The paroxysm of tears swept Neal as the Atlantic waves sweep foaming and
furious over Rackle Roy. Then it passed and left him panting, shaking
with recurrent sobs, and a prey to an hysterical dread of hearing some
sound from the vault beside him. He sat absolutely motionless. He
hardly dared to breathe. He waited in horrible expectation of hearing
something. He listened intent, agonised, feeling that if a sound reached
him he would cry aloud and on the instant become a raving madman. The
scene inside the vault rose to his imagination. Far more really than he
saw the dim church and the trees, he saw Finlay grovelling on the
ground and the stern men crouching over him. He saw a knife gleam in the
lantern’s light. He shut his eyes, as if by shutting them he could
blot out the pictures of his imagination. He waited to hear a shriek,
a smothered cry, a groan, the laboured breath of struggling men, the
splash of blood. The suspense became an agony. He rose to his feet and
fled.
He stumbled over a grave, and fell headlong, bruising his outstretched
hands against a tombstone. He rose instantly and fled again. Stumbling
again, he struck his head against the wall of the church. Dizzy and
bewildered, he hastened on, driven forward by the terror of hearing some
death noise from the vault. Tripping, staggering, rushing blindly, he
reached the stile at last, and stood beyond it on the road. Before him
was Moylin’s house. The window was lighted up, the door was open. He saw
men seated within, and heard them laugh aloud. They seemed to him not
men, but fiends making merry over murder, and the winning for their hell
of a new damned soul. He fled from them as he had fled from the sound
he dreaded. He rushed down the steep lane. Loose stones rolled under his
feet. Sparks started into sudden brightness where the nails in his boot
soles struck flints. The hedges rose high on each side of him, making
the lane, even in the pale June night, intolerably dark. He fled on,
blind, reckless, for the moment mad.
Suddenly he was stopped short. Strong arms were round him. He was flung
to the ground. A man knelt on his chest. Rough hands grasped his throat.
“Who have you there, Tarn?”
“A damned fool for certain, whoever he is. What brings him down a hill
like this in the dark, as if the devil was after him?”
“Loose his throat; do you want to choke him. Let him speak. Now, then,
man, tell us who you are, and what you’re doing here.”
Neal’s powers of reasoning and thought returned to him. With the
presence of real danger his fear vanished. He saw the forms of the men
above him, discerned against the dull grey of the sky that they were
armed and in uniform. He understood at once that he had fallen into the
hands of soldiers, perhaps of yeomen.
“Who are you?” said the voice again.
Then the man who knelt on him added a word of warning--
“If you won’t speak, we’re the boys who know how to loose your tongue.
We’ve made many a damned croppy glad to speak when we’d dealt with him.”
Neal remained silent.
“Get him on his feet, Tam, and we’ll take him to the Captain. If he’s
not a rebel himself he’ll know where the rebels are hid.”
Neal was pulled up by the arms and marched along the lane again to
Moylin’s house. He was led into the kitchen. Two men sat at the table
drinking. They were in uniform. Neal recognised it as that of the
Kilulta yeomen, the men who had raided his father’s meeting-house. He
recognised one of the officers--Captain Twinely. The sergeant made his
report. He and his men had been patrolling the lane as they had been
ordered. They had heard a man running fast towards them, had stopped
him, and arrested him.
“Who are you, and what are you doing here?” asked Captain Twinely.
Neal made no answer. The sergeant peered closely at his face.
“I think I know the man, sir. He’s the young fellow that was with the
women at the meetinghouse in the north. The man the old lord made us
loose when we had him. What do you say, Tarn?”
“You’re right as hell,” said the trooper who stood by Neal. “I’d know
the young cub in a thousand.”
Captain Twinely rose, tools the lamp from the hook where it hung, held
it close to Neat’s face, and looked at him.
“I believe you’re right,” he said. “Now, young man, we know who you are;
You’re Neal Ward.” He drew a paper from his pocket and looked it over.
“Yes, that’s the name, ‘Neal Ward, son of the Reverend Micah Ward,
Presbyterian minister of Dunseveric. A young man, about six foot high,
well built, fair hair, grey eyes, active, strong.’ Yes, the description
fits all right. Now, Mr. Neal Ward, since I’ve answered my first
question myself, perhaps you’ll be so good as to answer my second for
me. Where are your fellow-rebels?”
Neal was silent.
“Come now, that won’t do. We know there’s a meeting of United Irishmen
here to-night. We know that the leaders, M’Cracken, Monro, Hope, and the
rest are somewhere about. Where are they?”
“I don’t know,” said Neal, “and if I did I wouldn’t tell you.”
The sergeant struck him sharply across the mouth with the back of his
hand.
“Take that for your insolence. I’ll learn ye to say ‘sir’ when ye
speak to a gentleman.”
“Answer my question,” said Captain Twinely, “or, by God, I’ll make you.”
“Try him with half hanging,” said the other officer, speaking for the
first time. “I’ve known a tongue wag freely enough after it’s been
sticking black out of a man’s mouth for a couple of minutes.”
“Too risky, Jack. The last fellow you half hanged wouldn’t come to life
again; turned out to be whole hanged, by gad.” He laughed. “There’s
fifty pounds on the head of this young cock, and it’s ten to one but the
rascally Government would back out of their promise if we brought
them nothing but a damned corpse. Besides, I want the information. The
vermin’s nest must be somewhere round. I want to get the lot of them.
No, no; there’s more ways of making a croppy speak than half hanging
him. We’ll try the strap first, any way. Now, Mr. Neal Ward, will you
speak or will you not?”
“I will not.”
“Hell to your soul! but I’m glad to hear it. I owe you something, young
man, and I like to pay my debts. If you’d spoken without flogging I
might have had to bring you into Belfast with a whole skin. Now I’ll
have you flogged, and you’ll speak afterwards. Tam, give the sergeant
your belt. Sergeant, there’s a tree outside. Tie the prisoner up and
flog him till he speaks, but don’t kill him. Leave enough life in him to
last till we get him to Belfast, unless he speaks at once.”
“Yes, sir, but if your orders are so particular I’d rather you’d be
present yourself to see how much he can stand.”
“I’m not going to leave my bottle,” said Captain Twinely, “to stand
sentry over croppy carrion. Flog him till you lay his liver bare,
sergeant, but don’t cut it out of him.”
The sergeant saluted, and marched Neal out of the house. His coat was
dragged off him, his shirt stripped from his back, his hands tied to the
tree which stood before Moylin’s house. He set his teeth and waited.
The predominating feeling in his mind at first was not fear but furious
anger. He had shrunk in terror from the near prospect of seeing Finlay
die. He felt nothing now except a passionate desire for revenge.
The sergeant swung the trooper’s belt round his head, making it whistle
through the air. Neal shivered and shrank, but the blow did not fall.
The sergeant was in no hurry.
“You hear that,” he said, swinging the belt again. “Will you speak
before I lay it on you? You shall have time to consider. Nobody shall
say I hurried a prisoner. We’ll sing you a psalm, my dearly beloved, a
sweet psalm to a most comfortable tune. At the end of the first verse
I’ll give you another chance. If you don’t speak then----. Now Tarn,
now lads all, tune up to the Ould Hunderd,
“‘There was a Presbyterian cat
Who loved her neighbour’s cream to sup;
She sanctified her theft with prayer
Before she went to drink it up.’”
The troopers, who appeared to have learned both tune and words since the
night when the sergeant sang them in Dunseveric meeting-house, shouted
lustily. Following their sergeant, they drawled the last line until it
seemed to Neal as if they would never reach the end of it.
“Now, Mr. Neal Ward,” said the sergeant, “you’ve had a most comfortable
and cheering psalm for the hour of your affliction. Will you speak,
or----. Damn your soul, Tam, what are you at?”
The man next him lurched suddenly forward, clutching at the sergeant.
In another instant there was a dull thud, and Donald Ward stood over
the sergeant with a pistol, grasped by its barrel, in his hand. He had
brought the butt of it down on the man’s skull. Two more of the yeomen
fell almost at the same instant. The rest, three of them with wounds,
fled, yelling, down the lane.
“The croppies are on us! Hell and murder! We’re dead men!”
There were about twenty of them, all well armed, but a night surprise
has a tendency to shake the firmest nerves. Captain Twinely and his
fellow-officer played no very heroic part. At the first sound of the
shouting and the footsteps of the flying troopers they rushed into the
inner room and crawled under the bed, fighting desperately with each
other for the place nearest the wall, but Donald Ward had no time to go
after them.
“Cut the boy down,” he said.
It was Felix Matier who set Neal free.
“Oh, whistle and I will come to you, my lad,” he quoted, as he hustled
the shirt over Neal’s shoulders. “Why didn’t you whistle, Neal, or
shout, or something? Only for that devil’s song we’d never have found
you. I guessed he was at some mischief when I heard him begin it.”
“Silence,” said Donald, “and let us get out of this. The place must
be swarming with troops, and those yelling cowards will arouse every
soldier within a mite of us. It may not be so easy to chase the next
lot. Over into the churchyard again, and then, Moylin, we must trust to
you. You know the country, or you ought to, and I don’t.”
Aeneas Moylin led the way into the churchyard again, and across the wall
at the lower end of it. The noise of many horsemen riding fast reached
them from the lane they had left. The frightened yeomen had gathered
troops to aid them, dragoons who had been posted on the main road down
below. From the top of the rath, which rose dark above even the tower of
the church, there came shouts. Men had been placed there, too, and were
gathering to their comrades opposite Moylin’s house. The hunt would
begin in earnest soon. Donald called a halt and, cowering under
the shadow of a thick hedge, the little party of fugitives held a
consultation.
“We might go back to the vault,” said James Bigger. “They would find it
hard to get at us there, even if they discovered us. They couldn’t burn
us out, for the walls are solid stone and four foot thick at least.”
“I’m not going to spend the night with---- with what’s there,” said
Felix Matier. “I’m not a coward, but I won’t sit in the dark all night
with my knees up against--ugh!”
“James Finlay?” said Bigger. “He won’t hurt you now.”
“I’m for getting away if possible,” said Donald. “I’m not frightened of
dead men, but I want to be at the fight tomorrow. If we stay here all
night we’ll miss it.”
“Hark!” said Moylin, “they’re in the churchyard. I hear them stumbling
about among the graves. We can’t get back now, even if we want to.
Follow me.”
Creeping along the side of the hedge, they crossed the field they were
in, another, and another after that. They came upon a by-road.
“We must cross this,” said Moylin, “and I think there are soldiers nigh
at hand.”
Suddenly the sky behind them grew strangely bright. A flame, which cast
black shadows from hedge and tree and wall, which lit up every open
space of ground, shot up.
“Down,” said Donald, “down for your lives, lie flat. Where the devil
have they got the fire?”
“It’s my house,” said Moylin, quietly, “the roof is thatched. It burns
well, but it won’t burn for long.”
The shouts of the soldiers round the burning homestead reached them
plainly. A body of horsemen cantered along the lane in front of them.
“Now,” said Donald, “now, while their backs are turned, get across.”
They crossed unseen, and gained the shelter of the ditch at the far
side. They crept along it, seeking some boundary wall or hedge running
at right angles which would cast a shadow over them. The horsemen passed
again, but this time the risk of discovery was less. The thatch of
Moylin’s house had almost burned itself out. Only a red glow remained,
casting little shadow, lighting the land dimly. They crossed the field
in safety and reached a grove of trees.
“We’re right now,” said Moylin. “We can take it easy from this on.”
“Neal Ward,” said Felix Matier, “next time you get yourself into a
scrape I’ll leave you there. I haven’t been as nervous since I played ‘I
spy’ twenty years ago among the whins round the Giant’s Ring. Fighting’s
no test of courage. It’s running away that tries a man.”
“Phew!” said Donald, wiping his brow. Even he seemed to have felt the
strain of the last half-hour. “I did some scouting work for General
Greene in the Carolinas. I’ve lain low in sight of the watch-fires of
Cornwallis’ cavalry, but I’m damned if I ever had as close a shave as
that. I felt jumpy, and that’s a fact. I think it was the sight of your
bare back, Neal, and that blackguard brandishing his belt over you that
played up with my nerves.”
“Let’s be getting on,” said Moylin, “my house is ashes now, the house I
built with my own hands, the room my wife died in, the bed my girl was
born in. She’s safe out of this, thank God. I want to be getting on. I
want to be in Antrim to-morrow with a pike in my hand and a regiment of
dragoons in front of me.”
Under Moylin’s guidance they travelled across country through the night.
About three in the morning, when the east was beginning to grow bright
with the coming dawn, they reached a substantial farmhouse and climbed
into the haggard.
“We’re within twenty yards of the main road now,” said Moylin, “about
a mile and a half outside the town of Antrim. We can lie here till
morning. It’s a safe place. The man that owns it won’t betray us if he
does find us here.”
At six o’clock Donald Ward awoke. The rest of the party lay stretched
around him, sleeping as men do after severe physical exertion and mental
strain. He sat still for a while, and then crept out of the barn where
they slept, and reconnoitered the farmhouse. He was surprised to find no
sign of life about it. Doors and windows were fast shut. No dog barked
at him. No cattle lowed. Not even a hen pecked or cackled in the yard.
He returned to the barn and roused the rest of the party.
“I’ve been looking round,” he said, “to see what chance we have of
getting breakfast. As far as I can make out the place is deserted.”
“I wouldn’t wonder,” said Moylin, “if the man that owns it has cleared
out. He’s a bit of a coward, and he’s not much liked in the country
because he tries to please both parties.”
“I thought you said last night,” said Donald, “that he wouldn’t betray
us.”
“No more he would,” said Moylin, “he’d be afraid of what might happen
him after, but I never said he’d help us. It’s my belief he’s gone off
out of this in dread of what may happen in Antrim to-day. He’ll be at
his brother’s farm away down the Six Mile Water.”
“Well,” said Donald, “it doesn’t matter about him. The question is, how
are we to get something to eat?”
A long consultation followed. There were serious difficulties. The
amount of food required for seven hungry men was considerable, and
Donald Ward insisted strongly on the necessity of having a good meal. It
was decided at last that two of the party should venture into Antrim to
buy bread and wine. No one knew what troops there might be in the town.
It would not be safe to count on the support of the inhabitants if they
happened to have soldiers in their houses. The inns might be full of
officers. The shops might be in the hands of the royal troops.
“It’s no use discussing the difficulties and dangers,” said Donald at
last. “We’ve got to risk it. We can’t fight all day on empty stomachs.
We’d fight badly if we did. I and Neal here will go into Antrim, we’re
the least likely to be recognised. The rest of you are known men. We’ll
bring you back something to eat.”
At eight o’clock they set out, and reached the town just as the people
were beginning to open their doors. Donald Ward pressed some money into
Neal’s hand.
“Go into the inn where we stopped,” he said. “Get a couple of bottles
of wine and some cold meat if you can. I’ll go on to the baker’s. We’ll
meet again opposite the church. If I’m not there in twenty minutes go
back without me; I’ll wait that long for you. Walk in as if you owned
the shanty. There’s nothing starts suspicion as quick as looking
frightened. Bluster a bit if they look crooked at you, and answer no
questions for anybody.”
Neal did his best to follow the advice. But it is not easy for a man who
has slept two successive nights in the open, who has had no opportunity
of shaving, and who has crawled in ditches for several miles, to assume
the airs of an opulent and self-contented tourist. Neal was painfully
conscious that he must look like a disreputable tramp. Nevertheless he
squared his shoulders, held up his head, and jingled his money in
his pocket as he passed through the door. He called valiantly for the
master. A girl, tousle-headed and heavy-eyed, looking as if she, too,
had slept on a hillside or slept very little in bed, came to him. He
recognised her as the same who had waited on him and Donald when they
spent the night in the inn. She was sharp-sighted in spite of her
sleeplessness. She knew Neal.
“In there with you,” she said, pointing to a door, “I’ll get you what
you’re after wanting. The dear knows there’s broken meat in plenty here
the morn.”
Neal entered the room. The table was littered with the remains of
breakfast. A large party had evidently been there and had gone. Neal
guessed that at least a dozen people had sat at the table. With his back
to the room, looking out of the window, stood a young man, booted and
spurred for riding, well dressed, well groomed, a sword by his side. His
figure struck Neal as being familiar. A second glance made him sure that
this was Maurice St. Clair. For a moment he hesitated. Then he said--
“Maurice.”
“Neal,” said the other, turning quickly. “What brings you here? God,
man, you mustn’t stay. My father is in the house and Lord O’Neill. Thank
God the rest of them are gone.”
“What brings you and your father to Antrim, Maurice?”
“There was to have been a meeting of the magistrates of the county here
to-day. My father rode in last night and brought me with him, but there
came an orderly from Belfast this morning with news which fluttered our
company. The rebels are to attack the town to-day. Oh, Neal, but it was
fun to see the hurry the worshipful justices were in to get home this
morning. There were a round dozen of them here last night drinking death
and damnation to the croppies till the small hours. This morning it
was who would get his breakfast and his horse first. You never saw such
scrambling.”
“You and your father stayed,” said Neal.
“Yes. Is it likely my lord would ride away from danger? You know him,
Neal.”
The girl entered with a basket on her arm. With a glance at Maurice St.
Clair she came close to Neal and whispered--
“There’s for you. There’s plenty wine and cold meat for half a score.
I’ll be tongued by the master after, it’s like, but I’ll give it for the
sake of Jemmy Hope, who’s a better gentleman than them that wears finer
coats, that never said a hard word or did an uncivil thing to a poor
serving wench no more than if she’d been the first lady in the land.”
Neal took the basket and bade farewell to Maurice, but as he turned to
leave the room Lord Dunseveric and another gentleman entered. Neal stood
back, hoping to escape notice, but Lord Dunseveric saw and recognised
him.
“O’Neill,” he said to his companion, “pardon me a moment. This is a
young friend of mine to whom I would speak a word.”
He led Neal to the window.
“Are you on your way home, Neal?”
“No, my lord.”
“I suppose I must not ask where you are going or what you mean to do. I
don’t ask, but I advise you strongly to go home. The game is up, Neal.
The plans of your friends have been blown upon. Their secrets are known.
See here.”
He held out a printed paper. Neal took it and read--
“To-morrow we march on Antrim. Drive the garrison of Randalstown before
you, and haste to form a junction with the commander-in-chief.--Henry
Joy M’Cracken. First year of Liberty, 6th June, 1798.”
“That paper was handed to General Clavering last night,” said Lord
Dunseveric, “and half a dozen more copies were sent to other officers.
Is it any use going on now?”
“My lord,” said Neal, “I have heard things--I have seen things. Last
night I myself was stripped for flogging. They have set a price on my
head. I put it to you as a gentleman, as a just man and a brave, would
it be right to go back now?”
“It is no use going on.”
“But would you go back? Would you desert friends who did not desert you?
Would you leave them?”
“A wise man does not struggle against the inevitable, Neal.”
“But a man of honour, my lord. What would a man of honour do?”
“A man of honour,” said Lord Dunseveric, “would act as you are going to
do.”
“Farewell, my lord, I go with an easy mind now, if I go to my death, for
I have your approval.”
“Neal Ward,” said Lord Dunseveric, “I have known you since you were a
boy, and I’ve loved you next to my own children. I don’t say you are
acting wrongly or dishonourably, but you and your friends are acting
foolishly. You cannot win. You and hundreds of innocent people must
suffer, and Ireland, Neal, Ireland will come to the worse, to the
old subjection, to the old bondage, to the old misery, through your
foolishness. I say this, not to dissuade you from going on, for I think
that you must go on now, but in order that when you look back on it all
afterwards you may remember that there were true friends of Ireland who
were not on your side.”
Neal bent over Lord Dunseveric’s hand and kissed it solemnly.
“I have known two great and good men,” he said. “You, my lord, and one
whose name you might count contemptible, James Hope, the weaver, of
Templepatrick. I think myself happy that I have had the goodwill of
both. And, my lord, I think Ireland the most unhappy country in the
world because to-day these two men will be in arms against each other.”
He sobbed. Then, lest he should betray more emotion, went quickly from
the inn.
He found his uncle waiting for him outside the church.
“Well, Neal,” he said, “how have you sped? You have a basket; I hope it
is full. See here, I have four loaves of bread. The baker man would have
denied me. He suspected me, but I had my answer for him. I told him I
was groom to a great lord who was staying in the inn. I made free with
the name of your friend, Lord Dunseveric. I told him that if he refused
my lord the bread he wanted he would hang him for his insolence. I got
the bread. For the first time and the last I have been a serving man.
Now, back, back as fast as we can go to our hungry comrades.”
After they left the town Donald Ward grew grave again.
“My lad,” he said, “we shall have a fight to-day--a fight worth
fighting. It won’t be the first time I’ve looked on bare steel or heard
the bullets sing. I know what fighting means, and I know this, that many
of us will lie low enough before the sun sets. It may be my luck to come
through or it may not. I have a sort of feeling that I am to fire my
last shots to-day. Don’t look at me like that, boy, I’m not frightened.
I’ll fight none the worse. But I want to settle a little bit of business
with you now that we are alone. I have a paper here, I wrote it
last night while you slept; I signed it this morning, and I have it
witnessed. I got a parson to witness it, a kind of curate man, a poor
creature. I caught him going into the church to say prayers, and made
him witness my signature. I had time enough, for you were longer at the
inn than I was at the baker’s. Here it is for you, Neal. In case of my
death it makes you owner of my share of a little business in the town
of Boston. My partner is managing it now. We own a few ships, and were
making money when I left. But it did not suit me. I got the fighting
fever into my blood during the war. I couldn’t settle down to books and
figures. Maybe you’ll take to the work. If you do you ought to stand a
good chance of dying a rich man, and you’ll be comfortably off the day
you hand that paper to my partner. Not a word now, not a word. I know
what you want to say. Twist your lips into a smile again. Look as if you
were happy whatever you feel, and when all’s said and done you ought to
be happy. Whatever the end of it may be we’ll get our bellies full of
fighting to-day, and what has life got to give a man better than that?”