Then Dermot moved very quickly indeed. An observer might have supposed that he had been stung by a hornet. He leaped up to the highest rock close to him, and began to wave frantically, calling to Paddy and his friends in that shrill, overcharged voice which burst from him when he was excited. The faces of the group turned towards him: but they did not stir. After his third cry, Paddy called something back.
“A great—big—conger !” Dermot screamed again. “Oh——” and a sob of eagerness rose in his throat, as he climbed down to his place of vantage—only just in time. The blue bar, moving more decisively, was sliding out again between the dark weeds. Another jab, and another—vicious, excited jabs, delivered against a proclaimed enemy: and with an angry twist the eel once more retreated, turning slightly, showing the grey of its belly.
“Paddy! Peg-leg! Do come! A great big eel. On my honour ; I’m not codding you.”
Strange the local words sounded, when Dermot incorporated them in his talk, without imitating them. They laughed at him up at Uncle Ben’s about it, saying “begawrah ” at him, and the like. Dermot did not mind. He could deliver speeches heard on the Fishbank with full voice, and knew it. One of these days …! For the present, taught by Granny’s and Grandpapa’s distaste for such performances, he did not venture.
Paddy said something to his companions, and started cloppering down the little pier, with that exaggerated swing of his arms which he used to ferry himself along. Dermot darted back to his place, and stood trembling, the cane grasped tightly in both hands, watching for a fresh sortie. The tide was running down fast. Upon his own quick breathing gained the scrabbling of Paddy’s boots, and the series of grunts with which he negotiated the slippery rocks.
“Now then. What’s this ye’re sayin’ about an eel? ”
“Truly, Paddy. Really and truly. He tried to come out, and I prodded him with my cane. I—There! Look at him! ”
“Faith.” Paddy slipped and slithered. “I see no eel. Where do you——Oh, I see’m. Oh—be Jasus! Hey !—quick! ”
Dermot jabbed, setting his teeth. The great steel spring of a body squirmed against the cane, and jerked sharply back. They heard it splash, deep under the hollow rock.
“The curse and flames! ” Paddy floundered across to where Dermot was standing. “The tide’s runnin’ low on’m. He won’t wait there long. He’ll have a dart at it.”
“Oh Paddy! What a pity we’ve no bait. I’ve got the conger hook here, and a bit of line.”
“Bait! He’d touch no bait. It’s his excape he’s thinkin’ of. Oh, be the holy! I’ve a plan. Have ye the hook? And the snood? Han’ them over quick. Peg-leg! Mike! ” He let such a bellow that Dermot jumped, and almost fell off the stone. “Ay! Ay! C’m on the two o’ ye, quick! ” He levered himself, monkey-like, on to a rock close by. “Here. Gi’ me the cane.”
“The cane! But I’ll have nothing to keep him back with.”
“Han’ it up quick, I’m tellin’ you, now, without you want us to lose him.”
“But he’s getting——Ah! Go back, back, back, you brute! ”
Passionately, his face contorted, Dermot stabbed at the eel, which had tried to rush him.
“That’s it. Give him a hell of a puck, and han’ it up quick while he’s still sore.”
There was no further sign of the eel, so Dermot reluctantly handed up his weapon.
“What will I frighten him back with now? ” he asked disconsolately.
“Yeer fut,” grunted Paddy, already furiously at work. He had seized the cane, and was lashing the big conger hook to its end with the snood of line, pulling with hands and teeth, letting fall a string of muttered curses, and eyeing the lessening space of water. Bending down and away, to get a purchase, he heard a determined splashing, and looked up to see Dermot dancing in the water in front of the hole. With a grunt of approval, he once more applied himself to his task.
“Oh, Paddy, hurry! He’s splashing about under there.”
“Amn’t I—workin’—as hard as I can. Where’s them fellas. Here, you’ll have to come here a minyit. Put yeer thumb on this——Oh, here y’are! ”
Peg-leg was advancing lazily down the slip.
“What ails yez? ” he enquired good-humouredly. “Why are ye baalin’? ”
“A bloody big eel, inunder the rock beyant,” explained Paddy briefly. “That’s what ails me. That’s why am I baalin’. Here—put yeer thumb on tha’. Grand. Now——Is he there yet, Dermot? ”
“He is. He tried again, to come out.”
“Well” Mr. Kennedy grasped his weapon, and slid grimly over the rock, to the scene of action. “Let him try now, the b——, all he pleases.”
The eel obliged, Paddy stabbed his gaff into the water, struck savagely, and missed. With a furious writhe the eel shot back into its retreat.
Paddy knelt down on the now bare stone.
“Oh, bedam, I see’m! A b——big b—.”
Dermot stooped too. There were now only a few inches of water beneath the hollow rock. The tide was running its last lap like water draining from a basin. Deep underneath, with no escape but the way they guarded, the eel lay half in, half out of the water, regarding them with cold, malevolent eyes. His iridescent blue had left him. He was a dull, dirty grey, covered with patches of slime.
“Le’ me see.” Peg-leg scrambled down, elbowing Dermot aside. “Oh, be the holies! That’s a big lad, Wing-Man. That’s a terrible big lad.”
Paddy did not reply. He was cursing softly, in a kind of ecstasy. The appearance of a formidable opponent, animal or human, wrought him always to a frenzy. When, once in two years maybe, Wing-Man Kennedy was roused to fight, the battle was short and desperate. To use his full strength, all of it, at once: to hate and destroy, and in the violence to purge off all hatred and destruction: that was the way Paddy worked.
Suddenly, Dermot did not see how, the fight began. There was a terrific scrabbling and groping, a yell from Peg-leg, and the eel was out in the open, leaping and lashing about at the end of the cane, with the hook deep in its neck. The savage, demented pulsations were almost shaking Paddy’s great arms from their sockets. His face was set and terrible, as if it had boiled over and gone cold: the muscles about his jaw stood out like thick round cords. Leaping up clumsily with a cry, Peg-leg rushed to him from behind, and flung his arms round him. Long Mike was slithering and ejaculating somewhere in the background. Dermot stared, the scene flaring vividly in his sight, so tense, so charged with a vicious power that the figures stood out as in a stereoscope. He, perceiving them, seemed to move on a different plane of time: their movements, quick and jerky with the strain of rigid muscles, were yet arrested: he saw each movement as a series of still poses, in a glaring and terrifying dream. The purpose of Peg-leg’s embrace, which at first gave a grotesque note of horror to the scene, became soon apparent ; for the eel, grasping a projection in his tail, with a lightning convulsion jerked both men on top of him. A yell arose, horrifying in its fear, its uncontrolled animal fury. For a moment the two men grovelled helplessly: then Peg-leg, yellow, spitting with fury, rolled off and leaped to his feet, revealing Paddy right on top of the eel, holding away with one hand the flat evil head that was only a few inches from his own. Like a gorilla, with the sheer power of his long arms, he raised himself, his brow a network, his mouth open like a gorilla’s, bellowing his fury and loathing. Another second, and he was on his feet, staggering away to one side. The eel slid over and tried to escape, but the long gaff galled it: it flung itself about, and the cane handle slid and whacked on the rock.
Before Paddy could get a hold on himself, for the sudden proximity of the eel had filled him with nausea, Long Mike stepped coolly across and put his foot on the cane. Then, going down on one knee, and propping his left hip against a buttress in the rock, he took hold of it, and jerked the eel out of the crevice on to a comparatively flat surface. There, keeping the cane low down against the rock, he contrived to hold it, as it leaped and writhed, unable to get a purchas
e for resistance.
“The gaff is tearin’ loose,” he warned them suddenly. “Hurry up, or he’ll be away on yez.”
This speech shook Paddy into activity. Planting his legs square, and bending down between them, he put forth the full strength of his back and his long misshapen arms. When he rose, he held by the edges a huge flat stone, with weeds and water dripping from it. Grunting from the effort, he swung it up to the flat rock beside the eel, and climbed up after it. As he beheld the eel, and contemplated his blow, his face became once more terrifying. The lower jaw projected, the brows drew low, the blood came down in a dark cloud between the eyes. Then, quickly as if galvanised, he stooped, raised the great stone high above his head, and crashed it down upon the leaping eel.
The effect was devastating. The stone lay all across its victim: the leapings ceased. Only a slow, shivering writhe of the tail marked the remnant of vitality which survived the blow.
It was a full minute before Paddy tipped the stone off the eel. He did it warily, for he had once been bitten by an eel, apparently dead, which he was carrying from a hook. In a last effort, it had leaped and fixed its serrated rows of teeth in his knuckle. But for his prompitude in forcing his whole hand inside the weakening jaws, he would have suffered badly. As it was, the teeth met in his flesh.
But this eel was past doing harm—past any conscious action. The blow had smashed its spine in a dozen places. Its head was flattened, its gills crushed outwards: one eye bulged loose from the socket. Even as they watched, its slow writhing ceased. It stiffened. Tremors, so quick, so small that Dermot thought his eye was tricking him, began to chase each other under its skin. They grew: the long, slimy sides, scarred grey, shimmered in a kind of ecstasy: a broken, choking cough rose in the crushed throat, and with a last effort the eel rolled over on its side, then relaxed upon its back, its grey belly bulging upwards to the sky.
“God mend his like,” said Long Mike piously. He picked up his pipe, a clay with a tin protector, which he had laid down in a cranny of the rock, and pulled at it anxiously. Presently he gave a grunt of contentment. It had not gone out. Mike hated having to use matches. They were his economy, his mania. To see them spilt, or wasted, or thrown away before every possible pipe had been lit, was physical hurt to him. No Vestal Virgin tended her sacred flame with greater personal zeal than Mike the dottle in his pipe.
Up through the town they went, exhibiting their famous catch. Everyone said, “Be the holies! ” and “How did yez catch that lad? ” and. to each had to be explained, with laughter and oaths, in shaky voices, the quite unheard of way in which they had caught him. Everyone said, “G’way ou’ of that. Yez are coddin’ me ”: and received in reply, “It’s God’s truth. Ask the young lad.” Everyone then said, “Jasus ”: or “Did yez ever hear the like o’ that? ” and the concourse, increasing every five yards, agreed that begob, ye never did. By the time they reached Walmer Villa, there was quite a crowd in attendance. The first cold water was cast on the exploit by Grandpapa, who came fuming to the door, apparently under the impression that all the “Cath’lic blagyards ” of the place were in insurrection and had chosen him as their first victim. Hailed by the crowd in terms of high respect, and called upon to admire the magnificent catch, he was little appeased, but let the captors in, if only to be rid of their followers.
“Mind now, mind now.” He stood, tetchy and fidgety, on the step. “Hold it clear, hold it clear. Don’t let it be touching anything, now.”
“Oh, damn the fear, sir,” said Mike, unexpectedly: and received a kick from his scandalised chief.
So, edging their way along, backing and sliding, they steered their inert burden down the hall, round the corner by the kitchen—“Tch, tch, tch,” exclaimed Bessie, standing with disgusted face by the door—and into the garden. There they laid it, beside the tub, and stood back to contemplate it in admiration.
Grandpapa followed them.
“I declare to me God,” he complained, “to go bring .. Tchah. . . What did you want to go bring that thing in here? ”
“Sure, sir,” said Paddy in scandalised tones, “we couldn’t be leaving it on the shore, and we after catching it. It was Master Dermot seen it,” he added proudly, “an’ kep’ it from escaping, the way we could come at it with the gaff.”
Grandpapa’s manner softened a little. Inconvenient though the captive was, he did not wish to dishearten his grandson.
“Well, well,” he said. “Don’t go making a mess with it, now. Well, well.”
The battle seemed to have set free Mike’s spirit. For the second time, he burst into unaccustomed speech.
“Them fish,” he observed, addressing Grandpapa, and designating the eel with his pipe, which he had removed from his mouth: “them fish gets a good price on the fishmongers. High up people do be eating them. In hotels. They do boil them, for to make soup.”
Grandpapa stared in astonishment. This ragamuffin of a fellow, to go lifting up his voice, and lecturing him. Then good-humour overcame him. He smiled grimly.
“Well, well,” he said. “You’ll soon be done: ” and, turning his back, he clasped his hands behind it, and went away slowly up the path.
“Hould yer whisht, Mike, ye bloody fool,” said Paddy, sotto voce, as the majestic back receded. “Don’t you know that’s the way to anger the old gentleman? With yeer soups, and yeer hotels, and yeer high up people! Wouldn’t Mr. Conroy know, better nor you, what high up people are apt to eat? ”
“Be easy,” replied Mike, replacing his pipe. “Be easy, now.”
Chapter XX
The finish of the eel was not on a level with its capture. Bessie firmly refused to make soup, or anything else, of it. Like all the people round about, she looked upon eels as serpents, and felt a superstitious horror at the thought of eating them. So the eel—four foot six in length, sixteen pounds and eight ounces on the scales—was cast out to rot on Mr. Caggen’s dunghill.
This anticlimax in no way chilled Dermot’s zeal for the new sport. After such an excitement, ordinary fishing seemed tame. Nothing would do him but that they purchase the materials for a real conger line. Leave for the requisite night-fishing, however, was not yet to be had. He had to be content with fishing by day, and setting the line in a convenient place at night.
In underground but natural ways, the exploit, and the praises he received for it, so fired his imagination that for the first time he envisaged a personal relationship between himself and Mona. From the distant worshipper, who did not aspire even to be a suppliant, he rose to be a possible champion, winning not only acquaintanceship, but homage. A success in the field of action revealed how deeply and how secretly he coveted such success. He longed now above all things to perform some feat before Mona’s eyes: to catch a huge, savage eel with her for spectator: even (since that, he had to admit, was unlikely) to be seen carrying his captive past her door. The girl left the cloisters of his mind, and walked openly in the sunlit street. By coincidence, he saw her several times, out of doors, in her front garden, and once, oh choking, suffocating thrill, on the Sea Wall itself. So ardently did his eyes follow her white frock along under the grey masonry, that Paddy noticed.
“Do you know who that is?” he enquired. “That’s Miss Scanlon.”
“You know her? ” Dermot turned, in dark amazement.
“Surely I know her. A very nice, pretty young gerrl. I do be often doing jobs for her mother in the garden. A nice spoken, friendly young lady.”
Paddy eyed his companion narrowly. The white frock flitted along, soared over the steps of Kelly Shore, dipped, was hidden behind a rock, appeared triumphant, then swung off up the steps of Newtown Smith.
“Would you like for to meet her? ”
From anyone else in the world, the question would have been an outrage. To anyone else he would have shot out an indignant, shamed refusal. But Paddy was Paddy, before whom he had no shame. Dermot turned to him an awed, shining face.
“Oh, Paddy, could I? ”
; Paddy shifted his feet, in a businesslike manner.
“Faith,” he said. “Easy.”
“But how, Paddy? ”
“Faith, me knowin’ her well, an’ all, d’ye see: I goes to her and tells her the young gentleman I do be with would like for to meet with her down by the gate——”
“Oh, but not anywhere near the house. They might see.”
“Well then. Forenint Burdett Avena’. I’ll tell her,” predicted the match-maker confidently. “She’ll come, and glad. You’ll see, now.”
Something deep down in Dermot distrusted this simple plan, but he was only too eager for it to be tried. His desire was sharpened, that very afternoon. Looking up as he went home alone, he saw Mona approaching, a few yards away. It was too late to cross the road. The pavement was empty. They had to pass. A miserable, sweet pang ran through him, a mixture of pride and utter shame. The moment lasted a lifetime: it had a landscape and a climate of its own. Crimson, he dared to raise his eyes, and saw that she was looking down, trying not to laugh. His heart gave a sudden wild leap, and he smiled too: and so they passed, smiling away from one another, the girl all self possessed, Dermot in an extraordinary perplexity of relief and feelings he could not understand.
All promised well: but strange, capricious are the ways of women. Poor Paddy’s embassy, discharged in husky secrecy by the back door, received with smiles and blushes, went all awry. The faithless Mona told her mother, who summoned the ambassador, and soundly rated him. How dare he? What did he mean? She never heard the like.
“You forget, Mr. Kennedy: my daughter is only a child.”
“So is Master Dermot, ma’am,” spoke up Paddy sturdily. “What is he, only a child too. What harrm, ma’am, the childer to be playing together. Sure, isn’t it only natural——”
“I don’t like such a way of doing things,” said Mrs. Scanlon. She was a big, over-ripe woman, and had perhaps some reason for being extra particular. “It’s not the right way, nor the way I’ve been accustomed to.”
The Garden Page 16