VIII
THE HOLY ISLAND
For three days of November a white fog stood motionless over thecountry. All day and all night smothered booms and bangs away to thesouth-west told that the Fastnet gun was hard at work, and the sirensof the American liners uplifted their monstrous female voices as theyfelt their way along the coast of Cork. On the third afternoon thewind began to whine about the windows of Shreelane, and the barometerfell like a stone. At 11 P.M. the storm rushed upon us with the roarand the suddenness of a train; the chimneys bellowed, the tall oldhouse quivered, and the yelling wind drove against it, as a man putshis shoulder against a door to burst it in.
We none of us got much sleep, and if Mrs. Cadogan is to bebelieved--which experience assures me she is not--she spent the nightin devotional exercises, and in ministering to the panic-strickenkitchen-maid by the light of a Blessed candle. All that day the stormscreamed on, dry-eyed; at nightfall the rain began, and next morning,which happened to be Sunday, every servant in the house was a messengerof Job, laden with tales of leakages, floods, and fallen trees, andinflated with the ill-concealed glory of their kind in evil tidings.To Peter Cadogan, who had been to early Mass, was reserved the crowningsatisfaction of reporting that a big vessel had gone on the rocks atYokahn Point the evening before, and was breaking up fast; it wasrumoured that the crew had got ashore, but this feature, beingfavourable and uninteresting, was kept as much as possible in thebackground. Mrs. Cadogan, who had been to America in an ocean liner,became at once the latest authority on shipwrecks, and was of opinionthat "whoever would be dhrownded, it wouldn't be thim lads o' sailors.Sure wasn't there the greatest storm ever was in it the time meself wason the say, and what'd thim fellows do but to put us below entirely inthe ship, and close down the doors on us, the way theirselves'd leg itwhen we'd be dhrownding!"
This view of the position was so startlingly novel that Philippawithdrew suddenly from the task of ordering dinner, and fell up thekitchen stairs in unsuitable laughter. Philippa has not the mostrudimentary capacity for keeping her countenance.
That afternoon I was wrapped in the slumber, balmiest and mostprofound, that follows on a wet Sunday luncheon, when Murray, our D.I.of police, drove up in uniform, and came into the house on the top of agust that set every door banging and every picture dancing on thewalls. He looked as if his eyes had been blown out of his head, and hewanted something to eat very badly.
"I've been down at the wreck since ten o'clock this morning," he said,"waiting for her to break up, and once she does there'll be trouble.She's an American ship, and she's full up with rum, and bacon, andbutter, and all sorts. Bosanquet is there with all his coastguards,and there are five hundred country people on the strand at this moment,waiting for the fun to begin. I've got ten of my fellows there, and Iwish I had as many more. You'd better come back with me, Yeates, wemay want the Riot Act before all's done!"
The heavy rain had ceased, but it seemed as if it had fed the windinstead of calming it, and when Murray and I drove out of Shreelane,the whole dirty sky was moving, full sailed, in from the south-west,and the telegraph wires were hanging in a loop from the post outsidethe gate. Nothing except a Skebawn car-horse would have faced thewhooping charges of the wind that came at us across Corran Lake;stimulated mysteriously by whistles from the driver, Murray's yellowhireling pounded woodenly along against the blast, till the smell ofthe torn sea-weed was borne upon it, and we saw the Atlantic waves cometowering into the bay of Tralagough.
The ship was, or had been, a three-masted barque; two of her masts weregone, and her bows stood high out of water on the reef that forms oneof the shark-like jaws of the bay. The long strand was crowded withblack groups of people, from the bank of heavy shingle that had beenhurled over on to the road, down to the slope where the waves pitchedthemselves and climbed and fought and tore the gravel back with them,as though they had dug their fingers in. The people were nearly allmen, dressed solemnly and hideously in their Sunday clothes; most ofthem had come straight from Mass without any dinner, true to that Irishinstinct that places its fun before its food. That the wreck wasregarded as a spree of the largest kind was sufficiently obvious. Ourcar pulled up at a public-house that stood askew between the road andthe shingle; it was humming with those whom Irish publicans are pleasedto call "Bona feeds," and sundry of the same class were clustered roundthe door. Under the wall on the lee-side was seated a bagpiper,droning out "The Irish Washerwoman" with nodding head and tapping heel,and a young man was cutting a few steps of a jig for the delectation ofa group of girls.
So far Murray's constabulary had done nothing but exhibit theirimposing chest measurement and spotless uniforms to the Atlantic, andBosanquet's coastguards had only salvaged some spars, the debris of aboat, and a dead sheep, but their time was coming. As we stumbled downover the shingle, battered by the wind and pelted by clots of foam,some one beside me shouted, "She's gone!" A hill of water hadsmothered the wreck, and when it fell from her again nothing was leftbut the bows, with the bowsprit hanging from them in a tangle ofrigging. The clouds, bronzed by an unseen sunset, hung low over her;in that greedy pack of waves, with the remorseless rocks above andbelow her, she seemed the most lonely and tormented of creatures.
About half-an-hour afterwards the cargo began to come ashore on the topof the rising tide. Barrels were plunging and diving in the trough ofthe waves, like a school of porpoises; they were pitched up the beachin waist-deep rushes of foam; they rolled down again, and were swung upand shouldered by the next wave, playing a kind of Tom Tiddler's groundwith the coastguards. Some of the barrels were big and dangerous, somewere small and nimble like young pigs, and the bluejackets were up totheir middles as their prey dodged and ducked, and the police lined outalong the beach to keep back the people. Ten men of the R.I.C. can doa great deal, but they cannot be in more than twenty or thirty placesat the same instant; therefore they could hardly cope with a scatteredand extremely active mob of four or five hundred, many of whom hadtaken advantage of their privileges as "bona-fide travellers," and allof whom were determined on getting at the rum.
As the dusk fell the thing got more and more out of hand; the peoplehad found out that the big puncheons held the rum, and had succeeded incapturing one. In the twinkling of an eye it was broached, and fiftybacks were shoving round it like a football scrummage. I have heardmany rows in my time: I have seen two Irish regiments--one of themMilitia--at each other's throats in Fermoy barracks; I have heardPhilippa's water spaniel and two fox-terriers hunting a strange catround the dairy; but never have I known such untrammelled bedlam asthat which yelled round the rum-casks on Tralagough strand. For it wassoon not a question of one broached cask, or even of two. The barrelswere coming in fast, so fast that it was impossible for therepresentatives of law and order to keep on any sort of terms withthem. The people, shouting with laughter, stove in the casks, anddrank rum at 34 deg. above proof, out of their hands, out of their hats,out of their boots. Women came fluttering over the hillsides throughthe twilight, carrying jugs, milk-pails, anything that would hold theliquor; I saw one of them, roaring with laughter, tilt a filthy zincbucket to an old man's lips.
With the darkness came anarchy. The rising tide brought more and yetmore booty: great spars came lunging in on the lap of the waves, mixedup with cabin furniture, seamen's chests, and the black and slipperybarrels, and the country people continued to flock in, and the drinkingbecame more and more unbridled. Murray sent for more men and a doctor,and we slaved on hopelessly in the dark, collaring half-drunken men,shoving pig-headed casks up hills of shingle, hustling in among groupsof roaring drinkers--we rescued perhaps one barrel in half-a-dozen. Ibegan to know that there were men there who were not drunk and were notidle; I was also aware, as the strenuous hours of darkness passed, ofan occasional rumble of cart wheels on the road. It was evident thatthe casks which were broached were the least part of the looting, buteven they were beyond our control. The most that Bosanquet, Murray,and I could
do was to concentrate our forces on the casks that had beensecured, and to organise charges upon the swilling crowds in order toupset the casks that they had broached. Already men and boys werelying about, limp as leeches, motionless as the dead.
"They'll kill themselves before morning, at this rate!" shouted Murrayto me. "They're drinking it by the quart! Here's another barrel; comeon!"
We rallied our small forces, and after a brief but furious strugglesucceeded in capsizing it. It poured away in a flood over the stones,over the prostrate figures that sprawled on them, and a howl ofreproach followed.
"If ye pour away any more o' that, Major," said an unctuous voice in myear, "ye'll intoxicate the stones and they'll be getting up andknocking us down!"
I had been aware of a fat shoulder next to mine in the throng as weheaved the puncheon over, and I now recognised the ponderous wit andFalstaffian figure of Mr. James Canty, a noted member of the SkebawnBoard of Guardians, and the owner of a large farm near at hand.
"I never saw worse work on this strand," he went on. "I considherthese debaucheries a disgrace to the counthry."
Mr. Canty was famous as an orator, and I presume that it was from longpractice among his fellow P.L.G.'s that he was able, without apparentexertion, to out-shout the storm.
At this juncture the long-awaited reinforcements arrived, and alongwith them came Dr. Jerome Hickey, armed with a black bag. Havingmentioned that the bag contained a pump--not one of the common orgarden variety--and that no pump on board a foundering ship had morearduous labours to perform, I prefer to pass to other themes. Thewreck, which had at first appeared to be as inexhaustible and asvariously stocked as that in the "Swiss Family Robinson," was beginningto fail in its supply. The crowd were by this time for the most partincapable from drink, and the fresh contingent of police tackled theirwork with some prospect of success by the light of a tar barrel,contributed by the owner of the public-house. At about the same time Ibegan to be aware that I was aching with fatigue, that my clothes hungheavy and soaked upon me, that my face was stiff with the salt sprayand the bitter wind, and that it was two hours past dinner-time. Thepossibility of fried salt herrings and hot whisky and water at thepublic-house rose dazzlingly before my mind, when Mr. Canty againcrossed my path.
"In my opinion ye have the whole cargo under conthrol now, Major," hesaid, "and the police and the sailors should be able to account for itall now by the help of the light. Wasn't I the finished fool that Ididn't think to send up to my house for a tar barrel before now!Well--we're all foolish sometimes! But indeed it's time for us to giveover, and that's what I'm after saying to the Captain and Mr. Murray.You're exhausted now the three of ye, and if I might make so bold, I'dsuggest that ye'd come up to my little place and have what'd warm yebefore ye'd go home. It's only a few perches up the road."
The tide had turned, the rain had begun again, and the tar barrelillumined the fact that Dr. Hickey's dreadful duties alone werepressing. We held a council and finally followed Mr. Canty, pickingour way through wreckage of all kinds, including the human variety.Near the public-house I stumbled over something that was soft and had asqueak in it; it was the piper, with his head and shoulders in anoverturned rum-barrel, and the bagpipes still under his arm.
I knew the outward appearance of Mr. Canty's house very well. It was atypical southern farm-house, with dirty whitewashed walls, a slatedroof, and small, hermetically-sealed windows staring at the morass ofmanure which constituted the yard. We followed Mr. Canty up the filthylane that led to it, picked our way round vague and squelching spurs ofthe manure heap, and were finally led through the kitchen into astifling best parlour. Mrs. Canty, a vast and slatternly matron, hadevidently made preparations for us; there was a newly-lighted firepouring flame up the chimney from layers of bogwood, there were whiskyand brandy on the table, and a plateful of biscuits sugared in whiteand pink. Upon our hostess was a black silk dress which indifferentlyconcealed the fact that she was short of boot-laces, and that the bootsthemselves had made many excursions to the yard and none to theblacking-bottle. Her manners, however, were admirable, and while Ilive I shall not forget her potato cakes. They came in hot and hotfrom a pot-oven, they were speckled with caraway seeds, they swam insalt butter, and we ate them shamelessly and greasily, and washed themdown with hot whisky and water; I knew to a nicety how ill I should benext day, and heeded not.
"Well, gentlemen," remarked Mr. Canty later on, in his best Board ofGuardians' manner, "I've seen many wrecks between this and the MizenHead, but I never witnessed a scene of more disgraceful ex-cess thanwhat was in it to-night."
"Hear, hear!" murmured Bosanquet with unseemly levity.
"I should say," went on Mr. Canty, "there was at one time to-nightupwards of one hundhred men dead dhrunk on the strand, or anyway sodhrunk that if they'd attempt to spake they'd foam at the mouth."
"The craytures!" interjected Mrs. Canty sympathetically.
"But if they're dhrunk to-day," continued our host, "it's nothing atall to what they'll be to-morrow and afther to-morrow, and it won't beon the strand they'll be dhrinkin' it."
"Why, where will it be?" said Bosanquet, with his disconcerting Englishway of asking a point-blank question.
Mr. Canty passed his hand over his red cheeks.
"There'll be plenty asking that before all's said and done, Captain,"he said, with a compassionate smile, "and there'll be plenty that couldgive the answer if they'll like, but by dam I don't think ye'll be aptto get much out of the Yokahn boys!"
"The Lord save us, 'twould be better to keep out from the likes o'thim!" put in Mrs. Canty, sliding a fresh avalanche of potato cakes onto the dish; "didn't they pull the clothes off the gauger and pourpotheen down his throath till he ran screeching through the streets o'Skebawn!"
James Canty chuckled.
"I remember there was a wreck here one time, and the undherwriters putme in charge of the cargo. Brandy it was--cases of the best Frinchbrandy. The people had a song about it, what's this the first versewas--
"One night to the rocks of Yokahn Came the barque _Isabella_ so dandy, To pieces she went before dawn, Herself and her cargo of brandy. And all met a wathery grave Excepting the vessel's car_pen_ther, Poor fellow, so far from his home."
Mr. Canty chanted these touching lines in a tuneful if wheezy tenor."Well, gentlemen, we're all friends here," he continued, "and it's noharm to mention that this man below at the public-house came askin' mewould I let him have some of it for a consideration. 'Sullivan,' saysI to him, 'if ye ran down gold in a cup in place of the brandy, Iwouldn't give it to you. Of coorse,' says I, 'I'm not sayin' but thatif a bottle was to get a crack of a stick, and it to be broken, and aman to drink a glass out of it, that would be no more than anaccident.' 'That's no good to me,' says he, 'but if I had twelvegallons of that brandy in Cork,' says he, 'by the Holy German!' sayshe, saying an awful curse, 'I'd sell twenty-five out of it!' Well,indeed, it was true for him; it was grand stuff. As the saying is, itwould make a horse out of a cow!"
"It appears to be a handy sort of place for keeping a pub," saidBosanquet.
"Shut to the door, Margaret," said Mr. Canty with elaborate caution."It'd be a queer place that wouldn't be handy for Sullivan!"
A further tale of great length was in progress when Dr. Hickey'sMephistophelian nose was poked into the best parlour.
"Hullo, Hickey! Pumped out? eh?" said Murray.
"If I am, there's plenty more like me," replied the Doctorenigmatically, "and some of them three times over! James, did thesegentlemen leave you a drop of anything that you'd offer me?"
"Maybe ye'd like a glass of rum, Doctor?" said Mr. Canty with a wink athis other guests.
Dr. Hickey shuddered.
I had next morning precisely the kind of mouth that I had anticipated,and it being my duty to spend the better part of the day administeringjustice in Skebawn, I received from Mr. Flurry Knox and other of mybrother magistrates precisely the class of condolences on my "Monda
yhead" that I found least amusing. It was unavailing to point out theresemblance between hot potato cakes and molten lead, or to dilate ontheir equal power of solidifying; the collective wisdom of the Benchdecided that I was suffering from contraband rum, and rejoiced over meaccordingly.
During the next three weeks Murray and Bosanquet put in a time only tobe equalled by that of the heroes in detective romances. They began byacting on the hint offered by Mr. Canty, and were rewarded by findingeight barrels of bacon and three casks of rum in the heart of Mr.Sullivan's turf rick, placed there, so Mr. Sullivan explained with muchdetail, by enemies, with the object of getting his licence taken away.They stabbed potato gardens with crowbars to find the buried barrels,they explored the chimneys, they raided the cow-houses; and in everypossible and impossible place they found some of the cargo of the latebarque _John D. Williams_, and, as the sympathetic Mr. Canty said, "Foras much as they found, they left five times as much afther them!"
It was a wet, lingering autumn, but towards the end of November therain dried up, the weather stiffened, and a week of light frosts andblue skies was offered as a tardy apology. Philippa possesses, incommon with many of her sex, an inappeasable passion for picnics, andher ingenuity for devising occasions for them is only equalled by hergift for enduring their rigours. I have seen her tackle a moistchicken pie with a splinter of slate and my stylograph pen. I haveknown her to take the tea-basket to an auction, and make tea in afour-wheeled inside car, regardless of the fact that it was comingunder the hammer in ten minutes, and that the kettle took twentyminutes to boil. It will therefore be readily understood that the rareoccasions when I was free to go out with a gun were not allowed to passuncelebrated by the tea-basket.
"You'd much better shoot Corran Lake to-morrow," my wife said to me onebrilliant afternoon. "We could send the punt over, and I could meetyou on Holy Island with----"
The rest of the sentence was concerned with ways, means, and thetea-basket, and need not be recorded.
I had taken the shooting of a long snipe bog that trailed from CorranLake almost to the sea at Tralagough, and it was my custom to begin toshoot from the seaward end of it, and finally to work round the lakeafter duck.
To-morrow proved a heavenly morning, touched with frost, gilt with sun.I started early, and the mists were still smoking up from the calm,all-reflecting lake, as the Quaker stepped out along the level road,smashing the thin ice on the puddles with his big feet. Behind thecalves of my legs sat Maria, Philippa's brown Irish water-spaniel,assiduously licking the barrels of my gun, as was her custom when theecstasy of going out shooting was hers. Maria had been given toPhilippa as a wedding-present, and since then it had been my wife'sambition that she should conform to the Beth Gelert standard of being"a lamb at home, a lion in the chase." Maria did pretty well as alion: she hunted all dogs unmistakably smaller than herself, andwhenever it was reasonably possible to do so she devoured the spoils ofthe chase, notably jack snipe. It was as a lamb that she failed;objectionable as I have no doubt a lamb would be as a domestic pet, itat least would not snatch the cold beef from the luncheon-table, noryet, if banished for its crimes, would it spend the night in scratchingthe paint off the hall door. Maria bit beggars (who valued theirdisgusting limbs at five shillings the square inch), she bullied theservants, she concealed ducks' claws and fishes' backbones behind thesofa cushions, and yet, when she laid her brown snout upon my knee, androlled her blackguard amber eyes upon me, and smote me with herfeathered paw, it was impossible to remember her iniquities againsther. On shooting mornings Maria ceased to be a buccaneer, a glutton,and a hypocrite. From the moment when I put my gun together herbreakfast stood untouched until it suffered the final degradation ofbeing eaten by the cats, and now in the trap she was shivering withexcitement, and agonising in her soul lest she should even yet be leftbehind.
Slipper met me at the cross roads from which I had sent back the trap;Slipper, redder in the nose than anything I had ever seen off thestage, very husky as to the voice, and going rather tender on bothfeet. He informed me that I should have a grand day's shooting, thehead-poacher of the locality having, in a most gentlemanlike manner,refrained from exercising his sporting rights the day before, onhearing that I was coming. I understood that this was to be consideredas a mark of high personal esteem, and I set to work at the bog withsuitable gratitude.
In spite of Mr. O'Driscoll's magnanimity, I had not a very goodmorning. The snipe were there, but in the perfect stillness of theweather it was impossible to get near them, and five times out of sixthey were up, flickering and dodging, before I was within shot. Mariabecame possessed of seven devils and broke away from heel the firsttime I let off my gun, ranging far and wide in search of the bird I hadmissed, and putting up every live thing for half a mile round, as shewent splashing and steeple-chasing through the bog. Slipper expressedhis opinion of her behaviour in language more appallingly picturesqueand resourceful than any I have heard, even in the Skebawn Courthouse;I admit that at the time I thought he spoke very suitably. Before shewas recaptured every remaining snipe within earshot was lifted out ofit by Slipper's steam-engine whistles and my own infuriated bellows; itwas fortunate that the bog was spacious and that there was still a longtract of it ahead, where beyond these voices there was peace.
I worked my way on, jumping treacle-dark drains, floundering throughthe rustling yellow rushes, circumnavigating the bog-holes, and takingevery possible and impossible chance of a shot; by the time I hadreached Corran Lake I had got two and a half brace, retrieved by Mariawith a perfection that showed what her powers were when the sinuousadroitness of Slipper's woodbine stick was fresh in her mind. But withMaria it was always the unexpected that happened. My last snipe, ajack, fell in the lake, and Maria, bursting through the reeds withkangaroo bounds, and cleaving the water like a torpedo-boat, was amodel of all the virtues of her kind. She picked up the bird with asnake-like dart of her head, clambered with it on to a tussock, andthere, well out of reach of the arm of the law, before our indignanteyes crunched it twice and bolted it.
"Well," said Slipper complacently, some ten minutes afterwards, "divilsuch a bating ever I gave a dog since the day Prince killed owld Mrs.Knox's paycock! Prince was a lump of a brown tarrier I had one time,and faith I kicked the toes out o' me owld boots on him before I hadthe owld lady composed!"
However composing Slipper's methods may have been to Mrs. Knox, theyhad quite the contrary effect upon a family party of duck that had beenlying in the reeds. With horrified outcries they broke into flight,and now were far away on the ethereal mirror of the lake, among stringsof their fellows that were floating and quacking in preoccupiedindifference to my presence.
A promenade along the lake-shore demonstrated the fact that without aboat there was no more shooting for me; I looked across to the islandwhere, some time ago, I had seen Philippa and her punt arrive. Theboat was tied to an overhanging tree, but my wife was nowhere to beseen. I was opening my mouth to give a hail, when I saw her emergeprecipitately from among the trees and jump into the boat; Philippa hadnot in vain spent many summers on the Thames, she was under way in atwinkling, sculled a score of strokes at the rate of a finish, thenstopped and stared at the peaceful island. I called to her, and in aminute or two the punt had crackled through the reeds, and shoved itsblunt nose ashore at the spot where I was standing.
"Sinclair," said Philippa in awe-struck tones, "there's something onthe island!"
"I hope there's something to eat there," said I.
"I tell you there _is_ something there, alive," said my wife with hereyes as large as saucers; "it's making an awful sound like snoring."
"That's the fairies, ma'am," said Slipper with complete certainty;"sure I known them that seen fairies in that island as thick as thegrass, and every one o' them with little caps on them."
Philippa's wide gaze wandered to Slipper's hideous pug face and back tome.
"It was not a human being, Sinclair!" she said combatively, though Ihad
not uttered a word.
Maria had already, after the manner of dogs, leaped, dripping, into theboat: I prepared to follow her example.
"Major," said Slipper, in a tragic whisper, "there was a man was anight on that island one time, watching duck, and Thim People cot him,and dhragged him through Hell and through Death, and threw him in thetide----"
"Shove off the boat," I said, too hungry for argument.
Slipper obeyed, throwing his knee over the gunwale as he did so, andtumbling into the bow; we could have done without him very comfortably,but his devotion was touching.
Holy Island was perhaps a hundred yards long, and about half as manybroad; it was covered with trees and a dense growth of rhododendrons;somewhere in the jungle was a ruined fragment of a chapel, smothered inivy and briars, and in a little glade in the heart of the island therewas a holy well. We landed, and it was obviously a sore humiliation toPhilippa that not a sound was to be heard in the spell-bound silence ofthe island, save the cough of a heron on a tree-top.
"It _was_ there," she said, with an unconvinced glance at thesurrounding thickets.
"Sure, I'll give a thrawl through the island, ma'am," volunteeredSlipper with unexpected gallantry, "an' if it's the divil himself is init, I'll rattle him into the lake!"
He went swaggering on his search, shouting, "Hi, cock!" and whackingthe rhododendrons with his stick, and after an interval returned andassured us that the island was uninhabited. Being provided withrefreshments he again withdrew, and Philippa and Maria and I fedvariously and at great length, and washed the plates with water fromthe holy well. I was smoking a cigarette when we heard Slipperaddressing the solitudes at the farther end of the island, and endingwith one of his whisky-throated crows of laughter.
He presently came lurching towards us through the bushes, and a glancesufficed to show even Philippa--who was as incompetent a judge of suchmatters as many of her sex--that he was undeniably screwed.
"Major Yeates!" he began, "and Mrs. Major Yeates, with respex to ye,I'm bastely dhrunk! Me head is light since the 'fluenzy, and thedocthor told me I should carry a little bottle-een o' sperrits----"
"Look here," I said to Philippa, "I'll take him across, and bring theboat back for you."
"Sinclair," responded my wife with concentrated emotion, "I wouldrather die than stay on this island alone!"
Slipper was getting drunker every moment, but I managed to stow him onhis back in the bows of the punt, in which position he at once began touplift husky and wandering strains of melody. To this accompanimentwe, as Tennyson says,
"moved from the brink like some full-breasted swan, That, fluting a wild carol ere her death, Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood With swarthy web."
Slipper would certainly have been none the worse for taking the flood,and, as the burden of "Lannigan's Ball" strengthened and spread alongthe tranquil lake, and the duck once more fled in justifiableconsternation, I felt much inclined to make him do so.
We made for the end of the lake that was nearest Shreelane, and, as werounded the point of the island, another boat presented itself to ourview. It contained my late entertainer, Mrs. Canty, seated bulkily inthe stern, while a small boy bowed himself between the two heavy oars.
"It's a lovely evening, Major Yeates," she called out. "I'm just goingto the island to get some water from the holy well for me daughter thathas an impression on her chest. Indeed, I thought 'twas yourself wassinging a song for Mrs. Yeates when I heard you coming, but sureSlipper is a great warrant himself for singing."
"May the divil crack the two legs undher ye!" bawled Slipper inacknowledgment of the compliment.
Mrs. Canty laughed genially, and her boat lumbered away.
I shoved Slipper ashore at the nearest point; Philippa and I paddled tothe end of the lake, and abandoning the duck as a bad business, walkedhome.
A few days afterwards it happened that it was incumbent upon me toattend the funeral of the Roman Catholic Bishop of the diocese. It waswhat is called in France "_un bel enterrement_," with inky flocks oftall-hatted priests, and countless yards of white scarves, and a repastof monumental solidity at the Bishop's residence. The actual intermentwas to take place in Cork, and we moved in long and imposing processionto the railway station, where a special train awaited the cortege. Myfriend Mr. James Canty was among the mourners: an important and activepersonage, exchanging condolences with the priests, giving directionsto porters, and blowing his nose with a trumpeting mournfulness thatpenetrated all the other noises of the platform. He was condescendingenough to notice my presence, and found time to tell me that he hadgiven Mr. Murray "a sure word" with regard to some of "_thewreckage_"--this with deep significance, and a wink of an inflamed andtearful eye. I saw him depart in a first-class carriage, and the odourof sanctity; seeing that he was accompanied by seven priests, and thatboth windows were shut, the latter must have been considerable.
Afterwards, in the town, I met Murray, looking more pleased withhimself than I had seen him since he had taken up the unprofitable taskof smuggler-hunting.
"Come along and have some lunch," he said, "I've got a real good thingon this time! That chap Canty came to me late last night, and told methat he knew for a fact that the island on Corran Lake was just stiffwith barrels of bacon and rum, and that I'd better send every man Icould spare to-day to get them into the town. I sent the men out ateight o'clock this morning; I think I've gone one better than Bosanquetthis time!"
I began to realise that Philippa was going to score heavily on thesubject of the fairies that she had heard snoring on the island, and Iimparted to Murray the leading features of our picnic there.
"Oh, Slipper's been up to his chin in that rum from the first," saidMurray. "I'd like to know who his sleeping partner was!"
It was beginning to get dark before the loaded carts of the salvageparty came lumbering past Murray's windows and into the yard of thepolice-barrack. We followed them, and in so doing picked up FlurryKnox, who was sauntering in the same direction. It was a good haul,five big casks of rum, and at least a dozen smaller barrels of baconand butter, and Murray and his Chief Constable smiled seraphically onone another as the spoil was unloaded and stowed in a shed.
"Wouldn't it be as well to see how the butter is keeping?" remarkedFlurry, who had been looking on silently, with, as I had noticed, astill and amused eye. "The rim of that small keg there looks as if ithad been shifted lately."
The sergeant looked hard at Flurry; he knew as well as most people thata hint from Mr. Knox was usually worth taking. He turned to Murray.
"Will I open it, sir?"
"Oh! open it if Mr. Knox wishes," said Murray, who was not famous forappreciating other people's suggestions.
The keg was opened.
"Funny butter," said Flurry.
The sergeant said nothing. The keg was full of black bog-mould.Another was opened, and another, all with the same result.
"Damnation!" said Murray, suddenly losing his temper. "What's the useof going on with those? Try one of the rum casks."
A few moments passed in total silence while a tap and a spigot weresent for and applied to the barrel. The sergeant drew off a mugful andput his nose to it with the deliberation of a connoisseur.
"Water, sir," he pronounced, "dirty water, with a small indication ofsperrits."
A junior constable tittered explosively, met the light blue glare ofMurray's eye, and withered away.
"Perhaps it's holy water!" said I, with a wavering voice.
Murray's glance pinned me like an assegai, and I also faded into thebackground.
"Well," said Flurry in dulcet tones, "if you want to know where thestuff is that was in those barrels, I can tell you, for I was told itmyself half-an-hour ago. It's gone to Cork with the Bishop by specialtrain!"
Mr. Canty was undoubtedly a man of resource. Mrs. Canty had mistakenlycredited me with an intelligence equal to her own, and on receivingfrom Slipper a highly coloured account of ho
w audibly Mr. Canty hadslept off his potations, had regarded the secret of Holy Island ashaving been given away. That night and the two succeeding ones werespent in the transfer of the rum to bottles, and the bottles and thebutter to fish boxes; these were, by means of a slight lubrication ofthe railway underlings, loaded into a truck as "Fresh Fish, Urgent,"and attached to the Bishop's funeral train, while the police, decoyedfar from the scene of action, were breaking their backs over barrels ofbog-water. "I suppose," continued Flurry pleasantly, "you don't knowthe pub that Canty's brother has in Cork. Well, I do. I'm going tobuy some rum there next week, cheap."
"I shall proceed against Canty," said Murray, with fateful calm.
"You won't proceed far," said Flurry; "you'll not get as much evidenceout of the whole country as'd hang a cat."
"Who was your informant?" demanded Murray.
Flurry laughed. "Well, by the time the train was in Cork, yourself andthe Major were the only two men in the town that weren't talking aboutit."
Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. Page 8