1
He awoke suddenly, and sat up in bed. "Good Lord!" he exclaimed, "I've
been asleep!" It was still dark, but less dark than it was when he came
to bed. He could just see the time by holding his watch close to his
eyes. "Four," he murmured. It was strange that he should have slept at
all, for there had been spasmodic firing all night. He got out of bed,
and went across his room to the window, and looked out, and as he
looked, the wounded horse struggled to rise, pawing the ground feebly,
and then fell over on its side. "It isn't dead!..." When he had looked
at it last, it had been lying very still, and he had thought it was
dead.
He looked across the road to the Park gates, but could not see any one
standing there. "Perhaps they've gone!" There was a shapeless thing
lying on the ground, outside the gates, but he could not make out what
it was. In the dim light, it looked like a great piece of paper ... the
debris of a windy day.
There was no movement anywhere ... the horse was still now ... but now
and then a single shot rang out, and then came a volley. "You'd think
they were just trying to make a noise! I wonder what's been happening
all night," he said, as he went back to bed.
2
He fell asleep again, and when he awoke, wakened by a heavier sound of
shooting, it was almost six o'clock, and it was light. "That must be the
soldiers," he thought, listening to the heavier rifle fire. He sat up
in bed, and glanced about the room. "I _was_ an ass not to keep the
shutters closed," he said aloud. "A stray bullet might have come in here
... I wonder whether the shutters would stop a bullet. After all, Bibles
do!..."
He could just see the Republican flag floating from the flagstaff on the
roof of the College of Surgeons. "They're still there, then!" And while
he sat looking at it, he heard the sound of some one, wearing heavy
boots, coming down the streets, making loud clattering echoes in the
silence. "That's funny!" he said. "People are going about already.
Perhaps it's over ... practically over!..."
He got out of bed, and as he did so, he heard the sharp rattle of
rifles, and when the echo of it had ceased, he could not hear the noise
of heavy treading any more. He stood still in the centre of the room,
listening, and presently he heard a groan. He ran to the window and
looked out. In the roadway, beneath him, an old man was lying on his
back, groaning very faintly.
"They've killed him!" Henry murmured, glancing across the road at the
hotel, from which the sound of firing had come. "They didn't challenge
him ... they just shot him!"
Four times, the old man groaned, and then he died. He was lying in the
attitude of a young child asleep. One leg was outstretched and the other
was lightly raised. His right arm was lying straight out from his body,
and the hand was turned up and hollowed. Very easy and natural was his
attitude, lying there in the morning light. He looked like a labourer.
"Going to his work," I suppose. "Thinking little of the rebellion. Just
stumping along to his job ... and then!..."
There was a bundle lying by his side, a red handkerchief that seemed to
be holding food ... and flowing towards it, trickling, so slowly did it
move, from his body was a little red dribble....
Henry looked at him with a feeling of curiosity and pity. He had never
seen a man killed before. He had never seen any dead person, not even
Mrs. Clutters, until his father died. He had purposely avoided seeing
Mrs. Clutters' body ... something in the thought of death repelled him
and made him reluctant to look at a corpse, and so, when he had been
asked if he would like to see Mrs. Clutters, he had made some evasive
reply. It had been different when his father died. He had looked on him,
not as a dead man, but as his father, still, even in death, his father,
able to love and be loved. When he thought of death, he thought, not of
Mr. Quinn, but of Mrs. Clutters, and always it seemed to him that the
dead were frightful.... But this old man, a few moments ago intent on
getting to his work in time, and now, cognisant, perhaps of all the
mysteries of this world, had nothing frightful about him. There was
beauty in the way he was lying in the roadway ... in that careless,
graceful attitude ... as if he were gratefully resting after much
labour....
He looked across the roadway, and now it was plain that the shapeless
thing that had looked in the dim light like paper blown to a corner by
the wind, was a dead man. He, too, was lying on his back, with his legs
stretched straight out and slightly parted ... and while Henry looked at
him, it seemed to him that the man was familiar to him. The brown
dust-coat he was wearing!... And then he remembered. It was the
red-haired, angry-looking, nervous man, who had chewed his moustache and
gaped about him with bloodshot eyes....
He dressed, and went downstairs. The servants were up, and moving about
the house, and one of them came to him.
"Will you have your breakfast now, sir!" she asked, and when he had
answered that he would, she said, "There's no milk, sir. The milkman
didn't come this morning!"
"It doesn't matter," he replied. "I'll have it without!"
He went to the front of the house, while his breakfast was being
prepared, and looked out of the window. In the bushes on the other side
of the road, he could see a youth, crawling on his stomach, and dragging
a rifle after him. He raised himself on to his knees, and glanced up at
the hotel, where there were some soldiers who had been brought in during
the night, and when he had raised himself, the soldiers in the upper
windows saw him, and fired on him. He got up and ran across the path
towards the shelter of the trees, and as he ran, the bullets spattered
about him. Then he staggered ... and Henry could not see him again.
3
An ambulance came and the bodies of the rebel and the labourer were put
into it and taken away. The horse had been hauled to the pavement, and
it lay in a great congealed mess of blood that had poured from a gash in
its throat....
4
Later in the morning, the people began to move about, and after a while
the streets were full of sightseers. It was possible now to learn
something of what happened on the previous day and during the night.
There had been fierce fighting in places. Soldiers were hurrying from
the Curragh, from the North of Ireland, from England. The thing was
serious ... the rebels had seized various strategic points, and were
determined to fight hardly. During the night, realising that Stephen's
Green was a dangerous place to be in, they had left it for the shelter
of the College of Surgeons. Some of them were still there, sniping from
safe points.
Henry went out and wandered about the streets. If there were soldiers in
Dublin, there were very few, and the rebels still had possession of the
city. He listened to the comments of the people who passed him, and as
he listened, he realised that there was resentment everywhere against
the Sinn Feiners. Behind one of the gates of the Park, a Sinn Feiner
was lying face downwards in the hole he had made to be a trench, and the
crowd climbed up the railings to gape at him. A youth thrust his way
through the people and peered at the dead man, and then he turned to the
crowd and said to them, "Let's get the poor chap out and bury him!" A
girl looked at him resentfully, and hurried to a towsled woman standing
on the kerb, and told her what the youth had said, and instantly the
woman rushed at him and hit him about the head and back. "No, ye'll not
get him out," she yelled at him. "Let him lie there an' rot like the
poor soldiers!"
"They forgot, the Sinn Feiners, that these women's husbands and sons are
at the Front!" Henry thought.
What madness was it that possessed them to rise? A little group of men
and boys had set itself against a Power in the interests of people who
did not desire their services. They could not hope to win the fight ...
they had not the gratitude or the good wishes of the people for whom
they were fighting. What were they going to do next? They had taken the
Post Office and the College of Surgeons and other places because there
was no one to prevent them from taking them ... but what were they going
to do next? They could not, even the wildest of them, believe that this
immunity from attack would last forever. Was there one among them with
an idea of the future of Ireland, of the complexities of government?...
He wanted to get hold of a leader of them and ask him just what he
proposed to do with Ireland?...
5
The rumours this day were wilder than they were on Monday. A man assured
Henry that the Pope had arrived in Ireland on an aeroplane and that Dr.
Walsh, the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin had committed suicide the
minute he heard of the outbreak of the Rebellion. Then the rumour
changed, and it was said that the Pope had thrown himself from the roof
of the Vatican. Lord Wimborne, the Viceroy, had been taken a prisoner,
and was now interned in Liberty Hall.... The Orangemen, sick of England,
were marching to the support of the Sinn Feiners, under the leadership
of Mr. Joseph Devlin! Ireland was entirely surrounded by German
submarines in order to prevent British transports from landing
troops....
6
There was looting in Sackville Street. Henry had made his way towards
the General Post Office, for he had heard that John Marsh was there, and
while he stood about, hoping that he might see him, the looting began.
Half-starved people swarmed up from the slums, like locusts, and seized
all they could find. They destroyed things in sheer wantonness....
"Well, if a city is content to keep such slums as Dublin has, it must
put up with the consequences!" Henry thought. And while he watched, he
saw John Marsh going to a shop which was being looted. He hauled a
hulking lad out of the broken window and flung him back into the crowd.
"Damn you," he shouted, "are you trying to disgrace your country?" He
pointed his rifle at the crowd. "I'll shoot the first one of you that
touches a thing!"
But it was impossible for them to control the looters, and while John
guarded one shop, the crowd passed on to another.
"John!" said Henry, going up to him and touching his arm.
He started and turned round. His face was drawn and haggard and very
pale.
"Henry!" he said, smiling. "I wondered who it was. I wish you'd gone
away when I asked you to go. It wasn't because I wanted to get rid of
you, Henry. I wanted you to be out of this ... so that you could go and
get married in peace!"
"You can't win, John. You know you can't win!..."
"I know we can't win a military success! ..." He drew his hand across
his eyes. "My God, I'm tired, Henry!" he said. "I'm worn out. I haven't
slept since Saturday night...."
"John!"
"Yes, Henry, what is it?"
"Come away with me. You know you can't win ... you can't possibly win.
Well go over to England together...."
"I'm fighting England, Henry, not visiting it!"
"You can hide there for a while ... until you can get away to France or
America!"
"Go away and leave them now, Henry?"
"Yes. The longer you hold out, the worse it'll be for everybody. The
people are against you ... I've heard things to-day that I never
expected to hear in Dublin...."
"I know they're against us. We thought there would be more on our side,
but that's all the more reason why we should fight. The people are
getting too English in their ways, Henry ... they think too much of
money. All those women in the Combe ... do you know why they're against
us? ... because they can't get their separation allowances! We won't win
a military success ... we all know that ... McDonagh and Pearse and
Connolly and Mineely and all of us ... we know that ... but well win a
spiritual success!"
"A spiritual success?"
"Yes. Well remind the people that Ireland is not yet a nation and that
there are Irishmen who are still willing to die for their country.
They've become very English, but they're not altogether English, Henry.
They've still some of the old Irish spirit in them, and we may quicken
that!"
"Nothing will ever convince you, I suppose, that the English aren't a
robber race?..."
"Nothing. I daresay the mass of the people are decent enough, but I
don't know and I don't care. All that matters to me is that my
countrymen shall not become like them!..."
"You're ruining the work of thirty years, John. Blowing it up in a
childish rage!..."
"You always thought I was a fool, Henry, but I don't think as you think.
We won the Home Rule Act by fair and constitutional means ... and
they've done us out of it. The Ulster men had only to yell at them, and
they gave in. Do you think they'll keep their word after the War?"
"Yes."
"Well, I don't. They'll use that damned Amending Act to cheat us as
they've cheated us before. No, Henry, this is a poor hope, but it is a
hope. You see, when we're beaten and those of us who are left alive,
surrender, the English will be sure to do the right thing ... from our
point of view! That's one of the things we count on. They'll put us down
with great firmness. They'll make an example of us. They'll shoot us,
Henry ... and when they do that, we'll win. We're not popular now ...
oh, I don't need you to tell me that ... but we'll be popular then. The
English will make us popular!"
"Isn't it a little mean, John, to hit them when they aren't looking?"
"Mean! They've hit us often enough, haven't they? They got us on the
ground when we were sick and kicked us. Why shouldn't we take advantage
of them?"
"The Germans!..."
"Why shouldn't we go to the Germans, or to any one who is willing to
help us? Wolfe Tone went to the French!..."
"You won't come away with me?"
"No. I came here to die, Henry, not to be safe!"
They stood for a few moments in silence, looking at each other, and then
John put out his hand to Henry who took it in his.
"I must get back now," John said. "Good-bye, Henry. I don't suppose I
shall ever see you again. If we lose, you and your friends can come and
try your way. I've always wanted to die for Ireland ever since I was
able to understand anything about my country, and I shall get my wish
soon. Good-bye, Henry!"
"Good-bye, John!"
"I hope you and your wife will be very happy!" He made a wry smile, as
he went on. "I'm afraid you won't be able to get to England just as soon
as you wished. If you'd gone when I asked you to go!..."
"I must get back now," he said again.
"Yes, John!"
"I'm glad I saw you. I wondered last night where you were...."
"And I wondered where you were."
"I was here. I've been here since Monday morning!"
He moved a few steps away, and then turned back.
"I've always liked you, Henry," he said, taking Henry's hand in his,
"even when you made me angry. I wish you were on our side...."
"I see no sense in this sort of thing, John!"
"I know you don't. And perhaps there isn't any sense in it, but that may
not matter. It's something, isn't it, to find men still willing to die
for their ideals, even when they know they haven't a chance of success?
The Post Office is full of young boys, who want nothing better than to
die for Ireland. Well, that's something, isn't it, in these times when
most of our people aren't willing to do anything but make money?
Good-bye again!"
He went back to the Post Office, very erect and very proud and very
resolute.
"By God," said Henry to himself, "I wish I had the heart to feel what he
feels!"
7
He was sitting in the smoking-room of the Club, trying to write. He had
written to Mary earlier in the evening, assuring her of his welfare, and
Driffield, a Treasury official, who had come into the Club for a few
moments, had offered to try and get it put into the special mail "pouch"
which was sent from the Castle every day to London. "You mustn't say
anything about the Rebellion," he said. "Just say you're all right. I
can't promise that it'll go off, but I'll do my best!" The restless,
excited feeling which had possessed him since the beginning of the
rebellion still held him, and he was unable to continue at anything for
long. All day he had wandered about the city, learning more of its
backways than he had ever known before. He had penetrated more deeply
into the slums than he had done when he had explored them with Gilbert
Farlow, and it seemed to him that there was nothing to be done with them
or with the people in them. They were decaying together, and the sooner
they decayed, the better would it be for Ireland. All his counsels that
day were counsels of despair. What was the good of working and building
when this was the material out of which a nation must be made? What was
the good of trying to make sure foundations when impatient,
undisciplined people like John Marsh came and threw one's work to the
ground? Was it not better that every Irishman of alert and vigorous mind
should leave Ireland to rot, and choose another country where men had
stability of mind and purpose?...
"But one must go on trying. If the house be pulled down, we must build
it up again. One must go on trying...."
He would get his friends together, and they would plan to save what they
could from the wreckage. "And then we'll begin again! Whatever happens,
we must begin again!"
He was tired of playing Patience, tired of reading, and tired of
sitting still. Perhaps, he thought, he could write. It would be odd
afterwards to think that he had written a story during a rebellion.
There was a great German ... who was it? ... Heine or Goethe?... Oh, why
couldn't he remember names!... who had gone on writing steadily, though
there was battle all about him.... He settled himself to write, though
he had no plan in his mind, and as he wrote, he felt that the story,
whatever it might grow to be, must be comic. "I feel like a clown making
jokes in the circus while his wife is dying," he said to himself....
But his restlessness persisted, and after a while he put his manuscript
aside, and took up a book which he had found in the bookcase: William
James's _Pragmatism_: and began to read it. He remembered a discussion
of Pragmatism by the Improved Tories, when Gilbert had described a
pragmatist as an unfrocked Jesuit....
And while he was burrowing into the first chapter, thinking more of
James's graceful style than of his matter, there was a great rattle, an
incessant hammer-and-rasp noise in the street.
"Good God!" he exclaimed, jumping up and dropping the book, "what's
that?"
Then it ceased, and there was a horrible quietness for a few moments,
followed by the crack-crack of rifles, and then again the
ra-ra-ra-rat-rat-rat-rattle-rattle....
"Machine guns!" he exclaimed. He knew instinctively that they were
machine guns. "It ... it startles you, that noise!"
It went on, rattling, with little pauses now and then as if the gun were
taking breath, for an hour or more: a paralysing sound, as if some giant
were drawing a great stick swiftly along iron railings.
"I think I'd better put the light out," he said, going across the room
to where the switch was, and as he went there was a cracking sound in
the window, and a bullet flew across the room and lodged in the
wall....
He switched the light off, and stood for a while in the dark. Then he
opened the door and went out and stood on the landing. The servants were
sitting huddled together on the staircase, nervous looking, indeed, but
not frightened. It seemed to him to be remarkable that these girls
should have kept their nerve as finely as they had. He smiled at them,
as he closed the door behind him.
"They're making a lot of noise, aren't they?" he said.
"Isn't it awful, sir?" one of them answered.
He did not speak of the bullet which had come into the room. "It must
have been a stray," he thought, "and there's no sense in upsetting
them!"
"The soldiers are firing across the Green," he said aloud, "at the
College of Surgeons. I think we're safe enough here, but I'd keep away
from the windows!..."
"Yes, sir, we are!"
He went to his room, and sat at the window. At this height it was
unlikely that any stray bullet would come near him. But he could not see
any one. He could hear the wild-fowl crying in the Park ... distinctly,
in the pause of the firing, he could hear a duck's quack-quack....
8
He went to bed, and tried to sleep, but could not. The firing from the
machine-guns was intermittent now, but it still went on, and there was a
continuous crackling of rifle-fire. Several times he got up and looked
out ... he had a curious and persistent desire to see whatever was going
on ... to be in it ... extraordinarily he was anxious not to miss
anything. _He was neither afraid nor aware of the fact that he was not
afraid._ He had simply the sensation that exciting things were
happening, that he wanted to see as much of them as possible, that he
was excited, that his blood was flowing rapidly through his veins, that
there was something hitting the inside of his head, thumping it. Then
when he was tired of straining to see into the darkness, he went back
to bed again, and closed his eyes and tried to sleep. And sometimes he
succeeded in sleeping for a while ... but always the noise of the
machine-guns woke him....
He went to the window when the dawn broke, and looked across the Green
to the College of Surgeons.
"It's still flying," he muttered as he watched the tri-colour flowing in
the wind.
9
And now the Rebellion began to bore him. He could not work, and the
walks he could take were circumscribed. He walked down to Trinity
College and stood there, watching the soldiers on the roof of the
College as they fired up Dame Street to where some Sinn Feiners were in
occupation of a newspaper office, or along Westmoreland Street towards
the Post Office. Wherever he went, there was the sound of bullets being
fired ... but after a while, the sound ceased to affect him. There were
snipers on many roofs ... and people had been killed by stray bullets
... but, although the sudden crack of a rifle overhead made him jump,
the boredom grew and increased. He wanted to get on with his work....
The soldiers were pouring into Dublin now ... more and more of them.
"It'll be over soon," he said to himself.
It seemed to him then that the thing he would remember always was the
dead horse which still lay on the pavement, becoming more and more
offensive. Wherever he went, he met people who said to him, "Have you
seen the dead horse?" Impossible to forget the corrupting beast,
impossible to refrain from saying too, "Have you seen the dead horse?"
Magnify that immensely, increase enormously the noise, and one had the
War! Noise and stench and dead men and boredom!...
He wandered about the streets, seeing the same people, listening to the
same statements, making the same remarks, wondering vaguely about food.
He had seen high officials carrying loaves under their arms, and little
jugs of milk....
"I wish to God it was over," he exclaimed. "I'm sick of this ...
idleness!"
He spoke to a soldier in Merrion Square. "Do you like Dublin?" he said.
"Oh, fine!" he answered. "We've been treated champion. I 'aven't seen
much of it yet, of course," he went on. "I've been 'ere ever since I
landed!" He pointed to the pavement. "But I know this bit damn well. You
know," he went on, "we thought we was in France when we arrived 'ere.
Couldn't make it out when we saw all the signs in English. I says to a
chap, as we was walking along, ''I,' I says, 'is this Boolone?' 'Naow,'
'e says, 'it's Ireland.'"
"And what did you say?" said Henry.
"I said 'Blimey!'" He moved to the kerb as the soldier further along the
street called "Pass these men along" and when he had called the warning
to the next soldier, he returned to Henry. "I say," he said, "wot are
these Sinn Feiners? I mean to say 'oo are they? Are they Irish, too?"
Henry tried to explain who the Sinn Feiners were.
"But wot they want to do? Wot's the point of all this ... this
'umbuggin' about? We don't want to fight Irish people ... we want to
fight Germans!..." He looked about for a moment, and then added, as if
to clinch his statement, "I mean to say, I _know_ an Irish chap ... 'e's
a friend of mine ... but I don't know no bloody Germans, an' wot's more
I wouldn't know them neither ... dirty lot, I calls 'em!"
"You know," he went on, "this is about the 'ottest bit of work a chap
could 'ave to do. These snipers, you know, they get on your nerves. I
mean to say, 'ere you are, standin' 'ere, you might say, in the dark an'
suddenly a bullet damn near 'its you ... or mebbe it does 'it you ...
one of our chaps was killed in front of that 'ouse last night ... they
been swillin' the blood away, see!..." Henry looked across the road to
where a man was vigorously brooming the wet pavement. The soldier
proceeded: "Well, you don't know where it's comin' from. 'E's up on one
of these 'ere roofs, 'idin', an' you're down 'ere ... exposed. 'E kneels
be'ind the parapet, an' 'as a shot at you, an' then 'e 'ops along the
roof to another place, an' 'as another shot at you.... You don't 'alf
begin to feel a bit jiggery when that's 'appening'...."
10
There was no malice in that soldier. He was puzzled, as puzzled as he
would have been if his brother had suddenly seized a rifle and lain in
wait for him. He looked upon the Irish as his comrades, not his enemies.
"I mean to say, we're all the same, I mean to say!..." He had been in
camp at Watford. "We was in a picture-palace, me an' my pal ... a whole
lot of us was there ... and then a message was put on the screen: 'All
the Dashes report at once!' I never thought nothink of it you know. Of
course, I went all right. But I thought it was just one of these
bloomin' spoof entrainments. They done that to us before ... two or
three times ... just to see 'ow quick they could do it ... an' I was
gettin' 'a bit fed-up with it. I'd said 'Good-bye' to a girl three times
... an' it was gettin' a bit monotonous. 'At it again,' I says to my
pal, as we hooked back to the camp, but when we was in the train, an' it
didn't stop an' go back again, I says to 'im, ''Illoa,' I says, 'we're
off!' An' I 'adn't said 'Good-bye' to 'er this time. I thought to
myself, 'I won't make a bloomin' ass of myself this time!' An' there we
was ... off at last! 'This is a nice-old-'ow-d'ye-do!' I says. I didn't
want the girl to think I was 'oppin' it like that ... sayin' nothink or
anythink.... When we got to Kingstown an' 'eard we was in Ireland ...
well, I mean to say, it _surprised_ me, I tell you.... Wot I can't make
out is, wot's it all about? I mean to say, wot do these chaps want?"
"They want to be free!..."
"But ain't they free? I mean to say, ain't they as free as me?"
"They don't think so."
"Well, wot can I do that they can't do?"
Henry did not know. "You ast me anythink," the soldier went on, "they're
a lot freer'n wot we are. I mean to say, we got conscription in our
country, but they ain't got it 'ere...."
There was another interruption, to enable a motor-cyclist to pass along.
When he returned to Henry, he said, "You know, when we got 'ere, an' all
the people come out their 'ouses an' treated us like their long-lost
brother, we couldn't make it out at all, an' when we 'eard about the
Sinn Feiners, we didn't know wot to think. I mean to say, we didn't know
'oo they was. One of our chaps thought they was black ... you know ...
niggers ... but I told 'im not to be a bloody fool. 'They don't 'ave
niggers in Ireland,' I says, 'They're the same as us,' I says. 'I mean
to say ... they're _white_!...'"
12
He wrote to Mary again, hoping that he would be able to get it into the
Castle "pouch," and then he went to seek for Driffield who had promised
to try and send his previous letter to England by the same means, and
Driffield, very dubious, took the letter and said he would do what he
could. She would be full of alarm ... he did not know whether she had
received his messages, and, of course, he had received none from her. It
was Thursday now, and still the rebellion was not suppressed. The city
was full of dead and wounded men and women, and there was difficulty
about burial. He thought of people in the first grief for their dead,
unwilling that the hour of interment should come ... and then, when it
came, and there could not be interment, suddenly finding their grief
turned to consternation, and what had been the object of mourning love,
become abhorrent, so that there was an unquenchable desire, a craving
that it might be taken away....
It was dangerous to be out of doors after seven o'clock, and so, since
no one came to the Club, and it was impossible to read or write, he
spent most of the evening in brooding.... If the rebellion were not
speedily suppressed, it might be impossible for him to get to Boveyhayne
in time for his marriage ... but the rebellion could not last very long
now, and at worst his marriage would only be postponed a little while.
His mind moved from thought to thought, from Mary to Gilbert and Ninian,
then to John Marsh and his father and to the boy in Stephen's Green who
had been told to dig a trench, but thought that he was digging his grave
... and then, inconsequently, he saw in his imagination the ridiculous
figure of a looter whom he had seen in Sackville Street, swaggering up
and down, clothed in evening dress, and carrying a lady's sunshade. He
had a panama hat on his head, and was wearing very thick-soled brown
boots ... and loosely tied about his waist were a pair of corsets....
He laughed at the remembrance, and as he laughed, he looked towards the
window, and saw a great red glare in the sky. From the centre of the
city, flames were reaching up, vast and red and terrible....
"Good God!" he exclaimed, "the place is on fire!"
13
The fire continued during the whole of the next day. It was impossible
to get near the burning buildings, and so, though people knew of the
fire, they did not know of its extent. The south side of the city,
separated from the north, where the fire was, by the river, knew
nothing of what was happening across the Liffey. It seemed now, this
horror following on the horror of the fighting, that Dublin must be
destroyed, that nothing could save it from the flames.... Then, by what
efforts no one can ever realise, the fire was controlled, and the
reddened sky became dark, and frightened citizens went to their beds to
such sleep as they could obtain.
14
The next day, the Rebellion collapsed. Henry had walked out of Dublin,
for it was easier now to move about, and coming back in the afternoon,
suddenly felt that the Rebellion was over. A man came cycling past at a
great pace, and as he went by, he shouted to Henry, "They've
surrendered!" and then was gone. There was a cooler feel in the air. It
seemed to him that a great tension had been relaxed ... that, after a
day of intolerable heat, there had come an evening of cool winds. As he
approached the city, he could see groups of people standing about in the
road, and he went to one of them, and asked if the news were true.
"Some of them's surrendered," he was told, "but there's a lot of snipers
still about!"
They could hear desultory firing as they spoke.
"Ah, they'll give in quick enough now," a man said. "Sure, they can't
hold out any longer!"
He hurried back to the city, and when he reached the Club, he saw that
the tri-colour was no longer flying over the College of Surgeons.