MORE DEVILRY
There was no fastening to the door of my cabin, but on passing my hand
over the place where a fastening might have been expected, a flake of
soft substance caught in my finger-nail and dropped to the floor. This,
when I picked it up, proved to be a pellet of bread kneaded to the
consistency of putty or dough. Taking the swing lamp from its bracket
I examined the door more closely and saw that there had once been a
fastening of some sort. A closer examination convinced me that the
person who had removed the fastening had been to the pains of plugging
the empty screw-holes with kneaded bread, after which he had apparently
rubbed dirt-smeared fingers over the place where the fastening had
been, in order to hide the marks left by removal.
When I picked out the bread-plugs--which had only recently been put
in, as they were still damp--I saw that the screw-holes were clean
inside, although there were tiny rings of dirt on the outside where the
roughened edges had brushed against the fingers and collected whatever
it was which had been smeared upon them.
Very softly I opened the door and looked at the other side, where, as I
expected, I found a bolt. A moment’s examination satisfied me that it
was the very bolt which had been on the inside, and that it had only
recently been placed where it was.
“There is some devilry in this,” I said to myself. “Even if the bolt
had not been recently changed I should strongly object to be anywhere
where Mullen could fasten me in if he had a mind to. I shall have to
take out these screws one by one with my penknife and make each hole so
large that the screws don’t bite. Then I’ll replace them, and the whole
concern will look as it was before; but if Mullen should fasten me in,
one good kick will fetch the bolt off and let me out.”
The job was tedious and lengthy, for I had to work in silence and with
a penknife in place of a screw-driver. But I got through it at last,
and having barricaded the door from the inside as best I could, I
pulled out the paper which had fallen from Mullen’s pocket.
A glance was sufficient to satisfy me that my find was no less than the
latter part of another manifesto, printed like previous manifestoes in
rude capitals, and bearing the well-known signature--
“BY ORDER,
“CAPTAIN SHANNON.”
It was evidently an attempt to stir up, for his own ends and purposes,
the disloyalty of the discontented Irish, and by professing to champion
their cause, to enlist their sympathy and co-operation in the war which
was being waged against England. Here is the document itself:--
“If England have annexed Ireland because she is smaller and lies
near, then might France with equal justice annex England, for Ireland
lies no nearer to England than England to France.
“Ireland is no mere pendant to England, like Anglesea or the Isle
of Wight; she is a separate and different country, scarcely smaller
in size, complete in herself, and peopled by a nation of different
creed, different temperament, and different race.
“The Celt shall not be ruled by the Teuton, nor the Teuton by the
Celt.
“God gave Ireland her independence when he cut her off from England
and separated the two countries by dividing seas.
“And they whom God has set asunder let no man join.
“But you have joined us to yourself in the union of bondage and
oppression, and when we cry out under our bondage--a bondage which,
were the cases reversed, England would be as little ready to tolerate
as Ireland--how do you meet our righteous demands?
“By trying to humour us as a woman seeks to humour a troublesome
child to whom she tosses a toy. By sending us what you dare not
insult the Scotch by sending to Scotland--a sawdust figure, of which
you hold the strings, who is to play at being king and holding court
to please us. But we--ah God! was ever so unreasonable a people?--we
do not simper and dance to the fiddling of this dummy king who is not
even of our own choosing, for we are ungracious enough to remember
that we have in our midst men of older lineage and nobler blood than
he.
“And then you cast about in your mind for some other means by which
you can make us loyal under subjection. And when there is born to
that ‘Queen of Ireland’ whom Ireland never sees--though she can
journey far afield to southern France or Italy--another princeling,
for whom royal provision must be made out of the pockets of the
people, who can scarce find their own children in bread, you say,
‘Go to, here is our opportunity; we will make Ireland loyal for ever
by giving this princeling Patrick as one of his many names and by
dubbing him Duke of Connaught.’
“But Ireland, graceless, thankless, stubborn Ireland, is not one
whit more loyal after receiving this royal boon, for she knows that
you rule over her by the coward’s right--the right of the strong to
oppress and make subject the weak.
“You call her your sister while you seek to make her your slave, even
as you call Irishmen your brothers while you have sought to make
their very name a reproach and a fitting subject for your sorry jests.
“You hold Ireland in the thrall of cruel oppression--for cowardice is
always cruel--not because of any sisterly feeling for her or love for
her people, whom you hate and who hate you with an undying hate, but
because you _are afraid to let her go free_.
“But that which you fear shall assuredly come to pass, and Ireland,
which might and would have been your friend and ally were she free,
is but waiting till you are involved in war to prove herself your
deadliest and bitterest enemy and the friend and ally of every
country which calls itself your foe.
“By order.
“CAPTAIN SHANNON.”
No more convincing proof that the fugitive in hiding on the “Cuban
Queen” was Captain Shannon could be wished for than this document, and
the only question I had to consider was how best to accomplish his
arrest.
I decided that the safest plan would be to signal Hughes to return.
He could see the hulk from the top window of my cottage, and I had
arranged with him that a red jersey (the men in charge of the hulks
wear red jerseys not unlike those affected by the Salvationists) slung
over the ship’s side was to be taken as meaning, “Come back as soon as
it is dark, and say that your wife is better.”
His return would, of course, render my presence on the hulk
unnecessary, and there would be nothing further for me to do but to
receive whatever payment Mullen proposed to give me, wish him and
my supposed brother good-bye and come ashore. Thence I should make
straight for the coastguard station and inform the officer in charge
that the notorious Captain Shannon was at that moment in hiding on
the “Cuban Queen” disguised as a woman. The rest would be easy, for
I had hit upon a plan by which, providing that I could count upon
the necessary assistance at the proper moment, the fugitive could be
secured without difficulty or danger, and I saw no reason why the
newspaper placards of the morning after Hughes’s return should not bear
the startling announcement, “Arrest of Captain Shannon.”