Liam reached behind the door for his waterproof coat and shrugged it on.
‘Wait a minute. I’ll come with you.’ Norah McCabe unfastened her apron and ran for her own coat.
All along the narrow street fishermen and their families ran from the houses and, with the wind and rain beating against their faces, made for the stone quay. It had been many years since a ship was last wrecked on this coast.
Liam could see the vessel as soon as he ran clear of the houses. It was large – very large. Launched as a five-masted transatlantic passenger-ship, she now limped northward on three, having lost two masts to a huge wave. From the foremast the shredded remains of a sail aimed a hundred tattered pennants toward the land.
For more than twenty minutes the crowd on the quay watched as the ship failed to make any headway on her course. Then, slowly and cumbersomely, the big sailing ship turned until its clean clipper bow pointed in the direction of Kilmar.
‘She’s going to try to make our harbour, here,’ shouted Norah McCabe, rain streaming down her face.
‘Her captain can’t know about the reef,’ said Liam. ‘She’ll go aground at any minute.’
At that moment a long wave raced down upon the ship and crashed hundreds of tons of water on to the wooden deck. The ship reeled beneath the blow, and above the noise of the storm Liam heard another sound. It was the roar of eager voices. Turning, Liam saw a huge crowd of cottiers, surging along the shore, beyond the village. There must have been at least a thousand of them.
‘They’ve been following the ship for miles.’ The information came from the boy who had brought the news of the ship to Kilmar. ‘They are waiting for it to go aground. They won’t have long to wait now.’
There was an angry murmur from the assembled fishermen. It had long been the tradition that the spoils of any wreck on this part of the coast belonged to them. They wrested a dangerous living from the sea and had a right to any bounties it thrust their way.
But Liam’s mind was working in another direction. ‘There are passengers on board that ship – women and children. If we don’t do something to help them quickly, every one of them will perish on the reef.’ Appealing to the fishermen, Liam said, ‘I need six strong men to come with me out to that ship.’
‘You can’t take a boat out in this sea.’ Norah McCabe was aghast. ‘It would capsize before you were halfway to the reef.’
‘A curragh might, not a wooden boat. Not our boat.’
Liam turned to go where his boat was pulled high up on the sand, and his mother clutched his arm. ‘Liam, take care. It was in just a storm as this that I lost your father. You are all I have now.’
‘Don’t worry, Ma. We will be all right. Our boat will stand up to rougher seas than this one. You and the others be preparing food and blankets for those we bring safely to shore.’
There was no shortage of volunteers to crew Liam’s boat. Strong young Kilmar fishermen ran to fetch their own oars from their curraghs before helping to push the heavy wooden fishing boat down the beach to the sea.
As Liam’s craft hit the water Tomas Feehan was gathering another crew, and only minutes later his boat, too, was being manhandled down the sloping sand of the beach.
‘I hardly expected to see a Feehan set out on a mission of mercy,’ said one of Liam’s oarsmen, as they pulled away from the shore.
‘Tomas has as much regard for human life as any man,’ replied Liam as he wiped salt spray from his lips.
‘More likely he doesn’t want you to pick up the cream of the spoils,’ retorted another of the fishermen. Seconds later all talking ceased as they crashed through the breaking surf. Three times they pulled clear of the beach – and three times the sea threw them back again. At the fourth attempt Liam urged his crew to use every ounce of their strength. Straining on their oars, the Kilmar fishermen slowly pulled the boat clear of the surf and moved out into the angry sea.
Liam peered through the rain and spray and saw the ship swing broadside on to the reef and lurch over beneath the pounding waves.
‘She’s going over on the reef,’ he shouted to the others ‘Pull harder … together.’
The sea fought the fishermen every foot of the way. For the last fifty yards to the reef they battled through an ever-increasing accumulation of debris, spurred on by the screams that were now reaching them above the howling of the wind.
Battered by wind and waves, the ship was lying almost on its side but, miraculously, one of her lifeboats had been launched safely. It was hove to on the lee side of the sailing ship, and Liam saw the crew urging a middle-aged woman to jump from the impossibly angled deck into the sea.
As the hysterical woman clung desperately to a torn and twisted guard-rail, a wave surged beneath the ship, lifting it up and then throwing it back upon the reef with a juddering crash that splintered many of its oak timbers. The screaming woman was catapulted into the sea and swept past the ship’s lifeboat as the sailors hastily pulled clear of the stricken vessel.
Liam steered his boat toward the woman, but when they were still yards away her flailing arms sank beneath a foam-capped wave and she disappeared from view.
Meanwhile, another wave had thrown the ship even farther across the reef and on to a smooth tooth of black rock which pierced the hull, splintering the massive timbers as though they were kindling. As the ship rose and fell to the movement of the sea, the rock worked away in the manner of a giant crowbar, enlarging the hole it had made and allowing the sea to flood inside.
The noise echoed through the doomed ship, and the passengers, who had been clinging to the false but familiar safety of cabins and state rooms, abandoned all hope of a miracle and fought their way to the acutely sloping deck.
Once there, the bravest among them plunged headlong into the sea and struck out for one of the three boats that now stood by to rescue them.
Some made it to safety, others were swept away and swallowed up by the hungry waves.
The more timid of the passengers clung to the sloping deck, and Liam brought his boat dangerously close to the ship to pluck them to safety. Then, only seconds after Liam’s crew had pulled to safety, a long high wave roared in from seaward. Crashing down upon the ship it drove the vessel across the reef and into deeper water where it immediately began to sink.
Now the last of the passengers leaped from the ship and the already overcrowded boats moved amongst them, pulling still more survivors inboard.
As Liam’s boat moved toward a small group of passengers who were fighting each other for a life-saving grip on a spar from a shattered mast, Liam reached over the side and grasped the clothing of a man who was being swept helplessly past the boat. Helped by the swell of a wave, Liam lifted the man up to the gunwale in a single movement.
As the man lay balanced between the safety of the boat and certain death, he lifted his head to look up at the man who had pulled him from the sea – and Liam looked down into the fear-filled face of Sir Richard Dudley!
The ship to whose assistance Liam had come was the transatlantic passenger vessel Atlantis. On the England-to-Canada run, she was making one of the last voyages of the season to Quebec. Among her passengers was Sir Richard Dudley, en route to his new Treasury appointment in the North American colony.
The captain of Atlantis had put to sea from Liverpool against all advice, hoping to take advantage of the easterly gales and arrive at Quebec before the winter ice closed in upon the port.
Passing through St George’s Channel on her way southward, Atlantis had encountered a storm of unprecedented ferocity and lost two of her masts. In desperation, the captain had put his ship about and sought the safety of an Irish harbour. He had been making for Dublin when Atlantis foundered on the Kilmar reef.
It seemed to Liam that he looked down at Caroline’s husband for long minutes. In fact, it was a matter of seconds only. For his part, Sir Richard Dudley thought that Liam was about to throw him back into the sea. He did not protest, or plead with Liam for his life. He had
given himself up for dead when Atlantis lost her two masts. Retiring to his cabin, he had quietly settled down to await the end, fortified by a bottle of good French brandy.
He was surprised that the ship lasted so long, and his bid for survival when Atlantis struck the Kilmar reef was instinctive rather than determined
Now, as he looked up at Liam, the man who more than any other had cause to wish him dead, he maintained the same strange calm and waited to feel the cold water close about him once more.
Abruptly, Liam tipped the baronet into the bottom of the boat and reached for the tiller as they bumped against the spar to which other survivors were clinging.
The fishermen hauled in the gasping passengers until the boat was dangerously overloaded; then Liam called for them to look to their oars and pull for the shore. There were still scores of passengers in the water pleading to be pulled to safety, but there could be little hope for them. The ship’s lifeboat was already on its way shoreward, and Tomas Feehan’s boat was as crowded as Liam’s own. The luckier survivors would find flotsam to cling to and, hopefully, drift to the shore. The remainder would drown.
Atlantis had grounded on the reef slightly to the north of Kilmar, and to bring the boat in alongside the quay would have meant going across the running sea, a dangerous manoeuvre with such an overladen boat. Liam decided to beach close to the point from where he had set off.
The fishing boat soon overtook the crowded ship’s lifeboat and led the way toward the shore. When he was less than a hundred yards from land, Liam saw the huge crowd of cottiers surge down to the water’s edge ahead of him. Some of them plunged headlong into the sea to retrieve small casks and boxes which were already beginning to wash ashore. Those who took them from the water did not keep them for long. As they waded ashore they were set upon by groups of stick-wielding men and robbed of their prizes. Even then, permanent ownership had not been established and fights broke out along the length of the beach as items from the sea changed hands again and again.
But as the boats drew closer the cottiers forgot their fighting and crowded down to the shore. Their faces showed neither compassion nor simple curiosity. These were desperately hungry people. They had followed the stricken Atlantis for miles in anticipation of finally plundering something of value Something to exchange for food. Nothing had yet happened to thwart their expectations, and suddenly Liam realised the danger his passengers were in.
‘Stop pulling! We’re going about.’ His shout carried above the noise of the wind, and in the boat forty anxious and enquiring faces turned toward him.
‘There’s a mob waiting for us on the shore,’ Liam shouted, for the benefit of the tired Kilmar oarsmen. ‘If we land here, we’ll have the clothes torn from our backs. We must head for the quay.’
The shipwrecked passengers looked apprehensive as the wind and the tide carried the boat closer to the shrieking cottiers on the beach. They wanted to stay well clear of the hungry mob. Atlantis had been no emigrant ship. She was a luxury passenger-vessel carrying wealthy and influential people. Many of those rescued by Liam’s boat carried a fortune in jewellery about their persons – enough to feed the largest cottier family for a lifetime.
Liam began to bring his boat about, but by this time it was dangerously close to the surf-pounded beach. The cottiers, suddenly aware that they were about to be cheated, set up a concerted howl that caused the passengers in the fishing boat to tremble with fear.
The turn was half-completed when two short heavy waves bore down upon the boat, one after the other. The first swung the boat broadside-on to the shoreline, frustrating Liam’s efforts to keep the craft pointing out to sea. The second spilled inside the overcrowded fishing boat, causing the passengers to panic and unseat two of the oarsmen.
In an instant, the boat was unmanageable and Liam had lost his battle to keep the Atlantis survivors from the cottier mob. The next wave to roll in from the sea was relatively small, but it was sufficient to carry the boat to shallow water. Liam felt the keel rasp against shingle and seconds later he and every man, woman and child in the boat were fighting desperately for their lives.
The mob of cottiers went berserk. Those nearest the boat were trampled underfoot in the swirling tide as others clawed their way forward, each of them determined to snatch a share of plunder.
Waves were continuing to buffet the boat and it could be only a matter of seconds before it overturned. The occupants had no alternative. They had to go over the side and face the crazed cottiers.
As Liam fought his way ashore he saw Sir Richard Dudley staggering beneath the blows of the cottiers. The baronet barely made it to dry sand before he was felled by a club-wielding ruffian, and as he lay sprawled on the sand he was trampled underfoot by the cottiers, who were packed too close together to bend down and rob him.
Liam fought his way in the direction of the prostrate baronet but was twice beaten to his knees before he could reach him. Liam struck out wildly about him, trying to clear a space, but he was surrounded on all sides by a shrieking, fighting mob; and as gold and jewellery spilled out upon the sand brutal and bloody murder was committed again and again upon Kilmar beach.
Someone struck Liam from behind and he fell beneath the feet of the cottiers, feeling rough sand against his face. He tried to rise but the mob surged over him, beating him down again.
But Liam’s desperate fight for survival had not gone unnoticed. Nathan Brock had arrived at Kilmar in time to see Liam’s boat swept ashore and overwhelmed by the cottiers. Followed by every able-bodied fisherman from the village, Nathan Brock plunged into the near-hysterical mob, felling any man who failed to move out of his path quickly enough.
Help also came to Liam from another source. Tomas Feehan’s boat had been only fifty yards from shore when Liam attempted to turn back. The big red-haired man saw the boat go aground and Liam beaten down beneath the murderous blows of the cottiers. Shouting to his own crew, he drove his boat straight for the shore. The power of the waves roaring in behind the boat drove it high up the beach, taking the cottiers by surprise and carving a path through their ranks.
Before the fishing boat had scraped to a lopsided halt, Tomas Feehan was over the side, laying about him with the hardwood tiller. He was no longer a young man, but Tomas Feehan enjoyed fighting and he still carried enough weight and muscle to make him a formidable opponent. Backed by his fishermen crew, wielding oars as though they were pikes, he drove the cottiers from Liam and the prostrate body of Sir Richard Dudley.
Nursing his left arm, broken just above the wrist by a cottier’s dub, Liam rose unsteadily to his feet only seconds before Nathan Brock and the Kilmar fishermen fought their way to the spot and formed a protective ring about Liam and the surviving Atlantis passengers.
‘You were a pleasure to watch, Tomas.’ Only Nathan Brock’s heavy breathing gave any indication of his own exertions on Liam’s behalf as he inclined his head toward the big fisherman. ‘I am glad you were not fighting for the other side.’
Tomas Feehan spat on the sand derisively. ‘On the “other side” are the cottiers you have been pampering.’ He swung his arm to take in the still figures littering the sand about them and spoke to Liam. ‘Look about you. We might be standing on a battlefield. It was you and the fine lady from Inch House who fed the cottiers and gave them strength to do this. Does that take away the pain from your arm, Liam McCabe?’
Both Liam and Nathan Brock had recognised many of the cottiers among the mob on the beach. Some they had fed and helped back to health. Ignoring Tomas Feehan’s words, Liam limped painfully across the sand to where Sir Richard Dudley lay face down, his jacket missing and his shin torn half-off.
‘Nathan, turn him over, see if he lives. It is Sir Richard Dudley.’
Nathan Brock dropped to his knees beside the prostrate body and turned it over. There was blood on the forehead of the baronet and it had spread to the sand beneath him. As Nathan Brock lay him back he stared upward with sand-dusted eyes that saw nothing.<
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Nathan Brock laid his ear against the baronet’s chest and listened.
By now the cottier mob had broken up and moved away, ranging along the shoreline, retrieving items that were beginning to wash ashore from the wrecked Atlantis.
For a full minute the men about Sir Richard Dudley stood looking down at him in silence. Nathan Brock stood up and shook his head at Liam.
‘He is dead. Lady Caroline is a widow.’
Chapter Fifty-Three
Liam wanted to take the news of Sir Richard Dudley’s death to Caroline himself, but in addition to his broken arm he had twisted his knee and for a few weeks was able to walk only with great difficulty.
Instead, Nathan Brock went to London to take his seat in Parliament and then on to France, taking advantage of the newly opened railway linking Paris and Boulogne.
It was a wasted journey. On his return he wrote to Liam, telling his friend that Caroline had been in the south of France when he had reached Paris. He could only leave word with a servant, telling Caroline of the manner in which Sir Richard had met his death.
The letter also contained some very sad news. Nathan Brock had called to see Eugene Brennan, only to be told that the old man had died a week earlier.
Liam limped off to find Father Clery, to break the news to him of the death of his lifetime friend.
The old priest was on his way back to the village from the soup kitchen and makeshift hospital he had set up on Kilmar hill. His efforts to help the cottiers continued, even though the fishermen had refused to help them since the attack upon Liam and the survivors of Atlantis. When someone was foolish enough to comment on the priest’s continuing support for the cottiers, Father Clery was quick to remind the speaker that there was more than one Kilmar man with cause to be grateful for his ability to forgive human weakness. Instead of criticising, he suggested the fisherman go away and pray that the people of Kilmar might never be faced with the same spectre of starvation and disease.
The Music Makers Page 46