Moonfleet

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Moonfleet is an adventure novel by the British author J. Meade Falkner from 1898. The story takes place in a poor fishing village in Dorset in the middle of the 18th century, which lives from smuggling and wreck looting. It tells of John Trenchard and his foster father Elzevir Block, two villagers who are on the trail of a cursed treasure.

The name of the village of Moonfleet is derived from a family of aristocrats who once ruled this county as lords. This family was called Mohune, so the small town west of the Fleet river is actually called Mohune-fleet. However, it is now only referred to as the Moonfleet. The Mohunes found their final resting place in a family crypt below the small village church of this place, and it is said that a member of this family is said to walk there at night as a restless ghost.

action

The book is divided into nineteen sections, each of which is introduced by a short quotation. The 1995 edition of Penguin Popular Classics begins with a short biography of John Meade Falkner, a quote from Shakespeare and an illustration of the Mohunes coat of arms. The coat of arms is simply designed and contains only a Y-shaped fork cross , underneath is a banner with the inscription "MUNIET MOHUNE".

In Moonfleet village

('In the village of Moonfleet'). The first sentence of the book was used by Chris de Burgh for the musical implementation of the story, which is introduced there by a narrator.

"THE village of Moonfleet lies half a mile from the sea on the right or west bank of the Fleet stream."

- J. Meade Falconer

The 15 year old orphan John Trenchard lives with his aunt in the small village of Moonfleet, which is half a mile from the sea in Moonfleet Bay in Dorset , UK . Most of the inhabitants of the village are either fishermen or smugglers . According to legend, the ghost of the late Colonel John Mohune, also known as 'Blackbeard' because of his long black beard, wanders around the cemetery at night. He is said to have owned a wrongly acquired diamond. Colonel Mohune wanted this to benefit the poor houses in Moonfleet. Shortly before his death, he had a priest come to him to buy his salvation, but he died and took the secret of the diamond's whereabouts with him to his grave. His mind should not calm down until this treasure has been found and used for charitable purposes.

How John got Blackbeard's amulet

The later chapter titles loud The floods (The flood), A Discovery (One discovery ') In the vault (' Inside the tomb ') The rescue (The Rescue') and An Assault (, An attack ') and tell of the following events.

A great storm swept over Moonfleet, bringing with it a high tide that inundated parts of the town. So water ran into the cellar vault under the small village church. The following Sunday morning, during the service , strange noises came up from the Mohunes' family crypt below the nave . The pastor had often told John about the restless spirits of Colonel Mohune and about the diamond he owned. Since that event, John has been looking for the treasure. A few days later he discovered the entrance to a tunnel that led to the crypt. He went downstairs and found huge stores of rum and other smuggled goods in the burial chamber . When the smugglers suddenly came down, he hid behind a coffin. While the men were talking he heard the voices of Elzevir Block, a 50-year-old Dutch seaman whose 15-year-old son David had recently been shot by the local justice of the peace, Maskew, and the voice of Ratsey, the stonemason whom John often attended helped the work.

During the conversation he heard Elzevir say that he would like to take on John as a replacement for his David. The smugglers left their hiding place and John emerged from his cover. The coffin behind which he was hiding belonged by chance or by design to that Colonel Mohune. As he climbed over the coffin he slipped and tore out one side of the coffin, looked for support and caught the dead man's beard in the process. When he lit his candle he saw that this beard was black. He had found Blackbeard and now feared his revenge for this act. However, when his ghost did not appear, John discovered a necklace with an amulet, which he took. When John tried to leave the crypt, he found that the men had locked the entrance tightly. John had to spend two days there in the dark and fell asleep weak and foggy from alcohol. He finally woke up in a back room of Why Not? , Moonfleet's local pub. Elzevir, their tenant, took care of John until he was well again and offered to stay with him forever.

An enigmatic inscription

An auction ('Eine Auktion'), The Landing ('Die Anlandung'), A judgment ('Ein Richter'), The escape ('Das Escape'), The sea-cave ('Die Meereshöhle'), A funeral ( 'A funeral'), An interview ('A conversation'). In the amulet, John had only found a parchment with an inscription instead of the expected diamond. There were some verses in the Bible and he could see no reference to the treasure.

One evening in April, the lease for the Why Not? and an auction was held to renew the lease. Usually Elzevir was the only one to bid for the tavern, but this time Maskew came to bid too. Elzevir lost the Inn to the man who had already taken his son from him. But Maskew suspected that Elzevier was one of the smugglers and wanted to drive him out of Moonfleet by telling him the Why Not? and thus took his place. Maskew fought the smuggling business vehemently, so he ambushed them the next time they landed smuggled goods. Elzevir wanted to take revenge on Maskew for his son and threatened him with his own pistol. Soldiers who had been ambushed by Maskew suddenly emerged. It came to the shootout and was Maskew by a stray bullet killed. John was shot in the leg, but Elzevir escaped with him over the cliffs inland. Although they were not responsible for Maskew's death, a bounty for murder was placed on the two of them.

Finally, John and Elzevir reached the disused marble mines at Joseph's Pit, where they found a safe haven. Elzevir informed his friend Ratsey of their whereabouts so that they could be provided with food and weapons. It took John's leg two months to heal. Ratsey visited her one day to tell Elzevier that he was being watched himself and therefore could not come to her secret meeting place that often. Elzevir was not in the cave that evening, however, and by chance Ratsey got hold of Blackbeard's parchment. He noticed that the numbers in the psalms were not correctly indicated and thus helped solve the mystery of Blackbeard's diamond hiding place.

When Ratsey left and Elzevier returned, John told him about it. Eventually, they suspected the treasure might be in the well at Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight. Since it was no longer safe for the two in the vicinity of Moonfleet, they took the opportunity with the Bonaventure , a smuggler's ship to get there to look for Blackbeard's treasure. Before that, however, John visited Grace Maskew, his great love, in Moonfleet to say goodbye to her. She warns John to be careful, because the diamond is surrounded by evil influence.

The diamond and its curse

The wellhouse ('Das Brunnenhaus'), The well ('Der Brunnen'), The Jewel ('Das Juwel'), At Ymeguen ('In Ymeguen'), In the Bay ('In der Bucht') and On the beach ('On the beach') are the last chapters of the story.

At that time Carisbrooke Castle was a prison in which mainly French prisoners were locked. Elzevir managed to bribe one of the guards so that he opened the well house for them and they could look for the treasure. John was let down and found a brick marked with a "Y" at eighty feet, behind which the diamond was hidden in a cavity. But the guard wanted the jewel for himself and tried to kill Elzevier. In a duel, he stumbled over the edge of the well. Although Elzevier still grabbed his belt, he could not prevent the fall because the belt tore in two and the guard fell into the depths. The two then fled to Holland by ship to sell the stone in The Hague at the Aldobrand jeweler. However, the latter claimed that the diamond was not real and only wanted to pay a small price for it. Elzevir threw the diamond out of the window in a rage and it landed in the trader's garden. That same evening they tried to get the stone back because John realized that Aldobrand was trying to cheat them. However, they were captured and sentenced to life in forced labor by the court. The diamond had brought them no luck.

They worked on the construction of Ymeguen Castle for ten years before they were to become plantation workers on Java . But the ship, the barque Aurungzebe in which they found themselves with many other prisoners fell, off the English coast in a violent storm. Coincidentally, they were near Moonfleet , where the sea was particularly dangerous. The detainees managed to get out with the help of a key that one of the guards threw them. The convicts tried, like the ship's crew before, to avoid death with a dinghy. Elzevir, who knew the sea well at this point, stayed with John on the sinking ship because this promised the only real chance of rescue. The residents of Moonfleet had gathered on the beach and threw ropes into the water to rescue the castaways. Elzevir got hold of one in the raging sea. He could have saved his life by doing this, but since John was standing a little apart from him in the surf and threatened to drown, he fought his way back to him and gave him a push so that he could reach the rope. He himself was caught in the typical undercurrent on this stretch of coast and drowned. However, John Trenchard was pulled ashore alive. Elzevir's body was washed ashore the day after the storm and buried in Moonfleet.

Aldobrand died of John and Elzevir two years after the betrayal. But out of repentance he left his property to John. He was now a rich man, but kept none of the money, but used it to renovate the houses and the church of Moonfleet. He also had a lighthouse built and the poor house rebuilt. He then married Grace Maskew, his childhood sweetheart. They later had three children, Elzevir, John and Grace.

Before and after the fateful storm, no one was rescued alive from the roaring seas off Moonfleet.

reception

  • The book was filmed in 1955 by Fritz Lang under the title Das Schloß im Schatten . The story, however, differs from the novel.
  • There is also a two-part British film adaptation called Moonfleet from 2013.
  • The story about Moonfleet was put into music by Chris de Burgh in 2010 in the album Moonfleet & Other Stories and in 2011 on his Moonfleet tour.

literature

Text output

  • John Meade Falconer: Moonfleet. Penguin Books (Puffin Classics), London 1994, ISBN 978-0-14-036704-1 .
  • John Meade Falconer: Moonfleet. Penguin Books (Penguin Popular Classics), London 1995, ISBN 978-0-14-119794-4 .
  • John Meade Falconer: Moonfleet. Langenscheidt (Black Cat Publishing), April 2008, ISBN 3-526-52501-3 . (English learning and training book with audio CD).

German editions

  • John Meade Falconer: The Adventures of John Trenchard. Aschendorff, Münster / Westphalia 1959, without ISBN. (translated by Hildegard Diessel).
  • John Meade Falconer: Moonfleet. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1995, ISBN 3-596-12468-9 . (translated by Oliver Koch).
  • John Meade Falconer: Moonfleet. Translated from the English by Michael Kleeberg. Liebeskind, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-95438-059-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Moonfleet. (Penguin Popular Classics), Chapter 1, p. 11.