CHAPTER XII
THE SEA MIST
Father O'Hara looked at the two prisoners, and the tears ran down his face. He was the man whom Colonel Sullivan and Bale had overtaken on their way to Tralee. In spite of his life and his wrongs, he was a merciful man, and with all his heart he wished that, if he could do no good, God had been pleased to send him another way through the mist. Not that life was to him aught but a tragedy at any time, on whichever road he took. What but a tragedy could it be to a man bred at Douay and reared on Greek, and now condemned to live in loneliness and squalor among unlettered, unwashed creatures; to one who, banned by the law, moved by night, and lurked in some hiding-place by day, and, waking or sleeping, was ever in contact with the lawless and the oppressed, the wretched and the starving—whose existence was spent in shriving, christening, burying among the hills and bogs?
Yet, even in such a life this was a tragedy beyond the common. And—"What can I do?" he cried. "Non mihi, domine, culpa!Oh, what can I do?"
"You can do nothing, father," O'Sullivan Og said grimly. "They're heretics, no less! And we're wasting your time, blessed man." He whispered a few words in the priest's ear.
The latter shuddered. "God forgive us all!" he wailed. "And most, those who need it most! God keep us from high place!"
"Sure and we're in little peril!" O'Sullivan Og replied.
Colonel John looked at the priest with solemn eyes. Nor did aught but a tiny pulse beating in his cheek betray that every sense was on the stretch; that he was listening, watching, ready to seize the least chance, that he might save, at any rate, poor Bale. Then, "You are a Christian, father," he said gravely. "I ask nothing for myself. But this is my servant. He has done nothing, he knows nothing. Prevail with them to spare him!"
Bale uttered a fierce remonstrance. No one understood it, or what he said, or meant. His eyes looked askance, like the eyes of a beast in a snare—seeking a weapon, or a throat! To be butchered thus! To be butchered thus!
Perhaps Colonel John, notwithstanding his calm courage, had the same thought, and found it bitter. Death had been good in the face of silent thousands, with pride and high resolve for cheer. Or in the heat of a fight for the right, where it came unheeded and almost unfelt. But here on the bog, in the mist, unknown, unnoticed, to perish and be forgotten in a week, even by the savage hands that took their breath! Perhaps to face this he too had need of all his Christian stoicism.
"My God! My God!" the priest said. And he fell on his knees and raised his hands. "Have pity on these two, and soften the hearts of their murderers!"
"Amen," said Colonel John quietly.
"Faith, and 'tis idle, this," O'Sullivan Og cried irritably. He gave a secret sign to his men to draw to one side and be ready. "We've our orders, and other work to do. Kneel aside, father, 'tis no harm we mean you, God forbid! But you're wasting breath on these same. And you," he continued, addressing the two, "say what prayer you will, if you know one, and then kneel or stand—it's all one to us—and, God willing, you'll be in purgatory and never a knowledge of it!"
"One moment," Colonel John interposed, his face pale but composed, "I have something to say to my friend."
"And you may, if you'll play no tricks."
"If you would spare him——"
"'Tis idle, I say! Sorra a bit of good is it! But there, ye shall be having while the blessed man says three Paternosters, and not the least taste of time beyond! Devil a bit!"
Colonel John made a sign to the priest, who, bowing himself on the wet sod, covered his eyes with his hand and began to pray. The men, at a sign from O'Sullivan, had drawn to either side, and the firelock-men were handling their pieces, with one eye on their leader and one on the prisoners.
Colonel John took Bale's hand. "What matter, soon or late?" he said gently "Here, or on our beds we die in our duty. Let us say,In manus tuas——"
"Popish! Popish!" Bale muttered, shaking his head. He spoke hoarsely, his tongue cleaving to his mouth. His eyes were full of rage.
"Into Thy hands!" Colonel John said. He stooped nearer to his man's ear. "When I shout, jump and run!" he breathed. "I will hold two." Again he lifted his head and looked calmly at the threatening figures standing about them, gaunt and dark, against the curtain of mist. They were waiting for the signal. The priest was half way through his second Paternoster. His trembling tongue was stumbling, lagging more and more. As he ended it—the two men still standing hand in hand—Colonel John gripped Bale's fingers hard, but held him.
"What is that?" he cried, in a loud voice—but still he held Bale tight that he might not move. "What is that?" he repeated. On the ear—on his ear first—had fallen the sound of hurrying feet.
They strained their eyes through the mist.
"And what'll this be?" O'Sullivan Og muttered suspiciously, looking first in the direction of the sound, and then, still more suspiciously, at his prisoners. "If you budge a step," he growled, "I'll drive this pike——"
"A messenger from The McMurrough," Colonel John said, speaking as sternly as if he and not The McMurrough's henchman commanded the party. If he was human, as indeed he was, if his heart, at the hope of respite, beat upon his ribs as the heart of a worse man might have beaten, he did not betray it save by a light in his eyes. "You will see if I am not right," he added.
They had not to wait. As he spoke a tall, lathy form emerged from the mist. It advanced with long leaps, the way they had come. A moment, and the messenger saw them—almost as soon as they had seen him. He pulled up, and walked the intervening distance, his arms drooping, and his breath coming in gasps. He had run apace, and he could not speak. But he nodded—as he wiped the saliva from his parted lips—to O'Sullivan Og to come aside with him; and the two moved off a space. The others eyed them while the message was given. The suspense was short. Quickly O'Sullivan Og came back.
"Ye may be thankful," he said drily. "Ye've cheated the pikes for this time, no less. And 'tis safe ye are."
"You have the greater reason to be thankful," Colonel John replied solemnly. "You have been spared a foul crime."
"Faith, and I hope I may never do worse," Og answered hardily, "than rid the world of two black Protestants, an' them with a priest to make their souls! Many's the honest man's closed his eyes without that same. But 'tis no time for prating! I wonder at your honour, and you no more than out of the black water! Bring them along, boys," he continued, "we've work to do yet!"
"Laus Deo!" the priest cried, lifting up his hands. "Give Him the glory!"
"Amen," the Colonel said softly. And for a moment he shut his eyes and stood with clasped hands. Perhaps even his courage was hardly proof against so sudden, so late a respite. He looked with a hardly repressed shudder on the dreary face of the bog, on the gleaming water, on the dripping furze bushes. "I thank you kindly, father, for your prayers!" he said. "The words of a good man avail much!"
No more was said. For a few yards Bale walked unsteadily, shaken by his escape from a death the prospect of which had evoked as much rage as fear. But he recovered himself speedily, and, urged by O'Sullivan's continual injunctions to hasten, the party were not long in retracing their steps. They reached the road, and went along it, but in the direction of the landing-place. In a few minutes they were threading their way in single file across the saucer-like waste which lay to landward of the hill overlooking the jetty and the inlet.
"Are you taking us to the French sloop?" Colonel John asked.
"You'll be as wise as the lave of us by-and-by!" Og answered sulkily.
They crossed the shoulder near the tower, which loomed uncertainly through the fog, and they strode down the slope to the stone pier. The mist lay low on the water, and only the wet stones of the jetty, and a boat or two floating in the angle between the jetty and the shore, were visible. The tide was almost at the flood. Og bade the men draw in one of the boats, ordered Colonel Sullivan and Bale to go into the bow, and the pikemen to take the oars. He and the two firelock-men—the messenger had vanished—took their seats in the stern.
"Pull out, you cripples," he said. "And be pulling stout, and there'll be flood enough to be bringing us back."
The men bent to the clumsy oars, and the boat slid down the inlet, and passed under the beam of the French sloop, which lay moored farther along the jetty. Not a sign of life appeared on deck as they passed; the ship seemed to be deserted. Half a dozen strokes carried the boat beyond view of it, and the little party were alone on the bosom of the water, that lay rocking smoothly between its unseen banks. Some minutes were spent in stout rowing, and the oily swell began to grow longer and slower. They were near the mouth of the inlet, and abreast of the east-and-west-running shore of the bay. Smoothly as the sea lapped the beach under the mist, the boat began to rise and fall on the Atlantic rollers.
"Tis more deceitful than a pretty colleen," O'Sullivan Og said, "is the sea-fog, bad cess to it! My own father was lost in it. Will you be seeing her, boys?"
"Ye'll not see her till ye touch her!" one of the rowers answered.
"And the tide running?" the other said. "Save us from that same!"
"She's farther out by three gunshots!" struck in a firelock-man. "We'll be drifting back, ye thieves of the world, if ye sit staring there! Pull, an' we'll be inshore an' ye know it."
For some minutes the men pulled steadily onwards, while one of the passengers, apprised that their destination was the Spanish war-vessel which had landed Cammock and the Bishop, felt anything but eager to reach it. A Spanish war-ship meant imprisonment and hardship without question, possibly the Inquisition, persecution, and death. When the men lay at last on their oars, and swore that they must have passed the ship, and they would go no farther, he alone listened indifferently, nay, felt a faint hope born in him.
"'Tis a black Protestant fog!" O'Sullivan cried. "Where'll we be, I wonder?"
"Sure, ye can make no mistake," one answered. "The wind's light off the land."
"We'll be pulling back, lads."
"That's the word."
The men put the boat about, a little sulkily, and started on the return journey. The sound of barking dogs and crowing cocks came off the land with that clearness which all sounds assume in a fog. Suddenly Colonel John, crouching in the bow, where was scant room for Bale and himself, saw a large shape loom before him. Involuntarily he uttered a warning cry, O'Sullivan echoed it, the men tried to hold the boat. In doing this, however, one man was quicker than the other, the boat turned broadside on to her former course, and before the cry was well off O'Sullivan Og's lips, it swept violently athwart a cable hauled taut by the weight of a vessel straining to the flow of the tide. In a twinkling the boat careened, throwing its occupants into the water.
Colonel John and Bale were nearest to the hawser, and managed, suddenly as the thing happened, to seize it and cling to it. But the first wave washed over them, blinding them and choking them; and, warned by this, they worked themselves desperately along the rope until their shoulders were clear of the water and they could twist a leg over their slender support.
That effected, they could spit out the water, breathe again, and look about them. They shouted for help once, twice, thrice, thinking that some on the great ship looming dim and distant to shoreward of them must hear. But their shouts were merged in the wail of despair, of shrieks and cries that floated away into the mist. The boat, travelling with the last of the tide, had struck the cable with force, and was already drifting a gunshot away. Whether any saved themselves on it, the two clinging to the hawser could not see.
Bale, shivering and scared, would have shouted again, but Colonel John stayed him. "God rest their souls!" he said solemnly. "The men aboard can do nothing. By the time they'll have lowered a boat it will be done with these."
"They can take us aboard," Bale said.
"Ay, if we want to go to Cadiz gaol," Colonel John answered slowly. He was peering keenly towards the land.
"But what can we do, your honour?" Bale asked with a shiver.
"Swim ashore."
"God forbid!"
"But you can swim?"
"Not that far. Not near that far, God knows!" Bale repeated with emphasis, his teeth chattering. "I'll go down like a stone."
"Cadiz gaol! Cadiz gaol!" Colonel John muttered. "Isn't it worth a swim to escape that?"
"Ay, ay, but——"
"Do you see that oar drifting? In a twinkling it will be out of reach. Off with your boots, man, off with your clothes, and to it! That oar is freedom! The tide is with us still, or it would not be moving that way. But let the tide turn and we cannot do it."
"It's too far!"
"If you could see the shore," Colonel John argued, "you'd think nothing of it! With your chin on that oar, you can't sink. But it must be done before we are chilled."
He was stripping himself to his underclothes while he talked: and in haste, fearing that he might feel the hawser slacken and dip—a sign that the tide had turned. Or if the oar floated out of sight—then too the worst might happen to them. Already Colonel John had plans and hopes, but freedom was needful if they were to come to anything.
"Come!" he cried impulsively. "Man, you are not a coward, I know it well! Come!"
He let himself into the water as he spoke, and after a moment of hesitation, and with a shiver of disgust, Bale followed his example, let the rope go, and with quick, nervous strokes bobbed after him in the direction of the oar. Colonel John deserved the less credit, as he was the better swimmer. He swam long and slow, with his head low: and his eyes watched his follower. A half minute of violent exertion, and Bale's outstretched hand clutched the oar. It was a thick, clumsy implement, and it floated high. In curt, clipped sentences Colonel John bade him rest his hands on it, and thrust it before him lengthwise, swimming with his feet.
For five minutes nothing was said, but they proceeded slowly and patiently, rising a little above each wave and trusting—for they could see nothing, and the light wind was in their faces—that the tide was still seconding their efforts. Colonel John knew that if the shore lay, as he judged, about half a mile distant, he must, to reach it, swim slowly and reserve his strength. Though a natural desire to decide the question quickly would have impelled him to greater exertion, he resisted it as many a man has resisted it, and thereby has saved his life. At the worst, he reflected that the oar would support them both for a short time. But that meant remaining stationary and becoming chilled.
They had been swimming for ten minutes, as he calculated, when Bale, who floated higher, cried joyfully that he could see the land. Colonel John made no answer, he needed all his breath. But a minute later he too saw it loom low through the fog; and then, in some minutes afterwards, they felt bottom and waded on to a ledge of rocks which projected a hundred yards from the mainland eastward of the mouth of the inlet. The tide had served them well by carrying them a little to the eastward. They sat a moment on the rocks to recover their strength—while the seagulls flew wailing over them—and for the first time they took in the full gravity of the catastrophe. Every other man in the boat had perished—so they judged, for there was no stir on shore. On that they uttered some expressions of pity and of thankfulness; and then, stung to action by the chill wind, which set their teeth chattering, they got to their feet and scrambled painfully along the rocks until they reached the marshy bank of the inlet. Thence a pilgrimage scarcely less painful, through gorse and rushes, brought them at the end of ten minutes to the jetty.
Here, too, all was quiet. If any of O'Sullivan Og's party had saved themselves they were not to be seen, nor was there any indication that the accident was known on shore. It was still early, but little after six, the day Sunday; and apart from the cackling of poultry, and the grunting of hogs, no sound came from O'Sullivan's house or the hovels about it.
While Colonel John had been picking his way over the rocks and between the gorse bushes, his thoughts had not been idle; and now, without hesitation, he made along the jetty until the masts of the French sloop loomed beside it. He boarded the vessel by a plank and looked round him. There was no watch on deck, but a murmur of talk came from the forecastle and a melancholy voice piping a French song rose from the depths of the cabin. Colonel John bade Bale follow him—they were shivering from head to foot—and descended the companion.
The singer was Captain Augustin. He lay on his back in his bunk, while his mate, between sleep and waking, formed an unwilling audience.
Tout mal chaussé, tout mal vêtu,
Tout mal chaussé, tout mal vêtu,
Tout mal chaussé, tout mal vêtu,
sang the Captain in a doleful voice,
Pauvre marin, d'où reviens-tu?Tout doux! Tout doux!
Pauvre marin, d'où reviens-tu?Tout doux! Tout doux!
Pauvre marin, d'où reviens-tu?
Tout doux! Tout doux!
With the last word on his lips, he called on the name of his Maker, for he saw two half-naked, dripping figures peering at him through the open door. For the moment he took them, by the dim light, for the revenants of drowned men; while his mate, a Breton, rose on his elbow and shrieked aloud.
It was only when Colonel John called them by name that they were reassured, lost their fears, and recognised in the pallid figures before them their late passenger and his attendant. Then, as the two Frenchmen sprang to their feet, the cabin rang with oaths and invocations, withMon Dieu!andMa foi!Immediately clothes were fetched, and rough cloths to dry the visitors and restore warmth to their limbs, and cognac and food—for the two were half starved. Meantime, and while these comforts were being administered, and half the crew, crouching about the companion, listened, and volleys of questions rained upon him, Colonel John told very shortly the tale of their adventures, of the fate that had menaced them, and their narrow escape. In return he learned that the Frenchmen were virtually prisoners.
"They have taken our equipage, cursed dogs!" Augustin explained, refraining with difficulty from a dance of rage. "The rudder, the sails, they are not, see you! They have locked all in the house on shore, that we may not go by night, you understand. And by day the ship of war beyond, Spanish it is possible, pirate for certain, goes about to sink us if we move! Ah,sacré nom, that I had never seen this land of swine!"
"Have they a guard over the rudder and the sails?" Colonel John asked, pausing to speak with the food half way to his mouth.
"I know not. What matter?"
"If not, it were not hard to regain them," Colonel John said, with an odd light in his eyes.
"And the ship of war beyond? What would she be doing?"
"While the fog lies?" Colonel John replied. "Nothing."
"The fog?" Augustin exclaimed. He clapped his hand to his head, ran up the companion and as quickly returned. A skipper is in a low way who, whatever his position, has no eye for the weather; and he felt the tacit reproach. "Name of Names!" he cried. "There is a fog like the inside of Jonah's whale! For the ship beyond I snap the finger at her! She is not! Then forward,mes braves! Yet tranquil! They have taken the arms!"
"Ay?" Colonel John said, still eating. "Is that so? Then it seems to me we must retake them. That first."
"What, you?" Augustin exclaimed.
"Why not?" Colonel John responded, looking round him, a twinkle in his eye. "The goods of his host are in a manner of speaking the house of his host. And it is the duty—as I said once before."
"But is it not that they are—of your kin?"
"That is the reason," Colonel John answered cryptically, and to the skipper's surprise. But that surprise lasted a very short time. "Listen to me," the Colonel continued. "This goes farther than you think, and to cure it we must not stop short. Let me speak, and do you, my friends, listen. Courage, and I will give you not only freedom but a good bargain."
The skipper stared. "How so?" he asked.
Then Colonel John unfolded the plan on which he had been meditating while the waves lapped his smarting chin, while the gorse bushes pricked his feet, and the stones gibed them. It was a great plan, and before all things a bold one; so bold that Augustin gasped as it unfolded itself, and the seamen, who, with the freedom of foreign sailors in a ship of fortune, crowded the foot of the companion, opened their eyes.
Augustin smacked his lips. "It is what you callmagnifique!" he said. "But," he shrugged his shoulders, "it is not possible!"
"If the fog holds?"
"But if it—what you call—lifts? What then, eh?"
"Through how many storms have you ridden?" the Colonel answered. "Yet if the mast had gone?"
"We had gone!Vraiment!
"That did not keep you ashore."
Augustin cogitated over this for a while. Then, "But we are eight only," he objected. "Myself, nine."
"And two are eleven," Colonel John replied.
"We do not know the ground."
"I do."
The skipper shrugged his shoulders.
"And they have treated you—but you know how they have treated you," Colonel John went on, appealing to the lower motive.
The group of seamen who stood about the door growled seamen's oaths.
"There are things that seem hard," the Colonel continued, "and being begun, pouf! they are done while you think of them!"
Captain Augustin of Bordeaux swelled out his breast. "That is true," he said. "I have done things like that."
"Then do one more!"
The skipper's eyes surveyed the men's faces. He caught the spark in their eyes. "I will do it," he cried.
"Good!" Colonel John cried. "The arms first!"
CHAPTER XIII
A SLIP
Flavia McMurrough enjoyed one advantage over her partners in conspiracy. She could rise on the morning after the night of the bonfires with a clear head and an appetite undiminished by punch; and probably she was the only one at Morristown of whom this could be said. The morning light did not break for her on aching eyelids and a brain at once too retentive of the boasts of the small hours and too sensitive to the perils of the day to come. Colonel John had scarcely passed away under guard, old Darby had scarcely made his first round—with many an ominous shake of the head—the slatternly serving-boys had scarcely risen from their beds in the passages, before she was afoot, gay as a lark, and trilling like one; with spirits prepared for the best or the worst which the day might bring forth—though she foresaw only the best—and undepressed even by the blanket of mist that shrouded lake and hills and all the world from view.
If the past night, with its wassail and its mirth, its toasts and its loud-voiced bragging, might be called "the great night of Morristown," this, the girl promised herself, should more truly and more fitly be styled "the great day of Ireland." On this day would they begin a work the end of which no man could see, but which, to the close of time, should shed a lustre on the name of McMurrough. No more should their native land be swept along, a chained slave, a handmaid, in the train of a more brutal, a more violent, and a more stupid people! From this day Ireland's valour, that had never known fit leading, should be recognised for what it was, her wit be turned to good uses, her old traditions be revived in the light of new glories. The tears rose to the girl's eyes, her bosom heaved, her heart seemed too large for her, as she pictured the fruition of the work to be begun this day, and with clasped hands and prayerful eyes sang her morning hymn.
No more should an Irish gentleman walk swordless and shamed among his equals. No more should the gallant beast he had bred be seized with contumely in the market-place. No more should all the nobler services of his native land be closed to him, his faith be banned, his priests proscribed! No more should he be driven to sell his valour to the highest bidder, and pour forth his blood in foreign causes, under the walls of old Vienna, and on every stricken field from Almanza to the Don. For on this day Ireland should rouse herself from the long nightmare, the oppression of centuries. She should remember her greatness of old time and the blessing of Patrick; and those who had enslaved her, those who had scorned her and flouted her, should learn the strength of hands nerved by the love of God and the love of country! This day at Morristown the day should break.
The tears gushed from her eyes as she thought of this, and with an overflowing heart thanked Heaven for the grace and favour that assigned her a part in the work. And the halo formed of those tears ennobled all she saw about her. The men, still sprawling up and down the courtyard in the abandonment of drink, her brother calling with a pale face and querulous oaths for a cooling draught, Sir Donny and old Tim Burke, yawning off, like the old topers they were, the effects of the carouse—the cause and her hopes ennobled all. It was much—may she be forgiven!—if, in the first enthusiasm of the morning, she gave a single thought to the misguided kinsman whose opposition had hurried him into trouble, and exposed him to dangers at which she vaguely guessed.
Fool that he was, she reflected, to pit himself against such men as the Bishop and the Spanish Admiral! From her window she saw the two walking in the garden with bent heads, aloof from the yawning crowd, and now appearing beyond the line of Florence yews, now vanishing behind them. On which she came near to worshipping them. Had they not brought to Ireland, to Kerry, to Morristown, the craft and skill in counsel, the sagacity and courage, which had won for them the favour of foreign kings, and raised them high in exile? Lacking their guidance, the movement might have come to nothing, the most enthusiastic must have wasted their strength. But they were here to inspire, to lead, to control. Against such men the parlour-captains of Tralee, the encroaching Pettys, and their like, must fail indeed. And before more worthy opponents arrived to encounter the patriots, who could say what battles might not be won, what allies gained?
It was a dream, but a golden dream, and when she descended to the living-room she still lived in it. The girl's lips quivered as she kissed the Bishop's hand and received with bent knees his episcopal blessing. "And on this house, my daughter," he added, "and on this day!"
"Amen!" she murmured in her heart.
True, breakfast, and the hour after breakfast, gave some pause to her happiness. The men's nerves were on edge with potheen and excitement, and they had not been at table five minutes before quarrelling broke out at the lower end of the board. The Spanish officer who was in attendance on Cammock came to words, and almost to blows, with one of the O'Beirnes, who resented the notion that the Admiral's safety was not sufficiently secured by the Irish about him. The peace was kept with difficulty, and so much ill-feeling survived the outbreak that Cammock thought it prudent to remit two-thirds of the sailors to the ship, and keep the remainder as far as possible in the background.
This was not a promising beginning, where the numbers were already so scanty that the Bishop wondered in his heart whether his dupes would dare to pass from words to action. But it was not all. Some one spoke of Asgill, and of another Justice in the neighbourhood, asserting that their hearts were with the rising, and that at a later point their aid might be expected. At once,
"The Evil One's spawn!" cried Sir Donny, rising in his place, and speaking under the influence of great excitement. "If you're for dealing with them, I'm riding! No Protestants! No black brood of Cromwell for me! I'd as soon never wear sword again as wear it in their company!"
"You're not meaning it, Sir Donny!" Uncle Ulick said.
"Faith, but if he's not, I am!" cried old Tim Burke, rising and banging the table with his fist. "'Tis what I'm meaning, and devil a bit of a mistake! Just that!"
Another backed him, with so much violence that the most moderate and sensible looked serious, and it needed the Bishop's interference to calm the storm. "We need not decide one way or the other," he said, "until they come in." Probably he thought that an unlikely contingency. "There are arguments on both sides," he continued blandly. "It is true that half-measures are seldom wise. On the other hand, it was by a Protestant king that France was led back to the true faith. But of this at another time. I think we must be moving, gentlemen. It grows late."
While the gentry talked thus at table, the courtyard and the space between the house and the lake began to present, where the mist allowed them to be seen, the lively and animated appearance which the Irish, ever lovers of a crowd, admire. Food and drink were there served to the barefoot, shock-headed boys drawn up in bodies under their priests, or under the great men's agents; and when these matters had been consumed one band after another moved off in the direction of the rendezvous. This was at the Carraghalin, a name long given to the ruins of an abbey situate in an upland valley above the waterfall, and a long Irish mile from the house. But as each troop moved off towards the head of the lake its place was filled in a measure by late-comers, as well as by companies of women and girls, close-hooded and shawled, who halted before the house to raise shrill cries of welcome, or, as they passed, stirred the air with their wild Erse melodies. The orders for all were to take their seats in an orderly fashion and in a mighty semicircle about a well-known rock situate a hundred yards from the abbey. Tradition reported that in old days this rock had been a pulpit, and that thence the Irish Apostle had preached to the heathen. More certainly it had formed a rostrum and the valley a gathering-place in troubled and more recent times. The turf about it was dry, sweet, and sheep-bitten; on either side it sloped gently to the rock, while a sentry posted on each of the two low hills which flanked the vale was a sufficient surety against surprise.
It was not until the last of the peasants had filed off, and the space before the house had resumed its normal aspect—but for once without its beggars—that the gentry began to make their way in the same direction. The buckeens were the first to go. Uncle Ulick, with the Spanish officer and his men, formed the next party. The O'Beirnes, with Sir Donny and Timothy Burke and a priest or two of a superior order, were not long behind them. The last to leave—and they left the house with no other guardians than a cook-maid or two—were the Admiral and the Bishop, honourably escorted, as became their rank, by their host and hostess.
Freed from the wrangling and confusion which the presence of the others bred, Flavia regained her serenity as she walked. There was nothing, indeed, in the face of nature, in the mist and the dark day, and the moisture that hung in beads on thorn and furze, to cheer her. But she drew her spirits from a higher source, and, sanguine and self-reliant, foreseeing naught but success, stepped proudly along beside the Bishop, who found, perhaps, in her presence and her courage a make-weight for the gloom of the day.
"You are sure," he said, smiling, "that we shall not lose our way?"
"Ah! and I am sure," she answered, "I could take you blindfold."
"The mist——"
"It stands, my lord, for the mist overhanging this poor land, which our sun shall disperse."
"God grant it!" he said—"God grant it, indeed, my daughter!" But, do what he would, he spoke without fervour.
They passed along the lake-edge, catching now and then the shimmer of water on their right. Thence they ascended the steep path that led up the glen of the waterfall to the level of the platform on which the old tower stood. Leaving this on the right—and only to an informed eye was it visible—they climbed yet a little higher, and entered a deep driftway that, at the summit of the gorge, clove its way between the mound behind the tower and the hill on their left, and so penetrated presently to the valley of the Carraghalin. The mist was thinner here, the nature of the ground was more perceptible, and they had not proceeded fifty yards along the sunken way before Cammock, who was leading, in the company of The McMurrough, halted.
"A fine place for a stand," he said, looking about him with a soldierly eye. "And better for an ambush. Especially on such a morning as this, when you cannot see a man five paces away."
"I trust," the Bishop answered, smiling, "that we shall have no need to make the one, or to fear the other."
"You could hold this," Flavia asked eagerly, "with such men as we have?"
"Against an army," Cammock answered.
"Against an army!" she murmured, as, her heart beating high with pride, they resumed their way, Flavia and the Bishop in the van. "Against an army!" she repeated fondly.
The words had not fully left her lips when she recoiled. At the same moment the Bishop uttered an exclamation, Cammock swore and seized his hilt, The McMurrough turned as if to flee. For on the path close to them, facing them with a pistol in his hand, stood Colonel Sullivan.
He levelled the pistol at the head of the nearest man, and though Flavia, with instant presence of mind, struck it up, the act helped little. Before Cammock could clear his blade, or his companions back up his resistance, four or five men, of Colonel John's following, flung themselves on them from behind. They were seized, strong arms pinioned them, knives were at their throats. In a twinkling, and while they still expected death, sacks were dragged over their heads and down to their waists, and they were helpless.
It was well, it was neatly done; and completely done, with a single drawback. The men had not seized Flavia, and, white as paper, but with rage not fear, she screamed shrilly for help—screamed twice.
She would have screamed a third time, but Colonel Sullivan, who knew that they were scarcely two furlongs from the meeting-place, and from some hundreds of merciless foes, did the only thing possible. He flung his arms round her, pressed her face roughly against his shoulder, smothered her cries remorselessly. Then raising her, aided by the man with the musket, he bore her, vainly struggling—and, it must be owned, scratching—after the others out of the driftway.
The thing done, the Colonel's little band of Frenchmen knew that they had cast the die, and must now succeed or perish. The girl's screams, quickly suppressed, might not have given the alarm; but they had set nerves on edge. The prick of a knife was used—and often—to apprise the blinded prisoners that if they did not move they would be piked. They were dragged, a seaman on either side of each captive, over some hundred paces of rough ground, through the stream, and so into a path little better than a sheep-track which ran round the farther side of the hill of the tower, and descended that way to the more remote bank of the lake. It was a rugged path, steep and slippery, dropping precipitously a couple of feet in places, and more than once following the bed of the stream. But it was traceable even in the mist, and the party from the sloop, once put on it, could follow it.
If no late-comer to the meeting encountered them, Colonel John, to whom every foot of the ground was familiar, saw no reason, apart from the chances of pursuit, why they should not get the prisoners, whom they had so audaciously surprised, as far as the lower end of the lake. There he and his party must fall again into the Skull road and risk the more serious uncertainties of the open way. All, however, depended on time. If Flavia's screams had not given the alarm, it would soon be given by the absence of those whom the people had come to meet. The missing leaders would be sought, pursuit would be organised. Yet, if before that pursuit reached the foot of the lake, the fugitives had passed into the road, the raiders would stand a fair chance. They would at least have a start, the sloop in front of them, and their enemies behind them.
But, with peril on every side of them, Flavia was still the main, the real difficulty. Colonel Sullivan could not hope to carry her far, even with the help of the man who fettered her feet, and bore part of her weight. Twice she freed her mouth and uttered a stifled cry. The Colonel only pressed her face more ruthlessly to him—his men's lives depended on her silence. But the sweat stood on his brow; and, after carrying her no more than three hundred yards, he staggered under the unwilling burden. He was on the path now and descending, and he held out a little farther. But presently, when he hoped that she had swooned, she fell to struggling more desperately. He thought, on this, that he might be smothering her; and he relaxed his hold to allow her to breathe. For reward she struck him madly, furiously in the face, and he had to stifle her again.
But his heart was sick. It was a horrible, a brutal business, a thing he had not foreseen on board theCormorant. He had supposed that she would faint at the first alarm; and his courage, which would have faced almost any event with coolness, quailed. He could not murder the girl, and she would not be silent. No, she would not be silent! Short of setting her down and binding her hand and foot, which would take time, and was horrible to imagine, he could not see what to do. And the man with him, who saw the rest of the party outstripping them, and as good as disappearing in the fog, who fancied, with every step, that he heard the feet of merciless pursuers overtaking them, was frantic with impatience.
Then Colonel John, with the sweat standing on his brow, did a thing to which he afterwards looked back with great astonishment.
"Give me your knife," he said, with a groan, "and hold her hands! We must silence her, and there is only one way!"
The man, terrified as he was, and selfish as terrified men are, recoiled from the deed. "My God!" he said. "No!"
"Yes!" Colonel John retorted fiercely. "The knife!—the knife, man! And do you hold her hands!"
With a jerk he lifted her face from his breast—and this time she neither struck him nor screamed. The man had half-heartedly drawn his knife. The Colonel snatched it from him. "Now her hands!" he said. "Hold her, fool! I know where to strike!"
She opened her mouth to shriek, but no sound came. She had heard, she understood; and for a moment she could neither struggle nor cry. That terror which rage and an almost indomitable spirit had kept at bay seized her; the sight of the gleaming death poised above her paralysed her throat. Her mouth gaped, her eyes glared at the steel; then, with a queer sobbing sound, she fainted.
"Thank God!" the Colonel cried. And there was indeed thankfulness in his voice. He thrust the knife back into the man's hands, and, raising the girl again in his arms, "There is a house a little below," he said. "We can leave her there! Hurry, man!—hurry!"
He had not traversed that road for twenty years, but his memory had not tricked him. Less than fifty paces below they came on a cabin, close to the foot of the waterfall. The door was not fastened—for what, in such a place, was there to steal?—and Colonel John thrust it open with his foot. The interior was dark, the place was almost windowless; but he made out the form of an old crone who, nursing her knees, crouched with a pipe in her mouth beside a handful of peat. Seeing him, the woman tottered to her feet with a cry of alarm, and shaded her bleared eyes from the inrush of daylight. She gabbled shrilly, but she knew only Erse, and Colonel John attempted no explanation.
"The lady of the house," he said, in that tongue. And he laid Flavia, not ungently, but very quickly, on the floor. He turned about without another word, shut the door on the two, and hurried along the path at the full stretch of his legs. In half a minute he had overtaken his companion, and the two pressed on together on the heels of the main party.
The old beldame, left alone with the girl, viewed her with an astonishment which would have been greater if she had not reached that age at which all sensations become dulled. How the Lady of the House, who was to her both Power and Providence, came to be there, and there in that state, passed her conception. But she had the sense to loosen the girl's frock at the neck, to throw water on her face, and to beat her hands. In a very few minutes Flavia, who had never swooned before—fashionable as the exercise was at this period in feminine society—sighed once or twice, and came to herself.
"Where am I?" she muttered. Still for some moments she continued to look about her in a dazed way; at length she recognised the old woman, and the cottage. Then she remembered, with a moan, what had happened—the ambuscade, the flight, the knife.
She could not turn whiter, but she shuddered and closed her eyes. At last, with shrinking, she looked at her dress. "Am I—hurt?" she whispered.
The old woman did not understand, but she patted Flavia's hand. Meanwhile the girl saw that there was no blood on her dress, and she found courage to raise her hand to her throat. She found no wound. At that she smiled faintly. Then she began to cry—for she was a woman.
But, broken as she was by that moment of terror, Flavia's indulgence in the feminine weakness was short, for it was measured by the time she devoted to thoughts of her own fortunes. Quickly, very quickly, she overcame her weakness; she stood up, she understood, and she extended her arms in rage and grief and unavailing passion. That rage which treachery arouses in the generous breast, that passion which an outrage upon hospitality kindles in the meanest, that grief which ruined plans and friends betrayed have bred a thousand times in Irish bosoms—she felt them all, and intensely. She would that the villains had killed her! She would that they had finished her life! Why should she survive, except for vengeance? For not only were her hopes for Ireland fallen; not only were those who had trusted themselves to The McMurrough perishing even now in the hands of ruthless foes; but her brother, her dear, her only brother, whom her prayers, her influence had brought into this path, he too was snared, of his fate also there could be no doubt!
She felt all that was most keen, most poignant, of grief, of anger, of indignation. But the sharpest pang of all—had she analysed her feelings—was inflicted by the consciousness of failure, and of failure verging on the ignominious. The mature take good and evil fortune as they come; but to fail at first setting out in life, to be outwitted in the opening venture, to have to acknowledge that experience is, after all, a formidable foe—these are mishaps which sour the magnanimous and poison young blood.
She had not known before what it was to hate. Now she only lived to hate: to hate the man who had shown himself so much cleverer than her friends, who, in a twinkling, and by a single blow, had wrecked her plans, duped her allies, betrayed her brother, made her name a laughing-stock, robbed Ireland of a last chance of freedom! who had held her in his arms, terrified her, mastered her! Oh, why had she swooned? Why had she not rather, disregarding her womanish weakness, her womanish fears, snatched the knife from him and plunged it into his treacherous breast? Why? Why?