Before noon on the following day the two children had come considerably
nearer the fulfilment of Atty’s prediction that they might be lost and
starved. Lost, in truth, they were very thoroughly, for their quest of
the Fottrells’ goat had lured them with many false hopes so far over
the bog that they no longer knew in what direction Clochranbeg lay;
and a fast of four-and-twenty hours feels unpleasantly like starvation
to people of seven or eight. In the lonesome track through which they
were straying they had met neither man nor beast, and after a night
spent huddled in misery under a furzy bank, they had been since the
return of light wandering on, growing hungrier, colder, and more
terrified with the lapse of each endless hour. The Union van, loaded
with constables, would have appeared to them a blessed ark of safety.
But now, when mid-day was still distant, they had espied before them,
not far off, the pale twinkling of the sea, and they made towards it,
rejoicing at the sight of any familiar object.
On the edge of the cliff they were once more disappointed, because no
houses came into view; still, there was an easy slope leading down to
the beach, and it would be a relief to escape from the dreadful desert
that stretched behind them. If they had but known, they were at that
moment standing on the brink of a grimmer peril than famine, captivity,
or any other of the harms that threatened them; for there at their feet
lay spread Slughnatraigh.
The bit of the strand so-called does not outwardly show much to
account for its very evil repute all about Meenaclochran. It is a
little semi-oval of a bay, curved round by cliffs with swarded crests.
Midway in their curve a spur of the cliff shelves down to the strand,
jutting out seaward in a low rocky ridge, overgrown with a curious
entanglement of seaweed, woodbine and brier bushes. The highest tides
seldom reach quite to the base of these cliffs; and it is to the sands
spread beneath them that Slughnatraigh owes its ill-omened name.
Quicksands they are, of the most treacherous and tenacious quality.
Woeful has been the fate of many a one who, setting foot unawares on
their smooth grey face, has felt a cold mouth open and fasten upon
him, enlarging itself, and gaping wider and deeper for him the more
wildly he struggles against its grip, until at last, half sucked in,
half sinking, he goes helplessly under, and the rest of his miserable
tragedy, stifled away from light and air, is to be surmised only by the
heaving and quivering, which subside slowly, as the death-trap gulps
down its victim. More than once it has happened that those trailing
bramble bushes have served as bait. On this bog-land they grow rarely
enough to make blackberries seem a covetable prize; and roving children
have sometimes been lured by the sight of them into terrible toils.
They attracted Min now, and she pointed them out to Atty, saying:
“There might be an odd few berries stickin’ on them yet,” with which
hope they began all the more eagerly to descend the rough track towards
the beach. But when they had scrambled nearly half-way down, they came
upon a much more important discovery. From behind a projecting crag
gleamed into view the white-washed gable-end of a cabin. “Look there,
Min,” said Atty, who saw it first. “It’s a house. If there’s any people
in it, they’d be apt to give us a bit of bread or somethin’.” Min said:
“Glory be--we’ll try would they,” and was hurrying on to make the
experiment, when a sudden thought checked her.
“I declare to goodness,” she said, “I believe it’s the man-trappers’
house. They said it was just beyant the stones on the strand, and
there’s the big stones, sure enough, and there’s itself. We’d a right
to not go near it.”
Min’s conjecture was so far correct. The man-trappers did live almost
on the verge of Slughnatraigh, in fact to its neighbourhood was
partly due their long-continued ill-repute, as many an anxious parent
endeavoured to scare the children from that real and ghastly danger
of the place by setting up the man-trappers as a half-mythical bogey.
All the rumours she had ever heard about them now occurred to Min. She
remembered how a cross-looking old woman had been pointed out to her at
Mass as the mother of the man-trappers, and how she had been assured
that any one of the family would drown a person as soon as look at him.
Here on the spot, these stories seemed more true and more terrific than
ever before, and Min resolved firmly that, hungry or no, she and Atty
must give the house as wide a berth as possible, without returning to
the desolate bog. “Let’s try first is there e’er a blackberry yet,” she
said, “and after that we can creep along down close by the edge of the
say below there. Some more houses is sure to be in it prisently a wee
bit further on.”
She turned towards the thorn-clad rocks, with Atty following her. But
their path brought them at one point a fuller view of the cabin with
its blue smoke-plume, and glint of red fire through the open door,
outside which a pinkish pig and several speckled hens rooted and pecked
round a large black pot, while a white goat browsed on the patch of
thrift-sprinkled sward. And all this looked so home-like to Atty, who
was just then less conscious of fear than of a chilly hunger, that he
warily lagged behind Min, till he found an opportunity to slip aside,
and make a dart for the scene which seemed to him much more attractive
and hopeful than those dark bushes shivering in the bleak morning wind.
Mrs Mulrane was mixing meal and water for stirabout on the dresser,
when a shrill sound of singing rose up suddenly close by: “What is
it to goodness?” she wondered with a start, for nothing like it had
been heard there since her sons grew up; and going to the door, she
was aware of a very small boy in a bluish woollen bib, who sang the
louder at her approach. It had struck Atty that a rendering of his most
popular lay might prove a successful introduction, and accordingly:
“_I would I were a mountain pig_,”
he was chanting,
“_I would indeed bedad;
I would I were a mountain pig
A-aitin’ of some bread.
I would I were a mountain pig
A-drinkin’ of some milk--
I would I were a mountain pig
A-gettin’ bits of food._”
The last line vibrated with a vehement shrillness, and Mrs Mulrane
said: “Och, whist, whist. Where at all are you streelin’ about to at
this time of day?” For she was never very early astir, and had but
lately made up her fire.
“We’re goin’ home to wherever the town is,” said Atty, “And if I had
e’er an ould crust of bread, I’d sing you a lot more of the ‘Mountain
Pig’ before I began aitin’ it at all.”
With an abrupt dive backwards Mrs Mulrane vanished indoors and speedily
reappeared. Her hands were filled with the remains of last night’s
supper, two flat griddle-cakes, either of which would cover this page.
“Here’s for you,” she said, interrupting a piercing _I would_. “Take
them, and stop your mouth, and run off home wid them, before you have
the crathur inside roused up.”
This crathur was in reality a most harmless person, but the vagueness
of the term left room for alarming imaginations, and Atty, with an
uncomfortable remembrance about the man-trappers, ran off as fast as he
could to join Min, whom he soon saw clambering on the low rocks across
a smooth stretch of sand. The rocky spit went dwindling seaward, and
ended in a line of detached boulders with sandy spaces between, like a
row of stepping-stones, only suited, however, to a giant’s striding;
and the last boulder was almost reached by the white edge of the tide
as it came seething in. Beyond the cold slate-coloured water a band
of dull red lingered on the north-western horizon, a belated remnant
drifted round from the morning glow.
Running at the top of his speed, with both hands full, Atty tripped up
over a shrivelled black coil of seaweed, knotted to a stony weight, and
he came down headlong on the sand. He fell soft, and at first his chief
concern was to recover his two cakes, which had flown out of his grasp;
but when he scrambled to his feet, it was only to feel that cold clammy
mouth closing round his ankles, and to find himself sinking, swiftly,
horribly, until all the solid world seemed to be crumbling away beneath
him. Min, who had come hurrying to meet him, almost rushed into the
same entanglement, but luckily stood still on the lowest boulder, a
small, sea-weedy slab, scarcely showing above the sand, whence she
reached him a hand before it was too late. “What ailed you at all?” she
said reprovingly, as he struggled up beside her. “Can’t you walk where
it’s firm-like?” But immediately afterwards, attempting to set foot on
a firm-like place, she plunged down even more deeply than he had done,
and floundered back again in much affright.
Their plight, in truth, was extremely grave, and the more so, the
less they understood the real nature of their peril. On one side the
rough breakers were rolling in loud and swift, and all round was
spread the deadly snare of the quicksand. At any moment the children
might be urged by the more visible danger to flee into the jaws of
the more fatal one too far for retreat. Meanwhile, however, they only
uttered dismayed little shrieks as they groped vainly with tentative
half-steps in every direction for a footing they never could find.
It was just at this time that Stacey Colgan with her daughters, and the
widow Joyce, and old six-pound-ten Gallaher, accompanied by several
lads and lasses, reached the end of the shingle belt, which forms the
beach most of the way from Clochranbeg to Slughnatraigh. They had
gone out early in quest of salt leaves, and finding these scarce, had
wandered on till they came to the precincts of the man-trappers. A
possibility of lighting upon the missing strange childer was present
to their minds, though nobody thought them likely to be astray upon
the strand, and the seekers for them had scattered themselves over the
bogs and along the roads. So the whole party were surprised and excited
when Judy Colgan exclaimed that she saw a couple of people over yonder
down by the water, and that according to her belief it was the strange
childer themselves.
“True for her, themselves they are bedad,” Mrs Joyce declared. “I know
them by Min’s red skirt. Besides, who else would it be stravadin’
about there? And they in the very worst of the soft places, sure it’s
destroyed they’ll be. Woman dear, what’ll we do at all?”
No sooner was their identity established, than the nimblest of the
gossoons and _girsheachs_ raced off homewards, partly for help, and
partly from emulous eagerness to communicate with the least delay the
doubly sensational news that the strange childer were after bein’
got below on the strand, and they about drowndin’ themselves dead in
the middle of Slughnatraigh. The rest of the party advanced as close
as they dared to the verge of the dangerous ground, and stood there
in a group, clamorous as sea-fowl, and as little to the purpose. For
a strong breeze beat back the sound of their voices, so that their
injunctions to “stand studdy where ye are, and set hand nor fut off of
the dry stone for your lives,” never reached Min and Atty, who in any
case would not probably have profited much thereby. But more effectual
aid was at hand. By-and-by these helpless onlookers saw that two young
men were coming rapidly down along the rocky spit, and finally jumping
from one detached boulder to the other, till only a narrow sand strip
separated them from the children. “They be Pat and Art Mulrane,” said
Mrs Colgan; and by the dropping of the nickname she unconsciously
showed that in this desperate crisis she had fixed some hopes upon
their friendly intervention.
The first action of the brothers was hardly encouraging. One of them
shook his fist fiercely at the children, and his threatening shout rose
above the dull drumming of the rollers.
“If them barbarous young miscreants of man-trappers take and do
anythin’ agin the unfortunate little crathurs now, I hope they’ll
get hung for it, I do so,” the Widow Joyce said half-whimpering.
Biddy Colgan simply ran away screeching, because, as she afterwards
explained, she’d as lief not be seein’ the two of them _massacreed_ or
swallied up.
“Och be aisy,” Six-pound-ten said to the widow. “Sure it’s only
dispersuadin’ them he’d be of skytin’ out into the soft holes. Ah,
woman, have sinse.”
Pat Mulrane had in fact roared at the children, who seemed about to
rush towards him: “Don’t you offer to stir an atom off that, you young
thieves of the world, or it’s settin’ the dog here at yous I’ll be to
ait yous alive.” He would have found it difficult to carry out this
threat, as Garry, the black-and-tan collie, himself had been once
nearly engulfed, and ever since had resolutely avoided setting a paw
on doubtful places. However it effectually deterred Atty and Min, who
remained rooted in dismay. A finishing-touch seemed added to their
tribulations by the advent of these notorious bugbears, at whom they
had now and then flung with due circumspection a censorious pebble or
clod. As they cowered together, motionless and mute, Min could only
make some vindictive grimaces with her face hidden on Atty’s sleeve,
and Atty thought wildly of setting up a propitiatory song, but could
not screw up courage to begin.
Meanwhile a brief and anxious colloquy was going on between the two
man-trappers. The urgency of the situation allowed scant time for
words, and small choice of deeds. In a few moments the swift rising
of the tide would swamp the children on their little ledge of safety,
and though that lay within a man’s jump of the Mulrane’s station, to
spring upon it without dislodging its other occupants was, by reason of
its diminutive size and slippery surface, an altogether impossible feat.
“Musha, good gracious, what at all quare antic is the fellow at now?”
commented Mrs Colgan to her criticising companions on the other side of
Slughnatraigh, as they saw Pat Mulrane suddenly plunge forward as if
about to dive off the lowest shelf of the rock. “Is it fallin’ after
his head he’d be, to the back of everythin’ else?”
“Begorra, it’s makin’ a foot-stick of himself he is,” Six-pound-ten
averred, “to let the children across,” and so it was.
By wedging his toes tightly into a crevice of the big boulder, and
gripping with both hands a hold of the slimy, tawny-podded wreaths on
the small one, Pat, prone at full length, just spanned the interval
between them, over which Art stepped thus on a footbridge, and returned
with a frightened child swinging from either arm. This manœuvre was
executed with the utmost despatch, yet barely in time, for Pat’s
precarious clutch of the slithery seaweed failed just as the other
three were safely landed, so that down he went face foremost into
the smothering slough, whence his brother hauled him out, blinded,
half-choked, hideous to behold in a mask of blue-black oozy mire, after
a desperate wrestle with the clinging horror of Slughnatraigh.
All serious danger, nevertheless, was at an end once they were set high
and dry upon the big boulder, where they could wait securely until the
rescue was completed with the help of inanimate planks and ropes. The
strange childer were before long transferred to the Mulranes’ house,
and joined there by the Colgans with their party. Not for many a year
had Mrs Mulrane entertained so much company, and more kept dropping
in through the afternoon, as rumours reached the town, and brought
neighbours to investigate upon the spot.
Deep concern had prevailed at Clochranbeg towards the close of the day
before, when Min and Atty were found to have entirely and unaccountably
disappeared. Not only were the children general favourites, but a
feeling existed that the parish was in some measure responsible for
them, and that a slur would be cast upon it if they were allowed, as
Joe Fottrell said, “to go to loss.” Most people had a sense that such
an event would be unlucky as well as lamentable. Search-parties had
been roaming over the bogs all night, and some were still going to and
fro among their holes and hillocks; but an opinion that they would not
again be seen alive was steadily gaining ground.
Nobody wandered more widely and with a more distracted mind than Mrs
O’Hagan, the strange childer’s landlady, who was reproaching herself
bitterly for having “maybe scared them away wid blamin’ them for th’
ould kilt hin, and talkin’ about the Union.” She had gone so far
afield that the news of their recovery did not find her till near
sunset, and even then in the shape of reports at once disquieting and
contradictory. Some said that the strange childer had been last seen
right in the middle of Slughnatraigh. Some that old Mrs Mulrane had
hunted them away from her door, and set the dog at them. Others, with
much convincing persistency and detail, related that the man-trappers
“were after drowndin’ both of them below on the strand, and they
screechin’ the way you might hear them in Derry.”
Her relief was therefore intense when she found them happily
established by the Mulranes’ fire, little the worse for their
adventures, which several neighbours graphically recounted to her,
laying especial stress upon the heroism displayed by Pat Mulrane, who
had come, Six-pound-ten said, “widin an ames ace of losin’ his life
over it.” Upon Pat, who still looked limp and woebegone as he sat
in the chimney-corner, Mrs O’Hagan showered, vastly to his further
discomfort, profuse praises and benedictions.
“Long sorry I’d be,” she said in peroration, “to be passin’ remarks
agin any person in the parish, but I question is there e’er another
boy in it that would take and make a foot-stick of himself above the
bewitched ould houle out yonder, that’s neither land nor water, unless
’twas the Divil had the stirrin’ of them together accordin’ to some
plan of his own, as is like enough, for the unnathural thrimblin’ and
quakin’s in them yit. Sure now, if it wasn’t only for yourself, Pat
Mulrane, it’s at the black bottom of that awful place them two little
imps of innicent crathurs ’ud be lyin’ this minyit, supposin’ there is
a bottom to it at all, instead of sittin’ here as grand as you plase,
aitin’ bread and treckle, the bould little tormints, and half the
parish heart-scalded runnin’ over the country after them the lenth of
the night.”
“Och, they’re welcome, ma’am,” Pat muttered ambiguously.
“Take a cup of tay, ma’am; it’s dry you’re apt to be after all that
fine talk you’re givin’ Pat,” his mother said with a sub-acid suavity,
for while exulting on his behalf she retained a resentful memory of her
last visit to Mrs O’Hagan, and of Dan’s rejected suit.
Mrs O’Hagan accepted the tea unsuspectingly, though protesting that
she had only looked in to fetch home the children; yet in the end she
went her way without them. The Mulranes were loth to relinquish them so
soon, chiefly on account of Maggie Dowling, who from her imprisoning
box-bed declared that “the little gossoon wid his quare song done her
heart good,” and who seemed sadly cast down by the prospect of their
departure. “You might lave them at all events,” Mrs Mulrane suggested,
“till the crathur’s tired of the fantigue.” And Mrs O’Hagan consented,
mindful of what poverty prevailed in her own and her neighbours’
houses, and not ignorant that the Mulranes were at this time some
degrees better off than the rest. As for Min and Atty themselves, the
friendliness of Garry, and the abundance of freshly-baked griddle
cakes, very sufficiently reconciled them to their change of quarters.
In this way it came about that the strange childer took up their
abode with the man-trappers, and one result of it was that the latter
shook off the bad name which had been fastened upon them. From that
day the youth of Clochranbeg transferred their animosity to unchancy
Slughnatraigh, which they thenceforth regarded with increased dread
and aversion, and at whose impassively sullen, grey face they pelted
vanishing stones from an even more cautious distance than when the
man-trappers had been their mark. Six-pound-ten’s oft-repeated
narrative of the strange childer’s hair’s-breadth escape always wound
up with, “Ay, bedad, ’twas the fine foot-stick he made of himself
entirely that time;” and this helped to suggest the new nickname
with which it somehow seemed necessary to replace the old. It became
customary to speak of Pat Mulrane and his brother as “the foot-sticks,”
a title which, in the circumstances, nobody could shout after them with
hostile derision. Moreover, as Min and Atty often accompanied them to
the strand or the town, they were gradually drawn out of the isolation
into which they had shrunk, and began to hold again some intercourse
with their kind.
These changes were all more or less soothing to Mrs Mulrane, and under
their influence she showed a perceptible diminution in the eccentricity
and moodiness of her demeanour. But her clearing sky showed its
brightest patch one day when a friend of the M‘Evoys looked in on her
charged with what were obviously overtures to the making up of a match
between their Lizzie and her Pat. On that occasion she uttered dark
and riddling speeches, which would not have misbeseemed an ancient
Pythoness, or the heroine of an Æschylean drama, about people whose
ignorance and pride “hindered them of taking what was offered them,
when belike nothing ailed it all the while except bein’ a dale too good
for them, or the likes of them, and who were very apt to find they had
missed their chances, if ever they come lookin’ after it again.”
Nevertheless this lifting of her clouds was only partial and
transitory. Their shadow dropped upon her once more before the
dissatisfied go-between had well re-crossed the threshold, and she
fell into a gloomy reverie, standing idle at her door, while the chant
of the _Mountain Pig_ came faintly from the inner room, where it was
beguiling that long spring afternoon for Maggie Dowling. If she had put
her dejection into words they would have run somewhat as follows: “It’s
poor Dan I do be thinkin’ bad of. Them other two boys might be right
enough, but me heart’s scalded about him, for he didn’t get fairity wid
it all, troth he did not. And it’s blamin’ me he is, I well know. There
might be a letter at the office agin next Saturday, but it’s not to me
he’ll write. Last time it was to Pat, and before that to Maggie and
Art; niver a word he sent to me. It’s him I’m thinkin’ bad of, the poor
child. But I might maybe get news of him on Saturday.”