From the little creek where we landed, a small zigzag path led up the
sides of the cliff, the track by which the peasants carried the sea-weed
which they gathered for manure, and up this we now slowly wended our
way.
Stopping for some time to gaze at the ample bay beneath us, the
tall-masted frigates floating so majestically on its glassy surface--it
was a scene of tranquil and picturesque beauty with which it would have
been almost impossible to associate the idea of war and invasion. In
the lazy bunting that hung listlessly from peak and mast-head--in the
cheerful voices of the sailors, heard afar off in the stillness--in
the measured plash of the sea itself, and the fearless daring of the
sea-gulls, as they soared slowly above our heads--there seemed
something so suggestive of peace and tranquillity, that it struck us as
profanation to disturb it.
As we gained the top and looked around us, our astonishment became even
greater. A long succession of low hills, covered with tall ferns or
heath, stretched away on every side; not a house, nor a hovel, nor a
living thing to be seen. Had the country been one uninhabited since
the Creation, it could not have presented an aspect of more thorough
desolation! No road-track, nor even a footpath, led through the dreary
waste before us, on which, to all seeming, the foot of man had never
fallen. And as we stood for some moments, uncertain which way to turn, a
sense of the ridiculous suddenly burst upon the party, and we all broke
into a hearty roar of laughter.
‘I little thought,’ cried Charost, ‘that I should ever emulate “La
Perouse,” but it strikes me that I am destined to become a great
discoverer.’
‘How so, colonel?’ asked his aide-de-camp.
‘Why, it is quite clear that this same island is uninhabited; and if it
be all like this, I own I’m scarcely surprised at it.’
‘Still, there must be a town not far off, and the residence of that
bishop we heard of this morning.’
A half-incredulous shrug of the shoulders was all his reply, as he
sauntered along with his hands behind his back, apparently lost in
thought; while we, as if instinctively partaking of his gloom, followed
him in total silence.
‘Do you know, gentlemen, what I’m thinking?’ said he, stopping suddenly
and facing about. ‘My notion is, that the best thing to do here would be
to plant our tricolour, proclaim the land a colony of France, and take
to our boats again.’
This speech, delivered with an air of great gravity, imposed upon us
for an instant; but the moment after, the speaker breaking into a hearty
laugh, we all joined him, as much amused by the strangeness of our
situation, as by anything in his remark.
‘We never could bring our guns through a soil like this, colonel,’
said the aide-de-camp, as he struck his heel into the soft and clayey
surface.
‘If we could ever land them at all!’ muttered he, half aloud; then
added, ‘But for what object should we? Believe me, gentlemen, if we are
to have a campaign here, bows and arrows are the true weapons.’
‘Ah! what do I see yonder?’ cried the aide-de-camp; ‘are not those sheep
feeding in that little glen?’
‘Yes,’ cried I, ‘and a man herding them, too. See, the fellow has caught
sight of us, and he’s off as fast as his legs can carry him.’ And so was
it: the man had no sooner seen us than he sprang to his feet and hurried
down the mountain at full speed.
Our first impulse was to follow and give him chase, and even without a
word we all started off in pursuit; but we soon saw how fruitless would
be the attempt, for, even independent of the start he had got of us, the
peasant’s speed was more than the double of our own.
‘No matter,’ said the colonel, ‘if we have lost the shepherd we have
at least gained the sheep, and so I recommend you to secure mutton for
dinner to-morrow.’
With this piece of advice, down the hill he darted as hard as he could;
Briolle, the aide-de-camp, and myself following at our best pace. We
were reckoning without our host, however, for the animals, after one
stupid stare at us, set off in a scamper that soon showed their mountain
breeding, keeping all together like a pack of hounds, and really not
very inferior in the speed they displayed.
A little gorge led between the hills, and through this they rushed
madly, and with a clatter like a charge of cavalry. Excited by the
chase, and emulous each to outrun the other, the colonel threw off his
shako, and Briolle his sword, in the ardour of pursuit. We now gained
on them rapidly, and though, from a winding in the glen, they had
momentarily got out of sight, we knew that we were close upon them. I
was about thirty paces in advance of my comrades, when, on turning an
angle of the gorge, I found myself directly in front of a group of mud
hovels, near which were standing about a dozen ragged, miserable-looking
men, armed with pitchforks and scythes, while in the rear stood the
sheep, blowing and panting from the chase.
I came to a dead stop; and although I would have given worlds to have
had my comrades at my side, I never once looked back to see if they were
coming; but, putting a bold face on the matter, called out the only few
words I knew of Irish, ‘Go de-mat ha tu.’
The peasants looked at each other; and whether it was my accent, my
impudence, or my strange dress and appearance, or altogether, I cannot
say, but after a few seconds’ pause they burst out into a roar of
laughter, in the midst of which my two comrades came up.
‘We saw the sheep feeding on the hills yonder,’ said I, recovering
self-possession, ‘and guessed that by giving them chase they’d lead us
to some inhabited spot. What is this place called?’
‘Shindrennin,’ said a man who seemed to be the chief of the party; ‘and,
if I might make so bould, who are you, yourselves?’
‘French officers; this is my colonel,’ said I, pointing to Charost, who
was wiping his forehead and face after his late exertion.
The information, far from producing the electric effect of pleasure I
had anticipated, was received with a coldness almost amounting to fear,
and they spoke eagerly together for some minutes in Irish.
‘Our allies evidently don’t like the look of us,’ said Charost,
laughing;’ and if the truth must be told, I own the disappointment is
mutual.’
‘Tis too late you come, sir,’ said the peasant, addressing the colonel,
while he removed his hat, and assumed an air of respectful deference.
‘‘Tis all over with poor Ireland this time.’
‘Tell him,’ said Charost, to whom I translated the speech, ‘that it’s
never too late to assert a good cause; that we have got arms for twenty
thousand, if they have but hands and hearts to use them. Tell him that
a French army is now lying in that bay yonder, ready and able to
accomplish the independence of Ireland.’
I delivered my speech as pompously as it was briefed to me; and although
I was listened to in silence, and respectfully, it was plain my words
carried little or no conviction with them. Not caring to waste more of
our time in such discourse, I now inquired about the country--in what
directions lay the highroads, and the relative situations of the towns
of Killala, Gastlebar, and Ballina, the only places of comparative
importance in the neighbourhood. I next asked about the landing-places,
and learned that a small fishing-harbour existed, not more than half a
mile from the spot where we had landed, from which a little country
road lay to the village of Palmerstown. As to the means of transporting
baggage, guns, and ammunition, there were few horses to be had, but
with money we might get all we wanted; indeed, the peasants constantly
referred to this means of success, even to asking ‘What the French would
give a man that was to join them?’ If I did not translate the demand
with fidelity to my colonel, it was really that a sense of shame
prevented me. My whole heart was in the cause; and I could not endure
the thought of its being degraded in this way. It was growing duskish,
and the colonel proposed that the peasant should show us the way to
the fishing-harbour he spoke of, while some other of the party might go
round to our boat, and direct them to follow us thither. The arrangement
was soon made, and we all sauntered down towards the shore, chatting
over the state of the country, and the chances of a successful rising.
From the specimen before me, I was not disposed to be over sanguine
about the peasantry. The man was evidently disaffected towards England.
He bore her neither good-will nor love, but his fears were greater than
all else. He had never heard of anything but failure in all attempts
against her, and he could not believe in any other result. Even the aid
and alliance of France inspired no other feeling than distrust, for
he said more than once, ‘Sure what can harm yez? Haven’t ye yer ships
beyant, to take yez away, if things goes bad?’
I was heartily glad that Colonel Charost knew so little English, that
the greater part of the peasant’s conversation was unintelligible to
him, since, from the first, he had always spoken of the expedition in
terms of disparagement; and certainly what we were now to hear was not
of a nature to controvert the prediction.
In our ignorance as to the habits and modes of thought of the people,
we were much surprised at the greater interest the peasant betrayed when
asking us about France and her prospects, than when the conversation
concerned his own country. It appeared as though, in the one case,
distance gave grandeur and dimensions to all his conceptions, while
familiarity with home scenes and native politics had robbed them of
all their illusions. He knew well that there were plenty of hardships,
abundance of evils, to deplore in Ireland: rents were high, taxes and
tithes oppressive, agents were severe, bailiffs were cruel Social wrongs
he could discuss for hours, but of political woes, the only ones we
could be expected to relieve or care for, he really knew nothing. ‘‘Tis
true,’ he repeated, ‘that what my honour said was all right, Ireland was
badly treated,’ and so on; ‘liberty was an elegant thing if a body had
it,’ and such like; but there ended his patriotism.
Accustomed for many a day to the habits of a people where all were
politicians, where the rights of man and the grand principles of
equality and self-government were everlastingly under discussion, I was,
I confess it, sorely disappointed at this worse than apathy.
‘Will they fight?--ask him that,’ said Gharost, to whom I had been
conveying a rather rose-coloured version of my friend’s talk.
‘Oh, begorra! we ‘ll fight sure enough!’ said he, with a half-dogged
scowl beneath his brows.
‘What number of them may we reckon on in the neighbourhood?’ repeated
the colonel.
‘‘Tis mighty hard to say; many of the boys were gone over to England for
the harvest; some were away to the counties inland, others were working
on the roads; but if they knew, sure they ‘d be soon back again.’
‘Might they calculate on a thousand stout, effective men?’ asked
Charost.
‘Ay, twenty, if they were at home,’ said the peasant, less a liar by
intention than from the vague and careless disregard of truth so common
in all their own intercourse with each other.
I must own that the degree of credit we reposed in the worthy man’s
information was considerably influenced by the state of facts before
us, inasmuch as that the ‘elegant, fine harbour’ he had so gloriously
described--‘the beautiful road’--‘the neat little quay’ to land upon,
and the other advantages of the spot, all turned out to be most grievous
disappointments. That the people were not of our own mind on these
matters, was plain enough from the looks of astonishment our discontent
provoked; and now a lively discussion ensued on the relative merits of
various bays, creeks, and inlets along the coast, each of which, with
some unpronounceable name or other, was seen to have a special advocate
in its favour, till at last the colonel lost all patience, and jumping
into the boat, ordered the men to push off for the frigate.
Evidently out of temper at the non-success of his reconnaissance, and as
little pleased with the country as the people, Gharost did not speak a
word as we rowed back to the ship. Our failure, as it happened, was of
little moment, for another party, under the guidance of Madgett, had
already discovered a good landing-place at the bottom of the Bay of
Rathfran, and arrangements were already in progress to disembark the
troops at daybreak. We also found that, during our absence, some of the
‘chiefs’ had come off from shore, one of whom, named Neal Kerrigan, was
destined to attain considerable celebrity in the rebel army. He was a
talkative, vulgar, presumptuous fellow, who, without any knowledge or
experience whatever, took upon him to discuss military measures and
strategy with all the assurance of an old commander.
Singularly enough, Humbert suffered this man to influence him in a great
degree, and yielded opinion to him on points even where his own judgment
was directly opposed to the advice he gave.
If Kerrigan’s language and bearing were directly the reverse of
soldierlike, his tawdry uniform of green and gold, with massive
epaulettes and a profusion of lace, were no less absurd in our eyes,
accustomed as we were to the almost puritan plainness of military
costume. His rank, too, seemed as undefined as his information; for
while he called himself ‘General,’ his companions as often addressed
him by the title of ‘Captain.’ Upon some points his counsels, indeed,
alarmed and astonished us.
‘It was of no use whatever,’ he said, ‘to attempt to discipline the
peasantry, or reduce them to anything like habits of military obedience.
Were the effort to be made, it would prove a total failure; for they
would either grow disgusted with the restraint, and desert altogether,
or so infect the other troops with their own habits of disorder, that
the whole force would become a mere rabble. Arm them well, let them have
plenty of ammunition, and free liberty to use it in their own way and
their own time, and we should soon see that they would prove a greater
terror to the English than double the number of trained and disciplined
troops.’
In some respects this view was a correct one; but whether it was a
wise counsel to have followed, subsequent events gave us ample cause to
doubt.
Kerrigan, however, had a specious, reckless, go-a-head way with him that
suited well the tone and temper of Humbert’s mind. He never looked too
far into consequences, but trusted that the eventualities of the morrow
would always suggest the best course for the day after; and this alone
was so akin to our own general’s mode of proceeding, that he speedily
won his confidence.
The last evening on board was spent merrily on all sides. In the general
cabin, where the staff and all the _chefs de brigade_ were assembled,
gay songs, and toasts, and speeches succeeded each other till nigh
morning. The printed proclamations, meant for circulation among the
people, were read out, with droll commentaries; and all imaginable
quizzing and jesting went on about the new government to be established
in Ireland, and the various offices to be bestowed upon each. Had the
whole expedition been a joke, the tone of levity could not have been
greater. Not a thought was bestowed, not a word wasted, upon any of
the graver incidents that might ensue. All were, if not hopeful and
sanguine, utterly reckless, and thoroughly indifferent to the future.