THE SEA MIST
Father O'Hara looked at the two prisoners, and the tears ran down his
face. He was the man whom Colonel Sullivan and Bale had overtaken on
their way to Tralee. In spite of his life and his wrongs, he was a
merciful man, and with all his heart he wished that, if he could do no
good, God had been pleased to send him another way through the mist.
Not that life was to him aught but a tragedy at any time, on whichever
road he took. What but a tragedy could it be to a man bred at Douay and
reared on Greek, and now condemned to live in loneliness and squalor
among unlettered, unwashed creatures; to one who, banned by the law,
moved by night, and lurked in some hiding-place by day, and, waking or
sleeping, was ever in contact with the lawless and the oppressed, the
wretched and the starving--whose existence was spent in shriving,
christening, burying among the hills and bogs?
Yet, even in such a life this was a tragedy beyond the common. And--"What
can I do?" he cried. "_Non mihi, domine, culpa!_ Oh, what can I do?"
"You can do nothing, father," O'Sullivan Og said grimly. "They're
heretics, no less! And we're wasting your time, blessed man." He
whispered a few words in the priest's ear.
The latter shuddered. "God forgive us all!" he wailed. "And most, those
who need it most! God keep us from high place!"
"Sure and we're in little peril!" O'Sullivan Og replied.
Colonel John looked at the priest with solemn eyes. Nor did aught but a
tiny pulse beating in his cheek betray that every sense was on the
stretch; that he was listening, watching, ready to seize the least
chance, that he might save, at any rate, poor Bale. Then, "You are a
Christian, father," he said gravely. "I ask nothing for myself. But
this is my servant. He has done nothing, he knows nothing. Prevail with
them to spare him!"
Bale uttered a fierce remonstrance. No one understood it, or what he
said, or meant. His eyes looked askance, like the eyes of a beast in a
snare--seeking a weapon, or a throat! To be butchered thus! To be
butchered thus!
Perhaps Colonel John, notwithstanding his calm courage, had the same
thought, and found it bitter. Death had been good in the face of silent
thousands, with pride and high resolve for cheer. Or in the heat of a
fight for the right, where it came unheeded and almost unfelt. But here
on the bog, in the mist, unknown, unnoticed, to perish and be forgotten
in a week, even by the savage hands that took their breath! Perhaps to
face this he too had need of all his Christian stoicism.
"My God! My God!" the priest said. And he fell on his knees and raised
his hands. "Have pity on these two, and soften the hearts of their
murderers!"
"Amen," said Colonel John quietly.
"Faith, and 'tis idle, this," O'Sullivan Og cried irritably. He gave a
secret sign to his men to draw to one side and be ready. "We've our
orders, and other work to do. Kneel aside, father, 'tis no harm we mean
you, God forbid! But you're wasting breath on these same. And you," he
continued, addressing the two, "say what prayer you will, if you know
one, and then kneel or stand--it's all one to us--and, God willing,
you'll be in purgatory and never a knowledge of it!"
"One moment," Colonel John interposed, his face pale but composed, "I
have something to say to my friend."
"And you may, if you'll play no tricks."
"If you would spare him----"
"'Tis idle, I say! Sorra a bit of good is it! But there, ye shall be
having while the blessed man says three Paternosters, and not the least
taste of time beyond! Devil a bit!"
Colonel John made a sign to the priest, who, bowing himself on the wet
sod, covered his eyes with his hand and began to pray. The men, at a
sign from O'Sullivan, had drawn to either side, and the firelock-men
were handling their pieces, with one eye on their leader and one on the
prisoners.
Colonel John took Bale's hand. "What matter, soon or late?" he said
gently "Here, or on our beds we die in our duty. Let us say, _In
manus tuas_----"
"Popish! Popish!" Bale muttered, shaking his head. He spoke hoarsely,
his tongue cleaving to his mouth. His eyes were full of rage.
"Into Thy hands!" Colonel John said. He stooped nearer to his man's
ear. "When I shout, jump and run!" he breathed. "I will hold two."
Again he lifted his head and looked calmly at the threatening figures
standing about them, gaunt and dark, against the curtain of mist. They
were waiting for the signal. The priest was half way through his second
Paternoster. His trembling tongue was stumbling, lagging more and more.
As he ended it--the two men still standing hand in hand--Colonel John
gripped Bale's fingers hard, but held him.
"What is that?" he cried, in a loud voice--but still he held Bale tight
that he might not move. "What is that?" he repeated. On the ear--on his
ear first--had fallen the sound of hurrying feet.
They strained their eyes through the mist.
"And what'll this be?" O'Sullivan Og muttered suspiciously, looking
first in the direction of the sound, and then, still more suspiciously,
at his prisoners. "If you budge a step," he growled, "I'll drive this
pike----"
"A messenger from The McMurrough," Colonel John said, speaking as
sternly as if he and not The McMurrough's henchman commanded the party.
If he was human, as indeed he was, if his heart, at the hope of
respite, beat upon his ribs as the heart of a worse man might have
beaten, he did not betray it save by a light in his eyes. "You will see
if I am not right," he added.
They had not to wait. As he spoke a tall, lathy form emerged from the
mist. It advanced with long leaps, the way they had come. A moment, and
the messenger saw them--almost as soon as they had seen him. He pulled
up, and walked the intervening distance, his arms drooping, and his
breath coming in gasps. He had run apace, and he could not speak. But
he nodded--as he wiped the saliva from his parted lips--to O'Sullivan
Og to come aside with him; and the two moved off a space. The others
eyed them while the message was given. The suspense was short. Quickly
O'Sullivan Og came back.
"Ye may be thankful," he said drily. "Ye've cheated the pikes for this
time, no less. And 'tis safe ye are."
"You have the greater reason to be thankful," Colonel John replied
solemnly. "You have been spared a foul crime."
"Faith, and I hope I may never do worse," Og answered hardily, "than
rid the world of two black Protestants, an' them with a priest to make
their souls! Many's the honest man's closed his eyes without that same.
But 'tis no time for prating! I wonder at your honour, and you no more
than out of the black water! Bring them along, boys," he continued,
"we've work to do yet!"
"_Laus Deo!_" the priest cried, lifting up his hands. "Give Him the
glory!"
"Amen," the Colonel said softly. And for a moment he shut his eyes and
stood with clasped hands. Perhaps even his courage was hardly proof
against so sudden, so late a respite. He looked with a hardly repressed
shudder on the dreary face of the bog, on the gleaming water, on the
dripping furze bushes. "I thank you kindly, father, for your prayers!"
he said. "The words of a good man avail much!"
No more was said. For a few yards Bale walked unsteadily, shaken by his
escape from a death the prospect of which had evoked as much rage as
fear. But he recovered himself speedily, and, urged by O'Sullivan's
continual injunctions to hasten, the party were not long in retracing
their steps. They reached the road, and went along it, but in the
direction of the landing-place. In a few minutes they were threading
their way in single file across the saucer-like waste which lay to
landward of the hill overlooking the jetty and the inlet.
"Are you taking us to the French sloop?" Colonel John asked.
"You'll be as wise as the lave of us by-and-by!" Og answered sulkily.
They crossed the shoulder near the tower, which loomed uncertainly
through the fog, and they strode down the slope to the stone pier. The
mist lay low on the water, and only the wet stones of the jetty, and a
boat or two floating in the angle between the jetty and the shore, were
visible. The tide was almost at the flood. Og bade the men draw in one
of the boats, ordered Colonel Sullivan and Bale to go into the bow, and
the pikemen to take the oars. He and the two firelock-men--the
messenger had vanished--took their seats in the stern.
"Pull out, you cripples," he said. "And be pulling stout, and there'll
be flood enough to be bringing us back."
The men bent to the clumsy oars, and the boat slid down the inlet, and
passed under the beam of the French sloop, which lay moored farther
along the jetty. Not a sign of life appeared on deck as they passed;
the ship seemed to be deserted. Half a dozen strokes carried the boat
beyond view of it, and the little party were alone on the bosom of the
water, that lay rocking smoothly between its unseen banks. Some minutes
were spent in stout rowing, and the oily swell began to grow longer and
slower. They were near the mouth of the inlet, and abreast of the
east-and-west-running shore of the bay. Smoothly as the sea lapped the
beach under the mist, the boat began to rise and fall on the Atlantic
rollers.
"Tis more deceitful than a pretty colleen," O'Sullivan Og said, "is the
sea-fog, bad cess to it! My own father was lost in it. Will you be
seeing her, boys?"
"Ye'll not see her till ye touch her!" one of the rowers answered.
"And the tide running?" the other said. "Save us from that same!"
"She's farther out by three gunshots!" struck in a firelock-man. "We'll
be drifting back, ye thieves of the world, if ye sit staring there!
Pull, an' we'll be inshore an' ye know it."
For some minutes the men pulled steadily onwards, while one of the
passengers, apprised that their destination was the Spanish war-vessel
which had landed Cammock and the Bishop, felt anything but eager to
reach it. A Spanish war-ship meant imprisonment and hardship without
question, possibly the Inquisition, persecution, and death. When the
men lay at last on their oars, and swore that they must have passed the
ship, and they would go no farther, he alone listened indifferently,
nay, felt a faint hope born in him.
"'Tis a black Protestant fog!" O'Sullivan cried. "Where'll we be, I
wonder?"
"Sure, ye can make no mistake," one answered. "The wind's light off the
land."
"We'll be pulling back, lads."
"That's the word."
The men put the boat about, a little sulkily, and started on the return
journey. The sound of barking dogs and crowing cocks came off the land
with that clearness which all sounds assume in a fog. Suddenly Colonel
John, crouching in the bow, where was scant room for Bale and himself,
saw a large shape loom before him. Involuntarily he uttered a warning
cry, O'Sullivan echoed it, the men tried to hold the boat. In doing
this, however, one man was quicker than the other, the boat turned
broadside on to her former course, and before the cry was well off
O'Sullivan Og's lips, it swept violently athwart a cable hauled taut by
the weight of a vessel straining to the flow of the tide. In a
twinkling the boat careened, throwing its occupants into the water.
Colonel John and Bale were nearest to the hawser, and managed, suddenly
as the thing happened, to seize it and cling to it. But the first wave
washed over them, blinding them and choking them; and, warned by this,
they worked themselves desperately along the rope until their shoulders
were clear of the water and they could twist a leg over their slender
support.
That effected, they could spit out the water, breathe again, and look
about them. They shouted for help once, twice, thrice, thinking that
some on the great ship looming dim and distant to shoreward of them
must hear. But their shouts were merged in the wail of despair, of
shrieks and cries that floated away into the mist. The boat, travelling
with the last of the tide, had struck the cable with force, and was
already drifting a gunshot away. Whether any saved themselves on it,
the two clinging to the hawser could not see.
Bale, shivering and scared, would have shouted again, but Colonel John
stayed him. "God rest their souls!" he said solemnly. "The men aboard
can do nothing. By the time they'll have lowered a boat it will be done
with these."
"They can take us aboard," Bale said.
"Ay, if we want to go to Cadiz gaol," Colonel John answered slowly. He
was peering keenly towards the land.
"But what can we do, your honour?" Bale asked with a shiver.
"Swim ashore."
"God forbid!"
"But you can swim?"
"Not that far. Not near that far, God knows!" Bale repeated with
emphasis, his teeth chattering. "I'll go down like a stone."
"Cadiz gaol! Cadiz gaol!" Colonel John muttered. "Isn't it worth a swim
to escape that?"
"Ay, ay, but----"
"Do you see that oar drifting? In a twinkling it will be out of reach.
Off with your boots, man, off with your clothes, and to it! That oar is
freedom! The tide is with us still, or it would not be moving that way.
But let the tide turn and we cannot do it."
"It's too far!"
"If you could see the shore," Colonel John argued, "you'd think nothing
of it! With your chin on that oar, you can't sink. But it must be done
before we are chilled."
He was stripping himself to his underclothes while he talked: and in
haste, fearing that he might feel the hawser slacken and dip--a sign
that the tide had turned. Or if the oar floated out of sight--then too
the worst might happen to them. Already Colonel John had plans and
hopes, but freedom was needful if they were to come to anything.
"Come!" he cried impulsively. "Man, you are not a coward, I know it
well! Come!"
He let himself into the water as he spoke, and after a moment of
hesitation, and with a shiver of disgust, Bale followed his example,
let the rope go, and with quick, nervous strokes bobbed after him in
the direction of the oar. Colonel John deserved the less credit, as he
was the better swimmer. He swam long and slow, with his head low: and
his eyes watched his follower. A half minute of violent exertion, and
Bale's outstretched hand clutched the oar. It was a thick, clumsy
implement, and it floated high. In curt, clipped sentences Colonel John
bade him rest his hands on it, and thrust it before him lengthwise,
swimming with his feet.
For five minutes nothing was said, but they proceeded slowly and
patiently, rising a little above each wave and trusting--for they could
see nothing, and the light wind was in their faces--that the tide was
still seconding their efforts. Colonel John knew that if the shore lay,
as he judged, about half a mile distant, he must, to reach it, swim
slowly and reserve his strength. Though a natural desire to decide the
question quickly would have impelled him to greater exertion, he
resisted it as many a man has resisted it, and thereby has saved his
life. At the worst, he reflected that the oar would support them both
for a short time. But that meant remaining stationary and becoming
chilled.
They had been swimming for ten minutes, as he calculated, when Bale,
who floated higher, cried joyfully that he could see the land. Colonel
John made no answer, he needed all his breath. But a minute later he
too saw it loom low through the fog; and then, in some minutes
afterwards, they felt bottom and waded on to a ledge of rocks which
projected a hundred yards from the mainland eastward of the mouth of
the inlet. The tide had served them well by carrying them a little to
the eastward. They sat a moment on the rocks to recover their
strength--while the seagulls flew wailing over them--and for the first
time they took in the full gravity of the catastrophe. Every other man
in the boat had perished--so they judged, for there was no stir on
shore. On that they uttered some expressions of pity and of
thankfulness; and then, stung to action by the chill wind, which set
their teeth chattering, they got to their feet and scrambled painfully
along the rocks until they reached the marshy bank of the inlet. Thence
a pilgrimage scarcely less painful, through gorse and rushes, brought
them at the end of ten minutes to the jetty.
Here, too, all was quiet. If any of O'Sullivan Og's party had saved
themselves they were not to be seen, nor was there any indication that
the accident was known on shore. It was still early, but little after
six, the day Sunday; and apart from the cackling of poultry, and the
grunting of hogs, no sound came from O'Sullivan's house or the hovels
about it.
While Colonel John had been picking his way over the rocks and between
the gorse bushes, his thoughts had not been idle; and now, without
hesitation, he made along the jetty until the masts of the French sloop
loomed beside it. He boarded the vessel by a plank and looked round
him. There was no watch on deck, but a murmur of talk came from the
forecastle and a melancholy voice piping a French song rose from the
depths of the cabin. Colonel John bade Bale follow him--they were
shivering from head to foot--and descended the companion.
The singer was Captain Augustin. He lay on his back in his bunk, while
his mate, between sleep and waking, formed an unwilling audience.
Tout mal chausse, tout mal vetu,
sang the Captain in a doleful voice,
Pauvre marin, d'ou reviens-tu?
Tout doux! Tout doux!
With the last word on his lips, he called on the name of his Maker, for
he saw two half-naked, dripping figures peering at him through the open
door. For the moment he took them, by the dim light, for the revenants
of drowned men; while his mate, a Breton, rose on his elbow and
shrieked aloud.
It was only when Colonel John called them by name that they were
reassured, lost their fears, and recognised in the pallid figures
before them their late passenger and his attendant. Then, as the two
Frenchmen sprang to their feet, the cabin rang with oaths and
invocations, with _Mon Dieu!_ and _Ma foi!_ Immediately clothes were
fetched, and rough cloths to dry the visitors and restore warmth to
their limbs, and cognac and food--for the two were half starved.
Meantime, and while these comforts were being administered, and half
the crew, crouching about the companion, listened, and volleys of
questions rained upon him, Colonel John told very shortly the tale of
their adventures, of the fate that had menaced them, and their narrow
escape. In return he learned that the Frenchmen were virtually
prisoners.
"They have taken our equipage, cursed dogs!" Augustin explained,
refraining with difficulty from a dance of rage. "The rudder, the
sails, they are not, see you! They have locked all in the house on
shore, that we may not go by night, you understand. And by day the ship
of war beyond, Spanish it is possible, pirate for certain, goes about
to sink us if we move! Ah, _sacre nom_, that I had never seen this land
of swine!"
"Have they a guard over the rudder and the sails?" Colonel John asked,
pausing to speak with the food half way to his mouth.
"I know not. What matter?"
"If not, it were not hard to regain them," Colonel John said, with an
odd light in his eyes.
"And the ship of war beyond? What would she be doing?"
"While the fog lies?" Colonel John replied. "Nothing."
"The fog?" Augustin exclaimed. He clapped his hand to his head, ran up
the companion and as quickly returned. A skipper is in a low way who,
whatever his position, has no eye for the weather; and he felt the
tacit reproach. "Name of Names!" he cried. "There is a fog like the
inside of Jonah's whale! For the ship beyond I snap the finger at her!
She is not! Then forward, _mes braves_! Yet tranquil! They have taken
the arms!"
"Ay?" Colonel John said, still eating. "Is that so? Then it seems to me
we must retake them. That first."
"What, you?" Augustin exclaimed.
"Why not?" Colonel John responded, looking round him, a twinkle in his
eye. "The goods of his host are in a manner of speaking the house of
his host. And it is the duty--as I said once before."
"But is it not that they are--of your kin?"
"That is the reason," Colonel John answered cryptically, and to the
skipper's surprise. But that surprise lasted a very short time. "Listen
to me," the Colonel continued. "This goes farther than you think, and
to cure it we must not stop short. Let me speak, and do you, my
friends, listen. Courage, and I will give you not only freedom but a
good bargain."
The skipper stared. "How so?" he asked.
Then Colonel John unfolded the plan on which he had been meditating
while the waves lapped his smarting chin, while the gorse bushes
pricked his feet, and the stones gibed them. It was a great plan, and
before all things a bold one; so bold that Augustin gasped as it
unfolded itself, and the seamen, who, with the freedom of foreign
sailors in a ship of fortune, crowded the foot of the companion, opened
their eyes.
Augustin smacked his lips. "It is what you call _magnifique_!" he said.
"But," he shrugged his shoulders, "it is not possible!"
"If the fog holds?"
"But if it--what you call--lifts? What then, eh?"
"Through how many storms have you ridden?" the Colonel answered. "Yet
if the mast had gone?"
"We had gone! _Vraiment!_
"That did not keep you ashore."
Augustin cogitated over this for a while. Then, "But we are eight
only," he objected. "Myself, nine."
"And two are eleven," Colonel John replied.
"We do not know the ground."
"I do."
The skipper shrugged his shoulders.
"And they have treated you--but you know how they have treated you,"
Colonel John went on, appealing to the lower motive.
The group of seamen who stood about the door growled seamen's oaths.
"There are things that seem hard," the Colonel continued, "and being
begun, pouf! they are done while you think of them!"
Captain Augustin of Bordeaux swelled out his breast. "That is true," he
said. "I have done things like that."
"Then do one more!"
The skipper's eyes surveyed the men's faces. He caught the spark in
their eyes. "I will do it," he cried.
"Good!" Colonel John cried. "The arms first!"