the gun, and this not a very heavy one, for the highest limit of
naval ordnance was the sixty-eight pounder, which indeed was looked
upon as a very terrible weapon. To the guns of nowadays, the old
thirty-two and sixty-eight pounders are mere pop-guns. There is the
huge eighty-one-ton gun, twenty-four feet long, and six feet thick at
the breech, its huge shot of fifteen hundred pounds being capable of
penetrating thirty inches of armour. There is the thirty-eight-ton
gun, whose shot of six or seven hundred pounds weight has smashed
a thirteen-inch plate at a thousand yards. Then there are guns of
six-and-a-half, nine, twelve, eighteen, and twenty-five tons, with
projectiles weighing from one to six hundred pounds, all of them
capable of piercing armour, against which the old naval guns would be
as useless as a schoolboy's squirt. But the gun does not stand alone.
There are two other weapons, either of which is more terrible, and
in certain cases more effective than the heaviest gun afloat. These
are the ram and the torpedo, the latter of which has recently been
described in these columns. Let us, however, have a look at the ram.
In the old days, the ship herself had no attacking power. She fought
with her guns; or else she was laid alongside of her enemy, and the
crew with axe, pike, and cutlass clambered over the bulwarks and on
to the hostile decks, which they cleared by hand-to-hand fighting.
Probably no iron-clad will ever be laid alongside of another to board
her. Were an iron-clad to go into action, all the openings in the deck
would be closed, and every one, even the steersman, under cover. Many
modern ships could continue a fight successfully with a hundred or a
hundred and fifty boarders in possession of the upper deck; and their
own turret guns, or the fire of friendly ships, would clear away the
intruders if necessary. Thus, in the recent war between Paraguay and
Brazil, during one of the river engagements, a Paraguayan ship ran
alongside of a Brazilian turret-ship and sent a crowd of boarders on to
her iron decks. They met with no opposition; the round turret in front
of them continued its fire against a Paraguayan monitor; while another
Brazilian monitor sent volley after volley of grape-shot sweeping
across the decks of her consort. In a few minutes they were clear.
The Paraguayan boarders had been killed, had jumped into the water,
or had escaped to one of their own ships. This, we believe, is the
only attempt on record at boarding an iron-clad; its failure shews how
hopeless such an enterprise is against a ship the possession of whose
deck does not give any control over her movements or those of her crew.
It is therefore probable that it will be only in the most exceptional
cases that iron-clads will approach each other with the object of
boarding. If they do come to close quarters, it will be only to use the
ram.
This idea of fighting with the ram is a very old one. The _beak_ was
the weapon of the ancient navies of the Mediterranean, and the beak
was what we now call the ram. It is quite evident that to make the
ship herself, weighing from nine to twelve thousand tons, take the
place of the projectile, by driving her at a high speed against a
hostile vessel, is to use a weapon more powerful than the heaviest
gun. A ship like the _Inflexible_ or the _Sultan_, with a speed of ten
or twelve knots an hour, will strike a heavier blow than a shot from
even the eighty-one-ton gun would give at a range of a few hundred
yards; and while the injury done by the shot will probably be above
the water-line, the ram will cut the hostile vessel down from above
the water-line perhaps almost to the keel. Every one remembers how the
_Iron Duke_ sank the _Vanguard_ by an accidental collision at a low
rate of speed. But in this case the injury was such that the _Vanguard_
did not sink for nearly an hour. Much more terrible was the sinking
of the iron-clad _Re d'Italia_ in the battle of Lissa in 1866. The
Austrian admiral found himself inferior in gun-power to the Italian
ships; he therefore decided on using the ram as much as possible.
'I rammed away at everything I saw painted gray,' he said himself
in describing the action. One of these gray ships was the splendid
iron-clad _Re d'Italia_, which struck fair amidships by Tegethoff's
bow, went to the bottom of the Adriatic with all her crew in less than
a minute. We believe that this use of the ram will play a great part in
any future English naval engagement.
Such are the means of defence and attack possessed by our fleet. There
has never yet been anything like a grand engagement between two great
iron-clad navies; when that takes place, we shall see what the new
naval warfare really is; meanwhile one thing is quite certain--that
iron-clads are neither as handy nor as comfortable as the grand old
ships of say forty years ago. Sailors in the royal navy have had to
exchange the well-lighted, airy lower-decks of the line-of-battle ship
for the hot dark 'compartments' of the iron-clad; for oil-lamps, hot
rooms, and artificial ventilation, and perhaps the prospect of being
battered with monster guns or blown up with torpedoes. This change of
conditions may have serious consequences, not contemplated by designers
of iron-clads. At present the crews of these vessels have been nearly
all engaged as boys, put on board training-ships. They turn out a fine
set of young men, but they do not remain in the service. Before they
are thirty, most of them have gone, and are engaged in employment on
shore, or in yachts, or in ocean steam lines. We believe there will
be also a growing difficulty in procuring a good set of officers,
including surgeons, for the iron-clads. Young men of good education,
with numerous openings for them in civil life, do not like to be
immured in dark floating hulks, with the risk at any moment of being
helplessly sent to the bottom of the sea. We at anyrate know the fact
of two young men trained as surgeons for the royal navy who on these
grounds have shrunk from following their intended profession. In short,
science may invent ships of overpowering destructive grandeur, but it
cannot invent men who will agree to live under conditions of dismal
discomfort in these floating dungeons. Such, we imagine, will be
found to be weak points in a navy of iron-clads. Nor can we look with
indifference on the many instances of disaster in the mere working of
these new-fashioned vessels. Explosions and other fatalities follow in
pretty quick succession. Furnaces and steam-machinery are constantly
going wrong. Shafts and bearers are going wrong. There seems to be
such a complication in all departments, that one can have little
confidence in matters going quite right in case of that kind of active
service involved in absolute warfare. A contemplation of these several
contingencies, it must be owned, is far from pleasant.
Since this article was written, news has come of a successful naval
engagement which shews that our sailors are as brave and as skilful
as ever they were. One day last May a rebel Peruvian iron-clad, the
_Huascar_, having committed piratical acts in the Pacific, was attacked
by two of our fine wooden cruisers, the _Shah_ and the _Amethyst_.
The two English wooden ships fairly beat the iron-clad turret-ship,
which was so damaged that the rebel crew were only too glad to go into
harbour and surrender to the Peruvian authorities. This is the first
English action with an iron-clad; and slight as it is in itself, the
fact that our ships were only wooden cruisers meant for no such severe
work, gives it some importance, and makes the victory a legitimate
cause for well-founded satisfaction.
THE 'SOFTIE'S' DREAM.
IN TWO CHAPTERS.--CHAPTER I.
In the fertile valley of the river Suck, just where some years ago such
consternation was created by a portion of the Bog of Allen shewing
an inclination to settle for good, there stood many years since a
farm-house of rather a better class than any of those in the immediate
neighbourhood, or indeed in any of the adjacent villages. The house
stood a little off the high-road from Castlerea to Loughlinn, and
few people who passed failed to observe its well-to-do, comfortable
appearance and 'smug' haggard (steading). Its occupier, Owen Kearney,
was a very hard-working sober man, who not only minded his own
business, but let his neighbours' affairs alone. He was never in
arrears with his rent, had his turf cut a year in advance, and got
his crops down first and in earliest; so that it was not without some
reason that people said he was the most comfortable farmer in the
village of Glenmadda. Added to being the most industrious, Owen Kearney
was (what few tenant farmers in the west of Ireland were thirty years
ago) something of a speculator. He did not tie his savings up in an
old stocking and hide it in the thatch of the barn or cow-house, as
the majority of his neighbours who had any savings usually did; but
despite the repeated warnings of Shaun More Morris, the philosopher
and wiseacre of the village, invested in new and improved farming
implements and in horses, of which he was not unjustly considered the
best judge in the County Roscommon. As he did all his business when
he was perfectly sober, he seldom had any cause to complain of his
bargain; and the 'luck-penny,' instead of spending in the public-house,
he made a rule of giving to the priest for the poor of the parish.
Not being in the habit of gossiping either about his own or his
neighbours' affairs, no one could form any correct idea of how rich
Owen Kearney really was; but it was generally known that he kept
his money at the bank, as on fair and market days he went into that
building with his pockets well filled and came out with them empty, and
mounting his cob, rode home quietly, long before the fun or the faction
fights commenced.
Not so, however, the younger of his two sons, Larry, a wild restless
lad of seventeen, on whom neither the precept nor example of his
father and brother seemed to have the least influence. Martin, the
eldest, was steady and thoughtful like his father; but Larry, with his
boisterous laugh and ready joke, dancing blue eyes and flaxen hair,
never spent a minute in thinking during his life. While he worked,
which was not often, he was as good as two, his father used to say; and
'when he took his divarsion he was the divil at it,' Martin used to
add good-naturedly. Innumerable were the scrapes Larry got into, and
miraculous were the methods by which he managed to extricate himself.
There was not a wake, wedding, or christening for miles round that he
was not to be found at. No merry-gathering or fair was complete without
him; and it was almost a proverb that Larry Kearney was the last to sit
down wherever there was a dance, and the first to shake a shillelah
wherever there was a shindy. Of course he was his mother's favourite;
such boys invariably are. She shut her eyes to his faults, supplied him
with money without any questions, and being a very religious woman, or
what in that part of Ireland is termed a voteen, she atoned for all his
shortcomings.
There was another member of Owen Kearney's family as full of fun and
mischief in her way as Larry; this was Dora Costello, the farmer's
orphan niece. Little Dora, everybody called her, because, when she lost
her own father and mother, and went to live with her uncle and aunt,
she was a little toddling thing of three years old. At the time this
story tells of she was a fine girl of seventeen, tall, finely formed,
and as graceful as a willow. A fine specimen of an Irish peasant girl
was Dora Costello, with her red-and-white complexion, merry changeable
hazel eyes, and rich, reddish auburn hair. There was not a farmer's
daughter within many a mile who could _scutch_ or spin as much flax
of an evening, nor one who could better milk a cow or make a roll of
butter. Bright, intelligent, and good-tempered, with a tongue as ready
as her fingers, and a sense of humour as rich as her brogue, Dora was a
general favourite, and as a natural consequence had numerous admirers.
Being by nature somewhat of a coquette, she managed to play them
off one against another with an ease and grace which a London belle
might have envied, keeping good friends with all, and giving none the
slightest preference. But when it came to a question of marriage, it
was a different thing altogether. Dora declared she was very happy with
her uncle and aunt, and unceremoniously refused all the eligible young
men in her own and the next village, declaring of each in turn that she
would 'as soon marry Barney Athleague.'
Long ago, in almost every Irish village there was to be found hanging
about the farm-houses some poor half-witted creature, called in one
place an _onsha_, in others an _omadthaun_, and in the County Roscommon
a _softie_. They were boys without any knowledge of who their parents
had been, cast as children on the charity of some village, from which
they usually took their names, as Johnnie _Loughlinn_, and Barney
_Athleague_. How Barney came to make his way to Glenmadda no one knew,
but one day when about ten years old he was seen following a hunt.
Stumbling over a loose stone, he sprained his ankle, and so was thrown
on the protection of the villagers. A glance at the lad's motley
appearance and vacant face was sufficient to shew what he was; and
as in most parts of Ireland, as in Germany, there exists amongst the
peasantry a sort of superstitious regard for silly people, poor Barney
found food and shelter, now from one, now from another, as indeed
the softies invariably did; in return for which they ran on errands
and looked after the pigs and poultry, and were always at hand in an
emergency.
As a rule, the softie looked a great deal bigger fool than he really
was. He contrived to live and be fed, clothed and lodged without
working. He made himself at home everywhere, was generally treated
very well, and never by any chance treated badly. He knew everybody's
business (for curiosity was one of his virtues or vices), and with the
special advantage that people thought he knew nothing at all. All sorts
of matters were discussed freely round the hearth in his presence, he
meantime staring into the fire, sucking his fingers, or rolling on
the floor with the dog, no more heeded than that animal; yet all the
while drinking in the conversation, and with a sort of crooked wisdom
treasuring it up. Animal tastes and instincts were generally the most
marked in the softie; as a rule, he was greedy, selfish, and uncleanly
in his habits, violent in his antipathies, yet with a capacity for
attaching himself with a strong dog-like fidelity and affection to a
friend.
Such was Barney Athleague--perhaps a trifle better and more intelligent
than the generality of his class; and there was no place in the village
where he spent so much of his time, or was so well treated, as at
Owen Kearney's; first, because they were naturally kindly people; and
next, Mrs Kearney's religious feelings made her especially good to the
poor and friendless; and there was no person in the whole world whom
the softie cared so much about as Dora. Wherever she went, Barney was
not far behind. He was always ready to do anything in the world she
asked him, no matter how wearisome or hazardous. When she was a child,
he climbed the highest trees to get her birds' nests, tumbled like a
spaniel into the river to get her lilies, and walked miles and miles to
recover a pet kid of hers which had gone astray. As she grew older, he
carried her cans when she went milking, fed her poultry, and in short
waited on her and followed her about like a lapdog. It was great fun to
the 'boys' who used to assemble in the farmer's kitchen of a winter's
evening to tell stories and gossip, to see Barney fly into a furious
passion if any one he did not like touched Dora, or even put his hand
upon her dress.
One of the persons the poor softie most cordially detested was Larry
Kearney; perhaps because the young man was too fond of teasing him, or
else too much given to sitting beside Dora. How or whatever the cause,
the poor fool hated him; but with a prudence which one would hardly
have expected in a softie, he kept his opinions to himself, and watched
his enemy like a lynx. Not once or twice he saw the young man descend
from the loft where he slept with Luke the 'help,' after the family
were sound asleep, and opening the door, steal noiselessly from the
house; and after much consideration, Barney at last made up his mind
to follow him and learn his destination, nothing doubting but it was
the village public-house or _shebeen_, or the forge, which was often
a haunt for the idlers to play cards and get tipsy in. But Larry took
the very opposite direction from what the softie imagined. Crossing
two or three fields, he skirted a plantation of ash, on the other side
of which was a _rath_ or _forth_, said to be haunted, and the resort
of 'the good people.' The place was very generally avoided after
nightfall; and Barney's courage was beginning to fail him, when Larry
was joined by three or four other young men, which revived his spirits,
and nerved him to follow silently and cautiously as a cat.
On rounding the hill he saw there were between thirty and forty persons
assembled in a field, and after a few minutes one of them advanced to
meet Larry. The softie, on seeing the man approach, concealed himself
behind the ferns and brambles, all his curiosity aroused, and strained
his ears to catch the conversation; but the men spoke so indistinctly
that he could not distinguish a word till after a little while they
drew nearer to his cover.
'Look here, Larry,' one said, drawing something which gleamed in the
moonlight from a cave or hollow in the hill-side, within arm's length
of Barney's crouching form. 'Look, me boy, there's twoscore pike-heads
lying snug enough in there.'
'Good captain,' Larry replied, with his merry laugh, 'an' there's
two-score "boys" ready to handle them.'
'Yes; but we want more,' the captain said, as he replaced the weapon
in the cave, and carefully drew the thick grass, ferns, and blackberry
bushes over it. 'Did you speak e'er a word to Martin?'
Larry laughed again. 'Sorra a word, captain; an' if "Molly" herself was
to go an' ax _him_, he wouldn't join us,' he said; 'an' bedad, maybe he
might inform!' he added merrily--and the men moved away.
'Ha, ha!' Barney said to himself as he crept from his hiding-place,
and made his way back to the farm-house; 'that's where Larry goes. An'
who's Molly, who's Molly? I'll ask Miss Dora to-morrow who's Molly;'
and with this reflection he crept into his bed and fell asleep.
CHAPTER II.
'Father, I think I'd like to join the Volunteers,' said Martin Kearney
one day, about a month after the above event; 'the country is in a bad
way, an' it's time for them that love peace and quietness to spake up.'
'True for you, Martin; an' if I was younger I'd do the same thing,'
Owen Kearney said, looking up from the newspaper, in which he was
reading an account of the arrest of several of the rebels known in 184-
as the _Molly Maguires_, from their having first met in the house of
a woman of that name. 'It's bad for the poor boys that went with the
"Mollies."'
'Will you join with me, Larry?' Martin asked.
But he shook his head, as he replied somewhat hastily: 'Not I, faith;
the "boys" never did anything to me.'
'An' I'm not going to do anything to them,' answered Martin quietly.
'Only, I think it's right for us to shew that we're honest Roscommon
boys, an' have nothing to do with villains who go round the country
at night frightening women an' children, an' murdering poor innocent
cattle, not to mention shooting their next-door neighbour from behind
a hedge, without any reason. I know _I'd_ liever be a sheep-stealer
than a Molly Maguire; an' to shew I have no dealings with them, I'll go
to-morrow to Boyle an' list in the Volunteers.'
Larry used every argument to prevent his brother going to Boyle as he
said, but without any avail; and early the next morning Martin started
to do what numbers of the better class of farmers' sons in the vicinity
of the small towns had already done.
About twelve o'clock on the night that Martin left his home, Owen
Kearney and his wife were startled out of their sleep by the softie
rushing into their room screaming wildly that he had a dream.
'An' what was it, Barney?' asked Mrs Kearney kindly. 'Don't be
frightened now; but tell me.'
'Arrah, ma'am,' he sobbed, 'I dreamed I saw Martin; an' two men with
their faces blackened rode up to him on the plains of Boyle an' shot
him. Oh, _wirra, wirra_, one of them was Larry!'
Poor Mrs Kearney fell to wringing her hands, and sobbing wildly at the
extraordinary dream of the poor fool; while her husband rushed to his
son's room in the hope of finding Larry; but his bed was empty, as was
that of Luke the servant. Full of terrible forebodings, the farmer
began to question Barney more particularly as to his dream; but he
could only repeat again and again that two men fired at Martin on the
plains of Boyle; one of them was Larry, the other was Luke: this he
maintained with a persistency which it was almost impossible to doubt.
No one thought of returning to bed; and while they were consulting as
to what was best to be done, the softie again uttered a wild shriek,
and rolled over on the floor, as a bullet entered the kitchen window
and lodged in the opposite wall, followed by another, which whizzed
past Owen Kearney's head.
'The Lord have mercy upon us!' he exclaimed, crossing himself devoutly.
'Where will it end?' And he held his wife, who was almost insensible
from the fright, close in his arms. At that instant a bright light
illuminated the whole kitchen; and in a moment the truth flashed across
his brain--his steading was in flames. Not daring to open his door to
look out, he tried to think what was best to be done; for perhaps the
house over his head was blazing too, or would be in a few minutes.
Casting a hasty glance round, he lifted his wife in his arms, meaning
to carry her to the front of the house and out of sight of the flames;
when a violent knocking at the door startled him, and he recognised
his niece's voice demanding admittance. Hastily unbarring it, he saw
her accompanied by a party of soldiers, who, when they found no lives
had been taken, set to work bravely to protect the property which was
yet untouched by the fire. But there was little left for them to do.
The cattle had been hamstrung, the horses stolen, and a lighted brand
placed in every stack of oats and the thatch of every outhouse. The
work of devastation had been done only too well.
'They're taken, uncle--them that set the haggard a-fire,' said Dora as
soon as she was able to speak. 'I brought the soldiers to the house;
and,' she added, 'one of the villains said he had finished off Owen
Kearney. Thank God, it is not true!' and she threw herself into his
arms.
'Yes; I heard him,' said one of the soldiers; 'and we've sent him to
safer lodgings than we took him from. It seems, Mr Kearney, that your
niece was returning home from a visit to a neighbour's, when she
heard two men whispering in the lane at the end of the meadow. As
they were in front, and she didn't like their looks, she kept behind,
and heard them say that there were two gone to Boyle to look out for
_the Volunteer_, and that they were going to do for old Kearney and
his wife, "string" the cattle and fire the haggard. Like a sensible
girl, she turned round quietly and ran as quick as she could towards
Castlerea. By good luck she met us half-way; and though we were going
on another errand, we turned back at once with her, and netted the
rascals who did this pretty piece of business.--I sent six men on
towards Boyle, to see if they could learn anything of the villains that
followed your son,' added the sergeant.
'Where's Larry, uncle?' asked Dora, after she had tried ineffectually
to console her aunt. 'Why isn't he here?'
'You're all I have now, _alanna_,' Kearney said, pressing her to his
breast. 'Martin is gone, and Larry is gone. Well, well, God is good.'
'Miss Dora, Miss Dora!' cried Barney Athleague faintly, 'come here a
minute.'
In the general confusion, every one had forgotten the poor softie, who
lay on the floor quite insensible.
'What is it, Barney? Are ye hurt?' inquired Dora, bending over him.
'Not much; only my back is bad, and I can't lift my legs. Tell your
uncle Owen Kearney that Martin isn't dead. He's lyin' on the settle
in a shebeen with his hand on his side, calling "Dora, Dora!" I see
him--sure I see him; and Larry an' Luke is took; the sogers is bringing
them to Roscommon. Oh, wirra, wirra!'
'Shure the poor creature is frightened to death's door,' said Owen
Kearney, trying to induce Barney to get up and drink a little water;
but the mug fell out of the farmer's hands in dismay and horror, for he
found the poor softie was bathed in blood. 'He's shot, he's shot!' he
exclaimed; and one of the soldiers drew near and examined the wound.
'There's a bullet in his back,' the man said; 'and he'll never eat
another bit of this world's bread. And may God forget the man that
forgot he was an omadthaun.'
Poor Barney never spoke again. Nothing could have saved his life. But
his dream was literally true. At the very moment he awoke screaming,
Martin Kearney was fired at by his brother Larry and his father's
servant; at the hour he mentioned were the murderers taken; and Martin
himself was taken into a shebeen, as he said, and laid upon a settle in
the kitchen, where he called untiringly for his cousin Dora.