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THE WORKS OF STANLEY J. WEYMAN
VOL. XX
THE WILD GEESE
Thin Paper Edition of
Stanley J. Weyman's Novels
(Author's Complete Edition)
In 20 Volumes
Arranged Chronologically
With an Introduction in the First
Volume by Mr. Weyman
In clear type and handy size
To range with Henry Seton Merriman's Novels
Fcap. 8vo, Gilt Top, in Cloth and Leather
Vol. 1. The House of the Wolf.
" 2. The New Rector.
" 3. The Story of Francis Cludde.
" 4. A Gentleman of France.
" 5. The Man in Black.
" 6. Under the Red Robe.
" 7. My Lady Rotha.
" 8. Memoirs of a Minister of France.
" 9. The Red Cockade.
" 10. Shrewsbury.
Vol. 11. The Castle Inn.
" 12. Sophia.
" 13. Count Hannibal.
" 14. In Kings' Byways.
" 15. The Long Night.
" 16. The Abbess of Vlaye.
" 17. Starvecrow Farm.
" 18. Chippinge.
" 19. Laid up in Lavender.
" 20. The Wild Geese.
LONDON:
SMITH, ELDER & CO. and
LONGMANS GREEN & CO.
THE WILD GEESE
BY
STANLEY J. WEYMAN
LONDON:
SMITH, ELDER & CO.
(_For the United Kingdom_)
IN CONJUNCTION WITH CASSELL AND CO., LTD.; HODDER AND
STOUGHTON; METHUEN AND CO., WARD, LOCK AND CO., AND
LONGMANS GREEN & CO.
(_For the British Possessions and Foreign Countries_)
1911
1908 July 1st Edition
" Aug. 2nd Impression
" Oct. 3rd Impression
1910 July 4th Impression
" Nov. 5th Impression
1911 Mar. 6d. Edition
" Oct. 6th (Author's Complete Edition)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. ON BOARD THE "CORMORANT" SLOOP 1
II. MORRISTOWN 15
III. A SCION OF KINGS 27
IV. "STOP THIEF!" 42
V. THE MESS-ROOM AT TRALEE 57
VI. THE MAITRE D'ARMES 72
VII. BARGAINING 90
VIII. AN AFTER-DINNER GAME 103
IX. EARLY RISERS 119
X. A COUNCIL OF WAR 136
XI. A MESSAGE FOR THE YOUNG MASTER 154
XII. THE SEA MIST 171
XIII. A SLIP 187
XIV. THE COLONEL'S TERMS 202
XV. FEMINA FURENS 218
XVI. THE MARPLOT 235
XVII. THE LIMIT 251
XVIII. A COUNTERPLOT 268
XIX. PEINE FORTE ET DURE 285
XX. AN UNWELCOME VISITOR 301
XXI. THE KEY 320
XXII. THE SCENE IN THE PASSAGE 336
XXIII. BEHIND THE YEWS 350
XXIV. THE PITCHER AT THE WELL 368
XXV. PEACE 378
CHAPTER I
ON BOARD THE "CORMORANT" SLOOP
Midway in that period of Ireland's history during which, according to
historians, the distressful country had none--to be more precise, on a
spring morning early in the eighteenth century, and the reign of George
the First, a sloop of about seventy tons burthen was beating up Dingle
Bay, in the teeth of a stiff easterly breeze. The sun was two hours
high, and the grey expanse of the bay was flecked with white horses
hurrying seaward in haste to leap upon the Blasquets, or to disport
themselves in the field of ocean. From the heaving deck of the vessel
the mountains that shall not be removed were visible--on the northerly
tack Brandon, on the southerly Carntual; the former sunlit, with
patches of moss gleaming like emeralds on its breast, the latter dark
and melancholy, clothed in the midst of tradition and fancy that in
those days garbed so much of Ireland's bog and hill.
The sloop had missed the tide, and, close hauled to the wind, rode deep
in the ebb, making little way with each tack. The breeze hummed through
the rigging. The man at the helm humped a shoulder to the sting of the
spray, and the rest of the crew, seven or eight in number--tarry,
pigtailed, outlandish sailor men--crouched under the windward rail. The
skipper sat with a companion on a coil of rope on the dry side of the
skylight, and at the moment at which our story opens was oblivious
alike of the weather and his difficulties. He sat with his eyes fixed
on his neighbour, and in those eyes a wondering, fatuous admiration. So
might a mortal look if some strange hap brought him face to face with a
centaur.
"Never?" he murmured respectfully.
"Never," his companion answered.
"My faith!" Captain Augustin rejoined. He was a cross between a
Frenchman and an Irishman. For twenty years he had carried wine to
Ireland, and returned laden with wool to Bordeaux or Cadiz. He knew
every inlet between Achill Sound and the Head of Kinsale, and was so
far a Jacobite that he scorned to pay duty to King George. "Never? My
faith!" he repeated, staring, if possible, harder than ever.
"No," said the Colonel. "Under no provocation, thank God!"
"But it's _drole_," Captain Augustin rejoined. "It would bother me
sorely to know what you do."
"What we all should do," his passenger answered gently. "Our duty,
Captain Augustin. Our duty! Doing which we are men indeed. Doing which,
we have no more to do, no more to fear, no more to question." And
Colonel John Sullivan threw out both his hands, as if to illustrate the
freedom from care which followed. "See! it is done!"
"But west of Shannon, where there is no law?" Augustin answered. "Eh,
Colonel? And in Kerry, where we'll be, the saints helping, before
noon--which is all one with Connaught? No, in Kerry, what with
Sullivans, and Mahonies, and O'Beirnes, that wear coats only for a
gentleman to tread upon, and would sooner shoot a friend before
breakfast than spend the day idle, _par ma foi_, I'm not seeing what
you'll be doing there, Colonel."
"A man may protect himself from violence," the Colonel answered
soberly, "and yet do his duty. What he may not do--is this. He may not
go out to kill another in cold blood, for a point of honour, or for
revenge, or to sustain what he has already done amiss! No, nor for
vanity, or for the hundred trifles for which men risk their lives and
seek the lives of others. I hope I make myself clear, Captain
Augustin?" he added courteously.
He asked because the skipper's face of wonderment was not to be
misread. And the skipper answered, "Quite clear!" meaning the reverse.
Clear, indeed? Yonder were the hills and bogs of Kerry--lawless,
impenetrable, abominable--a realm of Tories and rapparees. On the sloop
itself was scarce a man whose hands were free from blood. He, Augustin,
mild-mannered as any smuggler on the coast, had spent his life between
fleeing and fighting, with his four carronades ever crammed to the
muzzle, and his cargo ready to be jettisoned at sight of a cruiser. And
this man talked as if he were in church! Talked--talked--the skipper
fairly gasped. "Oh, quite clear!" he mumbled. "Quite clear!" he
replied. "But it's an odd creed."
"Not a creed, my friend," Colonel Sullivan replied precisely. "But the
result of a creed. The result, thank God, of more creeds than one."
Captain Augustin cast a wild eye at the straining, shrieking rigging;
the sloop was lurching heavily. But whether he would or no, his eye
fluttered back and rested, fascinated, on the Colonel's face. Indeed,
from the hour, ten days earlier, which had seen him mount the side in
the Bordeaux river, Colonel John Sullivan had been a subject of growing
astonishment to the skipper. Captain Augustin knew his world tolerably.
In his time he had conveyed many a strange passenger from strand to
strand: haggard men who ground their shoulders against the bulkhead,
and saw things in corners; dark, down-looking adventurers, whose hands
flew to hilts if a gentleman addressed them suddenly; gay young sparks
bound on foreign service and with the point of honour on their lips, or
their like, returning old and broken to beg or cut throats on the
highway--these, and men who carried their lives in their hands, and men
who went, cloaked, on mysterious missions, and men who wept as the
Irish coast faded behind them, and men, more numerous, who wept when
they saw it again--he knew them all! All, he had carried them, talked
with them, learned their secrets, and more often their hopes.
But such a man as this he had never carried. A man who indeed wore
outlandish fur-trimmed clothes, and had seen, if his servant's sparse
words went for aught, outlandish service; but who neither swore, nor
drank above measure, nor swaggered, nor threatened. Who would not dice,
nor game--save for trifles. Who, on the contrary, talked of duty, and
had a peaceful word for all, and openly condemned the duello, and was
mild as milk and as gentle as an owl. Such a one seemed, indeed, the
fabled "phaynix," or a bat with six wings, or any other prodigy which
the fancy, Irish or foreign, could conceive.
Then, to double the marvel, the Colonel had a servant, a close-tongued
fellow, William Bale by name, and reputed an Englishman, who, if he was
not like his master, was as unlike other folk. He was as quiet-spoken
as the Colonel, and as precise, and as peaceable. He had even been
heard to talk of his duty. But while the Colonel was tall and spare,
with a gentle eye and a long, kindly face, and was altogether of a
pensive cast, Bale was short and stout, of a black pallor, and very
forbidding. His mouth, when he opened it--which was seldom--dropped
honey. But his brow scowled, his lip sneered, and his silence invited
no confidence.
Such being the skipper's passenger, and such his man, the wonder was
that Captain Augustin's astonishment had not long ago melted into
contempt. But it had not. For one thing, a seaman had been hurt, and
the Colonel had exhibited a skill in the treatment of wounds which
would not have disgraced an experienced chirurgeon. Then in the Bay the
sloop had met with half a gale, and the passenger, in circumstances
which the skipper knew to be more trying to landsmen than to himself,
had maintained a serenity beyond applause. He had even, clinging to the
same ring-bolt with the skipper, while the south-wester tore overhead
and the gallant little vessel lay over wellnigh to her beam-ends,
praised with a queer condescension the conduct of the crew.
"This is the finest thing in the world," he had shouted, amid the roar
of things, "to see men doing their duty! I would not have missed this
for a hundred crowns!"
"I'd give as much to be safe in Cherbourg," had been the skipper's grim
reply as he watched his mast.
But Augustin had not forgotten the Colonel's coolness. A landsman, for
whom the trough of the wave had no terrors, and the leeward breakers,
falling mountain high on Ushant, no message, was not a man to be
despised.
Indeed, from that time the skipper had begun to find a charm in the
Colonel's gentleness and courtesy. He had fought against the feeling,
but it had grown upon him. Something that was almost affection began to
mingle with and augment his wonder. Hence the patience with which, with
Kerry on the beam, he listened while the Colonel sang his siren song.
"He will be one of the people called Quakers," the skipper thought,
after a while. "I've heard of them, but never seen one. Yes, he will be
a Quaker."
Unfortunately, as he arrived at this conclusion a cry from the
steersman roused him. He sprang to his feet. Alas! the sloop had run
too far on the northerly tack, and simultaneously the wind had shifted
a point to the southward. In the open water this had advantaged her;
but she had been allowed to run into a bight of the north shore and a
line of foam cut her off to the eastward, leaving small room to tack.
She might still clear the westerly rocks and run out to sea, but the
skipper saw--with an oath--that this was doubtful, and with a seaman's
quickness he made up his mind.
"Keep her on!--keep her on!" he roared, "you son of a _maudite mere_!
Child of the accursed! We must run into Skull haven! And if the men of
Skull take so much as an iron bolt from us, and I misdoubt them, I'll
keel-haul you, son of the _Diable_! I'll not leave an inch of skin upon
you!"
The man, cowering over the wheel, obeyed, and the little vessel ran up
the narrowing water--in which she had become involved--on an even keel.
The crew were already on their feet, they had loosened the sheet, and
squared the boom; they stood by to lower the yard. All--the skipper
with a grim face--stood looking forward, as the inlet narrowed, the
green banks closed in, the rocks that fringed them approached. Silently
and gracefully the sloop glided on, more smoothly with every moment,
until a turn in the passage opened a small land-locked haven. At the
head of the haven, barely a hundred yards above high-water mark, stood
a ruined tower--the Tower of Skull--and below this a long house of
stone with a thatched roof.
It was clear that the sloop's movements had been watched from the
shore, for although the melancholy waste of moor and mountain disclosed
no other habitation, a score of half-naked barefoot figures were
gathered on the jetty; while others could be seen hurrying down the
hillside. These cried to one another in an unknown tongue, and with
shrill eldritch voices, which vied with the screams of the gulls
swinging overhead.
"Stand by to let go the kedge," Augustin cried, eyeing them gloomily.
"We are too far in now! Let go!--let go!"
But the order and the ensuing action at once redoubled the clamour on
shore. A dozen of the foremost natives flung themselves into crazy
boats, that seemed as if they could not float long enough to reach the
vessel. But the men handled them with consummate skill and with equal
daring. In a twinkling they were within hail, and a man, wearing a long
frieze coat, a fisherman's red cap, and little besides, stood up in the
bow of the nearest.
"You will be coming to the jetty, Captain?" he cried in imperfect
English.
The skipper scowled at him, but did not answer.
"You will come to the jetty, Captain," the man repeated in his high,
sing-song voice. "Sure, and you've come convenient, for there's no one
here barring yourselves."
"And you're wanting brandy!" Augustin muttered bitterly under his
breath. He glanced at his men, as if he meditated resistance.
But, "Kerry law! Kerry law!" the man cried. "You know it well, Captain!
It's not I'll be answerable if you don't come to the jetty."
The skipper, who had fallen ill at Skull once before, and got away with
some loss, hoping that he might never see the place again, knew that he
was in the men's power. True, a single discharge of his carronades
would blow the boats to pieces; but he could not in a moment warp his
ship out through the narrow passage. And if he could, he knew that the
act would be bloodily avenged if he ever landed again in that part of
Ireland. He swore under his breath, and the steersman who had wrought
the harm by holding on too long wilted under his eye. The crew looked
other ways.
At length he yielded, and sulkily gave the order, the windlass was
manned, and the kedge drawn up. Fenders were lowered, and the sloop
slid gently to the jetty side.
In a twinkling a score of natives swarmed aboard. The man in the frieze
coat followed more leisurely, and with such dignity as became the owner
of a stone-walled house. He sauntered up to the skipper, a leer in his
eye. "You will have lost something the last time you were here,
Captain?" he said. "It is not I that will be responsible this time
unless the stuff is landed."
Augustin laughed scornfully. "The cargo is for Crosby of Castlemaine,"
he said. And he added various things which he hoped would happen to
himself if he landed so much as a single tub.
"It's little we know of Crosby here," the other replied; and he spat on
the deck. "And less we'll be caring, my dear. I say it shall be landed.
Here, you, Darby Sullivan, off with the hatch!"
Augustin stepped forward impulsively, as if he had a mind to throw the
gentleman in the frieze coat into the sea. But he had not armed himself
before he came on deck, the men of Skull outnumbered his crew two to
one, and, savage and half-naked as they were, were furnished to a man
with long sharp skenes and the skill to use them. If resistance had
been possible at any time, he had let the moment pass. The nearest
Justice lived twelve Irish miles away, and had he been on the spot he
would, since he was of necessity a Protestant, have been as
helpless--unless he brought the garrison of Tralee at his back--as a
churchwarden in a Synod of Cardinals. The skipper hesitated, and while
he hesitated the hatches were off, and the Sullivans swarmed down like
monkeys. Before the sloop could be made fast, the smaller kegs were
being tossed up, and passed over the side, a line was formed on land,
and the cargo, which had last seen the sun on the banks of the Garonne,
was swiftly vanishing in the maw of the stone house on the shore.
The skipper's rage was great, but he could only swear, and O'Sullivan
Og, the man in the frieze coat, who bore him an old grudge, grinned in
mockery. "For better custody, Captain!" he said. "For better custody!
Under my roof, _bien_! And when you will to go again there will be the
dues to be paid, the little dues over which we quarrelled last time!
And all will be rendered to a stave!"
"You villain!" the Captain muttered under his breath. "I understand!"
Turning--for the sight was more than he could bear--he found his
passenger at his elbow.
The Colonel, if his face went for anything, liked the proceedings
almost as little as the skipper. His lips were tightly closed, and he
frowned.
"Ay," Augustin cried bitterly--for the first instinct of the man who is
hurt is to hurt another--"now you see what it is you've come back to!
It's rob, or be robbed, this side of Tralee, and as far as the devil
could kick you beyond it! I wish you well out of it! But I suppose it
would take more than this to make you draw that long hanger of yours?"
The Colonel cast a troubled eye on him. "Beyond doubt," he said, "it is
the duty of a man to assist in defending the house of his host. And in
a sense and measure, the goods of his host"--with an uneasy look at the
fast-vanishing cargo, which was leaping from hand to hand so swiftly
that the progress of a tub from the hold to the house was as the flight
of a swallow--"are the house of his host. I do not deny that," he
continued precisely, "but----"
"But in this instance," the sea-captain struck in with a sneer,
contempt for the first time mastering wonder, "in this instance?"
"In this instance," the Colonel repeated with an unmistakable blush, "I
am not very free to act. The truth is, Captain Augustin, these folk are
of my kin. I was born not many miles from here"--his eye measured the
lonely landscape as if he compared it with more recent scenes--"and,
wrong or right, blood is thicker than wine. So that frankly, I am not
clear that for the sake of your Bordeaux, I'm tied to shed blood that
might be my forbears'!"
"Or your grandmother's," Augustin cried, with an open sneer.
"Or my grandmother's. Very true. But if a word to them in season----"
"Oh, d--n your words," the skipper retorted disdainfully.
He would have said more, but at that moment it became clear that
something was happening on shore. On the green brow beside the tower a
girl mounted on horseback had appeared; at a cry from her the men had
stopped work. The next moment her horse came cantering down the slope,
and with uplifted whip she rode in among the men. The whip fell twice,
and down went all the tubs within reach. Her voice, speaking, now Erse,
now Kerry English, could be heard upbraiding the nearest, commanding,
threatening, denouncing. Then on the brow behind her appeared in turn a
man--a man who looked gigantic against the sky, and who sat a horse to
match. He descended more slowly, and reached the girl's side as
O'Sullivan Og, in his frieze coat, came to the front in support of his
men.
For a full minute the girl vented her anger on Og, while he stood sulky
but patient, waiting for an opening to defend himself. When he obtained
this, he seemed to the two on the deck of the sloop to appeal to the
big man, who said a word or two, but was cut short by the girl. Her
voice, passionate and indignant, reached the deck; but not her words.
"That should be Flavia McMurrough!" the Colonel murmured thoughtfully,
"And Uncle Ulick. He's little changed, whoever's changed! She has a
will, it seems, and good impulses!"
The big man had begun by frowning on O'Sullivan Og. But presently he
smiled at something the latter said, then he laughed; at last he made a
joke himself. At that the girl turned on him; but he argued with her. A
man held up a tub for inspection, and though she struck it pettishly
with her whip, it was plain that she was shaken. O'Sullivan Og pointed
to the sloop, pointed to his house, grinned. The listeners on the deck
caught the word "Dues!" and the peal of laughter that followed.
Captain Augustin understood naught of what was going forward. But the
man beside him, who did, touched his sleeve. "It were well to speak to
her," he said.
"Who is she?" the skipper asked impatiently. "What has she to do with
it?"
"They are her people," the Colonel answered simply--"or they should be.
If she says yea, it is yea; and if she says nay, it is nay. Or, so it
should be--as far as a league beyond Morristown."
Augustin waited for no more. He was still in a fog, but he saw a ray of
hope; this was the Chatelaine, it seemed. He bundled over the side.
Alas! he ventured too late. As his feet touched the slippery stones of
the jetty, the girl wheeled her horse about with an angry exclamation,
shook her whip at O'Sullivan Og--who winked the moment her back was
turned--and cantered away up the hill. On the instant the men picked up
the kegs they had dropped, a shrill cry passed down the line, and the
work was resumed.
But the big man remained; and the skipper, with the Colonel at his
elbow, made for him through the half-naked kernes. He saw them coming,
however, guessed their errand, and, with the plain intention of
avoiding them, he turned his horse's head.
But the skipper, springing forward, was in time to seize his stirrup.
"Sir," he cried, "this is robbery! _Nom de Dieu_, it is thievery!"
The big man looked down at him with temper. "Oh, by G--d, you must pay
your dues!" he said. "Oh yes, you must pay your dues!"
"But this is robbery."
"Sure it's not that you must be saying!"
The Colonel put the skipper on one side. "By your leave," he cried,
"one word! You don't know, sir, who I am, but----"
"I know you must pay your dues!" Uncle Ulick answered, parrot-like. "Oh
yes, you must pay your dues!" He was clearly ashamed of his _role_,
however; for as he spoke he shook off the Colonel's hold with a pettish
gesture, struck his horse with his stick, and cantered away over the
hill. In a twinkling he was lost to sight.
"_Vaurien!_" cried Captain Augustin, shaking his fist after him. But he
might as well have sworn at the moon.