now
having got safely across, I sat for an instant on that narrow ledge of
the stone shelf which projected beyond the coffin on the vault side, and
made ready to jump forward on to the floor below. And how it happened I
know not, but there I lost my balance, and as I slipped the candle flew
out of my grasp. Then I clutched at the coffin to save myself, but my
hand went clean through it, and so I came to the ground in a cloud of
dust and splinters; having only got hold of a wisp of seaweed, or a
handful of those draggled funeral trappings which were strewn about this
place. The floor of the vault was sandy; and so, though I fell crookedly,
I took but little harm beyond a shaking; and soon, pulling myself
together, set to strike my flint and blow the match into a flame to
search for the fallen candle. Yet all the time I kept in my fingers this
handful of light stuff; and when the flame burnt up again I held the
thing against the light, and saw that it was no wisp of seaweed, but
something black and wiry. For a moment, I could not gather what I had
hold of, but then gave a start that nearly sent the candle out, and
perhaps a cry, and let it drop as if it were red-hot iron, for I knew
that it was a man's beard.

Now when I saw that, I felt a sort of throttling fright, as though one
had caught hold of my heartstrings; and so many and such strange thoughts
rose in me, that the blood went pounding round and round in my head, as
it did once afterwards when I was fighting with the sea and near drowned.
Surely to have in hand the beard of any dead man in any place was bad
enough, but worse a thousand times in such a place as this, and to know
on whose face it had grown. For, almost before I fully saw what it was, I
knew it was that black beard which had given Colonel John Mohune his
nickname, and this was his great coffin I had hid behind.

I had lain, therefore, all that time, cheek by jowl with Blackbeard
himself, with only a thin shell of tinder wood to keep him from me, and
now had thrust my hand into his coffin and