Chapter III: Part 3

Very soon the Sinn Fein Courts in the Ballybor district were in full swing; the country people received orders not to appear at a Petty Sessions Court, and in a very short time every Petty Sessions clerk found himself completely idle. However, as a matter of form, Mayne attended every Court regularly, though the only people present were the police, the clerk, and himself, and their only work to say good-day to each other.

By now all the magistrates in the district had either resigned or feared to attend, and if only the R.M. could be frightened out of the country or removed, all Petty Sessions Courts would be closed, and the King’s Writ would cease to run in the country both figuratively and in reality. With this end in view, the Volunteers began to send threatening letters to Mayne, and on two occasions he was fired at when motoring back from holding Courts in outlying towns.

However, Mayne was made of the right stuff, and determined that as long as he was alive the usual Courts should be held throughout his district, no matter whether the people brought their cases to the King’s Courts or to the Sinn Fein Courts, which were generally held the day before a Petty Sessions Court was due in a town; and in order to provide cases he arranged with Blake to carry out a poteen raid on a large scale in the Ballyrick district, and that the cases should be tried at the next Court there. Blake duly carried out the raid, which was most successful, and the defendants were summoned to appear in Court, with the threat of arrest held over their heads if they did not turn up.

On the day of the Ballyrick Court Mayne set out, alone as usual, on his long drive about 9.45 A.M., and on reaching the level crossing found the gates closed, though no train was due to pass for several hours. After sounding his horn in vain, he went to open them himself, only to find that both gates were heavily padlocked.

He then made his way to the crossing-keeper’s house, which was about fifty yards up the line. The man’s wife, who was the only occupant of the house, told him that the gates had been locked that morning by the Volunteers, after the police cars had passed through, and the keys taken away. Determined not to be beaten, Mayne now got a heavy stone, and had actually succeeded in smashing the padlock on the near gate, when he was shot in the head from behind, and at once collapsed on the road.

During the late war extraordinary cases were known of men shot through the head, even through the brain, living for hours afterwards, though generally unable to speak; and Mayne, though paralysed, was quite conscious when his murderers came up to where he was lying.

For some time the murderers argued whether they should finish him off, or remove him as he was. In the end they put him into his own car, unlocked the far gate, and drove off in the direction of Ballyrick.

After proceeding about a mile they came to a lane, which led up to a lonely farm close to the sea. After driving up to the farm they threw Mayne—still alive and conscious—on to a manure heap at the back of the farmhouse, and then drove off. It was afterwards found that they then took the car to a high cliff and ran it over the edge, to be broken up on the rocks below in the sea.

Mayne spent the rest of that day lying on the manure heap, and so terrorised were the inhabitants of the farm that not one of them dared go near him. To give poor Mayne even a cup of cold water would have meant certain death to the giver.

Late that evening the murderers returned, expecting to find Mayne dead by now; but he was still alive, though in a pitiable state. Again they argued among themselves whether they would finish him off or not, and again for some unknown reason they decided not to. And these are the men who, according to an English paper (thank God! not an Irish one), are “entitled to the treatment which, in _civilised_ countries, is given to prisoners of war.”

After some time an ass was harnessed to a cart, into which they threw Mayne’s body, and then proceeded to the seashore below the farm. Here, after another discussion, they buried him—still alive, though quite paralysed—up to his neck in the sand, at a place where they thought the incoming tide would just reach him and slowly drown him during the night-time. It was now several hours since Mayne had been shot, and one can only hope that, though he was still alive, his senses had become numbed.

The following morning these fiends returned again to find that they had miscalculated the height of the tide, which had only reached the level of poor Mayne’s chin, and that he was _still alive_, though probably by now quite mad. They then dug him up, and this time made no mistake, but buried him where the tide was bound to drown him. And the next flood tide put an end to a torture the like of which Lenin and Trotsky could hardly exceed for sheer malignant devilry.

Blake and a strong escort of police had motored out to Ballyrick ahead of Mayne, in case there might be an ambush on the road. The Court was due to begin at twelve, and when by two there was no sign of the R.M., Blake left for Ballybor, making inquiries on the way, but could get no tidings of him anywhere.

On arriving in Ballybor, Blake wired for a force of Auxiliaries, who arrived that night, and at once started with Blake and a strong force of R.I.C. to hunt the countryside for Mayne; but nowadays in Ireland, so dangerous is it for any civilian to be seen speaking to a policeman, that it is always quite impossible to obtain any direct information. People who had seen Mayne set out on his last ill-fated drive denied that they even knew him by sight.

For three days and three nights they scoured the countryside from Ballybor to Ballyrick, and from Ballyrick back again to Ballybor, but no clue or tidings of Mayne could they get. From the time Mayne left Ballybor, R.M. and car seemed to have disappeared as though the earth had opened and swallowed them.

As there was no evidence of foul play, the police hoped that the R.M. had been kidnapped and hidden away in the mountains to the east of Ballyrick. So they posted notices throughout the district to the effect that, if the R.M. was returned in two days all would be well, but if not——

At the end of the two days’ grace a man, who said he kept the railway crossing on the road to Ballyrick, arrived on a bicycle at the barracks ashen with fear, and asked to see Blake. On hearing the man’s story, Blake went out to the level crossing and there found poor Mayne’s body in a rough wooden box, lying on the side of the line. The cause of death appeared obvious; but they were greatly puzzled to find the clothes soaked with sea-water and full of sand, and to hear from the doctor who examined the body that death was due to—drowning.

The level-crossing man was detained at the barracks, and every means was taken to extract information from him; but he denied all knowledge of the murder, and proved an alibi to Blake’s satisfaction.

The police spent the next fortnight searching in vain for Mayne’s murderers, and it is probable that, but for a curious trait in the peasant’s character, they would never have solved the mystery.

Late one evening, about three weeks after the murder, a typical Ballyrick peasant arrived at the barracks in Ballybor and asked to see the D.I., and refused to state his business except to the D.I. Luckily the police decided to admit the man, and he was led off to Blake’s office.

When he was brought in Blake was up to his eyes in official correspondence, with the prospect of an all-night sitting before him; but hoping that the man might have news of Mayne, he ordered the police to leave the man alone with him, and then waited for him to tell his news.

If a western peasant has a favour to ask or a confession to make, he will talk of everything and everybody except the object of his visit, possibly for an hour and probably for two, and will generally not come to the point until he is preparing to leave. The length of time required to extract the necessary information depends entirely on the skill of the interviewer.

Blake’s visitor was no exception to this rule, and many an Englishman, cleverer than Blake, would have made the mistake of hurrying his man, which is always fatal; and even Blake’s patience was nearly exhausted before he made his confession.

Whether the man’s confession was genuine, or whether he hoped to save his skin by turning informer is not quite clear; but at any rate he confessed to Blake that he and five other men had murdered Mayne at the level crossing, gave the full details of one of the worst atrocities which has ever been committed in Ireland, and stated as his only reason for confessing that he had not been able to sleep since the murder.

VI.
AN OUTLAW.

Probably the great majority of the British public had no idea of the extraordinary situation in the south and west of Ireland during 1920, and most likely never will have. In the summer of that sinister year, when the Sinn Fein tyranny was at its height, an English newspaper sent a lady journalist over to this unfortunate country to find out what really was the matter with us, and, if possible, to give the world yet another solution of the Irish Question.

In her first letter, this lady, quite unnecessarily, told her millions of readers that she had never been in Ireland before, proceeded to relate the peculiarities of the people of Dublin and Belfast, and finished with a vivid description of the peaceful and happy condition of the country, in spite of the interested rumours put about to the contrary.

At the time when this lady journalist was discovering peaceful and happy Ireland, the power of Sinn Fein was rapidly passing from the hands of the hot-air merchants to the direct-action ruffians; in other words, Arthur Griffiths became a mere cipher, and Michael Collins the dictator of the south and west. And very soon Collins had several imitators.

Born in 1889 in the highlands of Ballyrick, Denis Joyce, after working for a few years as gillie and general boy at a shooting-lodge near Errinane, drifted to Dublin as a labourer, and at once came under the influence of Connolly, the prince of Irish Bolsheviks. Taken prisoner during the Easter rebellion of 1916, he was eventually released with other small fry, and in return devoted himself to the extermination of the British Empire in general, and Irish policemen in particular.

During the spring and summer of 1920, Joyce and his numerous bodyguard, like an Irish chieftain of old, lived like fighting-cocks. Hailed as the conquerors of the British Army (they had shot several unarmed soldiers) wherever they went, not only did they live free, gratis, and for nothing, but the country people literally fought for the honour of entertaining these heroes. A great pity that the lady journalist could not have been present at one of these banquets. What “copy” she could have sent to her editor, and the certified net sale would have soared to the skies.

But though Joyce and his merry men had a great time, they did not neglect their duty; and on every occasion, when conditions were all in their favour, they shot down police patrols from behind walls, and murdered unfortunate policemen when visiting their wives and families.

However, every dog has his day, and in the autumn of 1920, when the British Army and the Auxiliary Cadets started to take a hand in the game, Joyce found himself changed from a popular hero into a hunted outlaw, with the usual result that, where formerly he had found an open door and a smiling welcome, he now was met by a closed door and a scowl; and when seeking board and lodging, it became necessary to persuade the unwilling hosts with a six-shooter.

The police and military now commenced paying calls at night; and a farmer, living in the depth of the country, hearing a knock at his door during the long winter’s nights, had always the pleasing excitement of not knowing if he was to have the honour of entertaining some badly-wanted gunmen, a patrol of the R.I.C., a party of Auxiliary Cadets, a military search-party, or merely a posse of local robbers, any of whom might take a sudden dislike to the unfortunate farmer, with unpleasant results.

In the winter of 1920, Joyce, who would have made an excellent soldier, made the bad mistake of mixing up love with war; in other words, he became greatly enamoured of a girl living in the south, and in order to be within reach of her, confined his attentions to that district for a considerable time, instead of moving about the country with his usual rapidity; and the Auxiliaries, getting an inkling of the situation from a former lover of the girl, made a great effort to surround and capture him.

Though he received repeated warnings of the activity of the Cadets, Joyce put off his departure, until a day came when word was brought that the place was surrounded by forces of the Crown, who would close in on the little town that evening.

Joyce at once went to tell Molly, whose father kept a small hotel in the town, and the girl’s quick wit soon thought out a plan of escape for her lover. Five commercial travellers staying in the hotel, and at the time out touring neighbouring villages, had left their heavy cases of samples at the hotel, and their railway passes in the safe keeping of the hotel proprietor.

That afternoon the train to the west carried Joyce and four of his bodyguard disguised as bagmen; the remainder were left to shift for themselves, and that evening, when the Cadets searched the town from attic to cellar, they found that the principal bird had flown.

Joyce knew that it would not be safe to travel by train as far as Ballybor, and as soon as he thought that they had cleared the Auxiliary cordon, determined to alight at the next stop and continue the journey by car. Just as they were on the point of leaving the train, however, they noticed several Cadets waiting by the station exit, so did not get out.

Two stations farther on they left the train, and being now outside the net, quickly commandeered a Ford from the local garage and set out for the Ballyrick country, where Joyce had decided to hide and rest for a while. Keeping to byroads, they made their way westwards at a good rate until it was nearly daylight, when, after hiding the car in a wood, they proceeded to search for board and lodging.

Shortly they came across a good farmhouse, and, after the usual display of pistols, were admitted reluctantly, made a hearty meal, and retired to bed after ordering their host to have five good bicycles and another meal ready for them as soon as it was dark.

It has been mentioned that Joyce had worked as a boy at a shooting-lodge near Errinane, and he now conceived the brilliant idea of taking a rest-cure there until such time as the police took less interest in him. This lodge, Drumcar by name, belonged to a Connaught squire who had married an Englishwoman, and except for a short time in the summer was only occupied by a caretaker. Situated in one of the wildest parts of the west, a mile from the road, hidden by woods of oak and birch, and overlooking the bay on which Errinane stands, it was probably the last place in Ireland where the police would think of looking for an active gunman, and the chances were that not a single Auxiliary even knew that such a place existed.

The gunmen arrived at Drumcar soon after dawn, and after rousing the terrified caretaker, who lived with his son and daughter in a cottage in the grounds, they settled down to a life of peace and comfort. The girl attended on them, while the old man brought food from Errinane in a donkey cart, and a good supply of poteen from a mountain farm near the mouth of the bay.

The lodge was well supplied with turf, contained an excellent library of novels, and Joyce and his men waxed fat with good living and soft lying; but it is a case of once on the run, always on the run, until the inevitable end comes, or the gunman is lucky enough to escape to the States.

Now, it is a well-known truth in the west that a “mountainy” man will always, when sick unto death, home-sick, or in dire distress, make for his beloved mountains, no matter what far end of the world he may have drifted to; and when in due course Blake learnt through official channels that Joyce had escaped from the southern town, he at once began to keep a sharp look-out for him in the Ballyrick country.

But when a fortnight passed and there was no sign of Joyce, nor yet any report of his presence in that part of the country, Blake turned up the man’s official record, from which he learnt two interesting facts: first, that Joyce had worked at Drumcar; and, secondly, that he had a married sister in Bunrattey, a district on the southern border of Blake’s country.

Blake now turned his attention to the sister’s house, and when this proved a blank, he determined to try Drumcar Lodge as a last resource; but at the time of the landing of arms at Errinane, every police barrack and coastguard station within a radius of many miles had been burnt, so that it was impossible to get any news of the place without going there, the nearest barrack in Blake’s district being fifty miles away.

A “travelling circus” of Auxiliaries happened to be passing through Ballybor, and the leader undertook to investigate the lodge and let Blake know if they found any trace of Joyce. Blake advised them to surround the lodge in the day-time, as, owing to the wild and mountainous nature of the country, a night attack would be impossible.

On the whole, the gunmen treated old Faherty, the caretaker, and his children well, especially the son, Patsy, in the hope that he would join them; but, luckily for himself, the lad had a wholesome dread of firearms. After he had been at the lodge some days, in spite of feeling quite secure, Joyce, with the instinct of the hunted, began to look about for a bolt-hole in case of need; though in the midst of the wilds the lodge had serious drawbacks, being situated on the side of a slope, so that any one leaving the lodge would at once come under observation from several points, and, moreover, an arm of the sea cut off all escape to the north.

In fact, escape seemed very doubtful, until by chance Patsy mentioned that in a boat-house, hidden by trees, on the shore of the bay, there was a large motor-launch, which he had learnt to drive the previous summer. The next time the old man went to Errinane for provisions, he brought back with him twenty gallons of petrol (duly entered up in his absent master’s account), and Joyce felt easier in his mind.

On a pouring wet afternoon the five gunmen were playing nap in front of a comfortable turf fire in the drawing-room, while old Faherty’s daughter brewed poteen punch for them, and Patsy was reading a novel in an arm-chair, when a long-haired boy dashed in with the news that a large party of Auxiliary Cadets had rushed through Errinane, taken two countrymen they had met on the road as guides, and were surrounding the lodge from all sides except the sea. Joyce had launched the motor-boat only the previous day, and within a few minutes they were under way, heading for the mouth of the bay with the throttle full open. Seeing the launch in the bay below them as they reached the front of the lodge, the Cadets opened fire, but before they could get on to their target the launch vanished in the thick mist of rain.

As pursuit was out of the question, the Auxiliaries drove straight to Errinane Post Office, only to find the wires cut. They then went on to the nearest town, and wired to the naval authorities at Queenstown, hoping that they might be able to get in touch with a destroyer off the west coast by wireless, and so capture Joyce at sea.

Joyce knew that the hue-and-cry would be up, and that it would be fatal to land anywhere on the coast near Errinane; and as the sea was calm, he made up his mind to cut across a big bay to the north and make for Buntarriv, a narrow passage between an island and the mainland, which would lead them to Trabawn Bay, on the shores of which lay his own country.

The launch left the slip at Drumcar at 1 P.M., and Joyce made out that at eight miles an hour they ought to reach Buntarriv Sound at four o’clock and Trabawn Bay in another hour, which should give them plenty of time to land before darkness set in. Unfortunately, when out in the open Atlantic, the engine stopped, and Patsy, who was thoroughly frightened by now, would only sit down and cry. Two of the gunmen knew something of motors, and after nearly two hours discovered that the carburetter was choked with dirt, and it was nearly six o’clock before the Sound was within sight: another quarter of an hour and they would have been too late. As it was, a destroyer opened fire on them just as they were entering the Sound, and they were only saved by the failing light.

Knowing that the destroyer could not follow them, and afraid of wrecking the launch in the dark, they anchored and waited for the moon to rise, and eventually landed on the shore of Trabawn Bay. Joyce was at last in his own country, and before day broke the gunmen were safely lodged in different mountain farms close to Joyce’s home, and the next day Patsy was handed over to the local Volunteers to be returned to Drumcar. The following day they took the launch to a bay surrounded by high cliffs, where no human being except an odd herd ever went, and beached her at the height of the tide on the sandy shore, where they left her for future use.

After a few days at home Joyce began to get restless, and resolved to visit his married sister in the Bunrattey district; but the local Volunteers could only supply them with two bicycles, and the distance was too far to walk—forty-two miles as the crow flies. However, he learnt from a postman that a police patrol visited Ballyscaddan, a small village about sixteen miles east of Ballyrick, daily, and were in the habit of leaving their bicycles outside a public-house which they frequented.

The gunmen spent the night in Ballyscaddan, and about eleven o’clock a patrol of six R.I.C. arrived in the village, left their bicycles outside the public-house, and went inside to refresh themselves. The gunmen, who were waiting in the next house, quickly cut the tyres of one bicycle to ribbons, and rode off on the remaining five, leaving the unfortunate villagers to bear the brunt of the infuriated policemen’s wrath. That night Joyce and his four men slept in his sister’s house in Bunrattey.

Besides his courage, the only redeeming feature about Joyce appears to have been his love for this sister. As usual, she was delighted to see him, but by now the other inhabitants would have as soon welcomed the devil himself as Joyce, knowing that his progress through the country was blazed by reprisals.

Gone were the days when he used to hold audience daily in his sister’s house like a king, and men came many miles simply to see the famous Denis Joyce. Now the country people would avoid him on the road, and not a single person came to see him.

His sister warned him repeatedly that it was dangerous to stay any length of time with her; but Joyce seems to have lost heart, or perhaps his Celtic soul had a premonition of coming disaster. At any rate he refused to go, and spent most of this time sitting by the kitchen fire brooding.

Blake soon learnt of Joyce’s escape by sea from Drumcar, and feeling sure that sooner or later he would visit his sister before starting operations in the south again, concentrated his attention on that district. To this end, he kept his men well away, and at the same time asked for the help of the Auxiliary “travelling circus,” among whom were three Cadets who knew Joyce well by sight.

One of these Cadets, whose personal appearance favoured the disguise, was dressed up as a priest, and sent out on a bicycle to spy out the land. After two days he returned with the good news that he had passed the famous gunman on the road in Bunrattey, and at once Blake made preparations to surround the place that night.

He knew that success entirely depended on maintaining complete secrecy until the house was surrounded, and that if even a whisper of what was in the air got abroad all chances of capturing Joyce were gone. Tired of seeing operations ruined by well-advertised Crossleys, bristling with rifles, tearing along the main roads, he determined to try and catch his man by cunning.

Directly he received the news that Joyce was at Bunrattey, he left Ballybor Barracks with four Crossleys, two of R.I.C., and two of Auxiliaries, in the opposite direction to which Bunrattey lay, until they came to a small village about ten miles to the north, where there was a large flour-mill. Surrounding the mill, the police carried out a perfunctory search and left just before dark, taking with them two of the miller’s lorries, one empty, and the other loaded with flour sacks and two large tarpaulins, cutting the wires as soon as they were clear of the village.

Making their way eastwards until they reached a long stretch of desolate bog-road, they halted with one tender about a quarter of a mile behind and another the same distance ahead. They then proceeded to transfer half the flour sacks to the empty lorry, built them up with a hollow in the middle so that both lorries appeared to be fully loaded, filled the hollows with police, and then threw a tarpaulin over each.

The two lorries then set off to make a large detour in order to approach Bunrattey from the south (the opposite direction to Ballybor), and Blake made out that they ought to arrive there about midnight. The four Crossleys waited and followed at a time which should bring them to Bunrattey a quarter of an hour after the arrival of the lorries.

Joyce’s sister’s house stood back from the main road about eighty yards, was one-storied, very strongly built, and had a tremendous thatch of straw; to the front there were four small windows, heavily shuttered, and a stout oak door, and at the back only a door of the same kind. At a distance of about thirty yards from the house a low stone wall ran round the sides and back, enclosing a small cabbage garden and the haggard, which gave excellent cover for the police.

The lorries stopped within 400 yards of the house, and the police quickly and silently surrounded it without raising the alarm. They then waited for the arrival of the Crossleys, when the Auxiliaries and the remainder of the police formed a second cordon outside the first one.

The leading lorry was now brought into the lane which led up to the house, and left there with the acetylene lamps shining full on the front door and windows, and at the same time the lamps of the second lorry were taken to the back of the house and mounted on the wall, so that any one attempting to leave the house by the doors or windows would be in the full glare of the powerful lamps.

Approaching the house from a gable-end, Blake crawled along the front until he reached the door, on which he hammered with the butt of his revolver, and called on the inmates to surrender, telling them that they were surrounded and that resistance only meant death. Receiving no answer, he called out that if they did not come out at once with their hands up, he would open fire on the house, and for reply there came a volley of bullets through the lower part of the door. He then crawled back to cover, and ordered his men to open fire on the front door with a machine-gun.

The concentrated fire of a machine-gun will cut a hole through a nine-inch brick wall in a very short time, and in a few minutes the oak door was in splinters. While the machine-gun kept up a continuous fire at the height of a man’s chest, four policemen endeavoured to get into the house by crawling up to the door, but when a few feet away two were shot, and the remaining two only escaped by rolling to one side.

All that the police had to do now, provided that Joyce was in the house—and the resistance offered made this a certainty—was to wait until daylight, when the certain capture of the gunmen would only be a question of time. But by now Blake was excited, and remembering how O’Hara had slipped through his hands, he determined to burn the rats out and finish the show. After getting a tin of petrol from one of the cars, he again crawled up to the gable-end, set a light to the tin, and flung it on to the thatch, which at once took fire, burning fiercely.

Only a few days previously this part of the thatch had been renewed, and as the weather had been fine it was bone-dry. But after a few minutes the fire reached the old and wet thatch, and as there was a gentle breeze blowing from the front, very soon the back of the house was completely hidden by a cloud of smoke.

Realising the mistake he had made, Blake ordered his men to keep up a continuous fire on the back door, and at the same time rushed the machine-gun round to that side; but so blinding was the smoke by now that it was impossible to know where the back door was.

Hearing shouts from the front, on going there he found a young woman standing in the doorway with her hands up, who told him that all the men in the house were wounded and unable to move. On entering they found three of Joyce’s bodyguard and his brother-in-law lying in pools of blood on the kitchen floor, but not a sign of Joyce or the fourth man.

There was still a chance that the missing two might be found wounded outside the back door, which was ajar, but the smoke was still so dense that no one could approach. After a time the smoke abated, and they found the fourth man dead a few yards from the house, but not a sign of Joyce.

Again working on the theory that the gunman would make for his home in the Ballyrick mountains, which lay to the westward at the back of the house, Blake divided his forces into two, sending each out on a flank in order to get well ahead of the fugitive, and then form a fan-shaped net and beat backwards towards the house. Four miles away to the west was the Owenmore river, which ran northwards through Ballybor, and across the river were two bridges, each about four miles from where they were.

The two forces crossed by different bridges, each dropping three men at the bridges, then went on about three miles, and at daybreak started to beat the country back to the bridges. Here they arrived, worn out, at 10 A.M., and not a sign had any one seen or heard of Joyce.

Sure that Joyce had crossed the river, the police started to beat back again over the ground they had just covered; but by 4 P.M. the men were done in, and Blake had to call them off and return to Ballybor.

That night he got out a large-scale Ordnance map of the Bunrattey district, put himself in Joyce’s place, and tried to think out his line of escape, presuming that the fugitive had avoided the bridges and swum the river at the nearest point from his sister’s house. On crossing the river he would soon come to a thick wood on the slope of a hill, through which the railway line to Ballybor ran, and here he decided that Joyce must be hiding.

Early the next morning Blake set out with a strong force, and approaching Derryallen Wood from all four sides at once, spent the rest of the day beating the wood through and through, but without any result, and they came to the conclusion that by now Joyce must have got clear.

A week afterwards, when Blake was returning in the dusk from Grouse Lodge Barracks, a man stopped the car on an open stretch of road about a mile outside Ballybor. The man turned out to be the loyal guard of the goods train, and he told Blake that for several days past he had seen the engine-driver drop a parcel as the train passed through Derryallen Wood, and always at the same place, into a patch of briers on the side of the line.

Blake’s interest in Joyce awoke afresh, but he felt sure that no living being had escaped them on the day when they searched the wood, and they had not been able to find any trace of a hiding-place. However, it would be interesting to know what the engine-driver dropped when passing through the wood, and by whom it was picked up.

The main road from Ballybor to Castleport ran parallel with the railway, skirting the east side of Derryallen; and here, on a pitch-dark winter’s night, in torrents of rain, two Crossleys stopped for a couple of minutes while Blake and a party of R.I.C. and Cadets dropped out, and then drove on again.

With great difficulty the party found their way in the dark to the railway line, where they remained hidden in some laurels until it began to grow light, when they were able to conceal themselves within easy reach of the patch of briers.

After hours of weary waiting the goods train passed down, and the engine-driver dropped the parcel into the briers. At once the police forgot hunger and cold in their eagerness to see who would pick up the parcel, but again they were doomed to hours of weary waiting.

At last, when the men had nearly reached the limit of their endurance and light was almost gone, they saw a most miserable-looking wild-eyed man crawling painfully towards the patch of briers. When he was within five yards of the parcel Blake called on him to surrender, and every man covered him with his rifle.

Game to the end, though unable to stand on account of a bullet-wound in one leg, Joyce drew his pistol and glared defiance at the police; but as he raised himself to fire, a fifteen-stone Cadet, who had crept up silently behind him, flung himself on the famous gunman’s back, and the long chase was over.

Joyce refused to show Blake his hiding-place, but afterwards they learnt from the owner of the wood that there was a cave in the middle of the wood which had been used by robbers over a hundred years ago, the entrance of which was completely covered by thick heather.

VII.
THE STRANGER WITHIN THE GATES.

After the loss of the American arms the district of Ballybor remained quiet for some considerable time, so that the hard-working farmers in the country and respectable shopkeepers in the town began to hope at last that the trouble was over, and that they might be free to carry on their work in peace. Unfortunately, a quiet and peaceful district is anathema to the Sinn Fein G.H.Q., and before long a Volunteer flying column received orders to operate in the Ballybor district, with a view to stirring up trouble and bringing the county into line with the south.

By this time the large moderate element of Sinn Fein, in other words, practically every man who had a stake in the country—substantial farmers with haggards to burn, and prosperous shopkeepers with shops to burn—realised that they had backed a losing horse, and were prepared to do any mortal thing for peace, except help the police. Unfortunately, the farmers’ sons and shop-boys, who, in the usual course of events, but for the war, would have been in the States by now, took quite a different view. £20 in the £ rates, burnt haggards, and ruined businesses meant nothing to boys who paid no rates nor owned shops or farms.

Up to the winter of 1919 the rebels moved about the country in motors, how, when, and where they liked. Even during the time when every gallon of petrol was being kept for the armies in France, and the Loyalists were only allowed six gallons a month (on paper), De Valera and his staff burnt petrol as freely as a Connaught peasant will drink poteen. In connection with this, it would be interesting to know into whose petrol tanks the many thousands of gallons of petrol which was washed up on the western shores of Ireland from torpedoed vessels passed, and the system of collection and distribution.

After this winter, when the use of cars for illegal purposes became more and more restricted as the car-permit regulations became stricter and more rigidly enforced, the Volunteers began to make great use of bicycles, and their flying columns consisted of cyclists only. Orders were issued from G.H.Q. that every Volunteer must be able to ride a bicycle, and local commandants were instructed to see that every man in their command had one.

During the Mons retreat the cyclists were invaluable, both for fighting small rearguard actions and also for keeping in contact with the enemy. During the present war in Ireland, the explanation of the mysteries of how men can shoot policemen from behind a wall and then disappear into thin air, and of how a column of gunmen can shoot up a train in Kerry on Monday and ambush a police lorry in Clare on Tuesday, is to be found in the intelligent use of the humble push-bike. And until the authorities round up every push-bike in Ireland, these mysteries will continue.

As soon as G.H.Q. determined that the Ballybor district must be brought into line with the south, a small party of gunmen, operating at the time many miles to the south, received their orders, and late that night a silent and ghostly party of cyclists rode into the Ballybor district. At a certain cross-roads they were met by guides, and long before daybreak the gunmen were billeted in ones and twos throughout the townland of Cloonalla.

The following night a meeting of the local Volunteers was held in the National School, and the leader of the gunmen insisted that a police ambush or an attack on the Grouse Lodge Barracks should take place within the next few nights. The general opinion being against an attack on the barracks—the field of fire was too good, and the Black and Tans too handy with their rifles—it was settled (by the gunmen) that the police should be ambushed at a favourable spot where the main road from Ballybor to Castleport passed through a wooded demesne.

The next morning Father Tom, the parish priest, was besieged by the young Volunteers’ fathers, men who had homes and haggards to burn, one and all imploring his reverence to prevent an ambush in the parish, and to save them from the wrath of the Auxiliaries. Some of them, when asked, confessed that the gunmen were staying in their houses, but that their sons had brought them there without leave, and that they were powerless to get rid of them.

From the beginning of the movement Father Tom, who was young for a parish priest and an ardent Sinn Feiner in theory, had been one of the leaders in the district, and even when burning houses and haggards began to follow murderous ambuscades in far-away Co. Cork as surely as day follows night, he still felt a thrill of pride for his countrymen who were giving their all for freedom, and became a fiercer Sinn Feiner than ever; but an ambush (and the sequel) in his own beloved parish was a very different thing, and a calamity to be avoided at all costs (his house stood high, and would give a splendid view at night of burning houses and haggards), and there was obviously no time to lose.

The next day was Sunday, and at mass Father Tom, who was a fine preacher, thundered forth from the altar. A vivid imagination stimulated his eloquence to such a pitch that he reduced most of the older members of his flock to tears.

He told them that it had come to his ears that certain men in the parish were harbouring strangers within their gates, and that these strangers had been trying to incite young and innocent boys to murder policemen. He then described the result of an ambush—how houses were burnt to the ground and women and little children were turned out on the road on a winter’s night (he did not mention the men, knowing that by then they would be up in the mountains), and how innocent men were shot in their beds before the eyes of their wives; but he said nothing about the widows and orphans of the murdered policemen. Finally, he warned his flock against the strangers, who would fade away before the wrath of the soldiers and Auxiliaries fell on the parish, and commanded that they should be instantly turned out under the direst penalties. And with a last curse on the strangers he left the chapel.

If Father Tom had thundered from the altar against ambushes many, many months before, instead of openly encouraging the Volunteers, the result might have been very different; but a leader of men who gives an order to-day and a counter-order to-morrow is rarely obeyed. That night it was learnt that a party of military would proceed from Castleport to Ballybor on Wednesday night, and it was settled to ambush them at the spot chosen in the demesne, the gunmen promising that a carload of arms and bombs would arrive in time for the ambush, and also a doctor.

In the Cloonalla district there lived, nowadays a _rara avis_ in the west of Ireland, a Protestant farmer of the old yeoman type so well known in England, and a staunch Loyalist. To his house there came on that Sunday night two of the leading farmers, who told him the whole story of the proposed ambush, and begged him to warn the police.

The chapel of Cloonalla stands in the centre of the parish, close to a cross-roads, and on that Wednesday morning the inhabitants woke up to find a kilted sentry on guard at the cross-roads, and before most of them could get out of bed, two companies of Highlanders, guided by Blake, were hard at work searching every house for strangers.

Blake had brought with him two old regular R.I.C. sergeants, men who had been stationed in the district for years, and who knew every man, young and old; but the gunmen had been in trouble before, and were not to be caught so easily.

They were all young men and clean shaved, and before the police and Highlanders entered any of their billets, one and all were dressed as women with shawls over their heads; and in one house, where two of them had been billeted, the Highlanders found a young woman sitting on a stool by the fire, nursing a baby under her shawl, while another pretty shawled girl was preparing breakfast for the young mother. A big Highlander could not resist giving her a glad eye, little knowing that “she” was a notorious gunman, and wanted to the tune of a thousand pounds for the brutal murder of a D.I. as he was leaving church.

The only result of the raid was the finding of an old shot-gun in the bed of the local blacksmith, a man who had always defied the local Volunteers, and kept a gun for poaching only, and who was taken off to Ballybor Barracks amidst the jeers of everybody. However, in a few days they realised how useful and necessary a person a smith is in a country district, and before the week was out the whole townland was clamouring for the smith’s release.

However, the raid had good results; the Volunteers refused point-blank to carry out the ambush on Wednesday night, though the gunmen stayed until that day, making every endeavour to bring it off. Finding it was useless, they disappeared that night as silently as they had come, promising to return shortly in greater numbers.

The whole district heaved a sigh of relief when it was known that there were no longer any strangers within the gates, and settled down to farm and lead the life God meant them to live, and hoped against hope that they might never see a cursed stranger again, be he gunman or Auxiliary. Blake let it be known that it was a case of no ambush, no Auxiliaries, and every farmer in the district was quite content to keep his side of the bargain.

But peace was not yet to be the portion of Cloonalla. Within three weeks of the first gunman leaving, a party of twenty arrived on a wild winter’s night, and, as on the former occasion, as silently dispersed to their allotted billets. This time the leader of the gunmen did not ask the local Volunteers to help, but ordered them to carry out the ambush in the wooded demesne on the main road from Castleport to Ballybor, as previously arranged.

The gunmen did not appear during the day-time at all, and had been nearly a week in the district before Father Tom heard of their arrival. Unfortunately, the priest was very ill with influenza at the time, and before he could take any action the damage was done.

As usual, the scene of the ambush was laid with great cleverness. Between the two entrance-gates of the demesne on the main road there was a sharp rise in the form of an S bend, with a thick thorn hedge on each side of the middle of this bend. Where the rise was steepest, there was a lane leading to the keeper’s house, about fifty yards from the road, and at the entrance of this lane the gunmen laid a mine in the main road to be fired by an electric wire running towards the keeper’s house. After laying the mine they forced the road contractor of that part of the road to cart broken stones and lay them right across the road over the mine, so that all traces of the mine were hidden.

The day after the mine had been laid word came to Cloonalla that the police had arrested three men in Ballybor during the previous night, and that it was thought that the prisoners would be sent to Castleport that night in a Crossley under a strong police escort. As soon as it was dark, the gunmen, after parking their bicycles in a wood of the demesne, collected all the Volunteers they could induce or force to accompany them, and made their way across country to the scene of the ambush.

The night was unusually fine with a full moon, and two hours after the Volunteers and gunmen had taken up their positions, the peculiar note of a Crossley engine could be distinctly heard approaching at a great pace from the Ballybor direction. The gunman who had laid the mine was a first-class electrician, and as the car tore past the lane there was a blinding flash, followed by a terrific roar, and the car seemed to jump clean off the road and then collapse in a burning heap on the road.

With the roar of the mine the ambushers opened a heavy fire on the car, but receiving no reply they quickly ceased fire, waiting to see what would happen next. But the mine had done its work only too well, and the only sounds which could be heard were the groans of dying men amid the burning ruins of the car. After some minutes two policemen rolled out of the end of the car and lay on the highroad, one man with both his legs paralysed, crying piteously for water, and the second with part of his head blown away by a flat-nosed bullet, crying for a priest.

Up to this point the leader of the gunmen had taken charge of all the proceedings, and when the Volunteers were collected on the road like a flock of sheep they still waited for orders. However, after five minutes, as no order was given, they began to look for their leader, suddenly to realise that every gunman had faded away.

At once every Volunteer started to make his way home as fast as he could, and within two minutes the only occupants of the road were the two dying policemen, lying like two black logs in the white moonlight. Presently a terror-stricken keeper crept out of his house, and as soon as his scattered wits could take in the situation, he got out his bicycle and rode into Ballybor for help.

Long before day broke columns of soldiers, R.I.C., and Auxiliaries concentrated on and met at that horrible scene on the road between the two demesne gates, and shortly afterwards broke like a tornado on the townland of Cloonalla, and Father Tom, from his bedroom window, saw his worst fears realised. When daylight came the parish was at last clear of all strangers and avengers, but at a terrible price.

A quick-witted policeman remembered that the only limestone road in Cloonalla was the road from Ballybor to Castleport, so that it was easy to tell in a house by an inspection of boots if any man of that household had been present at the ambush, and that night the fathers suffered for the sins of their sons, and the sons paid the full price of the gunmen’s crime.

Like good soldiers, the gunmen carefully thought out their line of retreat before the ambush took place. They found that a broad river ran through the demesne parallel to and about 400 yards from the main road, that the nearest bridges above and below were five miles away, and that across the river ran a range of wild and desolate country. In a wood on the bank of the river they found fishing-boats, used for netting salmon during the summer-time, and before the ambush the leader sent two of his men to collect all these boats at a certain part of the river, and to remain there in readiness to take the remainder and their bicycles across. As soon as the ambush was over they collected their bicycles, crossed the river, and were soon riding through a little-known pass in the mountains on their way to carry on their devil’s work in a part of the country many miles removed from the scene of the Cloonalla ambush.

VIII.
MR BRIGGS’ ISLAND.

Several years before the late war there lived in the suburbs of London a prosperous stockbroker, by name Benjamin Briggs, a lonely bachelor, an ardent fisherman, and a man of simple and kindly nature. Every year Mr Briggs spent his entire summer holidays fishing in Scotland or Wales, and it was not until after hearing a friend at his club recounting the wonderful fishing that he had had in Ireland that he turned his attention to that country.

One afternoon, when passing through Euston Station, a famous poster of Connemara caught Mr Briggs’ eye, and the following summer he made a complete tour of that delightful country of mountains, moors, and rivers. So charmed was he with the scenery and the perfect manners of the peasants that he determined to see more of the country, and on a fine summer’s afternoon found himself in the little town of Ballybor, reputed to be one of the best fishing centres in Ireland.