“We had rather a tiresome passage home,” he said. “It kept on falling
calm, and O’Meara’s motor isn’t very powerful. It took us a clear week
to work our way up to the County Down coast. It was there we landed, in
a poky little harbour. We went in at night, and had to wait for a full
tide to get in at all. We got the sails of the boat outside, and just
strolled in, so to speak, with the wretched little engine doing about
half it could. Hazlewood told me that he expected four motor-cars to
meet us, and that I was to take one of them, and drive like hell into
County Armagh. There I was to call at a house belonging to O’Meara, and
hand over my share of the guns. He said he hoped I knew my way about
those parts, because it would be awkward for me trying to work with road
maps when I ought to drive fast. I said I knew that country like the
palm of my hand. The governor’s parish is up there, you know.”
Sam certainly ought to know County Down. He was brought up there, and
must have walked, cycled, and driven over most of the roads.
“The only thing I didn’t know,” said Sam, “was O’Meara’s house. I’d
never heard of his having a house in that part of the country. However,
he said he’d only taken it lately, and that when I got over the border
into Armagh there’d be a man waiting to show me where to go. He told
me the road I was to take and I knew every turn of the way, so I felt
pretty sure of getting there. It was about two in the morning when we
got alongside the pier. The four motors were there all right, but there
wasn’t a soul about except the men in charge of them. We got out the
guns. They were done up in small bundles and the cartridges in handy
little cases; but it took us till half-past four o’clock to get them
ashore. By that time there were a few people knocking about; but they
didn’t seem to want to interfere with us. In fact, some of them came
and helped us to pack the stuff into the cars. They were perfectly
friendly.”
“That doesn’t surprise me in the least,” I said “The people up there
are nearly all Protestants. Most of them were probably Volunteers
themselves. I daresay it wasn’t the first cargo they’d helped to land.”
“It was the first cargo they ever helped to land for the National
Volunteers,” said Sam with a grin.
“The National Volunteers!”
I admit that Sam startled me. I do not suppose that he has any political
convictions. At the age of twenty a man has a few prejudices but no
convictions. If he is a young fellow who goes in for being intellectual
they are prejudices against the party his father belonged to. If--and
this is Sam’s case--he is a healthy-minded young man, who enjoys sport,
he takes over his father’s opinions as they stand, and regards everybody
who does not accept them as an irredeemable blackguard. The Dean is a
very strong loyalist. He is the chaplain of an Orange Lodge, and has
told me more than once that he hopes to march to battle at the head of
his regiment of Volunteers.
“Smuggling arms for the Nationalists!” I said.
“That’s what I did,” said Sam, grinning broadly. “But I thought all
the time that I was working for the other side. I didn’t know the
Nationalists went in for guns; thought they only talked. In fact, to
tell you the truth, I forgot all about them. Otherwise I wouldn’t have
done it At least I mightn’t. But I had a great time.”
“Of course,” I said, “I don’t mind. So far as I am concerned personally
I’d rather neither side had any guns. But if your father finds out, Sam,
there’ll be a frightful row. He’ll disown you.”
“The governor knows all about it,” said Sam, “and he doesn’t mind
one bit. Just wait till you hear the end of the story. You’ll be as
surprised as I was.”
“I certainly shall,” I said, “if the story ends in your father’s
approving of your smuggling guns for rebels. He’d call them rebels, you
know.”
“Oh,” said Sam, “as far as rebellion goes I don’t see that there’s much
to choose between them. However, that doesn’t matter. What happened was
this. I got off with my load about five o’clock, and I had a gorgeous
spin. There wasn’t a cart or a thing on the roads, and I just let the
car rip. I touched sixty miles an hour, and hardly ever dropped below
forty. Best run I ever had. Almost the only thing I passed was a motor
lorry, going the same way I was. I didn’t think anything of it at the
time, but it turned out to be important afterwards. It was about seven
o’clock when I got out of County Down into Armagh. I began looking out
for the fellow who was to meet me. It wasn’t long before I spotted him,
standing at a corner, trying to look as if he were a military sentry.
You know the sort of thing I mean. Bandolier, belt, and frightfully
stiff about the back. He held up his hand and I stopped. ‘A loyal man,’
he said. Well, I was, so far as I knew at that time, so I said ‘You
bet.’ ‘That’s not right,’ said he. ‘Give the countersign.’ I hadn’t
heard anything about a countersign, so I told him not to be a damned
fool, and that I’d break his head if he said I wasn’t a loyal man. That
seemed to puzzle him a bit. He got out a notebook and read a page or
two, looking at me and the car every now and then as if he wasn’t quite
satisfied. I felt pretty sure, of course, that he was the man I wanted.
He couldn’t very well be anyone else. So by way of cutting the business
short I told him I was loaded up with guns and cartridges, and that I
wished he’d hop in and show me where to go. ‘That’s all very fine,’ he
said, ‘but you oughtn’t to be in a car like that.’ I told him there was
no use arguing about the car. I wasn’t going back to change it to please
him. He asked me who I was, and I told him, mentioning that I was the
governor’s son. I thought that might help him to make up his mind, and
it did. The governor is middling well known up in those parts, and the
mention of his name was enough. The fellow climbed in beside me. We
hadn’t very far to go, as it turned out, and in the inside of twenty
minutes I was driving up the avenue of a big house. The size of it
rather surprised me, for I didn’t think O’Meara was well enough off to
keep up a place of the kind. However, I was evidently expected, for I
was shown into the dining-room by a footman. There were three men at
breakfast, my old dad, Dopping--you know Dopping, don’t you?”
Dopping is a retired cavalry colonel. I do business for him and know him
pretty well He is just the sort of man who would be in the thick of any
gun-running that was going on.
“There was another man,” said Sam, “whom I didn’t know and wasn’t
introduced to. The fact is there wasn’t much time for politeness. My dad
looked as if he’d been shot when he saw me, and old Dopping bristled all
over like an Irish terrier at the beginning of a fight, and asked me
who the devil I was and what I was doing there. Of course, he jolly well
knew who I was, and I thought he must know what brought me there, so I
just winked by way of letting him understand that I was in the game.
He got so red in the face that I thought he’d burst. Then the other
man chipped in and asked me what I’d got in the car. The three of
them whispered together for a bit, and I suggested that if they didn’t
believe me they’d better go and see. The car was outside the door, and
their own man was sitting on the guns. Dopping went, and I suppose he
told the other two that the guns were there all right. Dad asked me where
I got them, and I told them, mentioning Hazlewood’s name and the name
of the yacht. I was a bit puzzled, but I still thought everything was all
right, and that there’d be no harm in mentioning names. I very soon
saw that there was some sort of mistake somewhere. The governor and old
Dopping and the other man, who seemed to be the coolest of the three,
went over to the window and looked at the car. Then they started
whispering again, and I couldn’t hear a word they said. Didn’t want to.
I was as hungry as a wolf, and there was a jolly good breakfast on the
table. I sat down and gorged. I had just started my third egg when
the door opened, and a rather nice-looking young fellow walked in. The
footman came behind him, looking as white as a sheet, and began some
sort of apology for letting the stranger in. Old Dopping, who was still
in a pretty bad temper, told the footman to go and be damned. Then the
new man introduced himself. He said he was Colonel O’Connell, of the
first Armagh Regiment of National Volunteers. I expected to see old
Dopping kill him at sight. Dopping is a tremendous loyalist, and the
other fellow--well--phew!”
Sam whistled. Words failed him, I suppose, when it came to expressing
the disloyalty of a colonel of National Volunteers.
“Instead of that,” said Sam, “Dopping stood up straight, and saluted
O’Connell. O’Connell stiffened his back, and saluted Dopping. The
third man, the one I didn’t know, stood up, too, and saluted. O’Connell
saluted him. Then the governor bowed quite civilly, and O’Connell
saluted him. I can tell you it was a pretty scene. ‘I beg to inform
you, gentlemen,’ said O’Connell, ‘that a consignment of rifles and
ammunition, apparently intended for your force, has arrived at our
headquarters in a motor lorry.’ Nothing could have been civiller than
the way he spoke. But Dopping was not to be beat. He’s a bristly old bear
at times, but he always was a gentleman. ‘Owing to a mistake,’ he said,
‘some arms, evidently belonging to you, are now in a car at our door.’
The governor and the other man sat down and laughed till they were
purple, but neither O’Connell nor old Dopping so much as smiled. It was
then--and I give you my word not till then--that I tumbled to the idea
that I’d been running guns for the other side. I expected that there’d
be a furious row the minute the governor stopped laughing. But
there wasn’t. In fact, no one took any notice of me. There was a long
consultation, and in the end they settled that it might be risky to
start moving the guns about again, and that each party had better stick
to what it had got. Our fellows--I call them our fellows, though, of
course, I was really acting for the others--our fellows got rather the
better of the exchange in the way of ammunition. But O’Connell scooped
in a lot of extra rifles. When they had that settled they all saluted
again, and the governor said something about hoping to meet O’Connell
at Philippi. I don’t know what he meant by that, but O’Connell seemed
tremendously pleased. Where do you suppose Philippi is?”
“Philippi,” I said, “is where somebody--Julius Caesar, I think, but it
doesn’t matter---- What your father meant was that he hoped to have a
chance of fighting it out with O’Connell some day. Not a duel, you know,
but a proper battle. The Ulster Volunteers against the other lot.”
“We shall have to wipe out the police first,” said Sam, “to prevent
their interfering. I hope I shall be there then. I want to get my own
back out of those fellows who collared me from behind the day of the
last rag. But, I say, what about the soldiers--the regular soldiers, I
mean? Which side will they be on?”
“That,” I said, “is the one uncertain factor in the problem. Nobody
knows.”
“The best plan,” said Sam, “would be to take them away altogether, and
leave us to settle the matter ourselves. We’d do it all right, judging
by the way old Dopping and O’Connell behaved to each other.”
Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings. I should never have suspected
Sam of profound political wisdom. But it is quite possible that his
suggestion would meet the case better than any other.