But that same day came Sam Tewkesbury to the Why Not? about nightfall, and begged a glass of rum, being, as he said, ‘all of a shake’, and telling a tale of how he passed the churchyard wall on his return from work, and in the dusk heard screams and wailing voices, and knew ’twas Blackbeard piping his lost Mohunes to hunt for treasure.  So, though he saw nothing, he turned tail and never stopped running till he stood at the inn door.  Then, forthwith, Elzevir leaves Sam to drink at the Why Not? alone, and himself sets off running up the street to call for Master Ratsey; and they two make straight across the sea-meadows in the dark.

’For as soon as I heard Tewkesbury tell of screams and wailings in the air, and no one to be seen,’ said Elzevir, ’I guessed that some poor soul had got shut in the vault, and was there crying for his life.  And to this I was not guided by mother wit, but by a surer and a sadder token.  Thou wilt have heard how thirteen years ago a daft body we called Cracky Jones was found one morning in the churchyard dead.  He was gone missing for a week before, and twice within that week I had sat through the night upon the hill behind the church, watching to warn the lugger with a flare she could not put in for the surf upon the beach.  And on those nights, the air being still though a heavy swell was running, I heard thrice or more a throttled scream come shivering across the meadows from the graveyard.  Yet beyond turning my blood cold for a moment, it gave me little trouble, for evil tales have hung about the church; and though I did not set much store by the old yarns of Blackbeard piping up his crew, yet I thought strange things might well go on among the graves at night.  And so I never budged, nor stirred hand or foot to save a fellow-creature in his agony.

’But when the surf fell enough for the boats to get ashore, and Greening held a lantern for me to jump down into the passage, after we had got the side out of the tomb, the first thing the light fell on at the bottom was a white face turned skyward.  I have not forgot that, lad, for ’twas Cracky Jones lay there, with his face thin and shrunk, yet all the doited look gone out of it.  We tried to force some brandy in his mouth, but he was stark and dead; with knees drawn up towards his head, so stiff we had to lift him doubled as he was, and lay him by the churchyard wall for some of us to find next day.  We never knew how he got there, but guessed that he had hung about the landers some night when they ran a cargo, and slipped in when the watchman’s back was turned.  Thus when Sam Tewkesbury spoke of screams and waitings, and no one to be seen, I knew what ’twas, but never guessed who might be shut in there, not knowing thou wert gone amissing.  So ran to Ratsey to get his help to slip the side stone off, for by myself I cannot stir it now, though once I did when I was younger; and from him learned that thou wert lost, and knew whom we should find before we got there.’