desperate rush down the slope, in the hope of catching the gunmen
scattered in the different cottages, and so mopping them up before they
could get together; but by this time the flying column had taken up
positions on the top of the far slope above the village, and as the
Cadets reached the cottages they came under heavy machine-gun fire.
Quickly realising what had happened, Jones ordered one platoon to make a
frontal attack on the gunmen’s position, while he sent a second and
third platoon to try to work round their flanks; the fourth platoon he
kept with him under cover in the village.
Then followed a very pretty fight for an hour, by which time the gunmen,
like the Boers of old, thought it was time to move on and take up a
position on the next ridge.
Jones knew that if he could only keep in close touch with the flying
column it was only a question of time before Blake, who would be guided
by the heavy firing, would attack them in the rear, and that they would
then stand a good chance of bagging the whole lot. The fight gradually
worked across the mountains, the gunmen retreating from ridge to ridge,
while the Cadets stuck to them like grim death, always striving to pin
them down, and when they retreated to drive them in the direction from
which Blake ought to appear.
Late in the afternoon heavy shooting suddenly broke out behind the
gunmen, and the Cadets redoubled their efforts to close with them.
By this time the opposing forces had worked their way down the western
slopes of the mountains almost as far as the high upland bogs, and
directly the gunmen realised that they were likely to be surrounded,
they broke and fled down a valley, closely pursued by police and Cadets.
Unfortunately the light was getting bad, and the gunmen’s luck still
held good. When they had gone about a mile, they came across a big party
of country people with whom they mixed, and when the police came up with
them it was impossible to tell gunmen from peasants—probably the former
were busily engaged cutting turf while the latter looked on. Their arms
were passed to the women, who hid the rifles in the heather and secreted
the pistols and ammunition on their persons.
During the whole long fight Father John attended to wounded Cadet and
gunman alike, always to be seen where the fight was hottest; and though
his calling was conspicuous from his clothes and white collar, yet on
several occasions the gunmen deliberately fired on him when attending to
a wounded Cadet.
After the battle of Glenmuck the flying column was seen no more in that
district, and for weeks the local Volunteers gave Jones no trouble.
Time after time Jones had received information that certain young men in
and about Annagh carried arms, but whenever they were surprised in a
shop or pub no arms could be found on them, and it was noticed that they
always moved about in the company of certain girls.
Soon after the battle of Glenmuck the belles of the district received
the shock of their lives when shopping in a town some miles away with
these young men. About noon four Crossley loads of Cadets suddenly
dashed into the town with two women searchers dressed in dark-blue
uniforms, and that day the first real haul of revolvers and automatics
was made. As usual, the men passed their arms to the girls directly they
saw the Auxiliaries arrive, but this time no notice was taken of the
men, while the girls, who on former occasions had stood looking on and
jeering at the Cadets, found themselves quickly rounded up, and the
women searchers soon did the rest.
After this the moral effect of the women searchers was so great that not
a girl in the district dare carry arms or even despatches. The girls
were not sure whether the searchers were women or young Cadets dressed
up as women, and this uncertainty greatly increased their alarm.
About six weeks later Jones found out that a much-wanted Dublin gunman,
called Foy, who had murdered at least two British officers in cold
blood, was hidden in the district, and was being fed by his mother and
sister, who lived about two miles from Annagh. Time after time the
Cadets tried to surprise Mrs Foy or her daughter carrying food to Foy’s
hiding-place, but always in vain.
Foy’s presence soon began to be felt in the district. Two Cadets,
returning off leave in mufti and unarmed, were taken out of the train
and murdered just outside the station, their bodies being left there for
all who passed to see, and no man dared to touch the bodies until the
police arrived. Next the Cadets were ambushed twice in one week, both
times unsuccessfully.
Father John, who had hoped that at last his parish had returned to the
paths of peace, was furious, and denounced from the altar all men and
women who shielded murderers. Finally, after the murder of the two
Cadets, he refused Holy Communion to Mrs Foy and her daughter, which is
a very serious step for a priest to take.
And when remonstrated with, he replied that, sooner than not denounce
and punish murderers and those who aided and abetted them, he would
throw off his coat and become an Auxiliary. More power to you, Father
John!
XVII.
THE BOG CEMETERY.
After many months of the Sinn Fein Terror, the town of Ballybor became a
place of shadows and whispers. At night-time men saw shadows, real and
unreal, moving and stationary, at every corner of the streets and in
every lane; and during the day-time, when men met in the streets, they
would only speak in low whispers to each other, and always keeping one
eye over their shoulder.
Public opinion withered and died. Sinn Fein had no use for it—men became
completely detached, mere spectators of the unchecked and uncondemned
orgy of crime; like the younger generation in England, who waste a large
part of their lives in picture-houses, gazing at films of vice and
crime. And if a man had been murdered in the main street at Ballybor in
the middle of the day, not a hand would have been raised to save the
victim—the inhabitants would simply have regarded the incident in the
light of a film, and then gone home to their dinners.
The oft-heard remark when a policeman has been murdered, “that it served
him right for joining the R.I.C.,” epitomises the attitude of the
majority of the Irish public towards so-called “political murder.” As a
rule, an Irishman, on being asked if there was any news in the paper,
would reply, “No, only the usual columns of murders and outrages.”
Walter Drake, as his name implies, was descended from an Elizabethan
soldier who had settled in the west of Ireland and built a large house
about two miles from Ballybor, and here for many generations the Drakes
had lived, hunted, and farmed.
Walter Drake had at an early age entered the army through Sandhurst, but
retired after six years’ service on the death of his father, and since
then had lived at the Manor, spending a large part of his time helping
his poorer neighbours in every way in his power: a quiet man of a
retiring nature, a popular magistrate, and a good neighbour, but a
determined Loyalist. Called up again in August 1914, he had served
throughout the war with distinction in his old regiment, to return once
more to his home.
Had Drake lived in any civilised country in the world, he would most
assuredly have died in his bed when his time came, esteemed by all as a
just, kindly, and honourable man; but, as in war, the best seem to be
always taken, so it has been in Ireland. His only crimes appear to have
been that he continued to act as a magistrate after receiving an order
from the I.R.A. to resign his commission of the peace, and devoting
himself to helping ex-soldiers in the town to get their pensions and
trying to get grants of land for such as were worthy. The granting of
land to ex-soldiers was bitterly opposed by the Transport Union, who
wanted every acre for their own landless members. And probably being a
personal friend of Blake’s and beloved by the police force, would
constitute another crime in the eyes of the I.R.A.
On a certain Monday night the constable on duty at Ballybor Barracks
reported that a great light could be seen in the sky, and thought there
must be a big fire not far from the town. Going to the top of the
barracks, Blake at once saw that a large house must be on fire, and
judging from the direction the chances were that it was the Manor.
Taking a dozen men in a Crossley, he at once went off there, to find the
grand old house burning fiercely, and by the light of the fire he could
make out a pathetic group of figures on the tennis-ground in front of
the house.
The first person whom Blake met was the old butler, who told a tale now
familiar in many parts of Ireland to-day. The household had retired at
their usual hour of eleven, after which the butler had carefully closed
up the house and gone to the servants’ hall to smoke a pipe before
turning in. Soon afterwards he heard a loud knocking at the front door,
followed by a volley of shots, some of which must have been fired
through the windows, as he could hear the sound of falling glass.
The old man went and opened the front door, to be met by a ring of
rifles, shot-guns, pistols, and electric torches, behind which he could
make out the usual mob of masked ruffians. A strange voice then demanded
Major Drake; and when the butler told them that the Major had gone to
Dublin by the mail that day, a man handed him a letter telling him that
in ten minutes’ time they were going to burn the house to the ground,
and that he had better warn the inmates if he didn’t want them roasted
alive.
The butler at once took the letter to Miss Drake, who read the following
pleasant communication addressed to her brother:—
“Major Drake,—Owing to your aggressively anti-Irish attitude, we
have received orders to burn your house to the ground. You will be
given ten minutes to collect your clothes. By order.—I.R.A.”
The girl hurriedly slipped on a dressing-gown, and went down to the hall
to find it full of the brutes sprawling in chairs and smoking. The
leader came forward to speak to her, and she begged him to have mercy on
her mother, who was old and in feeble health, and who would surely be
killed by the shock of having her house burnt and being turned out into
the night; and implored the man to take anything he wanted, offering him
all the money she had and her mother’s jewellery. For answer the man
pulled out his watch, and said that she had exactly ten minutes to get
her old English mother out of the house, no more and no less.
Seeing that it was useless to argue with the brute, Miss Drake called
the butler and her mother’s maid, woke up the old lady, dressed her the
best way they could, and as the household passed out through the central
hall, they saw men sprinkling the furniture and carpets with petrol.
Hardly had they reached the lawn when the men rushed out past them.
There was a violent explosion (petrol-tins bursting), and the house
seemed to burst into flames in an instant. And here they remained on the
tennis-ground, helpless and hopeless, their only crime Loyalty, until
Blake found them there, silently crying.
Seeing that the house was gone, that, in fact, it was impossible to save
anything, Blake put the Drakes into the Crossley, with the old butler
and the servants, and drove them to a hotel in the town.
Drake had been seen motoring through Ballybor to the station on the
Monday, and by that evening there was a whisper in the town that
something had happened to him, but what the something was the whisper
did not mention. During Tuesday rumour lay dormant. On Wednesday,
however, rumour awoke and rapidly made up for lost time, and by that
evening it was freely whispered throughout the town that Drake had
joined the I.R.A.; that he had bolted to Canada to escape from the
I.R.A., only to be taken out of the train on his way to Dublin by a
flying column of gunmen, tried by a court-martial, condemned, and
executed; that he had gone to Dublin to join the Auxiliaries; and
lastly, that he had gone to London to get married.
On Wednesday morning Miss Drake, whose poor old mother lay in a state of
collapse at the hotel, came to Blake in great distress, and implored him
to find her brother. She was sure something must have happened to him,
as she had wired twice, and then, getting no reply, had wired to the
secretary of his club, where he had intended staying, and from whom an
answer had just come to say Major Drake had not arrived.
Blake promised to do all he could, and started off at once to the
station to make inquiries. Having found out that Drake actually did
leave Ballybor by the mail train on Monday, he next sent an urgent
cipher message to the authorities in Dublin, hoping they would be able
to trace him there. Blake then set out for Knockshinnagh, the next
station on the line to Dublin, about a mile from the small town of the
same name, and situated in the midst of a vast bog, which stretches
towards the foot of the mountains to the east and west, and runs nearly
as far as Ballybor. Here, acting on the assumption that the rumour of
Drake having left the mail train at this station was correct, Blake
carefully interrogated the station-master and the three porters. One and
all denied having seen Drake on the day in question—one porter, who had
been there years, adding inconsequently that he did not even know him by
sight, and thereby making Blake sure that he was on the right track at
last.
That night Blake again visited the station-master at his house in the
station after midnight; and pretending that he knew for certain that
Drake had left the train at Knockshinnagh, warned the man of the serious
consequences of refusing to give information. 1 A.M. is an unpleasant
hour to interview armed men, and thinking that the police were
uncomfortably near and the I.R.A. in the dim distance, the
station-master made a full confession.
A few minutes before the limited mail arrived at Knockshinnagh on
Monday, three armed and masked men had driven up in a Ford car, and
directly the train pulled up had made straight for the carriage in which
Drake was travelling. At once they seized him, and dragged him,
struggling, out of the carriage to the car, and then drove off rapidly
in the direction of Ballybor. Before the train pulled out, a stranger in
a third-class carriage warned the station-master, in the name of the
I.R.A., to give no information to any one. As no further information
could be got from the station-master, Blake returned to the barracks,
and set out again for Knockshinnagh after breakfast, to endeavour to
trace the Ford from there.
The road from Knockshinnagh to Ballybor runs practically the whole way
through a vast bog, which is drained by the Owenmore river, with a deep
fringe of water-meadows on each bank. At intervals side roads connect up
the villages on the higher ground near the mountains with the main road.
The police had covered nearly three miles of the road without getting
any news of Drake or the Ford, when a sharp-eyed sergeant noticed the
narrow tracks of a Ford turning up one of these side roads to the east.
The car had turned the corner sharply, leaving a deep track of two
wheels in the soft ground on the edge of the road.
Turning down this side road, they proceeded slowly without seeing any
further car-tracks until they came to a long low cottage, standing back
about fifteen yards from the road. Here they found tracks which showed
that the car had pulled up at the door of the cottage, turned, and
returned towards the main road.
Leaving his men outside, Blake entered with a sergeant, in time to see
the owner bolting out of the back door, only to be caught by the
sergeant and brought back. The man said his name was Moran, and
protested his loyalty loudly before Blake could ask him a question.
In Ireland if you want information badly, often the best way to obtain
it is to bluff your opponent into believing that you already know part
of it, leaving him to guess as to how much you know. Blake took this
line of attack with Moran, and asked him the names of the four men who
had called at his cottage on the previous Monday in a car. But Moran
knew the game as well as Blake, and denied that any car had been to his
house lately, or indeed at any time, whereby Blake knew that the man
lied, and had something to conceal.
He then threatened Moran that if he did not tell all he knew he would
arrest him and keep him until he did, and at the same time took him
outside and pointed out the old tracks of a car in front of the cottage.
This had the desired effect, and at long last Blake thought their search
was at an end.
Moran, it appeared, was the caretaker of an I.R.A. cemetery, or rather
an old disused cemetery, where formerly unbaptised children were buried,
and which now was used to bury Volunteers who had “gone to America.” On
the Monday in question three armed and masked men had driven up to his
house with a prisoner, and after trying him by “court-martial” in the
cottage, had taken him to the cemetery, and made Moran help them to dig
a grave, while the unfortunate prisoner looked on. They blindfolded and
shot him, and finally forced Moran to put the body in the grave and fill
it in. They then left.
Though hard pressed, Moran denied any knowledge of the identity of the
masked men or their victim; and when told to describe the murdered man,
gave a description which might have applied to hundreds of men.
Blake then ordered Moran to show him the cemetery, but when thus driven
into a corner he took on the courage of a cornered rat, and though they
tried for an hour not one inch would he go. Seeing that the man was
desperate and would have died sooner than show them the cemetery, Blake
returned to the barracks.
That night, as soon as it was dark, a strong police force rounded up the
six leading Volunteers in Ballybor, and took them out to Moran’s house
in two Crossleys, arriving as the full moon was showing over the top of
the mountains.
At the first knock on the door Moran came out, his face contracted with
fear, which turned to relief on seeing the uniforms of the police; but
when he saw the six Volunteers he nearly collapsed. Blake now ordered
Moran to lead them to the cemetery, and so great was the man’s terror
that he started off across the bog without a word.
After walking over a mile in the moonlight, they came to a low ridge of
limestone mounds running through the bog and parallel to the mountains.
Here in a hollow was the old graveyard, which looked like a disused
sheep-pen, such as the country people use for the rounding-up of
mountain sheep when the different owners pick out their own sheep and
lambs to brand them. The cemetery was surrounded by a stone wall, broken
down in many places, and inside was a tangled mass of elder and thorn
bushes.
After posting sentries round the graveyard, Blake made Moran point out
the latest grave, and after the trembling man had shown them a mound
between two bushes, he ordered two of the Volunteers to start opening
the grave with spades brought by the police. Presently one of the spades
met something in a sack, and on opening the sack they found the body of
a short dark man—obviously a peasant—whereas Drake had been a tall fair
man. On examination they found wounds in the body and left leg.
For a moment Blake was quite nonplussed—he had been so sure that the
body would be Drake’s. He was certain that the station-master had spoken
the truth, and there seemed no reason to doubt Moran’s evidence, though
why he should be in such a state of terror was not plain. Further, it
was now five days since Drake was supposed to have been murdered, and
the body they had just dug up had obviously been in the ground two days
at the most, probably only one.
A careful examination of the cemetery showed that there was no other
recent grave.
Blake’s thoughts were interrupted by one of the Volunteers, a man called
Brogan, asking with his tongue in his cheek and an impudent sneer: “Is
yer honour satisfied now, and will we be after burying this poor fellow
decently agin?”
Taking no notice of Brogan’s question, Blake told a sergeant to make the
Volunteers carry the dead man to the Crossleys, and to wait for him
there. After they had gone he made Moran go down on his knees and swear
on his oath that the body they had dug up was the man who had been
executed on the previous Monday; but Moran could only swear that he had
been so frightened at the time that he had not taken any notice of the
prisoner, but that to the best of his belief the body was the one he had
buried. Moran then broke down, and had to be half-carried, half-led to
his cottage, where they left him, and returned to Ballybor with the
Volunteers and the corpse for a military investigation.
The failure to find Drake’s body in the bog cemetery forced Blake to
follow up the other rumours regarding his sudden disappearance, but
every rumour and clue failed them, and it looked as though Drake’s fate
was to be added to the long list of unsolved Irish crimes.
Two days after the police had visited the cemetery, Blake received
information that arms for a police ambush had been brought into Murrisk
townland, and also that poteen was being freely made and drunk there.
Having arranged with a company of Auxiliaries stationed in Annagh to
co-operate with him, Blake left the barracks with two Crossley loads of
police and a Ford an hour before dawn one morning, and as the day broke
the Auxiliaries and police started to close in a cordon on the village
and outlying farms where they suspected the arms were hidden.
The first signs of life were two women running across a bog, and when
followed one of them was seen by Blake with his glasses to throw a still
into a bog-hole, while the other one took two large jars from under her
shawl and smashed them together into pieces. The women were quickly
rounded up, and on being taken to the nearest house, the police found
six fully-dressed men well tucked up in two beds, and the remains of a
huge fire in the kitchen, while the whole house reeked of poteen—good
circumstantial evidence that the party of eight had spent the night
running a still.
After a long and fruitless search for arms, Blake found himself close to
Murrisk Abbey; so, after sending the Auxiliaries back to Annagh, he went
to pay the mac Nessa a visit.
The old man was delighted to see him, and insisted that he should stay
to dinner, and the police should have drink and food.
Blake and the mac Nessa dined alone, and over the port the old man
started to tell Blake tales of his youth. After his second glass and the
long day in the cold, Blake began to feel drowsy, and his thoughts
wandered to Drake and the grave in the bog cemetery, only to wake up
with a start, hearing the old man say something about a grave, followed
by, “Is yer honour satisfied now?”
Apologising for his deafness, he asked the mac Nessa to begin again, and
the old man told a rambling story of a butler of his young days called
Faherty, whose chief recreation was shooting rabbits in the park during
the summer evenings. Close to the park lived a pompous retired
shopkeeper called Malone, who had a very fine red setter, which was
always wandering in the park, like Faherty, after rabbits.
On several occasions Faherty and Malone had had words over the setter,
and the climax was reached when Malone arrived at the Abbey one evening,
purple with rage, and insisting on seeing the mac Nessa, burst into his
study, accused Faherty of having shot his setter, and added that he knew
that the dog was buried in a shrubbery at the back of the house. The mac
Nessa at once called for Faherty; the three proceeded straight to the
shrubbery with a spade, and Faherty was made to open the grave which
they found there. After digging down a short way he came on the body of
a cur dog, to Malone’s great astonishment and disappointment, and
Faherty asked in a voice of triumph, “Is yer honour satisfied now?”
After Malone had gone home, the mac Nessa asked Faherty for an
explanation, and the butler told his master how he had shot Malone’s
setter by mistake in the dusk, and then buried him in the shrubbery. The
following day he heard that Malone suspected him, and had heard of the
funeral in the shrubbery, so the next night he shot a cur dog, and
buried him on top of the setter.