There was agitation in Kilcross. For years the fishing industry of
the place had been deteriorating. Steam-trawlers owned by English
and Scotch firms in Liverpool and Glasgow had gradually come to
infest the bay, and tugs came twice a week to relieve them of their
takings. The primitive appliances and means of transport of the
native fishermen had left them unable to cope with this competition;
so that it was with difficulty they could get their fish sold, and
often it was left to rot on their hands. Further than that, the huge
beams of these new-fangled engines disturbed the bottom of the bay,
raked up the spawning beds, and interfered with the habits of
generations, so that no man knew where to look next for the fish.
But all that was going to be altered now; the press had taken the
matter up and interested itself on behalf of this distressed class;
busybodies who saw an opportunity of gaining a cheap notoriety for
themselves wrote to the papers and caused questions to be asked in
Parliament. The result was that relief works had been undertaken in
the shape of a boat-slip, with a jetty to protect it from the
weather, and to form a harbor for incoming boats. Up to this time
the open beach had been their only landing-place, and dragging the
heavy boats, over the rough shingle every time they were launched or
taken out of the water had not tended to increase their lasting
qualities; while often, when it was at all rough, it was impossible
to land at all, and a sandy cove further round the coast had to be
sought out. So now, with a placid gratitude to Providence, all
Kilcross was sitting on the shore watching the first stone being laid.
For weeks afterwards the new works afforded great employment for eye
and tongue to the inhabitants of the little village. In the reunions
on the beach or round the fires at night in the cottages, there was
no other subject of conversation but 'the gran' new kay;' and when
there was nothing else to do, the large square stones lying about
came in handy to sit upon and smoke a pipe while watching the masons
at work. Some of the men even went the length of earning an
occasional day's wages by helping to transport the stones to their
resting-places; but the general opinion was that, when everything was
being done for them, it was unnecessary to jog the elbow of
Providence, and that such sustained energy as regular work entailed
could not be expected of a people used to the precarious calling of
the sea.
Presently the works were finished, and the idlers' occupation was
gone. The particular busybody who took the credit to himself for all
that had been done, broke a bottle of champagne over the new pier and
made a speech. The fishermen quite believed him when he told them
that they were very fine fellows; but with the narrow shrewdness of
their class, thought that he was rather a fool to take so much
trouble over other people's affairs that did not concern him, for
they did not know how it served his interest to do so.
On the following Sunday morning, a lovely day in the late Donegal
summer, when the women and the younger men were preparing to set out
for chapel, the word went round that 'the fish is in the bay,' and in
a moment all thought of devotions was abandoned. First there was
seen a dark-blue ripple on the surface of the water, coming rapidly
nearer, and shot with flashes of silver in the sunlight; this was
caused by the 'sprit' or small herring-fry leaping out of the water
to escape their natural enemies. Above them hovered screaming flocks
of gulls; every now and then one of these would mount to a height,
and sheathing its wings, would drop with a splash like a stone into
the water, emerging with a small fish in its beak. Hard upon the
track of the 'sprit' followed shoals of shehans, glascon, whiting,
mackerel, herring, and pollack; after them came porpoises, dolphins,
and seals; conger-eels twined themselves among the wrack along the
rocks lying in wait for the fry; and even a whale was seen spouting
in the offing. The larger fish devoured the smaller, only to be
themselves devoured in turn by others.
In a moment the nets were got out and the boats launched. The women
and boys remaining on shore armed themselves with baskets and
seine-nets. With these they rushed into the water up to the waist
and lifted out baskets full of the fry and even of the mackerel,
which sometimes ran themselves up dry upon the beach in their
eagerness after their prey. A shoal of mackerel entered the mouth of
the little harbor, and a seine-net being quickly stretched across the
entrance, not one escaped.
That evening there were rejoicings in the little village. Enough
fish had been caught in that one day to salt down and last them
through the winter, leaving a handsome surplus to hawk through the
inland towns and villages. The whiting had been caught in such
numbers that no one had any use for them, and they were left to rot
in heaps upon the shore, until the country people came with carts and
drew them for manure. But the old men shook their heads, and said it
was a bad sign for the weather; they had never known so plentiful a
take, and the fish must be flying before some prodigious storm.
Upon this occasion the croakers proved right for once. For when the
people awoke two days later, they found that the first of the
equinoctial gales was upon them before its usual time. The clouds
were scurrying in huge banks across the sky, and the sea, turned
leaden-gray, was running violently shorewards, beaten flat by the
furious force of the wind, and breaking upon the beach with a low
moaning sound. As the day progressed the wind abated slightly and
allowed the waves to rise, and they roused themselves in their might
and beat upon the devoted pier. For a time their efforts were
unavailing, for the back that it presented to them was encased in
concrete and proof against assault; but at last a huge roller
launched itself over the top of the pier and fell upon the stone-work
in its centre; the mortar, impregnated with the salt air and the
spray, had never had a chance to dry and get properly hard; the force
of the water, gripping the edges of one of the huge stones in the
centre, whisked it from its feeble hold and carried it hurtling into
the sea beyond. The waves laughed, exulting in their success, and
hurled mass after mass into the breach thus begun, churning stones
and mortar up in a circular whirlpool, until by evening there was a
huge round hole in the new pier reaching to the bed-rock beneath.
Meanwhile the sights and sounds of wrecks at sea were beginning to be
apparent. Minute-guns were heard in the offing, the reports almost
drowned in the rush of the storm; a three-masted vessel went ashore
on the opposite side of the bay under the lighthouse upon St. John's
Point, and could be seen rapidly breaking up. Masts of vessels,
beams, and pieces of wreckage began to come ashore, brought by the
set of the currents and the force of the wind. All the fishermen
were gathered upon the beach apathetically watching the destruction
of the quay, from which they had hoped so much, and on the look-out
for prizes.
'What's yon?' presently said Big Dan Murphy, the leader of the group,
pointing to a dark object tossing among the surf. They formed a line
joining hands, and he dashed in and pulled it ashore. It proved to
be a cask of rum.
'Lend a hand, boys,' he said, 'to take it up to me shanty, an' we'll
have a sup the night whin ahls over.'
Nothing further came ashore, and the night saw a dozen men gathered
in Murphy's hut. The village stood a little back from the beach in a
dip of the land that sheltered it from the boisterous fury of the
Atlantic gales; but Murphy's hut stood alone on higher ground and
nearer the sea, the sentinel and outpost of the rest.
The men sat round the open turf fire upon the hearth, each with a tin
porringer in his hand, and the cask in their midst.
'It's well that the ould gauger's gone,' said one with gloomy
satisfaction, 'or he'd be pokin' his ugly nose into this. He always
kim down on the night ov a storrum to say what had kim ashore.'
'They say,' replied another, 'that this man is worse agin. New twigs
swape clane an' he's for iver drivin' aroun' the counthry wid his
trap an' his little wee black pony.'
As he spoke there was a knock at the door, and the gauger stood in
their midst.
'How's this, boys?' he said. 'What have you got here? Your name's
Dan Murphy, isn't it?'
'Ay, till the bone breaks,' returned Dan briefly.
'Don't you know that this doesn't belong to you? Flotsam and jetsam
belongs to the Crown and the owner of the land upon which it is
washed ashore.'
The other men looked anxious, Dan dogged.
'Findin's is kapin's,' he said; 'I niver hear tell that the open
baich belonged to no man. I pulled yon barrel out ov the say at the
risk av me own life, an' I've as much right to kape it as any man
else, an' what's more, I mane to kape it.'
'I've heard of you, Dan Murphy,' replied the gauger sternly, 'and
you'd better not give any trouble. I'm not the kind of man to stand
any nonsense. I seize this rum in the Queen's name.'
In an instant he was on his back on the floor with two men on top of
him; but the red-bearded gauger was a strong man and a bold, and
struggling fiercely, he gave vent to a shrill whistle. The door
burst open, and in rushed six policemen, whom he had brought,
expecting resistance. The biggest of them made at Big Dan, but found
more than his match; the giant stepped lightly aside, and catching
his assailant as he passed by the scruff of the neck and the
waistband, he swung him round with the impetus of his own rush, and
hurled him back through the door the way he came.
Then seizing an axe that stood in the corner, he shouted above the
uproar, 'If us is to git no good ov it, no man else will neither,'
and he brought down the axe on the head of the cask, smashing it in
and overturning it.
The rum gurgled placidly out of the hole, and ran in little streams
about the floor, forming a pool round the gauger where he lay on his
back, and soaking into his clothes; above him the fight raged
fiercely, the men whirled close-locked in the narrow space of the
hut. Presently a rivulet of rum meandered gently into the fire upon
the hearth, and immediately the floor of the hut was intersected by
rivers of blue flame. The rest of the combatants rushed stamping and
swearing out of the hut. The gauger still lying on his back could
not see what had occurred; and thinking that the others were
escaping, he grappled his two assailants more fiercely to him, so
that they could not rise. In a moment he was an island in a lake of
fire, the flames lapping his sides, fastening upon his clothes, and
licking his beard. With a yell of surprise and pain he released his
opponents, who fled shouting from the hut. He rose and rushed after
them. But the flames had caught, and were fanned to fury by the
gale. He threw himself down and rolled upon the ground in agony, but
they had got firm hold of his rum-soaked clothes, and relit in one
place as fast as they were extinguished in another. At last he could
bear the torture no longer, and uttering shriek on shriek, he rushed
headlong down the slope a pillar of towering flame, and threw himself
over the cliff into the sea a hundred feet below.
When he was pulled out a few minutes later he was a mere mass of
charred cinder, hardly bearing any resemblance to humanity, and with
only a few sparks of life left in his body. Before he could be
carried to the nearest hut he was dead.
For their share in his death Dan Murphy and the other two men
received long terms of penal servitude, and the scandal consequent
upon the incident cast a blight over the little place. No further
relief works were undertaken. The jetty is now in ruins, but a
hundred yards off along the cliffs there is a spot still pointed out
as 'the gauger's lep.'