Chapter V: Part 5

After the coursing they took O’Dowd into their confidence, showed him the distillery and arranged that he should act as their agent. This part was simple, but the difficulty was how, when, and where to deliver the goods to O’Dowd. If the “tay carts” came to Ardcumber, or the distillery Ford went to O’Dowd’s continually, suspicion would be aroused. After a long discussion they decided on a plan of action.

Once a week, when Evans drove into Ballybor for provisions, he was to fill up the Ford with poteen and leave the car in a shed in O’Dowd’s yard, where the poteen could be transferred to O’Dowd’s cellars and the car loaded up with empties. O’Dowd wanted to use earthenware jars, but Evans decided on two-gallon petrol tins as being less likely to excite suspicion.

For a considerable time the plan worked well. Evans took a full load weekly to O’Dowd’s, whose tea carts distributed the poteen far and wide throughout the district.

One morning Blake, who had spent a busy night raiding in the district for arms and poteen stills, called in at Ardcumber on his way home and had breakfast with the Evans. During the conversation he mentioned casually that the country was flooded with poteen, and that they had failed to find out where it was being made, but that they suspected it was being delivered in tea carts from Ballybor.

As soon as Blake had gone David drove off into Ballybor, settled up his accounts with O’Dowd, who was only too thankful to be rid of the job in time, and before he left for home had arranged with an egg merchant called Michael Flanagan, who sent lorries out to all the villages for miles around collecting eggs, to take over the agency, the petrol tins to be hidden in the straw of the empty egg-crates.

The police appear to have had no suspicion of Evans, and the probabilities are that the Ardcumber distillery would have worked on indefinitely but for interference from a quite unsuspected quarter. The Sinn Fein leaders of the district began to grow uneasy at the effects of the apparently unlimited supply of poteen on the discipline of the Volunteers, and determined to put down the industry.

Any men who were now found with stills in their possession by the Sinn Fein police were paraded before the congregation outside the chapels after Mass on Sunday morning, the stills broken up with hammers, the owners heavily fined, and then let go with a warning of much severer penalties if they were found guilty of the same offence again.

Afterwards Evans and Flanagan received summonses to appear on a named date before a Sinn Fein Court. Flanagan went and was heavily fined, but Evans took no notice of the summons.

Flanagan was now, of course, afraid to act as agent, and the question again arose of how they were to get the poteen to the different buyers. While matters were in this state Flanagan sent a warning to Evans that the Volunteers would raid Ardcumber on a certain night, and that the results would be very unpleasant for them.

The situation was now serious. It was impossible for two men to defend such a large house, and once inside, the Volunteers, apart from the fact that they would probably shoot them, would certainly break up the distillery, and the rapid increase of their bank balances would cease.

That evening they received a letter stating that they had been banished from Ireland by an order of the Sinn Fein Court, and giving them two days in which to leave the country. The same night, after dark, a volley of shots was fired through the window of every room showing a light, and the following morning they had to cook their own breakfast, as the old woman did not turn up.

But David Evans was not beaten yet. After breakfast he motored into Ballybor, where he waited until it was dark. He then went to the barracks, and told Blake that the Volunteers had threatened to raid Ardcumber the following night for arms, and suggested that the police should ambush the Volunteers in the grounds.

Blake, only too glad to help a friend, and eager to get the Volunteers together in the open, consented, and before Evans left the two had thought out a very pretty trap.

It has been mentioned that Ardcumber stood at the foot of a range of mountains, which isolated the Ballybor country on the east, and across them for many miles there was only one track, which led down to the back of the demesne, and which was never used except by country people bringing turf in creels on donkeys from the mountain bogs during the day-time.

Blake proposed to start out the following afternoon with a good force, cross the mountains by the main road, which ran through a pass due east of Ballybor, and return by the mountain track, reaching Ardcumber demesne soon after dark. Here David Evans was to meet them and guide them to the scene of the ambush. The district between the demesne and the mountains was thinly populated, and at that hour no one would be abroad for fear of the Black and Tans. The attackers would be certain to come from the opposite direction, and would not be likely to arrive before the moon rose at 11 P.M.

The police, with a party of Cadets and two Lewis guns, were in position by 9 P.M. in a shrubbery on each side of the avenue, about a hundred yards from the house. At 11.30 P.M. the Volunteers, sure of their prey, marched up the avenue in column of route, singing the “Soldiers’ Song.” When they were within forty yards Blake called on them to halt, lay down their arms, and put up their hands.

The column halted at once, and for a second appeared to waver, but an officer gave the order to deploy. Before the column could break up both Lewis guns opened fire.

Unfortunately at this moment a dark cloud obscured the moon and heavy rain began to fall, with the result that, after the first short burst of fire, the Volunteers were invisible; and though the police started in pursuit, they failed to overtake the flying rebels, and had to concentrate on the house.

After collecting and rendering first-aid to the wounded—there were none killed—the police brought their cars up to the house, and shortly afterwards returned to Ballybor.

The Evanses were now fairly safe from the Volunteers, but again the question of distributing the poteen arose, and this time it looked as though they would have to do it themselves. They tried to induce Flanagan to come on again; but the egg merchant was by now thoroughly frightened, and thankful to get off with a heavy fine. O’Dowd, being a police suspect, was out of the question, but there still remained His Majesty’s mails.

The story of how the Evanses had played the police off against the Volunteers was soon the talk of the countryside for many a mile, and so queer and uncertain is the Irish peasant’s mentality that, where one would have expected them to be furious and determined to be avenged, on the contrary their great sense of humour was immensely tickled at the idea of the police defending the Ardcumber distillery, and the Evanses became popular heroes.

After the Volunteer attack, Blake, being afraid that they might make another attempt to capture the arms in Ardcumber House, offered David a party of Black and Tans for protection, but this offer was refused.

For some time His Majesty’s mail cars carried the Ardcumber poteen punctually and efficiently—in fact, far better than either O’Dowd or Flanagan had done. Petrol tins were still used to put the poteen in, and Evans would leave the full tins at a garage twice a week, where the mail cars got their petrol from, and if a mail car carried a few extra tins of petrol, who thought anything about it?

Unfortunately the mail contract for that district ran out a few months afterwards, and this time was given to a man from the north, an Orangeman, and once again Evans had to find a fresh way of sending round the country his now famous poteen.

But so popular had the Evanses become that, instead of having to seek agents, they received offers to deliver the poteen from the manager of a creamery in the Cloonalla district, and also from the manager of a Cooperative Society in a village distant about four miles from Ardcumber. Evans closed with both offers, and the cousins redoubled their efforts to turn out all the poteen they possibly could, knowing that an end must come sooner or later.

Two months afterwards the Auxiliaries discovered that the creamery was being used as a Sinn Fein prison, and, as a result, raided the place one night and burnt it to the ground. Incidentally, they found several full petrol tins in the manager’s office, filled up their petrol tanks with them, and could not make out why the cars would not start.

It is both possible and probable that, except for some unforeseen accident, the Evanses might have gone on making and selling poteen for an indefinite time—in fact, as long as the country remained in the present state of chaos. The distillation of poteen always has and always will appeal to the western peasant, and the story of how the Evanses called in the police to defend their still against the attack of the Volunteers will be told over the firesides of many a cottage for generations to come—long after Sinn Fein is dead and buried.

But at last their good luck deserted them. One night while working at the still, John carelessly knocked over an oil-lamp, and in a moment the old dry woodwork of the attic was in flames. Before morning the grand old house, with its great collection of priceless furniture, was a smouldering ruin, nothing but the bare blackened walls standing, and so it is likely to remain for all time.

The Evanses, having made a considerable sum of money by now, said good-bye to Blake, and returned to their native land.

XI.
THE MAYOR’S CONSCIENCE.

In the spring of 1920 Blake suddenly received orders to proceed to a town in the south of Ireland on special duty, and on applying for leave was granted a fortnight, which he determined to spend in Dublin. In due course his relief arrived, and after handing over he found himself free from all responsibility for the first time for many months.

At this period the Government and the Irish railwaymen were enacting a comic opera worthy of Gilbert and Sullivan at their best, the Government paying the railway companies a huge subsidy, the greater part of which found its way into the railwaymen’s pockets in the form of enormous wages, while the men refused to carry any armed forces of the Crown; and the public, who, of course, indirectly paid the subsidy, looked on helplessly.

In order to get a passenger train Blake had to motor thirty-two miles to a station in the next county, where, as yet, no armed forces had tried to travel. While waiting here a green country boy asked him some trivial question, and with little difficulty Blake led him on to tell his whole history.

In spite of a Sinn Fein edict to the contrary, many young men, who could find no work in Ireland, or who wished to avoid service in the I.R.A., were at this time contriving to emigrate to the States by crossing to England and sailing from Southampton. In order to defeat this, Sinn Fein agents were in the habit of frequenting the termini in Dublin for the purpose of getting in touch with these would-be emigrants and forcing them to return home.

This youth, who came from the Ballyrick district, and had never been in a train in his life, told Blake that a brother in the States had sent him his passage, and that he was due to sail from Southampton in a few days’ time, but had to go to the American Consul in Dublin in order that his passport might be viséd, and asked Blake where the consul’s office was.

Blake warned him not to tell any one he met on his journey that he was going to America, or he would surely fall into the hands of the Sinn Fein police, and thought no more about the matter.

When the train reached a junction after about an hour and a half’s run, there was considerable delay while a large party of Auxiliary Cadets searched the train, and eventually arrested a police sergeant, whom they removed after a desperate struggle to a waiting motor. Blake was reading at the time, and did not think anything was wrong until he saw the sergeant being dragged out of the station. It then occurred to him that, though he thought he knew every Cadet in the west by sight, yet he failed to recognise any of the search-party. However, it was useless to interfere, as he was alone and unarmed.

Blake stayed at a hotel near Stephen’s Green, and for the first part of the night, so silent and empty were the streets, that Dublin might have been a city of the dead. However, about 2 A.M., a miniature battle broke out in some near quarter, and for hours rifle-fire and the explosions of bombs continued, varied at times by bursts of machine-gun fire.

The following morning after breakfast he set out to see a high official in the Castle, a friend of his father’s, and also to report at the R.I.C. Headquarters there. While walking along Grafton Street shots suddenly rang out at each end, and at once the crowd tried to escape down several by-streets, only to be held up by the Cadets at every point; and it was not until two hours afterwards, when the Cadets had satisfied themselves that the men they wanted were not there, that Blake was free to proceed to the Castle.

The streets appeared much the same as usual, but the Castle was greatly changed from peace times. The entrance gates were heavily barred; barbed wire, steel shutters, and sandbags in evidence everywhere. Outside, a strong party of Dublin Metropolitan Police and Military Foot Police. Inside, a strong guard of infantry in steel helmets, while a tank and two armoured cars were standing by ready to go into action.

As nobody was allowed to enter the Castle without a pass, Blake had to get a friend from the headquarters of the R.I.C. to identify him before he could gain admission, and he learnt from his friend that the party of Auxiliaries he had seen the previous day arresting the police sergeant at the junction were in reality a flying column of Volunteers, who had managed to smuggle the Cadets’ uniforms into the country from England.

Blake found that most of the officials in the Castle were virtually prisoners there, and in order to keep their figures down had improvised a gravel tennis-court and also a squash racket-court.

When training at the depot in Dublin, Blake had made the acquaintance of a Colonel Mahoney, who had retired and lived near Kingstown with his only daughter, and his chief object in going to Dublin was to see Miss Mahoney again. After leaving the Castle he met her by appointment, and after they had lunched and been to a picture-house, they left by tram to be back in time for tea with the Colonel. After the tram started Blake found that he had an hour to spare, and got out at Ballsbridge to see a friend, while Miss Mahoney went on alone.

On reaching the Mahoneys’ house Blake learnt that, when Miss Mahoney got out at Kingstown, she had been followed by four young men, who had demanded the name of the man she had travelled in the tram with, and on her refusing to disclose Blake’s name, they had knocked her down with the butts of their revolvers, and left her there partially stunned.

The following day, when on her way to meet Blake again in Dublin, her tram was held up by Auxiliaries, and all the men on it carefully searched for arms; but before the Cadets boarded the tram, Miss Mahoney saw several young men pass their revolvers to girls sitting next to them, with the result that the Auxiliaries found no arms. On leaving the tram at the end of Kildare Street, the pockets of her coat feeling unusually heavy, she put her hands into them and found a revolver in each. At the same moment two men overtook her and demanded their arms.

When he had been in Dublin four days Blake had to go to Broadstone Station to inquire about a kit-bag which had been lost on the journey to Dublin. He reached the station about a quarter of an hour before the departure of the train for the west, and passing a group of young men on the platform, recognised amongst them the youth who had asked him where to find the American consul.

There were no police within sight, and it was useless to interfere single-handed, but without doubt the talkative youth had fallen into the hands of the Sinn Fein Police, who were returning him to his home minus his passage-money: the group consisted of four dejected-looking youths and three rough-looking men, obviously in charge of the others.

When his leave was up Blake left for the south by an express train, changing at a junction after about two hours’ run. Here, just as the train was on the point of starting, an armed party of the Royal Fencibles under a subaltern marched on to the platform and took their seats in several different third-class carriages, the officer getting into Blake’s carriage. There was a considerable delay, and Blake expected that, as usual, the guard and driver would refuse to carry armed soldiers, but to his surprise the train started without any incident.

After an hour’s run, the train pulled up with a sudden jerk in a cutting just outside a station, and as the subaltern put his head out of the window to ascertain the cause, the train was raked from end to end by heavy rifle-fire, and the young subaltern collapsed on top of Blake, his head shattered by a dum-dum bullet.

Blake threw himself flat on the floor of the carriage until the fire from the top of the cutting slackened owing to a Lewis gun opening fire from one of the carriages near the engine. Taking the dead boy’s revolver, he then jumped on to the line, and made his way towards the forward carriages, where the soldiers had opened fire with their rifles.

Here he found a gallant Lewis gunner, badly wounded in an arm and leg, firing his gun as fast as he could mount the magazines, and so preventing the Volunteers from leaving their cover at the top of the bank and attacking at close quarters.

So hot was the Lewis gunner’s fire that after five minutes the Volunteers broke off the action and simply vanished. Blake then turned his attention to the wounded civilians, and though he had grown indifferent to dreadful sights through years of war, the awful condition of the dead and wounded in that train made him physically sick.

The majority of the wounds were from flat-nosed bullets, with the most terrible results. In one carriage lay a young woman in a pool of blood, her chest literally blown away by one of these devilish bullets. In another, a middle-aged man was screaming like a mad wild animal, his arm and shoulder shattered, and at his feet lay an old countrywoman, the top of her head blown off.

Very few of the soldiers had been wounded, and under Blake’s command they at once started off in pursuit, only to catch a glimpse of the Volunteers disappearing down a road on bicycles.

After a long delay the train went on, and in order to try and forget the awful scenes he had just witnessed, Blake endeavoured to read two English papers. The first paper, in a long leading article, called for a policy of conciliation in Ireland, while the second (a threepenny edition of the first) recounted at great length a speech made the previous day by a famous legal politician calling loudly upon the Government to withdraw all troops from Ireland, and demanding that the R.I.C. and Auxiliary Cadets should be severely dealt with for their brutal reprisals on innocent people, but never a word about the savage attacks on these same R.I.C. and Cadets by these “innocent people,” or a single thought for the widows and orphans of the murdered policemen. In disgust he threw both papers out of the carriage windows, and consigned all politicians to the bottomless pit.

On arriving at Esker, Blake found that his chief duty was to act as liaison officer between the military and police, and that he would be attached to the staff of the G.O.C. of the district.

He quickly realised that the bad reports of the state of the south had not been exaggerated, and that it was in a far worse state than the west. Ambushes of police and military, attacks on trains, shootings of unarmed soldiers and police in the streets at all hours of the day and night, the finding of dead men riddled with bullets in every kind of place, from an open field to an empty house, and the robbery of mails occurred daily with monotonous regularity; and so accustomed had people of all classes become to this saturnalia of crime, that they thought no more about the murder of a human being than the usual man thinks of killing a rat.

Blake’s principal work consisted of investigating these crimes in company with police and soldiers, and afterwards in making out a report for the General. In addition, he accompanied the General when making tours through the district.

One morning they received news of a terrible ambush of Cadets, and on arriving at the scene of the ambush Blake found the dead bodies of the Cadets still lying on the road. All their equipment and personal effects had been stolen, and their faces smashed in with an axe. Probably in several cases this barbarous mutilation had been committed before the unfortunate Cadets were dead.

Two days afterwards the bodies of the murdered Cadets passed through Esker _en route_ for England. All shops were closed, and great crowds collected in the streets. Blake was greatly struck by the different attitudes of sections of the crowd, some taking their hats off with every mark of reverence and sympathy when the coffins passed, while others kept their hats on until ordered by the officers to uncover, and many showed plainly by their faces that they were in full sympathy with the murderers.

Conditions in the south were now rapidly drifting into a war of extermination, and every morning brought fresh reports of men shot the previous night, either in bed before the eyes of their relations, or else against a wall outside their homes.

One evening word came to headquarters through the secret service that a baker in an outlying village was to be shot that night. It appeared that the baker, a moderate Sinn Feiner, had been chosen by the Inner Circle to take part in one of their nightly “executions,” and had refused. So the edict had gone forth that if the baker would not commit murder, he should be murdered himself.

The General at once sent Blake with a party of soldiers to try and save the baker’s life, but, missing their way in the dark, they arrived a few minutes too late. They found the unfortunate man lying on his bed shot through the head, while the only occupant of the house, the murdered man’s sister, sat white-faced by the bedside moaning and wringing her hands.

They could get nothing out of the sister, except that a party of armed and masked men, in “trench coats” as ever, had suddenly burst into the house and insisted that her brother should accompany them for some unknown purpose, and that he had refused. For a time they argued with him, until another man rushed into the house, calling out to them to be quick as the soldiers were near. Whereupon they shot the baker as he lay in bed, with the sister looking on, and then left the house hurriedly.

There seemed nothing to be done, and Blake was on the point of leaving when his eye caught a piece of white paper under the bed, which turned out to be the baker’s death-warrant for treason, signed by the C.M.A. of the I.R.A.

On his return Blake handed the death-warrant to the Intelligence people, who returned it shortly, saying that they could make nothing of it. After showing it to the General, Blake put the warrant away, and thought no more about it.

Some weeks afterwards, owing to the shooting of soldiers and police in the streets after dark, the curfew was advanced an hour. As a result, the number of curfew prisoners greatly increased—so much so on the first night that there was no room in the usual detention quarters, and the officer of the guard was obliged to use an empty office for the overflow.

While the General was working in his office after dinner, the officer of the guard brought a note from the Mayor of the town, who, he explained, had been found on the streets after curfew hour by a patrol, and was now a prisoner in the office below. The note requested a personal interview with the G.O.C., and stated that the matter was of the highest importance. The General passed the note to Blake, who was puzzled by the familiarity of the writing, but unable to remember where he had seen it before.

After some hesitation the General decided to see the Mayor, who was brought in by the officer of the guard, and left alone with the General and Blake. After beating about the bush for some time, the Mayor asked that he might be kept under arrest and, if possible, deported by sea to England, as he was in great danger of assassination, but would give no reason for the danger, only stating that he had received threatening letters.

The General explained that under no circumstances would he allow the Mayor to be detained under arrest or deported, unless he could show sufficient reasons. The Mayor replied that he considered the threatening letters an ample justification for his request; he had not brought the letters with him, but that if allowed to go home with a guard he would fetch them. But the General, being determined to get all the information he could out of the man, and knowing that once he had granted his request it would be impossible to get anything out of him, refused.

By now Blake had identified the Mayor’s handwriting with the writing on the baker’s death-warrant, and getting out the latter, placed the two papers in front of the General, who at once taxed the Mayor with being the head of the Inner Circle in Esker. This he denied, but on being confronted with the two papers, broke down and made a complete confession.

It appeared that for a long time past he had been the leader of Sinn Fein in that district, and though himself a moderate man, he had been unable to control the wild men, who had forced him, as head of the Inner Circle, to sign the death-warrants of the men condemned to be “executed,” or, in other words, the men they wished out of the way. After a time, being a very religious man, his conscience had rebelled against wholesale murder, and he had refused to sign any more death-warrants.

Whereupon the wild men, being afraid that the Mayor might give them away, had signed his death-warrant themselves, and that very morning he had received by post a warning to prepare for death.

The General was now quite satisfied to order his arrest and deportation forthwith; but the Mayor asked that he should be allowed to go home to say good-bye to his family, and that he might be arrested in his own house at some early hour in the morning. It was now nearly midnight, and the General, after granting his request, arranged that a patrol should arrest him at 4 A.M.

At 4 A.M. to the minute Blake drove up to the Mayor’s house in a lorry with an officer and fifteen men, but at once saw that something was wrong. Instead of the house being in complete darkness, most of the windows were lit up, and the loud wails of women could be heard in an upstairs room.

Leaving the officer to post sentries at the front and back of the house, Blake knocked at the door, which was opened after some delay by a woman, who, on seeing a police officer, tried to slam the door in his face. Blake, however, managed to slip into the hall, and asked the woman what was wrong, but she ran upstairs, calling out to some one above that the police had returned.

On the first landing the woman was joined by another woman and a man, and after a lot of trouble Blake at last got out of them that an hour previously a party of tall men in black mackintoshes, with soft hats pulled over their eyes, had gained admittance to the house, and made their way straight to the Mayor’s bedroom, where they found him kneeling down by his bed praying. After pushing the Mayor’s wife out of the room they shot him, threw his body on the bed, and rushed out of the house.

Blake asked to be shown the Mayor’s body, and the man led him to a bedroom at the back and opened the door. After making certain that the dead man was the Mayor, Blake left and drove straight back to the General.

That day the town was seething with excitement, and it was openly stated by many men that the Mayor had been murdered by the police.

Shortly afterwards a public inquiry was held, and it was clearly proved that every policeman in the town could be satisfactorily accounted for during the night of the murder, and, moreover, that every round of rifle and revolver ammunition could also be accounted for. However, this did not suit the Sinn Feiners, and a verdict of “guilty” was brought in against the authorities, though there can be no possible doubt in any unbiassed mind that the Mayor of Esker was murdered either by, or by the orders of, the Inner Circle.

When he went home, after his interview with the G.O.C., the natural assumption was that he had been giving information, and the Inner Circle determined that he should give no more. Whether they knew that he was to be arrested and deported at 4 A.M., and deliberately forestalled the arrest, or whether they merely knew that he was at headquarters, and were waiting to murder him on the first favourable opportunity, is not clear, and does not affect the question of the guilt of the murder.

XII.
A BRUTAL MURDER.

The childlike trust which so many Englishmen have in their institutions is a source of never-ending wonder to Irishmen, more especially the Englishman’s blind faith in the integrity of the Post Office in both countries. Long after Sinn Fein had made the Irish Post Office its chief source of information, the Government and public continued happily and blindly to confide their confidential correspondence to the tender mercies of the King’s enemies, and at the same time expressed their bewildered astonishment at the uncanny amount of information that the Sinn Fein Secret Service was able to obtain.

It is highly doubtful if Blake would ever have even thought of obtaining information from the mail bags, if a young subaltern, who commanded a platoon of the Blankshires temporarily stationed in the Ballybor Police Barracks, had not made the suggestion one night at dinner, and had even offered to carry out the operation himself if Blake had any official qualms. At first Blake refused, knowing that the authorities did not approve of tampering with the public’s private letters; but being desperately hard up for certain information he gave in, and it was arranged that Jones, the subaltern, should carry out the search.

A cross-country letter in the west of Ireland will often take nowadays any time from three to five days to arrive at a town only twenty miles away, and of the chief reasons of this delay one is that the mails often lie for twelve to twenty-four hours in a head post office before being sent out to rural sub-offices for distribution, or in a railway van at some junction awaiting a connection. This was well known to Blake, who had often to complain of delay in delivery of official letters, and also of letters from the “Castle” being frequently opened in the post.

Examining the mails in the Ballybor Post Office was out of the question, owing to the almost unbelievable fact that the staff, from the postmaster to the charwoman who washed out the tiled floors of the post office every morning, were Sinn Feiners, one and all, so that there only remained to search the mails in the train.

At this period the western railways were slowly dying from a creeping paralysis caused by the engine-drivers and guards refusing to carry the armed forces of the Crown, quite oblivious of the fact that it was only possible to pay the railway men’s enormous wages through the Government subsidy. For a time some lines shut down, but a goods train managed to reach Ballybor six days a week with mails and the bare necessities of life for the inhabitants—chiefly porter barrels. By good luck the guard on this train chanced to be a Loyalist—probably the only one on the line—and it was arranged with him that the mails should be searched by Jones while the mail van waited in a siding for several hours at a junction about sixteen miles from Ballybor.

Disguised as harvestmen, Jones and his servant were dropped at night from a Crossley close to the junction and admitted to the mail van by the guard; they at once set to work with electric torches, the batman opening the letters, whilst Jones read and made a note of any useful information, and when they had finished returned in the car to Ballybor Barracks.

On returning to the barracks, Blake and Jones went carefully through the information, and found that one letter addressed to a noted Sinn Feiner, Mr Pat Hegarty, who lived near a village called Lissamore, about eight miles away, gave sufficient evidence on which to hang Mr Hegarty. The writer stated that on the 3rd inst. Hegarty was to expect the arrival of an officer of the I.R.A. in uniform, who would come from the direction of Castleport on a bicycle about 10 P.M. Hegarty was to keep this officer in his house, place the new supply of American arms at his disposal for ambushes, and the officer would not leave the district until Blake had been either killed or kidnapped.

Some months previous to this Blake had been in the south on special duty, and during his absence, MacNot, the D.I. who relieved him temporarily, had called a truce with the Volunteers as long as all appeared well on paper, with the result that the Volunteers had been able to make full preparations for a second effort to wipe out the police in the district. Soon after his return to Ballybor Blake heard strong rumours of a second landing of American arms during his absence—this time, at night at Ballybor quay—and the letter confirmed the rumours.

On the night mentioned in the letter, Blake and Jones, accompanied by a police sergeant and two constables, left Ballybor Barracks in a car after dark in the opposite direction to that in which the village of Lissamore lay, and after going about three miles turned off at a byroad and proceeded by unfrequented roads, until they reached a small wood about half a mile from Hegarty’s house on the Castleport road; here they blocked the road with the car, and waited for their victim.

There was bright starlight, and punctually at 9.45 they saw a cyclist approaching from the direction of Castleport; but so dark was it in the wood that the cyclist only avoided running into the car by throwing himself off, to be quickly seized by two stalwart policemen before he could let go of his handle-bars, gagged and well tied up. They then took him into the wood, removed his uniform, dressed him in an old police uniform, and finally deposited him at the bottom of the car.

Jones then put on the Volunteer officer’s uniform, took his bicycle, and rode on to Hegarty’s house, while the police backed the car up a bohereen and waited there. Before starting out they had arranged that Jones should camouflage his English voice by a Yankee twang, as a brogue was quite beyond his powers.

On arriving at Hegarty’s house, Jones leant his bicycle against the wall, and gave three mysterious knocks at the door. For quite two minutes there was no answer, and just as he was preparing to knock again, the door opened about three inches, and a girl’s voice asked in a whisper who was there, and what he wanted at that time of night.

Now, unfortunately, the letter had not given the name of the I.R.A. officer, so Jones, being afraid to give a name lest the Hegartys might know the officer’s real name, muttered that he was a republican officer, and had come to see Pat Hegarty. The door at once closed, and he could hear the girl open and close a door at the back of the house, and for fully ten minutes nothing further occurred.

This was not part of the play which Jones and Blake had carefully rehearsed in the barracks that afternoon, and Jones was quite nonplussed what to do next. Being young and impetuous, he was just on the point of ruining the whole show by breaking in the door, when it opened and the girl’s voice told him to come in.

The room was pitch dark, and for a second Jones hesitated; but the girl laid her hand on his sleeve, and led him through to a lighted room at the back, where he found Hegarty with his wife and son about to sit down to supper. Hegarty bade him welcome, and the meal started.

After they had eaten for some time in silence, Hegarty asked him several questions about where he had been recently, and of prominent Volunteers in other parts of the country. Jones made the best answers he could, not forgetting to keep up his American accent, and mentioned casually that he had only recently come over from the States, where his parents had been living for some years.

For a time there was silence again, but Jones could feel that the eyes of Maria Hegarty were on him all the time; and presently she began to ask most awkward questions about places and people in the States, and Jones was hard put to it to avoid suspicion. Luckily Maria mentioned that her friends lived in the Eastern States, so that it was easy for Jones’s people to live far away in the west, and the situation was saved.

Supper over, the women cleared the table and retired, while Hegarty produced a large jar of poteen and tumblers, and the three men settled themselves round the fire to drink and talk. For the next two hours Jones extracted all the information he could out of the Hegartys, who, though shy at first, warmed up after several glasses of poteen, and Jones learnt from young Hegarty that the arms were kept under the floors of a disused Protestant school-house in the rectory grounds at Cloonalla, the rector of which was a notorious Loyalist, and would have died sooner than conceal arms knowingly for the rebels.

At this point Jones, who had never tasted poteen before, suddenly realised that he was nearly drunk, and that before he became quite drunk it would be wiser to lie down on a bed. On inquiry, he found that he was to sleep with young Hegarty, the idea of which so staggered him that he felt soberer at once, and determined to try and hold out.

Suddenly there came a violent knocking at the front door, followed by what sounded like the bang of a rifle-butt on the back door. At once the Hegartys put out the light, and started to hustle Jones up a ladder to a loft above the kitchen.

But by now the poteen had quite got to Jones’s head; and when the police went into the kitchen, they found old Hegarty and his son still struggling to get an I.R.A. officer up the ladder. The Hegartys now let go of Jones, who promptly closed with Blake, and a tremendous struggle started in the kitchen.

In a few minutes Jones was overcome, and lay on the floor with a heavy constable sitting on his chest. Blake then ordered the Hegartys to light the lamp, and afterwards to stand against the wall with their hands over their heads, and the constables to take Jones outside and shoot him. But he had not reckoned on Maria, who burst into the kitchen and with piercing screams endeavoured to throw her arms round Jones’s neck. Maria was a strong girl and desperate, and it took Jones and the two constables all they knew to shake her off and struggle out of the house.

Luckily Maria did not attempt to leave the house, and ten seconds after the back door had closed, six revolver shots rang out in quick succession, followed by the sound of a heavy body falling on wet ground. After telling Maria and her mother to go to their bedroom, Blake took Hegarty and his son into the back-yard, and showed them the body of the unfortunate Volunteer officer thrown by the police on the manure-heap. During the next half-hour he had little difficulty in getting all the information he required about local Volunteers (he made no mention of the arms), and after warning them not to move the corpse, the police left the house.

Maria appears to have been greatly taken with Jones’s youthful beauty, and nearly ruined the whole show again by insisting on her father and brother going out to bring in the corpse and lay it out in the kitchen. Luckily the Hegartys were too much afraid, and Jones told Blake afterwards that the agony of lying with his face buried in liquid manure was nothing to the agony he suffered listening to the Hegartys arguing whether his corpse should be left lying on the manure-heap to be eaten by dogs, or brought into the kitchen and laid out as a “dacent son of ould Ireland” should be.

While this argument was still raging a car stopped at the front door, and again the police rushed into the house, out at the back door, dragged the corpse off the manure-heap, through the house, and flung it on top of the real Volunteer officer in the back of the car. After telling the Hegartys that they would throw the body into the lake, the police drove off at a furious rate in the direction of Ballybor.

On returning to barracks, Jones at once rushed off to have a hot bath, while Blake went to his office to find his two clerks snowed up with paper, correspondence which had arrived by the goods mail while they had been out. After they had some food, Jones was all for raiding the rector of Cloonalla at once; but Blake made the fatal mistake of attending to the correspondence then, and putting off the raid to the following night.

The next night they set out with a strong force of police for the Cloonalla Rectory, but found, though there were evident signs that their information had been correct, that the arms had been removed; the rector was most indignant, and they returned defeated.

A few nights afterwards, when at dinner, Blake showed Jones the following paragraph in an Irish paper.

“A BRUTAL MURDER.

“On the night of the 3rd inst., about midnight, armed men in
uniform, some of them wearing trenchcoats, raided the house of Mr
Patrick Hegarty, a respectable farmer, who has never been known to
take any active part in politics. Inside these men found a young
man alleged to have been wearing the uniform of an officer in the
I.R.A.

“This unfortunate young man, without trial of any kind, was at
once dragged outside the house, riddled with bullets, and his body
thrown on a manure-heap in a most callous and brutal manner.

“After brutally ill-treating Mr Hegarty and his family, the
murderers left, to return again, saying that they would take the
body away and throw it into the lake. Though the lake has been
carefully dragged, no sign of this unhappy youth’s body has yet
been found.”

XIII.
SEAL ISLAND.

Sergeant O’Bryan was as fine a type of the R.I.C. as you would meet in half a dozen baronies: of magnificent physique, great courage, full of tact, and with the perfect manners of a true Irishman.

At the end of 1918 O’Bryan found himself sergeant in charge of Cloghleagh Barracks, a comfortable thatched house close to the shores of Lough Moyra, and distant about four miles from Ballybor.

While at Cloghleagh his principal work consisted of trying to put down the making of poteen, which was carried on extensively by the inhabitants of two small islands at the south end of the lake; otherwise the sergeant was on the best of terms with all the people of the district, who often appealed to him for advice and help. And as O’Bryan was a keen fisherman, he often managed to combine business with sport while out in the police boat.

Soon after Blake became D.I. at Ballybor, orders were received from the County Inspector to evacuate Cloghleagh Barracks, and for O’Bryan and his men to proceed to Ballybor Barracks. As the country round Cloghleagh had as yet shown no hostility towards the police, and as it was hard to get a house in any town, O’Bryan asked and obtained leave for his young wife and family to remain on at Cloghleagh Barracks; and here, not long after the sergeant had gone, the youngest O’Bryan was born.

Two days afterwards, on a wet winter’s evening, there came a knock at the barracks door, and when Mrs O’Bryan asked who was there, a man’s voice bade her open in the name of the I.R.A. Obeying, she found two masked men, who covered her with revolvers, and told her they would give her five minutes to clear out of the barracks before they set it on fire.

Mrs O’Bryan had seven children, the eldest about ten years and the youngest two days old, most of whom were in bed by this time. As fast as she could she roused and dressed the children; but the five minutes soon passed, and the men entered and bundled the whole family, some of the children only half clothed, out into the wet and cold of a winter’s night.

Outside Mrs O’Bryan found a large party of Ballybor shop-boys, some of them wearing black masks, led by four strange gunmen. This party had arrived in Cloghleagh about an hour before, and had at once proceeded to picket all roads leading to and from the barracks, and every unfortunate countryman or woman they met making their way along the roads was at once seized by the pickets, taken to the barrack-yard, and there placed face inwards against the wall with their hands on top of their heads.

As soon as the O’Bryan family had been hustled into the road, the gunmen threw paraffin and petrol on the thatch of the barracks, set it alight, and in a very short time the building was a charred ruin. They then mounted their bicycles and rode off into the night, leaving the unfortunate O’Bryans to shift for themselves.

Leaving her family huddled under a hedge, the mother tried to get into two neighbouring houses; but the blighting curse of the I.R.A. was on her and hers, and not a house would even open its door, let alone take them in. In the end she saw that it was hopeless, and returning to her children, did her best to keep them warm with her own body and the few blankets she had managed to bring out of the barracks. And here they spent the night like the beasts of the fields.

Next morning some countryman, braver than the rest, brought word to the Ballybor Barracks of the burning at Cloghleagh, and Sergeant O’Bryan arrived on the scene to find his wife and family perished and starving. Such is the mercy of the I.R.A. for the little children of the R.I.C.

O’Bryan took his family back to Ballybor Barracks, where they were fed and warmed; but in Ireland nowadays a police barracks is no place for little children and women, and before night they must leave. In vain the sergeant tried to find lodgings; he might as well have tried to swim the Atlantic. Every door was slammed in his face directly he made his appeal. But the good Samaritan is not yet extinct in Ireland, and at last the sergeant found a refuge for his family in the empty gardener’s lodge of Ballybor House.

While being turned out of Cloghleagh Barracks, Mrs O’Bryan had recognised two of the incendiaries, who had taken their masks off, as two prominent Sinn Fein shop-boys of Ballybor, afterwards telling her husband their names—Martin Walsh and Peter Lynch—and the sergeant never forgot them.

On a glorious June day Blake was leaning over the parapet of the lower bridge crossing the Owenmore river in Ballybor, watching the fishermen hauling in a net full of silvery grilse, and wishing that he could accept an invitation to fish at Ardcumber. After a time his eye wandered to a fleet of boats below the bridge, some anchored, while others were attached to mooring buoys. From force of habit he started to count them, and on finding that there were no less than thirty-seven, he began to make out their total carrying capacity, which roughly came to the high figure of three hundred.

On the following Sunday he happened to be crossing the same bridge at about ten in the morning, and stopped to look at three boats, packed with young men, a few carrying fishing-rods, starting off down the river. The fishing-rods were there right enough, but something seemed wrong; the men looked too purposeful, and, moreover, eight or nine young men in a boat with a couple of rods is an unusual sight.

Blake watched the boats disappearing fast down the river, and wondered what would be the right word to substitute for fishing. After a while he realised that there was not a boat left on the river, and, further, that if all the boats had carried as many passengers as the three he had just seen start, over three hundred young men from Ballybor had gone a-fishing that Sunday morning, the majority of whom, if not all of them, were shop-boys, the most dangerous element in the town.

The barracks commanded a good view of the reach of the river where the boats were usually moored, and next Sunday at an early hour Blake told off Sergeant O’Bryan with a pair of field-glasses to report how many boats and how many men went out a-fishing. At eleven o’clock the sergeant reported that, as usual, all the thirty-seven boats had started, carrying two hundred and fifty young men, and that among them he had recognised most of the prominent Sinn Fein shop-boys of the town. But he did not add that he had seen Walsh and Lynch.

Five miles below Ballybor the Owenmore river, from being roughly two hundred yards wide, suddenly becomes an inland sea, with a width of over three miles and a length of a mile. Between this inland water and the open sea runs a long narrow range of sand-hills, commonly known as Seal Island, nearly three miles long and with an average width of four hundred yards.

Blake came to the conclusion that the fishing expeditions every Sunday must be connected with this lonely island; but except for drilling—and sand-dunes did not seem a suitable place for a parade—he could think of nothing to which this island would lend itself. Moreover, he knew that if he tried to find out what was going on by observing from the mainland, he would be spotted and the alarm given, and that if he tried to approach the island in a boat from the seaside the fishermen from Dooncarra would give him away.