John Meade Falkner

Moonfleet Annotated and Illustrated Edition by John Meade Falkner

The plot is a gradual unfolding of a succession of events divided by intervals of time. John Trenchard, a fifteen year old orphan lad, lives with his maiden aunt, Miss Jane Arnold, in Moonfleet, a rundown tiny fishing village. One day while John sits on a stone in the churchyard gazing out to the sea, a crack in the earth running up the stone widens and discloses a large cavity beneath. Recalling stories of a hidden Mohune diamond, owned by the treacherous Colonel John Mohune, popularly known as Blackbeard, John explores the hole. Darkness forces him to give up the search and he returns home to obtain a candle. Forbidden by his aunt to go out at night, John waits until she retires and steals out of the house. In the hole, he discovers a passageway leading to the Mohune vault under the church. In the vault John comes upon the coffins of the dead Mohune family. He also discovers, much to his surprise, a hoard of casks and kegs and he realizes that this is a smuggler's cache.