ON DRINANE HEAD
Notwithstanding Manus's valorous undertaking to come and call her in
the morning, Norah took the precaution of getting up after he had
gone and drawing back the curtains and pulling up the blind, so that
the first gleam of the gray dawn might fall into her room and wake
her. She had but just huddled back into bed again when she heard the
drawing-room door open and good-nights being exchanged. A minute
later the handle of her own door was softly turned and Anstace came
in, carefully shading her candle with her hand to keep its light from
falling on her little sister's face. Norah closed her eyes tight and
feigned to be asleep. She was afraid of Anstace questioning her
about her unusual wakefulness, but it gave her an uncomfortable sense
of deceit to feel Anstace with cautious touch drawing the tumbled
bed-clothes straight, and tucking them in comfortably about her.
Then she went away as softly as she had come, and Norah fell asleep
and started up, as it seemed to herself, but a few minutes
afterwards, to find the window opposite her bed a square of
pale-grayish light, and the different objects in the room becoming
dimly visible.
It was only after a minute or two's partial bewilderment that she
could remember what it was which impended that morning, and why she
ought to be awake. In a moment, however, it all came back to her
mind, and she slipped hastily out upon the floor. Manus had not come
to call her as yet, but it would be well, all the same, to know
whether it were already three o'clock or not. A strange, ghostly
little figure Norah looked as she stole along the passage and down
the stairs in her night-gown and bare feet to where the tall old
clock in the hall ticked solemnly on, its ticking sounding ever so
much louder now in the silence of the house than it did ordinarily
during the day-time.
Norah had to mount on a chair so as to bring her face upon a level
with that of the clock before she could make out the position of the
two hands, and ascertain that it was as yet but half-past two. Back
to bed, therefore, she had to journey; but she did not venture to lie
down, lest sleep should steal upon her unawares. She sat up straight
instead, with her knees drawn up to her chin and the blankets pulled
round her shoulders, waiting till, after what seemed to her an
interminable time, the clock downstairs told out the hour with three
ringing metallic strokes.
There was still no stir from Manus's side of the house, and so she
started off on her peregrinations once more. She crept past the door
of Roderick's room, which was next to that of Manus, with bated
breath. The handle of the door made what seemed an appallingly loud
noise as she turned it. Within all was darkness, and the deep,
regular breathing, which was the only sound to be heard, betokened
that Lanty's peril had not interfered with Manus's slumbers as much
as he himself had expected.
"Manus, it has struck three!" whispered Norah from the door.
There was no answer. The breathing continued as regularly as before,
and Norah had to make her way across the room in dread of tumbling
over some of the furniture and making a clatter, which would arouse
half the household.
"Manus, wake up!" she whispered again as she reached the bed. "It's
time to dress."
"Eh--ah--hi--what's the matter?" came in indistinct gurglings from
amongst the bed-clothes.
"It's three o'clock, Manus--past it. And we're to go up to warn
Lanty; don't you remember?"
"Lanty!" in very sleepy accents. "Oh, bother, Norah, we'll leave
Lanty alone!"
It was quite evident that the enterprise bore a very different aspect
to Manus now, just roused out of his warm sleep, from what it had
done a few hours before.
"But the police and Captain Lester are going up to look for him, and
they'll take his still away, and carry him and his friends off to
prison."
"Nonsense! Not they! Trust old Lanty to look after himself. He'll
show them a trick or two if they come making trouble up there. I
don't believe they'll find the way, and very likely we shouldn't
either."
"But we ought to try," urged Norah, not a little taken aback at this
unexpected change of front on Manus's part.
"Oh, it's too great a fag, and I'm tired. Go back to bed, Norah,
it'll be all right, you'll see."
And a rustling of the bed-clothes betokened that Manus, after giving
this comfortable assurance, had turned over and disposed himself to
sleep once more.
Norah retired baffled from the room. It was full daylight by this
time, the cold, cheerless light of dawn, and she stood in the lobby
window, looking at the gray world outside, and debating with herself
what she should do. Perhaps, as Manus had said, it would be all
right, and Lanty's hiding-place would remain undiscovered, but on the
other hand Captain Lester, for all his jollity and good-humour, did
not look like a man who would follow a wild-goose chase, and probably
he had made himself well acquainted with the whereabouts of the still
before starting on his present enterprise. Norah thought of Lanty's
ugly, good-natured face, and of his kindness to her the day of the
seal-hunt. She was a little girl who did not forget kindness very
readily; and then there were Biddy and Tom and Bride to be thought
of. What a disgrace and a sorrow it would be to all of them if Lanty
should be marched along the road handcuffed on his way to Ennis jail,
as Manus had said he would be! No, the police should not take Lanty
if she could help it--that was a determination to which Norah very
quickly came, and since Manus would not go with her she would go
alone out on Drinane Head, and warn him of his danger. She thought
that from Manus's description of the place upon the previous night
she could hardly fail to find it.
It must be confessed that it required all Norah's self-command, when
she went back to her own little room, to keep her from plunging into
bed again, it looked so invitingly warm, and the raw chill of the
early morning had penetrated to her very bones. She withstood the
temptation bravely, however, and by the time that she had deluged her
face abundantly with cold water, and scrubbed it into a glow with a
rough towel, and had huddled in all haste into her clothes, the last
remnant of sleepiness had disappeared.
It was a strange sensation to step out-of-doors into the freshness of
the day which had but just begun. The birds were awake, and
twittered loudly in the trees as Norah walked down the avenue, but
they and she seemed the only things that were astir as yet. The
cattle were still lying down in the fields, as they had lain during
the night, and the doors of the few cabins which she passed upon the
road were shut, and not even a curl of smoke rose upwards from the
chimneys. It was a longer walk than Norah had expected, but she kept
the lofty frowning headland for which she was bound well in view, and
trudged steadily on. The road grew rougher and steeper as she went,
and dwindled down at last into a mere cattle-track which led out upon
the open moorland and left her free to make her way in what direction
she pleased.
Norah had never been so far from home by herself before, but that did
not trouble her much, any more than did the heathery solitude on
which she found herself. She had grown used to lonely rambles since
they had come to live at Kilshane, and her only fear was that she
might miss the snug retreat in which Lanty and his confederates
carried on their illegal practices, or that she might not reach it in
time to enable them to escape. She found that walking through the
deep heather, which reached almost to her waist, was very hard and
tiring work, and here and there she came upon soft, swampy places
into which her feet sunk with, a squelching sound, and threatened
more than once to stick fast altogether. All the same she struggled
onwards and upwards valiantly, sometimes helped on her way by a bare
slope of limestone which cropped out above the heather, and sometimes
having to make a long step to cross a rift or crevice, which seemed
to go down into unknown depths, but which was filled almost to the
brim with little green ferns and mosses, and trailing brambles, which
had established themselves in there out of reach of cutting blasts.
A yellow glow had been spreading gradually higher into the sky, and
the tops of the great mountains to her left were bathed in sunlight.
Suddenly, as Norah walked along, she saw her own shadow thrown before
her on the rocks--the sun, a red, rayless disc, had risen up over the
mountains, and in a moment the dull monotony of the landscape broke
into sudden life and colour. It was the first sunrise which Norah
had ever been out-of-doors to witness, but its beauty awoke little
response in her, her only thought being that if the sun had risen it
must be getting late--late, that is, for what she had to do, and that
it behoved her to hurry on if her expedition was not to fail of its
purpose. Panting, she struggled on up the steep heathery incline,
till she stopped all at once with a little gasp of wonder and
relief--she had reached the end of the long ascent, and almost at her
very feet the great cliff sank sheer to the sea, five hundred feet
below.
For a brief moment the little girl stood still to recover her breath,
whilst the keen salt wind blew her hair and her short skirts about.
A sea-gull circled close above her uttering its short, plaintive cry,
then with extended wings glided far out over the abyss. No other
living thing was in view on all the wide waste of heather and sea, in
the midst of which she stood, a little solitary speck.
She could walk faster now, for here, on the edge of the cliffs,
exposed to the fierce western gales, not even the heather could grow;
there were only a few inches of black peaty soil covering the rocks.
The long, level rays of the early sun shone upon her as she hurried
along, and far beneath her the great Atlantic surges broke in foam
upon the rocks. She had to make more than one detour to avoid
yawning clefts that ran far inland, another rise had to be struggled
up, and she stood at last on the very summit of Drinane Head.
Immediately below her was a hollow, a little green oasis which seemed
scooped out from the surrounding wilderness, and with a great throb
of joy Norah recognized the description which Manus had given her,
and knew she had arrived at the secluded retreat in which Lanty had
deemed that he might securely carry on his lawless trade. The little
mountain tarn lay in the centre of the circle of green, its black
sullen waters not brightened even by the morning sunshine; a tiny
stream flowed out of it and fell over the edge of the cliffs, to be
blown away in mist and spray long before the sea was reached. Facing
her, midway between the lake and the cliffs, was the thatched hovel
of which Manus had spoken, built against a rock, so that the wreaths
of blue peat-smoke which curled up from its roof seemed to rise out
of the very ground.
No one, police-constable or anyone else, was in sight, and by all
appearances she was still in time to accomplish her errand.
Slipping, scrambling, jumping from ledge to ledge of the rocks, Norah
descended from the height on which she stood into the little dell
below. She had to cross the streamlet which purled and gurgled
between banks of close mountain turf in its short course to the sea.
A large stone, however, had been placed in its bed to facilitate such
crossings, and a moment later Norah was knocking boldly at the door
of the hovel.
A shuffling of feet was heard within, a subdued muttering of voices,
then the door was cautiously opened a little way, and a
fierce-looking man with unkempt red hair and beard appeared. Norah
recognized him at once as the steersman of the boat which they had
encountered down below on their return from Ballintaggart Cave.
"Is Lanty Hogan here, please?" she enquired, whilst he stared in
speechless amazement at his unlooked-for visitor.
"An' what wud Lanty be doin' up here on the bare mountain, an' him
wid his father's good house to shtop in?" the man returned in true
Irish fashion, answering one question by asking another.
"But Lanty has been here, I know," Norah said earnestly, "and if he's
here still will you tell him, please, that Norah O'Brien is here and
wants to see him about something very important?"
"An' what ailed ye, Miss Norah, to be runnin' up here afther me an'
it scarce cockshout yit? Shure there's nothin' gone amiss down in
Kilshane?"
And there was genuine anxiety in Lanty's face as he unceremoniously
thrust the first speaker to one side and appeared in the doorway
himself. He was only in his shirt and trousers, and his face had a
sodden, smoke-bleared look.
"There is nothing wrong at Kilshane, thank you, Lanty," Norah began
rather nervously, for two or three other men in similar attire had
clustered at the door, all gazing at her and evidently curious to
learn her errand. "Captain Lester, the resident magistrate, stayed
at our house last night, and he and Mr. Roderick are coming up here
this morning with a lot of policemen to search for your still.
Master Manus heard them talking about it after dinner last night, so
I came up to tell you."
"Tare an' ages!"
Lanty almost knocked Norah over as he dashed out of the house, and in
another minute was bounding like a cat up the rocky knoll from which
she had just descended. Screening himself behind a block of
limestone which topped the summit, he crouched for a moment, gazing
about him, his eyes shaded from the sun, then came springing down
again as actively as he had gone up.
"The child's i' the right!" he ejaculated breathlessly, as he got
back, "an' sorra moment to lose! The peelers is movin' up to take us
back-ways an' front-ways an' all sides at wanst, but wid the help o'
goodness we'll sarcumvint thim theer boys yit."
The men drew away from the door into the centre of the floor,
speaking in hoarse, excited murmurs; and Norah, impelled by
curiosity, stepped inside, where she could see the interior of the
hovel and what was going on there.
A roaring turf-fire burnt at the farther end, making the heat of the
room almost unendurable, and a skinny, wrinkled old woman, with locks
of grizzled hair escaping from under the red handkerchief round her
head, was engaged in tending it. On a tripod above the fire stood a
tall, strangely-shaped vessel, closed at the top save for a pipe that
issued from it and wound in many spiral coils round the inside of a
large tub filled with cold water and placed upon the hearth. The
pipe passed out again at the bottom of the tub, discharging the
freshly-distilled spirits which had been condensed within it in its
passage through the cold water into a large earthenware pan which
acted as receiver. Norah had hardly had time, however, to
contemplate this strange and rude apparatus when, at an order given
in Irish by the red-bearded man who had opened the door to her, two
of the other men lifted the still off the fire, and carrying it
outside the door, poured the boiling liquor within it into the little
stream; another caught up the earthenware pan and emptied it in
similar fashion.
"A sin an' shame to be sendin' the good potheen over the racks to the
fishes," muttered the red-bearded man, whom the others called
Malachy, and who seemed to exercise some sort of authority over the
lawless crew. "Stir yerselves, boys," he went on louder, "or they'll
be on ye afore all's done."
The still itself, and the tripod on which it had stood, the tub with
the "worm" still coiled within it, and all the other portions of the
apparatus were carried up to the tarn and sunk in its dark,
peat-stained water, so also were two kegs of whisky which were
brought out from the inner room of the hovel. Malachy himself seized
a broken spade, which formed part of an accumulation of rubbish in
one corner, and carried spadeful after spadeful of blazing peats out
of the house, flinging them, hissing and spluttering, into the
stream, till the furnace on the hearth had been reduced to the limits
of an ordinary domestic fire. A big black pot was suspended over it,
in the place where the still had been; water and meal were hastily
poured in, and the old woman took her stand before it, an iron spoon
in her hand, stirring as composedly as if she had never assisted in
any more dubious enterprise than preparing stirabout for the
breakfast of her son and his friends.
"Now, thim theer boys may come as soon as plazes thim, an' we'll be
ready to bid thim the top o' the marnin'," chuckled Malachy, when the
preparations indoors were completed and the men who had gone to sink
the still and the other appliances in the tarn had straggled back to
the hovel again. Then, as his eye fell on Norah, whom in the bustle
everyone had forgotten, but who had remained standing just within the
door watching all these proceedings with the keenest interest, he
exclaimed, "Murdher alive, what'll we do wid the child at all, at
all?"
Strangely enough, this question had not occurred to any of the band
before, and at that moment four black dots came into view upon the
heathery skyline above the little lake. They were the heads of men
moving steadily down upon the cabin. A minute or two later two more
dark figures appeared high up on the rocky crest which Lanty had
scaled to get a view. Clearly the house was surrounded and escape
from it cut off.
"Hoide her in theer, quick!" suggested one of the men, pointing
towards the inner room.
"An' if it's minded to sarch the house they'd be," retorted Malachy
contemptuously, "sure the little darlin' wud be desthroyed for comin'
to bring us warnin', an' us desthroyed along of her."
"'Tis the born gomeral that y'are!" exclaimed the old woman, who had
hitherto continued to stir the black pot assiduously, but who seemed
now to wake up suddenly to the emergency of the situation. Still
grasping the iron spoon in one hand, she caught the terrified Norah
by the other, and dragged her unceremoniously towards the fire.
"Tak' the cheer an' sit down," she said authoritatively.
Malachy obeyed his mother, as Norah took her to be, by bringing
forward the solitary wooden chair of which the establishment boasted,
and seating himself upon it by the fire. With a sudden grab the old
woman pulled Norah's hat off and flung it amongst the lumber in the
corner, then snatching up an old tartan shawl which lay on the
window-ledge, she put it over the little girl's head and wrapped it
hastily about her.
"Stand her beside ye an' she'll pass for wan o' yer own," she said,
giving Norah a push towards her son as she spoke.
"Niver fear, 'cushla, nayther hurt nor harm shall come to ye,"
whispered Malachy encouragingly, as he drew her to stand at his knee.
"Stand still an' kape yer mouth shut, that's all that's for you to
do."