Chapter VI: Part 6

In the end it was settled to wait until the following Sunday, when Sergeant O’Bryan made his way across country before daylight and hid himself in the tower of an old abbey on the shore of the inland sea, from which the greater part of Seal Island was visible. On the Sunday night he returned to barracks, and reported that the “fishermen” had all landed at the little pier on the south side of the island, left a small guard over the boats, and made their way into the sand-hills, where they were hidden from his view. Some time afterwards, muffled intermittent rifle-fire started, and continued at intervals for several hours, after which the “fishermen” returned to their boats, and rowed back leisurely to Ballybor on the flood tide.

But before Blake could tackle the mystery of Seal Island, he had to turn his attention to a flying column of the I.R.A. which was reported to be making its way towards Ballybor. On the Sunday evening when O’Bryan returned from the old abbey, word was brought in by a Loyalist that the flying column had been seen that day in the Ballyrick mountains, and had taken up its quarters in the empty house of Mr Padraig O’Faherty, member of Dail Eireann for the Ballybor country, who had been for some time past an unwilling guest of the British Government somewhere in England.

Padraig O’Faherty’s house was (advisably was) situated in the middle of a desolate valley in the mountains twenty miles from Ballyrick and the same distance from Ballybor, and could only be approached by a bog road, which winds through mountains and moors without passing a single human habitation for the last eight miles. Moreover, there was not a tree within fifteen miles of the house, so that any attempt at surprise, or even attack, during the day-time was out of the question. At the first sight of a Crossley—and they had a three-mile view of the road both ways from the house—the flying column would simply dissolve into the mountains, probably to reappear the next day attacking a police barrack fifty miles the other side of Ballybor. A good example of the kind of problem the R.I.C. has to solve daily in the wild parts of the west.

That night Blake left Ballybor with an advance-guard of police on bicycles, and making a detour of the town, timed himself to arrive at O’Faherty’s house just before daylight, having arranged that Jones should follow in the Crossleys with his platoon of Blankshires and as many police as could be spared.

Arriving too soon, they hid their bicycles in some high heather near the road, and as soon as it was light enough took up positions at different points round the house, so that every avenue of escape would be swept by their rifle-fire, and waited for the main body to arrive.

As the sky became light, smoke could be seen rising from some of the chimneys, a suspicious sign at that hour of the morning, and shortly afterwards four young men appeared at the door, yawning and stretching themselves. After examining the valley in every direction with field-glasses, they proceeded to bring about forty bicycles out of a stable and park them in military formation outside, after which they re-entered the house.

During the next hour nothing happened, and just as Blake had given up all hope of the main body arriving and was thinking of trying to rush the house with his small force, a large party of men started to leave the house and make for the bicycles, and Blake was forced to give the order to open fire.

Several men were seen to drop at once, while the rest rushed back into the house, carrying their wounded with them, and in a minute heavy fire was opened from every window in the house on the police positions, the firing of a single shot by a policeman being the signal for a hail of bullets in that direction.

Blake was now getting very anxious at the non-arrival of Jones’s party, fearing that instead of capturing the flying column, the Volunteers might capture the police; and in order to deceive them, ordered his men to withhold their fire unless the Volunteers tried to rush them. At last Jones turned up, having been delayed repeatedly by punctures, and completed a strong cordon round the house.

Blake now attempted to draw the cordon closer, but every time the police and soldiers tried to advance by short rushes under heavy covering fire, the Volunteers opened such accurate fire from every window, including machine-gun fire from one of the upper rooms, that he had to desist. Eventually the soldiers silenced the machine-gun with their Lewis guns.

After getting to within three hundred yards of the house, Blake found that, owing to the formation of the ground, it would be impossible to advance any nearer without very heavy losses, and refused to allow Jones to make an assault with his men until all other means of reducing the place had failed.

The day was now wearing on, and for several hours the situation had remained a complete deadlock. The Volunteers were obviously marking time until darkness set in, when they would stand a good chance of slipping through the cordon; and Blake fully realised that if he did not win during daylight, he would surely lose in the dark.

Blake and Jones lay in the heather close together, arguing as to whether they should try to assault the house or not. Jones was keen to try, while Blake feared a failure with heavy losses. The day was by now blazing hot, with a steady south wind, and Jones, after lighting a cigarette, carelessly threw the match away alight, and in a second the dry heather took fire, and was only extinguished with great difficulty. But the fire had given Blake the idea he had been hunting for so long.

Collecting all the matches that the men possessed, Jones made his way round to the south side of the house, and distributed them amongst all the men there, who, at a given signal, set fire to the heather in front of them, and as soon as the house was enveloped in a cloud of smoke, the whole force charged for the house. As soon as they got within range, the police hurled Mills’ bombs through every window, and the soldiers then dashed in with fixed bayonets, but the bombs had done the work.

They found that the Volunteers had suffered heavily, hardly a man escaping a bomb splinter or a Lewis-gun bullet, and the question was how to remove so many wounded. In the house they found bed and bedding for fully forty men, and a great supply of fresh and tinned food; also rifles (chiefly Mauser), American shot-guns, automatics, revolvers, a quantity of ammunition, and a good stock of home-made bombs in a kind of cellar.

Not having enough transport, Blake sent off a fast car to ask for help from the County Inspector. Before leaving, Blake blew up Mr Padraig O’Faherty’s house with the Volunteers’ bombs, and the party returned to Ballybor before dark, victorious, but worn out.

As soon as they had had some sleep, Blake and Jones started to work out their plans for a surprise attack on Seal Island the following Sunday, and found that they had a difficult task before them.

Except at the east and west ends of the island, where the two channels of the river cut through the ridge of sand-hills, all approaches were visible for a long distance, and any idea of surprise out of the question. On the other hand, if an attempt was made to cross the channels, the Volunteers would have ample time to reach their boats at the pier in the middle of the south shore and so escape, while at a low tide it was possible to walk across at one point to the mainland.

In the end they gave it up, and went to consult the C.I., who decided to call in the assistance of the Navy.

On Sunday morning Sergeant O’Bryan duly reported that the boats had gone down the river, as usual with full crews. The previous night a destroyer had crept into the bay with all lights covered, and after landing a large party of bluejackets on Seal Island, had left again.

After allowing sufficient time for the Volunteers to land and get to work, Blake followed in a commandeered motor-launch, and at the same time Jones left the barracks with his platoon in two Crossleys, each with a Lewis gun, one party making for the western mouth of the river, and the other for the eastern, where they proceeded to take up positions covering all escape across the channels.

About three hundred yards from the pier on Seal Island, Blake and his men landed on a small round green island called Gannet Island, and took up positions covering the boats lying alongside the pier. Directly they landed, a small group of men were seen to leave the pier and disappear into the sand-dunes. Meanwhile the launch, with a machine-gun mounted in the bows, proceeded to patrol along the south shore of the island over the shallow water.

After a short time heavy firing broke out in the sand-hills and then died down, to break out again as a large body of Volunteers streamed towards the pier; but before they could reach their boats, Blake’s men on Gannet Island opened fire on them, and the launch sprayed them well with its machine-gun. The Volunteers seemed nonplussed and at a loss what to do; but the bluejackets, advancing in open order with fixed bayonets from the sand-hills, quickly decided them, and they made for the east end of the island, disappearing into a hollow followed by the bluejackets.

Again heavy firing broke out from the direction of the hollow, and continued at intervals for over an hour. Fearing that something was wrong, Blake then embarked his men on the launch, and after landing at the pier, proceeded in the direction of the firing, to find the Volunteers holding a large house which so far the sailors had failed to take.

The house came as a surprise to the police, none of whom had ever set foot on the island before, and there seemed every prospect of another deadlock. The house was old, well built, and commanded a fine field of fire in every direction.

But sailors are handy men, and after a consultation with Blake, the lieutenant in command decided to signal to his destroyer, which had anchored in the bay again, to open fire with her guns on the house. After trying in vain to get a direct view of the house, the destroyer opened indirect fire, a sailor on a high sand-hill signalling the result of each shot. Unfortunately the house was so sheltered by the sides of the hollow that nothing short of a howitzer could have reached it.

But the sailors were not beaten. After putting farther out to sea, the destroyer tried again, and this time at the third shot got home with a direct hit, and in a few minutes it was seen that the house was on fire.

Sailors and police now held their fire, and waited for the exciting moment when the Volunteers would be forced by the flames to bolt. A quarter of an hour, half an hour passed, but not a Volunteer bolted from the now fiercely burning house. At last the roof fell in with a crash and shower of sparks, and every man gripped his rifle, thinking that at last the rebels would be smoked out; but nothing happened. They had either vanished into thin air or were roasted alive. Still the sailors and police waited on, thinking that in the end somebody must come out. Without any warning one gable-end of the house suddenly fell outwards, and simultaneously firing broke out from the east channel of the river, about five hundred yards away.

The spell was now broken, and every man dashed in the direction of the firing. When they reached high ground they could see many of the Volunteers swimming across the channel, while those who could not swim were running towards the north side of the island.

The half-platoon of the Blankshires, with Sergeant O’Bryan as a guide, had taken up their position in the sand-hills on the mainland commanding the passage across the east channel, and had only been interested spectators of parts of the battle up to the time the gable fell, when, to their astonishment, they suddenly saw the Volunteers streaming out of the sand-hills and dashing into the river in front of them.

Foremost among the swimmers Sergeant O’Bryan saw, to his great joy, the heads of Walsh and Lynch, their foot-long hair floating like manes behind them, and knew that his enemies had been delivered into his hands. By the time the swimmers reached the mainland, and found themselves covered by the rifles and Lewis gun of the soldiers, they had had enough, and put up their hands of their own accord.

The sailors and police now beat the island towards the west end, and after a hard scramble over the sand-hills captured the remaining Volunteers.

A careful search of the place where the Volunteers had suddenly appeared out of the ground showed that there was an underground passage running from the house to within a short distance of the shore, probably used in former days for smuggling purposes.

A further search explained the reason of the Volunteers’ Sunday visits to the island. In a valley of the sand-hills they found an up-to-date rifle-range, and afterwards learnt that it had been built during the early part of the war, and frequently used for firing musketry courses by units of the New Armies training in Ireland.

XIV.
A FAMILY AFFAIR.

The mac Nessa, Prince of Murrisk, claimed descent from one of the Nine Hostages; and though proud of his lineage, he was still prouder of the boast that, up to comparatively recent times, not one of his ancestors had died in his bed. A violent death in some form or other, chiefly the “middoge,” accounting for one and all.

Murrisk Abbey is a modern house, as old places go in Ireland, but in the grounds there are the ruins of a very old castle, built in the days when the O’Fogartys ruled a countryside as far horse could gallop in any direction during the hours of daylight. Here the mac Nessa had spent most of his life, hunting, shooting, fishing, and farming, and incidentally bringing up a family of two sons and four daughters.

Both the sons, Cormac and Dominic, had served during the war in the British Army. Dominic willingly and eagerly, and Cormac, the elder, only because he feared his father, who was a staunch Loyalist.

The spring of 1919 found the two brothers at home. Cormac for good and all as he believed, and Dominic until he could decide how and where to make a living.

In England there is nowadays a large class whose one and only object in life appears to be to take sides with any and every enemy of their country, be he Boer, Boche, Bolshevik, or Sinn Feiner. This party never ceases to aid and abet these enemies by every means in their power, short of endangering their own skins, and at the same time never let an opportunity pass of accusing our soldiers and police (in Ireland) of every abominable crime which man has been known to commit. During the war this class of Englishmen greatly puzzled and irritated the French, as they have every nation that has ever admired the British as a race. A French interpreter once said to a British officer, “Many of your race are noble, the rest are swine.”

In Ireland, by some lucky chance, we have escaped this detestable and despicable breed of man, to whom a sincere rebel is infinitely preferable, but at the same time we have a class of men and women who are first cousins to them. In many good Irish families, noted for generations past for their unswerving loyalty, there is often one member who is an out-and-out rebel. Luckily he or she has generally less brains than the rest of the family, and is looked upon as a harmless lunatic, and one of the crosses which have to be borne in the world.

A plausible reason often advanced for this sporadic appearance of a rebel in a loyal family is the complete lack of conversation at the dinner-table, once sport has been exhausted, when all members of a family see eye to eye in politics; and as a “mutual admiration society” quickly palls on many young men and women, one member expresses contrary political opinions to the others out of pure cussedness, and the anger and recriminations of the rest quickly turn the bored jibber into a red-hot rebel.

Not many weeks after the brothers had returned home from the war, Cormac, who had spent many hours of his youth reading books and pamphlets on the wrongs England had inflicted on Ireland instead of hunting and shooting, and had even appeared at breakfast once in a weird ginger-coloured kilt, raised the red flag of Sinn Fein one evening at the dinner-table. Probably he did it from sheer boredom, hoping to draw his father into a wordy argument and so pass the time. The result, however, had a far-reaching effect on the lives of both Cormac and Dominic.

The mac Nessa was a big man and Cormac was not, and but for the intervention of Dominic, the elder son would probably have had an unpleasant and painful eviction from the dinner-table. However, the old chieftain controlled himself with a great effort, but as soon as the servants had withdrawn he ordered Cormac to leave the house the following morning for good and all, and in a sullen rage Cormac stalked out of the room.

Leaving word with the butler to pack his kit, Cormac made his way to the house of the parish priest, about two and a half miles from the abbey, where, being a Roman Catholic, he hoped to receive sympathy.

If there is one Church in the world which might be expected to range itself wholeheartedly on the side of law and order it is the Church of Rome, whose very existence depends on obedience, and it must have been a source of wonder to many English people why, at the very beginning of the Sinn Fein movement, this Church did not at once come into the open and denounce Sinn Fein from the altar in plain and unmistakable terms. Any thinking priest must know that under a semi-Bolshevik republic the power of the Roman Catholic Church would be gone, and gone for ever.

Cormac found the old priest kind and gentle as ever, but firm in his refusal to listen to any Sinn Fein views, and in a fresh rage he left to make his way to the curate’s lodging in a neighbouring farmhouse, and here he was received with open arms.

The curate quickly perceived what a valuable recruit Cormac might make, and before he left to spend his last night at the abbey, took advantage of the boy’s excited mood to make him swear to join the I.R.A.

After a very early breakfast, Cormac left his home on the fifteen-mile drive to Ballybor, where he caught the mail train for Dublin, his heart full of hatred of his family, and his mind set on revenge.

A week of dirty Dublin lodgings convinced Cormac that he had made a fool of himself, and putting his pride in his pocket, he wrote to his father asking to be allowed to return home. By return of post came a typewritten post-card from the mac Nessa to the effect that while he lived no rebel should ever darken his door.

That evening two strangers called at his rooms, and after making certain of his identity, explained that a message had been received at the Sinn Fein headquarters in Dublin from Father Michael of Murrisk that Cormac was prepared to join in the Sinn Fein movement, and offering him a high-sounding position. Cormac’s vanity was flattered, and he accepted at once.

Knowing that Cormac’s name would carry great weight with many half-hearted supporters and waverers, the Sinn Fein leaders employed him solely on propaganda work, sending him to every part of the country, not excepting the north, to speak at meetings, and always taking good care that his name appeared in large letters on the posters, and kind friends were not wanting to send the mac Nessa cuttings of his son’s speeches from every Irish and English paper in which they appeared.

During his travels Cormac at different times met in trains and hotels many friends of his own class, who one and all, to their great credit, refused to speak to him, and this treatment embittered him still more against all Loyalists, more especially against his father and brother.

After one trip to a town in the south, where he had tried to enter a club, and had been ejected by the hall porter, he offered himself on his return to Dublin for “active service,” and was at once sent to the Ballybor district to organise outrages, the Sinn Fein leaders knowing that the name of O’Fogarty was one to conjure with in that country even in these days.

In the meantime Dominic had been asked by the authorities to join the newly-formed Auxiliary Division of the R.I.C., in order that his knowledge of the Ballybor country might be utilised, and after a short training in Dublin found himself quartered in Ballybor with a platoon of Cadets.

By a coincidence the two brothers arrived in Ballybor within a week of each other, Cormac an avowed Sinn Feiner, and Dominic an officer in the Auxiliaries, who were about to take on the rebels at their own breed of warfare.

Every kind of news travels fast in country districts in Ireland, and within twelve hours of the brothers’ arrival it is doubtful if you could have found, even in the mountains of Ballyrick, a child who did not know of the O’Fogartys’ return. Moreover, there is nothing an Irishman loves more than a fight, and one between two brothers of the best-known family in three counties, with armed men at their back, was something worth looking forward to, even in these days of murder and outrage. And at local race-meetings in the west bets were freely taken on the issue of the fight between Cormac and Dominic O’Fogarty.

All thought of King or Republic was now completely forgotten in Ballybor, and for many miles around the countryside was divided into two camps. Most of the Volunteers, all nominally, were for Cormac, whilst all Loyalists and a good many Volunteers secretly supported Dominic, with the result that, so keen were both sides to outmanœuvre each other, the police obtained far more information than they had for a long time past.

Dominic made up his mind to take the offensive straight away, and learning from one of his Volunteer sympathisers that his brother, when in Ballybor, always slept in the house of a man called Ryan, made arrangements to raid the place, and at any rate to put Cormac out of action for some time to come.

However, Cormac learning of his brother’s kindly intention, thought that it would be an excellent opportunity to raid Murrisk for arms on that particular night, and incidentally to get some of his own back from his father. Leaving Ballybor as soon as it was dark with a dozen men, they bicycled to Murrisk, and after parking their machines in a wood near the main road, proceeded to knock up the house. The butler opened the door, but did not recognise Cormac in a mask, though his walk seemed vaguely familiar to him.

The mac Nessa was no coward, and on entering the inner hall, the raiders found themselves covered by the old man with a double-barrelled shot-gun. Cormac had expected that his father would show fight, and knowing where the electric light switch was in the hall, had arranged with his men that when he turned the light off they should throw themselves flat on the floor.

As the light went out the mac Nessa fired both barrels, which went harmlessly over the raiders’ heads, and before he could reload they had him down and tied up. Cormac then turned on the light, and by now, half-mad with rage and excitement, would have gone for his father; but his men kept him back, and when they had secured all the arms in the house under Cormac’s directions, they hustled him away.

In the meantime Dominic with a party of Cadets had raided Ryan’s house, but, of course, drew blank.

Early the next morning a mounted messenger brought word to the barracks in Ballybor that Cormac and a party of armed and masked men had raided Murrisk during the night and removed all arms and ammunition. That afternoon Dominic put up large notices all over Ballybor to the effect that if he caught Cormac in the town he would horsewhip him in the market-place.

Both the town and countryside were in a wild state of excitement after the Murrisk raid, Cormac’s supporters acclaiming his victory, while Dominic’s could only reply, “Wait and see.” And so keen were Dominic’s party to help their man, that information of every possible kind and description literally poured into the barracks by every post.

Like children, as ever, the people quickly forgot that they were either Loyalists or rebels, the blood-feud between the two brothers being far more interesting and exciting; and it is probable that, if only sufficient arms had been forthcoming on both sides, the brothers’ feud would have developed into a pitched battle, and if the police had interfered both parties would then have joined forces and turned on the common enemy.

After leaving Murrisk, Cormac, knowing that Ballybor would now be too hot for him, made for some caves in the Slievenamoe Mountains to the east of the town, and here he remained. Some time before these caves had been fitted up like dug-outs in France, while the food supply gave no difficulty, every house at the foot of the mountains having to supply rations on requisition for any gunmen using these caves. Here Cormac had plenty of time on his hands, and thought out a clever plan to put Dominic out of action.

Shortly before Cormac raided Murrisk, a new and simple manager had arrived at one of the Ballybor banks. The arrival of a new bank manager in an Irish provincial town is always the signal for all in financial difficulties to get busy and try their luck with the fresh arrival, and amongst the new manager’s first visitors came the Urban Council, who by sheer bluff managed to get their already big overdraft increased by some thousand pounds. A fresh election being within sight, they then proceeded to borrow a derelict steam-roller from the County Council, who had practically ceased to function, and to spend the money steam-rolling the streets of Ballybor. In this way they hoped to catch the votes of the labourers by the payment of high wages, and of the shopkeepers and owners of cars by improved streets.

Being in a great hurry to get on with the good work, they forgot that the streets had never been steam-rolled before, and that the gas-and water-pipes were very near the surface, with the result that for every yard of street the roller passed over one or more gas- or water-pipes burst, and the town soon smelt like the inside of a gas-works.

The consequent proceedings give a very fair idea of the Celtic capacity for public affairs, and of how the country would be run under “Home Rule,” or any other kind of rule except the “Union.”

Instead of stopping the steam-rolling until all mains and pipes had been relaid at a sufficient depth to resist the rolling, they solemnly proceeded to roll, burst, and mend from one end of the main street to the other, to the huge delight of all the local plumbers, who also had votes.

Luckily the money was exhausted by the time the main street was finished, and though the greater part of the surface was excellent, the ridges made by digging up the pipes at intervals would break the axle of an unsuspecting stranger’s car, to the great benefit of the local garages.

The police barracks at Ballybor are situated in a “cul-de-sac” off the main street, at the corners of which stand the principal hotel and a bank, and all cars going to or from the barracks must pass this corner.

Word was brought to Cormac in his mountain dug-out that his brother left Ballybor Barracks early every morning with a Crossley full of Cadets, and that they spent the whole day and often most of the night searching the surrounding country for him. Before leaving Ballybor he had witnessed the steam-rolling comic opera, and bicycling by night to Ballybor, he lay up during the day, got in touch with a plumber, borrowed his tools and barrow, and late that afternoon (in the plumber’s clothes, and slouch hat pulled well over his face) started to dig up the road between the bank and the hotel.

Human nature always seems to regard the digging up of a street in the light of a huge joke, and during his work Cormac was not only chaffed by the bank manager and the hotel loafers, but by the police themselves. When it was dusk he was joined by a Volunteer with a charge of gelignite, which had been raided from a Government ship off the south-east coast and brought to the west by car, and the two proceeded to lay a contact-mine in the centre of the road. They then filled in the earth, returned the tools and barrow to the plumber, and bicycled back to the mountains.

While Cormac was busy laying his mine, Dominic and Blake were poring over an Ordnance-map in the barracks not sixty yards away. Having come to the conclusion that it was quite useless to search the countryside piecemeal, and hearing a rumour of what was going on in the mountains through one of the forced food contractors having made a bitter complaint to a passing police patrol, they were now planning to surround the southern half of the Slievenamoe Mountains, and organising a great drive, and the next two days were spent working out the details.

About 9 A.M. a mineral-water lorry, in order to turn, backed up the cul-de-sac, and the mine being well and truly laid, disappeared in a sheet of flame, wrecking the bank and hotel. Hardly had the sound of the explosion died away, and before the police left the barracks to investigate, every young man in Ballybor of the shopkeeper class had his bicycle out and was off as hard as he could pedal. A Volunteer greatly resembles a mountain hare: directly the hunt is up he makes at top speed for high ground, and the harder you press both the faster they leg it up the mountains. Blake and Dominic managed to control their men, and no reprisals followed, the only arrest being the unfortunate plumber who had lent his outfit to Cormac, and whose bicycle had been “borrowed” by an agitated shop-boy.

At the present time a big drive in the west presents great difficulties. Very few, often none, of the R.I.C. or Auxiliaries know anything of the many wild and mountainous parts in their districts, and the soldiers are invariably complete strangers.

To reconnoitre the ground beforehand is out of the question, and it is difficult to induce reliable guides to act.

The part of the mountains Blake and Dominic had selected to drive lay about nine miles due east of Ballybor, divided by a deep pass from the remainder of the range to the north, and ending in a wild rocky valley intersected by the Owenmore river to the south, and the total area to be covered was about eighteen square miles of mountains, glens, cliffs, and bogs. It was not possible to start operations before 3 A.M. (the month being August), and they would have to stop soon after 11 P.M. (summer time), which gave them roughly twenty hours to beat the eighteen square miles.

Taking the total number of troops at their disposal, Blake divided them into groups of six, giving them nearly a hundred groups. Then Dominic picked out from a contoured Ordnance-map the same number of points surrounding the mountains, from all of which there was a good view and field of fire, and it was arranged that as many groups as possible should have either a Vickers machine-gun or a Lewis gun.

The actual drive was to be carried out by the police. The Cadets under Dominic were to start from the north end in a crescent formation and advance towards the highest point, which lay nearly in the centre of the area, while the R.I.C. under Blake were to advance from the south.

Dominic knew every yard of the mountains, having shot grouse there with his brother since boyhood, but the difficulty was to procure a guide for Blake’s party, none of whom had ever set foot on the mountains. With much persuasion, however, Dominic at last induced a man, who had been one of the mac Nessa’s game-watchers on the mountains for years, to act as guide. This man had to be promised a large sum of money, and to save him from the revenge of Sinn Fein, it was arranged that directly after the drive he should be safely got away to enlist in the British Army under an assumed name, and, if he wished, be sent straight off to India.

All officers and N.C.O.’s were given maps showing the position of every group marked, and it was arranged that the police should be in position at 3 A.M. and the troops half an hour later. A few days before the date fixed for the drive Dominic and his Auxiliaries disappeared from Ballybor, and it was given out that they had gone to Co. Cork.

Sharp at 3 A.M., on a perfect August day, the drive began. Dominic and the Cadets had to start from the shores of a large lake lying in a cup at the top of the pass, and climb a thousand feet before reaching the first valley in the mountains. At the top they halted for a breather and to admire the wonderful view. To the east the summer sun was fast rising, all around them stretched miles of heather-clad hills, and away to the north-west lay the sea, a pearly grey-blue in the fast growing light.

After a rest Dominic got his men into formation, spreading them out as far as possible without losing touch, while he kept a small party in the rear to go to any threatened point where the gunmen might try to break through the cordon. The Cadets had brought their signallers with them, equipped with a heliograph and flags, who remained with the reserve party.

On reaching higher ground Dominic could see with his glasses the small groups of soldiers taking up their positions, while far away in the plain to the eastward the Owenmore river wound like a blue thread through the dark bogland. A Cadet on his left nearly walked on a pack of grouse, which swung right-handed, passing within twenty yards of Dominic, and reminding him vividly of other days.

Very soon the Cadets began to feel the heat of the sun, and the hard going began to tell on several of them. Sitting in a Crossley is bad training for walking a grouse mountain.

After going about a mile and a half a party of men were seen in front making eastward at full speed down a valley, the end of which Dominic knew was held by a group of soldiers with a machine-gun. Halting his men, he then brought his right wing well round so as to cut off the gunmen’s retreat to the west should they attempt to break back.

The fleeing gunmen were soon lost sight of in dead ground, but presently the sound of firing was heard from the far end of the valley, and after a time the gunmen were seen retreating across the Cadets’ front, and making as hard as they could for the west side of the mountains.

At this point Blake’s men came in sight from the south, and quickly getting in touch with the Cadets’ right wing, completed the cordon. The gunmen, seeing that they were surrounded and all retreat cut off, split up into two parties, took up positions on two kopjes, and waited for the attack.

As a frontal attack would have entailed heavy loss, and seeing that there was another kopje on Blake’s side which would command and enfilade the gunmen’s positions, Dominic ordered the Cadets to pin the gunmen down by their fire, and at the same time sent a signaller to Blake telling him to occupy the commanding kopje. This Blake did, and also sent to the nearest group of soldiers for a machine-gun.

The fight lasted for two hours, and though the gunmen were always subject to a hot fire, and several times a man was seen to spring into the air and collapse in the heather, yet they stuck it gamely until the machine-gun was brought up and opened a heavy fire on both kopjes; the remaining gunmen then stood up and put up their hands.

On the two kopjes the police found twelve dead gunmen and twenty-eight prisoners, eighteen of whom were wounded. And amongst the dead Dominic found Cormac, shot through the heart.

After arranging for the burial of the dead (with the exception of Cormac, who was carried down the mountain-side on a stretcher) and the removal of the prisoners, Dominic took a party of Cadets to search some caves which he knew of about half a mile to the south-west. Here, as he expected, he found that the gunmen had been living in comparative comfort. One cave had been used as a living-room and contained chairs and tables, while two smaller inner ones were fitted up with bunks in tiers like a Boche dug-out, and had heather for bedding.

Towards evening the worn-out Cadets got back to their Crossleys on the pass road which ran along the north shore of the lake; and after leaving a party with a searchlight mounted on a tender to stop any stray gunmen escaping during the night on bicycles by the road to the east, Dominic started for Murrisk in a Crossley with his brother’s body.

Many an evening the two brothers had driven home together over the same road after a happy day’s grouse-shooting, never dreaming that their last journey together would be to bring Cormac’s body to the home of their ancestors.

The mac Nessa met the party in the great hall of Murrisk, and his ancestors looking down from the walls must surely have thought that they were back again in their own times of everlasting war and sudden death.

XV.
THE AMERICAN NURSE.

In the early ‘eighties there lived in the Cloonalla district a small farmer named Peter Walsh, who was what is generally called in the west a bad farmer, which is simply the Irish way of saying that he was lazy and good-for-nothing, and for several years Walsh had been in the clutches of the Cloonalla gombeen man, the local big shopkeeper.

The ways of the gombeen man are quite simple and usually most successful, the success largely depending on a run of bad potato crops, as generally after two successive failures the majority of the farmers in a poor mountainous district have no money at all. They are thus forced to go to the gombeen wallah, who advances them so much money, according to the size of their farm and their capacity for drink, as a mortgage on the farm at a high rate of interest. But instead of paying them money he gives credit for goods, and there is a verbal agreement that he will not foreclose as long as the farmer deals solely with him and makes no bones about the prices he is charged. Formerly this was the terrible millstone which used to hang for life round the necks of many western peasants.

However, Walsh’s millstone troubled him not one bit, and he “staggered” along for several years until there came a sequence of three bad and indifferent crops, which finished him completely. Seeing that Walsh was not going to make any effort, the gombeen man closed on the farm, and Peter, the wife, and their one child, Bridget, aged three years, left Ireland for America, illogically cursing the British Government for their own sins and those of the gombeen devil.

Now the gombeen man had no use for Peter’s farm himself, so he proceeded to make Peter’s brother, Michael, drunk one Saturday night in his shop, and made the farm over to him with the former conditions, not forgetting to double the mortgage.

In due course Michael died without kith or kin saving Bridget, now a hospital nurse in New York, who one day received a letter from a Ballybor solicitor informing her of her uncle’s death, and that she was the sole heiress to his two farms in Cloonalla, and asking for instructions.

From her youth upwards Nurse Bridget had heard nothing but abuse of the so-called English tyranny in Ireland—in fact, up to the time when she went to be trained hospital nurse, her only knowledge of England and Ireland was the thousand and one supposed wrongs which Ireland had suffered at the hands of England since the days of Cromwell, and her one ambition in life was to see the downfall of the British Empire, and with that the freedom of her fatherland. In America, the Irish children find plenty of mentors of hate of England, both among their own people and the Germans.

In time, when Bridget began to earn some money as a nurse, she joined every Irish anti-British society, secret and otherwise, she could, and at the time of her leaving the States to take over her uncle’s farms possessed more wonderful and weird badges and medallions than she could conveniently wear at once: incidentally the societies relieved her of most of her earnings “to provide powder and shot for ould Ireland.”

On the liner, Bridget met many of her race, mostly men and women who had worked hard for some years in the States and saved enough money to return to Ireland, where they hoped to buy a small farm or shop and never to wander any more. One and all were longing to be in Ireland once again, and not one ever mentioned a word of the “brutal English tyranny” until Bridget started the subject.

Bridget landed at Queenstown, made her way to Cork, and set out on the long and tedious cross-country railway journey to the west. At the best of times the journey is a slow one, but during 1920 it became much worse owing to the great uncertainty of any train reaching its destination. Trains were even known to stand in a station for days on end while the driver, the stoker, the guard, and the station employees argued and re-argued what they would do and what they would not do.

Twice during the journey Bridget had glimpses of the brutal British soldiery when two military parties wished to travel on the train, and the driver and guard refused to start until the armed assassins of the British Government left. At first Bridget was slightly confused; no doubt the soldiers were terrible blackguards, but at the time they seemed to be quiet and inoffensive, and she remembered frequently having seen American soldiers in the trains in the States, and the drivers and guards there made no objection.

However, a fellow-passenger explained to her that the soldiers used the Irish railways to go from one part of the country to another in order to murder the unfortunate soldiers of the Republican Army, and that the guard and driver, as became good citizens and soldiers of the Irish Republic, were quite right to refuse to aid and abet the British by carrying them on the train.

At a junction some thirty miles from Ballybor she changed into a composite train carrying passengers and goods, and soon after leaving the junction the train pulled up suddenly in a cutting, and there was loud shouting and firing. Bridget was greatly alarmed and excited, thinking that she would now see the British troops commit some of the terrible crimes she had heard so much about in the States—she had heard nothing of the crimes of the I.R.A.

It takes a long time in the west of Ireland to do anything, and it was quite twenty minutes before Bridget realised that this was a hold-up by the I.R.A., and that all the passengers were to get out and line up at the top of the cutting. The confusion then became terrific, half the passengers going up one side of the cutting, and the remainder up the other.

Wild-looking masked bandits then started shouting to the people to come down and go to the other side, whereupon a general post ensued.

Finally, the whole lot was collected together, searched, and at last allowed to take their seats in the train again; but the performance was not by any means over yet. Next, the waggons were all broken open, the contents thrown on the line, and then returned except Belfast merchandise, which was made into a heap—coffins, cases of jam and tea, boxes of linen, &c.—sprinkled with petrol, and then set on fire.

Bridget arrived at Ballybor on a summer’s evening, and at once set out for Cloonalla. Ballybor appeared a mean and dirty little town to her American eyes, and she hoped for better things at Cloonalla—a good hotel and decent stores. After an hour and a half’s drive the carman pulled up outside Cloonalla Chapel, and asked his fare where she wanted to go to. Not realising where she was, Bridget replied, to Cloonalla, the best hotel in Cloonalla, only to learn to her astonishment that the place boasted only one shop and no hotel of any kind. And in the end she was thankful to accept the hospitality of a farmer’s wife, and share a stuffy bed with the woman’s daughter.

Bridget received a shock when she saw her uncle’s house—she said that they wouldn’t put a pig in it in America—and the idea she had had of settling down there quickly vanished. However, she determined to stay on awhile in Ireland, and help to the best of her ability the famous soldiers of the I.R.A. (she had not realised yet that the bandits who had held up the train were the famous soldiers) of whom she had heard so much in America.

On visiting the solicitor in Ballybor, she found that her uncle had left her a few hundred pounds, and this she gave to the man Hanley, with whom she lodged, to buy cattle with to stock her farm.

As soon as Bridget had settled down she found ample scope for her political ambitions both in Cloonalla and Ballybor, where most of the young people of her own age found talking sedition far easier and more amusing than hard work; and as everybody seemed to have money to burn, she had a great time—political meetings, drilling, picnics, and dances. And after joining the Cumann na Ban she volunteered for active service with the local company of the I.R.A., little knowing what was before her.

At first the game was amusing enough, teaching the young men the rudiments of first aid, and lecturing to the girls and youths of Cloonalla in the school-house in the evening, followed by dancing until the early hours of the morning; and probably Bridget would have gone no further than this but for the unfortunate arrival of two professional gunmen in Cloonalla, who had been sent from Dublin to carry out the usual series of outrages and then to vanish before the storm burst.

The gunmen came with a list of local undesirables (from the I.R.A. point of view) to be removed—many of the names had probably been given out of private spite through the means of anonymous letters, a very favourite practice in Ireland—and at once proceeded to work, or rather to see that the Cloonalla Volunteers did the dirty work.

The following week seemed to Bridget like a horrible nightmare, starting with the murder of ex-soldiers, who paid the full penalty of being so stupid as to believe that the British Government would protect its friends and supporters in Ireland, and culminating in the revolting crime of the murder of a Protestant clergyman, who was seventy-nine years of age.

Early in the morning, before the household was up, the old man heard a loud knocking at the hall door, and on coming downstairs found the usual party of armed and masked men, who ordered him to follow them. He did so, and had no sooner reached the road than they shot him dead,—to be found by his old wife—the servants dared not leave the house—lying in the middle of the road in a pool of blood.

That night the gunmen vanished, and with them the orgy of crime ceased for a time at any rate. There is no doubt that these revolting and apparently purposeless murders are instigated by the I.R.A., but nevertheless they are carried out by the peasants in most cases, and they will have to bear the stigma now and always. Under a determined leader they appear to take kindly to “political murder.”

Bridget was physically and mentally sick with horror, and made up her mind to return to the States as soon as she could dispose of her farms, and to this end bicycled into Ballybor to arrange with an auctioneer to sell the farms for her by public auction at the earliest possible date. The following day the auctioneer inspected the farms, and declared that she ought to get at least a thousand pounds for her interest in each farm, and fixed a near date for the auction, though he was very doubtful if the I.R.A. would permit it, and advised her to try and obtain their consent. But the last thing in the world Bridget wanted was to have any further dealings with the I.R.A., and the auctioneer left promising to do his best.

That night after the Hanleys and Bridget had gone to bed they received a visit from the captain of the Cloonalla Volunteers, who wanted to know if it was true that Bridget was going to try and sell her farms by public auction. Bridget told him that it was quite true, and that she was going to return to America. Whereupon he told her that the I.R.A. would not allow this, and that if she wanted to dispose of her land a Sinn Fein Court would value it, and the Republican Government would then take it over and pay her in Dail Eireann Bonds (to be redeemed at their face value when Ireland is free and the Republic established), and after telling her to stop the auction he left.

In a few days Bridget received an order to attend a Sinn Fein Arbitration Court in Cloonalla Chapel at night, where the judges valued her farms at one hundred pounds each (loud applause in Court by the men who hoped to get the farms), and ordered her to hand over the land the following day to the Cloonalla Volunteer captain, who had every intention of keeping the farms himself.

Bridget protested loudly that she was a citizen of the United States, that the farms were hers, and that if this was a free country like America she was entitled to get the full market value for them, which she had been told was quite two thousand pounds; and lastly, that she had proved herself a good patriot, and burst into tears.

All of no avail—the judges gave her three days to get rid of her cattle and hand over the land, at the end of which time if she had not complied she was to be deported, and her farms and cattle confiscated.

Bridget returned to the Hanleys’ house to find her boxes packed and dumped in the road, together with her bicycle, and the door of the house locked, and this in the middle of the night. After trying in vain to gain admittance she sat down on one of her boxes and started to cry.

Towards dawn she again made a piteous appeal to the Hanleys to be allowed to stay in their house for the rest of the night, and that she would leave the following day; and for answer Mrs Hanley cursed her, and warned her that if she was not gone before daylight her hair would be cut off, and “God only knew what else would happen to her.” In a blind terror she mounted her bicycle and rode madly into Ballybor, where she had to wait some hours in the streets before she could gain admittance to a lodging-house.