Produced by David Widger
THE NORTHERN IRON
By George A. Birmingham
Dublin: Maunsel & Co., Limited
1907
TO FRANCIS JOSEPH BIGGER,
ARDRIGH, BELFAST.
_My Dear Bigger,_
_This story, as you have already guessed, is the fruit of a recent
holiday spent in County Antrim. The writing of it has been a great
pleasure, for almost every place mentioned in it recalls the goodness of
the friends who received me and made my holiday a happy one. I think of
kind people when I write of Dunseveric and Ballintoy--of hours spent in
their company among the Runkerry cliffs, the sandhills, the Skerries,
and of the morning on which I swam, like Neal and Una, into the Rock
Pigeons’ Cave, I remember a time--full of interest and delight--spent
with you when I mention Donegore, Antrim, and Temple-Patrick. My mind
dwells on an older, a very dear friend and relative, when I tell of
Neal’s visit to Belfast. And the book is more than the recollection of a
summer holiday. I go back in it to my own country--to places familiar
to me in boyhood as the mountains and bays of Mayo are now; to days very
long ago, when I caught cuddings and lithe off the Black Rock or Rackle
Roy and learned to swim in the Blue Pool at Port Ballintrae. Yet I know
that I could not, for all that I remembered of my boyhood or learned
during my holiday, have written this story without your help. You told
me what I wanted to know, you corrected, patiently, my manuscript, and
you have helped me to enter into the spirit of the time. For all this
I owe you many thanks, and if I have succeeded in writing a story which
interests my readers they, too, will owe you thanks._
_I have tried to be faithful to the facts of history and to represent
the thoughts and feelings of the men who took part in the_
“Out, unhappy far off things
And battles long ago,”
_of which I chose to write. Most of my characters are purely imaginary.
Of the men who really lived and acted in 1798 only one--James
Hope--appears prominently in my story. In his case I have taken pains
to understand what manner of man he was before I wrote of him, and I
believe that, feeble though my presentation of his character may be, you
will not find it actually untruthful._
_I am your friend,_
_GEORGE A. BIRMINGHAM._
THE NORTHERN IRON
CHAPTER I
The road which connects Portrush with Ballycastle skirts, so far as any
road can and dare, the sea coast. Sometimes it is driven inland a mile
or so by the impossibility of crossing tracts of sandhills. The mounds
and hollows of these dunes are for ever shifting and changing. The
loose sand is blown into new fantastic heights and valleys by the winter
gales. No road could be built on such insecure foundation. Elsewhere the
road shrinks back among the shelterless fields for fear of mighty cliffs
by which this northern Antrim coast is defended from the Atlantic. No
engineer in the eighteenth century, when the road was made, dared
lay his metal close to the Causeway cliffs or the awful precipice
of Pleaskin Head. Still, now and then, in places where there are no
sandhills and the cliffs are not appalling, the road ventures, for a
mile or two, to run within a few hundred yards of the sea, before it is
swept, like a cord bent by the wind, further inland. Thus, after passing
the ruins of Dunseveric Castle, the traveller sees close beneath him
the white limestone rocks and broad yellow stretch of Ballintoy Strand.
Here, when northerly gales are blowing, he may, if he is not swept off
his feet, cling desperately to his garments and watch the great waves
curl their feathered crests as they rush shorewards. He may listen,
awestruck, to the ocean’s roar of amazement when it batters in vain the
hard north coast, the rocks and sand which defy even the strength of the
Atlantic.
A quarter of a mile back from this piece of road there stood, in 1798,
the meeting-house of the Presbyterians and their minister’s manse.
The house stands on the site of a bare, shelterless hill. It is three
storeys high--a narrow, gaunt building, grey walled, black-slated. Its
only entrance is at the back, and on the shoreward side. This house
has disdained the shelter which might have been found further inland or
among its fellow-houses in the street of Ballintoy. It faces due north,
preferring an outlook upon the sea to the warmth and light of a southern
aspect. It is bare of all architectural ornament. Its windows are
few and small. The rooms within are gloomy, even in early summer. Its
architect seems to have feared this gloominess, for he planned great bay
windows for three rooms, one above the other. He built the bay. It juts
out for the whole height of the house, breaking the flatness of the
northern wall. But his heart failed him in the end. He dared not put
such a window in the house. He walled up the whole flat front of the
bay. Only in its sides did he place windows. Through these there is a
side view of the sea and a side view of the main wall of the house. They
are comparatively safe. The full force of the tempest does not strike
them fair.
In one of the gloomy rooms on a bright morning in the middle of May
sat the Reverend Micah Ward, the minister. The sun shone outside on the
yellow sand, the green water, and the white rocks; but neither sun nor
sea had tempted Micah Ward from his books. Great leather-covered folios
lay at his elbow on the table. Before him were an open Hebrew Bible, a
Septuagint with queer, contracted lettering, and an old yellow-leaved
Vulgate. The subject of his studies was the Book of Amos, who was the
ruggedest, the fiercest, and the most democratic of the Hebrew prophets.
Micah Ward’s face was clean-shaved and marked with heavy lines. Thick,
bushy brows hung over eyes which were keen and bright in spite of all
his studying. Looking at his face, a man might judge him to be hard,
narrow, strong--perhaps fanatical. Near the window:--one of the slanting
windows through which it is tantalising to look--sat a young man, tall
beyond the common, well knit, strong--Neal Ward, the minister’s son. He
had grown hardy in the keen sea air and firm of will under his father’s
rigid discipline. He had never known a mother’s care, for Margaret Ward,
a bright-faced woman, ill-mated, so they said, with the minister, never
recovered strength after her son’s birth. She lingered for a year, and
then died. They laid her body in Templeastra Graveyard, near the
sea. Over her grave her husband set a stone with an austerely-worded
inscription to keep her name in memory:--“The burying-ground of Micah
Ward. Margaret Neal, his wife, 1778.” Such inscriptions are to be found
in scores in the graveyards of Antrim. The hard, brave men who chose
to mark thus the resting-places of their dead disdained parade of their
affliction and their heart-break, and held their creed so firmly that
they felt no need of any text to remind them of the resurrection of the
dead.
Neal Ward, like his father, had books and papers before him, but his
attention was not fixed on them. Now and then, with spasmodic energy,
he copied a passage from the page before him. Then, with a sigh, he laid
his pen down and gazed out of the window. His father took no notice of
the young man’s want of application. No words passed between the two.
Then suddenly the silence was broken by a cry from the field below the
house--
“Hello! Neal! Neal Ward! Hello! Are you there?”
The young man started to his feet and made a step to the window.
Then turning, he looked at his father. The frown on Micah Ward’s brow
deepened slightly. Otherwise he made no sign of having heard the cry.
He went on writing in his careful, deliberate manner. The voice from
outside reached the room again.
“Neal! Neal Ward! Come out. What right has a man to shut himself indoors
on a day like this?”
Neal stood irresolute, looking at his father. At last he spoke.
“Can I go out, father? I have almost finished the transcription of the
passage which you set me.”
Micah Ward laid down his pen, sprinkled sand on his paper, and looked
up. He gazed steadily at his son. The young man’s eyes dropped. He
repeated his question in a voice that was nearly trembling.
“Can I go out, father?”
“Who is it calls you, Neal?”
“It is Maurice St. Clair.”
“Maurice St. Clair,” repeated Micah Ward. Then, with a note of deep
scorn in his voice, “The Hon. Maurice St. Clair, the son of Lord
Dun-severic. Are you to do his bidding, to run like a dog when he calls
you?”
“He is my friend, father.”
“Is he a fit friend for you? Have I not told you that his people and our
people are enemies the one to the other? That the oppression wherewith
they oppress us--but there. Go, since you want to go. You do not
understand as yet. Some day you will understand.”
Neal left the room without haste, closing the door quietly. Once free of
his father’s presence he seized a cap and ran from the house. Half-way
between him and the high road, knee deep in meadow grass, stood Maurice
St. Clair.
“Come along, come along quick,” he shouted. “I had nearly given up hope
of getting you out. We’re off for a day’s fishing to Rackle Roy. We’ll
bag a pigeon or two at the mouth of the cave before we land. Brown-Eyes
is down on the road waiting for us with rods and guns. We’ve all
day before us. My lord is off to Ballymoney, and can’t be back till
supper-time.”
“What takes Lord Dunseveric to Ballymoney to-day?” asked Neal. “There’s
no magistrates’ meeting, is there?”
“No. He’s gone to meet our aunt, Madame de Tourneville. She’s been
coming these five years, ever since she ran away from Paris at the time
of the Terror; but it’s only now she has succeeded in arriving.”
Together the two young men crossed the field and vaulted the wall which
separated the manse land from the road. The girl whom her brother called
Brown-Eyes waited for them. The name suited her well, and came naturally
from Maurice. He was tall and fair, yellow-haired, blue-eyed, large
limbed, a fine type of Antrim Irishman, the heir of the form and face
of generations of St. Clairs of Dunseveric. The girl, Una St. Clair,
belonged to a different race--came of her mother’s people. She was
small, brown-skinned, brown-eyed, dark-haired. She grew as the years
went on more and more like what her mother had been. Lord Dunseveric,
watching his daughter pass from childhood to womanhood, saw in her the
very image of Marie Dillon, the French-Irish girl who had won his heart
a quarter of a century before in Paris.
“Take the guns, Neal. Here, Brown-Eyes, give me the rods and the basket.
There’s no need for you to break your little back carrying them.”
“Why should I when I’ve two big men to carry them for me? Indeed, I’m
not sure but one of you ought to carry me, too. You’re big enough and
strong enough.”
She smiled gaily at Neal as he shouldered the guns. They had built sand
castles together when they were little children, and tempted the waves
to chase them up the sand, flying barefoot from the pursuing lip of
foam. They had climbed and fallen, explored rocky bays, penetrated to
the depths of caves as they grew older. Always Una St. Clair had queened
it over the boys, teased them, petted them, scolded them. Now, grown to
womanhood, she discovered new powers in herself which made Neal at least
more than ever her slave.
They reached the little bay where the boat lay pulled up among the
rocks. Maurice and Neal lifted her stern on to a roller and dragged her
towards the sea. Una, running before them, laid other rollers on the
pathway of slippery rock till the boat floated. Then she climbed the
gunwale and settled herself on the stern seat among the rods and guns.
The two young men shoved off into deep water, springing into the boat
with dripping feet as she slid out clear of the shore. They placed the
heavy oars between the wooden thole pins and steadied the boat while
Una shipped the rudder. The wind was off shore and the sea, save for the
long heave of the Atlantic, was still. The brown sail was hoisted and
stretched with the sprit. Then, sailing and rowing, they swept past
Carrighdubh, the Black Rock, which guarded the entrance of the little
bay, and passed into the shadow of the mighty cliffs.
A silence fell on them. The laughter and gay talk ceased. The sense
of holiday joyfulness was overwhelmed by a vague awe of the ocean’s
greatness, the oppression of its strength, and the black towering rocks
which hung over the boat, casting a gloom across the sea. The feeling of
this solemnity abides through life with the men and women who have been
bred as children on this north Antrim coast. If they live their lives
out among its rugged harbours and stern ways they become, as the
fishermen are, people of slow thoughts, long memories, and simple
outlook upon life. The fear of the Lord is over their lives. If they
wander elsewhere, making homes for themselves among the southern or
western Irish, or, further still, to England or America, they may
learn to be in appearance as other men are--may lose the harsh northern
intonation from their talk, but down in the bottom of their hearts will
be an awful affection for their sea, which is like no other sea, and the
dark overwhelming cliffs whose shadow never wholly leaves their souls.
In times of stress and hours of bitterness they will fall back upon the
stark, rigid strength of those who, seeing the mightiest of His works,
have learned to fear the Lord.
The boat lay off the entrance of the Pigeon Cave. The sportsman’s sense
awoke in Maurice. He gave a brief order to Neal, laid his oar across
the boat, stood up and took in the sprit, letting the sail hang in loose
folds. He unstepped the mast and sat down again.
“You may unship the rudder, Brown-Eyes, You had better leave the boat to
Neal and me to bring up to the cave. Pass the gun forward to me and the
powder horn.”
He loaded, ramming the charge down and pressing down the wad. Neal and
the girl sat silent. The solemn enchantment of the scene was on them
still. Then the two men took the oars again. Very cautiously they rowed
along the narrow channel which led to the opening of the cave. The rocks
lay low at first on each side of them; brown tangles of weed swayed
slowly to and fro with the onward sweep and eddy of the ocean swell.
Then, as the boat advanced, the rocks rose higher on each side, sheer
shining walls, whose reflection made the clear water almost black.
The huge arch of the cave’s entrance faced them. Behind was the
dark channel, and beyond it the sunlight on the sea, before them the
impenetrable gloom of the cave. The noise of the water dropping from its
roof into the sea beneath struck their ears sharply. The hollow roar
of the sea far off in the utmost recesses of the cave came to them. The
girl leaned forward from her seat and laid her hand on Neal’s arm. He
looked at her. Her eyes, the homes of laughter and quick inconsequences,
were wide with dread. Neal knew what she felt. It was not fear of any
definite danger or any evil actually threatening.
It was awe, the feeling of mariners of other days who penetrated to
unknown seas, of men in primitive times who knew that fairy powers dwelt
in dark lakes and precipitous mountain sides.
The bow of the boat touched the huge boulders which formed a bar across
the mouth of the cave. Maurice leaped out, gun in hand, and stood knee
deep in the water, feeling with his feet for a secure resting-place.
“Keep the boat off, Neal, and take your shot if you get a chance.”
He shouted--“Hello-lo-oh.”
The rocky sides and roof of the cave echoed back his cry a hundred
times. Again he shouted, and again, until shouts and echoes meeting
clashed with each other, and it seemed as if the tremendous laughter of
gleeful giants mocked the solemn booming of the sea. There was a rush
of many wings, and a flock of terrified rock pigeons flew from the cave.
Maurice fired one barrel after another in quick succession, and two
birds dropped dead into the water. Neal, shaking the girl’s hand from
his arm, fired, too. From his seat in the swaying boat it was difficult
to aim well. He missed once, but killed with his second shot. The boat
was borne forward and bumped sharply on the boulders at the cave’s
mouth. The laughter of the echo died away. Instead of it came, like
angry threats, the repetition of their four shots, multiplied to a
fusilade of loud explosions.
“Come back, Maurice,” cried Una. “Come back and let us get out of this.
I’m frightened. I cannot bear it any longer.”
“You shall have all the four wings of my birds to trim your hats with,
Brown-Eyes,” said Maurice, as he clambered dripping into the boat. “Neal
will stuff his bird for you and perch him on a stone. You shall have him
to set on the top of your new bureau, the one Aunt Estelle sent you when
she escaped from Paris without having her head chopped off.”
They pushed the boat cautiously back along the channel, travelling stern
first, for there was little room to turn, and even in calm weather men
do not willingly lay a boat across the sea in such a place.
“Now for Rackle Roy and a basketful of glashins and lithe,” said
Maurice.
East a little and out seawards from the mouth of the cave lies a long,
flat rock, dry at low water, and even at flood tide in calm weather,
swept with desolating surf when the Atlantic swell rolls in or the wind
lashes the nearer sea to fury. Right out of the centre of the rock the
waves have fashioned a deep bay, curved like a horse-shoe. This is a
famous fishing-place. As the tide rises, lithe and glashin, brazers,
gurnet, rock codling, and crowds of cuddings come here to feed, and the
fisherman, on those rare days, when he can land at all, may count on
bringing home with him great bunches of fish strung through the gills.
The rock lay far enough from the cliff to be clear of the shadow. The
sun shone on its brown weed-clad sides, glistened on black clusters of
mussels, glowed on the red seams of the rock where the iron cropped
out, and baked the black basalt of the upper surface. The spirits of the
party revived when they landed. Una’s gaiety returned to her.
“Have you forgotten the bait, Maurice? I’m sure you have. It would be
like you to come for a day’s fishing without bait.”
“No, then, I haven’t. There are three large crabs in the boat, and even
if there wasn’t one at all we could do nicely with limpets. There’s
worse bait than a good limpet.”
“Well, and if you have the crabs I expect you’ve forgotten the sheep’s
wool. What do you think, Neal? Yesterday we were fishing cuddings off
the Black Rock and Maurice ran out of wool. The fish simply sucked the
bait off our hooks and laughed at us. What did Maurice do but take my
hairs. He pulled them out one by one as he wanted them, and wrapped the
bait on with them.”
“Your wool, Brown-Eyes, doesn’t come up to that of the sheep. It’s not
soft enough. But I shan’t want it to-day. I’ve got my pockets half full
of the proper sort.”
Neal laughed, but he felt that to use Una’s hair as a wrap for the red
pulp of a crab’s back or the soft, black belly of a limpet was a kind
of profanation. He was a keen fisherman, but he would rather have missed
the chance of catching the largest lithe that ever swam than lure it
with a bait fastened with Una’s glossy hair.
They fished till noon, and the tide rose slowly round their rock. Then
Una’s luncheon basket was fetched from the boat, the mooring rope
was made secure above high water mark, and the three sat down on the
sun-baked rock and ate with keen appetites. Maurice stared seawards.
“That brig,” he said, “is lying very close inshore. Look at her, Neal.”
“I saw her pass the point of the Skerries an hour ago.” said Neal. “She
must have hauled her wind since then to fetch in so close with the tide
running against her.”
“I wonder why she’s doing it,” said Maurice. “She’ll have to run off
again to clear Benmore.”
“She looks a big ship,” said Una.
“Maybe she’s 250 tons,” said Neal. “She’s about the size of the brig
that sailed from Portrush for Boston last summer year with two hundred
emigrants in her.”
“She’s fetching closer in yet,” said Maurice. “See, she’s hoisted some
flag or other, two flags, no, three, from the peak of her spanker. It’s
a signal. I wonder what they want. Now they’ve laid her to. She must
want a boat out from the shore. Come on, Neal, come on, Brown-Eyes.
We’ll go out to her. We’ll be first. There’s no other boat nearer than
those at the Port, and we’ve got a long start of them. Never mind the
fish. Or wait. Fling them in. I dare say the men on the brig will be
glad of them. She must be an American.”
In a few minutes the boat was pulled clear of the little bay and out of
the shelter of Rackle Roy. The mast was stepped and the sail set.
The sheet was slacked out and the boat sped seawards before the wind.
Maurice was all impatience. He got out his oar.
“It’s no use,” said Neal, “the breeze has freshened since morning.
She’ll sail quicker than we could row.”
The brig lay little more than a mile from the shore. The boat soon
reached her.
“Boat, ahoy,” yelled a voice from the deck. “Lower your sail, and come
up under my lee.”
Maurice and Neal obeyed. The sea was rougher than it had been near
the shore. The boat, when Maurice had made fast the rope flung to him,
plunged up and down beside the brig, and needed careful handling to
prevent her being damaged.
The crew looked over the side with eager curiosity.
“Say, boys,” said the captain, “what will you take for your fish? I’ll
trade with you.”
“I don’t want to sell them,” said Maurice. “I’ll give them to you.”
His voice and accent, his refusal to barter, betrayed the fact that he
was a gentleman.
“I guess,” said the captain, “that you’re an aristocrat, a British
aristocrat, too proud to take the money of the men who whipped you in
the States. That’s so.”
“I’m an Irish gentleman,” said Maurice.
“Well, Mr. Irish Gentleman, if you’re too darned aristocratic to trade,
I’ll give you a present of a case of good Virginia, and you may give
me a present of your fish. I’d call it a swap, but if that turns
your stomach I’ll let you call it a mutual present, an expression of
international goodwill.”
“Fling him up the fish, Neal,” said Maurice.
Then another man appeared beside the captain on the quarter-deck. He was
not a seafaring man. He was lean and yellow, and had keen grey eyes. His
face seemed in some way familiar to Neal, though he could not recollect
having ever seen the man before.
“Yon are the Causeway cliffs,” he said, “and yon’s Pleaskin Head, and
the islands we passed are the Skerries?”
“You know this coast,” said Neal.
“I knew this coast, young man, before your mother had the dandling of
you. I know it now, though it’s five and twenty years since I set foot
on it. But that’s not the question. What I want to know is this. Can you
put me ashore? I could do well if you land me at the Causeway. I’d make
shift with my bag if you put me out at Port Ballin-trae. I don’t want to
be going on to Glasgow just for the pleasure of coming back again.”
“I’ll land you at the Black Rock under Run-kerry,” said Maurice, “if
you can pull an oar. The wind’s rising, and I’ve no mind to carry idle
passengers.”
“I can pull an oar,” said the stranger.
“I guess he can pull enough to break your back, young man,” said the
captain. “He’s an American citizen, and he’s been engaged in whipping
your British army. I guess an American citizen can lick a darned
aristocrat at pulling an oar same as he did at shooting off guns.”
“Shut your damned mouth,” said Maurice, suddenly angry, “or I’ll leave
you to land your passenger yourself and see how you like beating the
bottom out of your brig against our rocks. You’ll find an Irish rock
harder than your Yankee wood.”
The passenger fetched a small hand-bag and lowered it into the boat.
Under a shower of jibes from the captain, Maurice and Neal pushed off
and started for the row home against the wind.