The Wild Geese

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,

sang the Captain in a doleful voice,

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, with Mon Dieu! and Ma 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 call magnifique!" 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.