Page:Moonfleet - John Meade Falkner.pdf/66

 Then Elzevir cried out angrily, "Silence. Are you mad, or has the liquor mastered you? Are you Revenue men that you dare shout and roister? or contrabandiers with the lugger in the offing, and your life in your hand? You make noise enough to wake folk in Moonfleet from their beds."

"Tut, man," retorted Ratsey testily, and if they waked they would but pull the blankets tight about their ears, and say 'twas Blackbeard piping his crew of lost Mohunes to help him dig for treasure."

Yet for all that 'twas plain that Block ruled the roost, for there was silence for a minute, and then one said, "Ay, Master Elzevir is right. Let us away; the night is far spent, and we have nothing but the sweeps to take the lugger out of sight by dawn."

So the meeting broke up, and the torchlight grew dimmer, and died away as it had come in a red flicker on the roof, and the footsteps sounded fainter as they went up the passage, until the vault was left to the dead men and me. Yet for a very long time—it seemed hours—after all had gone I could hear a murmur of distant voices, and knew that some were talking at the end of the passage, and perhaps considering how the landslip might best be restored. So while I heard them thus conversing I dared not descend from my perch, lest some one might turn back to the vault, though I was glad enough to sit up, and ease my aching back and limbs. Yet in the awful blackness of the place even the echo of these human voices seemed a kindly and blessed thing, and a certain shrinking loneliness fell on me when they ceased at last and all was silent. Then I resolved I would be off at once, and get back to the moonlight bed that I had left