The Wild Geese, Stanley John Weyman [best books to read for beginners txt] 📗

took. What but a tragedy could it be to a man bred at Douay and reared on Greek, and now condemned to live in loneliness and squalor among unlettered, unwashed creatures; to one who, banned by the law, moved by night, and lurked in some hiding-place by day, and, waking or sleeping, was ever in contact with the lawless and the oppressed, the wretched and the starving--whose existence was spent in shriving, christening, burying among the hills and bogs?

Yet, even in such a life this was a tragedy beyond the common. And--"What can I do?" he cried. "_Non mihi, domine, culpa!_ Oh, what can I do?"

"You can do nothing, father," O'Sullivan Og said grimly. "They're heretics, no less! And we're wasting your time, blessed man." He whispered a few words in the priest's ear.

The latter shuddered. "God forgive us all!" he wailed. "And most, those who need it most! God keep us from high place!"

"Sure and we're in little peril!" O'Sullivan Og replied.

Colonel John looked at the priest with solemn eyes. Nor did aught but a tiny pulse beating in his cheek betray that every sense was on the stretch; that he was listening, watching, ready to seize the least chance, that he might save, at any rate, poor Bale. Then, "You are a Christian, father," he said gravely. "I ask nothing for myself. But this is my servant. He has done nothing, he knows nothing. Prevail with them to spare him!"

Bale uttered a fierce remonstrance. No one understood it, or what he said, or meant. His eyes looked askance, like the eyes of a beast in a snare--seeking a weapon, or a throat! To be butchered thus! To be butchered thus!

Perhaps Colonel John, notwithstanding his calm courage, had the same thought, and found it bitter. Death had been good in the face of silent thousands, with pride and high resolve for cheer. Or in the heat of a fight for the right, where it came unheeded and almost unfelt. But here on the bog, in the mist, unknown, unnoticed, to perish and be forgotten in a week, even by the savage hands that took their breath! Perhaps to face this he too had need of all his Christian stoicism.

"My God! My God!" the priest said. And he fell on his knees and raised his hands. "Have pity on these two, and soften the hearts of their murderers!"

"Amen," said Colonel John quietly.

"Faith, and 'tis idle, this," O'Sullivan Og cried irritably. He gave a secret sign to his men to draw to one side and be ready. "We've our orders, and other work to do. Kneel aside, father, 'tis no harm we mean you, God forbid! But you're wasting breath on these same. And you," he continued, addressing the two, "say what prayer you will, if you know one, and then kneel or stand--it's all one to us--and, God willing, you'll be in purgatory and never a knowledge of it!"

"One moment," Colonel John interposed, his face pale but composed, "I have something to say to my friend."

"And you may, if you'll play no tricks."

"If you would spare him----"

"'Tis idle, I say! Sorra a bit of good is it! But there, ye shall be having while the blessed man says three Paternosters, and not the least taste of time beyond! Devil a bit!"

Colonel John made a sign to the priest, who, bowing himself on the wet sod, covered his eyes with his hand and began to pray. The men, at a sign from O'Sullivan, had drawn to either side, and the firelock-men were handling their pieces, with one eye on their leader and one on the prisoners.

Colonel John took Bale's hand. "What matter, soon or late?" he said gently "Here, or on our beds we die in our duty. Let us say, _In manus tuas_----"

"Popish! Popish!" Bale muttered, shaking his head. He spoke hoarsely, his tongue cleaving to his mouth. His eyes were full of rage.

"Into Thy hands!" Colonel John said. He stooped nearer to his man's ear. "When I shout, jump and run!" he breathed. "I will hold two." Again he lifted his head and looked calmly at the threatening figures standing about them, gaunt and dark, against the curtain of mist. They were waiting for the signal. The priest was half way through his second Paternoster. His trembling tongue was stumbling, lagging more and more. As he ended it--the two men still standing hand in hand--Colonel John gripped Bale's fingers hard, but held him.

"What is that?" he cried, in a loud voice--but still he held Bale tight that he might not move. "What is that?" he repeated. On the ear--on his ear first--had fallen the sound of hurrying feet.

They strained their eyes through the mist.

"And what'll this be?" O'Sullivan Og muttered suspiciously, looking first in the direction of the sound, and then, still more suspiciously, at his prisoners. "If you budge a step," he growled, "I'll drive this pike----"

"A messenger from The McMurrough," Colonel John said, speaking as sternly as if he and not The McMurrough's henchman commanded the party. If he was human, as indeed he was, if his heart, at the hope of respite, beat upon his ribs as the heart of a worse man might have beaten, he did not betray it save by a light in his eyes. "You will see if I am not right," he added.

They had not to wait. As he spoke a tall, lathy form emerged from the mist. It advanced with long leaps, the way they had come. A moment, and the messenger saw them--almost as soon as they had seen him. He pulled up, and walked the intervening distance, his arms drooping, and his breath coming in gasps. He had run apace, and he could not speak. But he nodded--as he wiped the saliva from his parted lips--to O'Sullivan Og to come aside with him; and the two moved off a space. The others eyed them while the message was given. The suspense was short. Quickly O'Sullivan Og came back.

"Ye may be thankful," he said drily. "Ye've cheated the pikes for this time, no less. And 'tis safe ye are."

"You have the greater reason to be thankful," Colonel John replied solemnly. "You have been spared a foul crime."

"Faith, and I hope I may never do worse," Og answered hardily, "than rid the world of two black Protestants, an' them with a priest to make their souls! Many's the honest man's closed his eyes without that same. But 'tis no time for prating! I wonder at your honour, and you no more than out of the black water! Bring them along, boys," he continued, "we've work to do yet!"

"_Laus Deo!_" the priest cried, lifting up his hands. "Give Him the glory!"

"Amen," the Colonel said softly. And for a moment he shut his eyes and stood with clasped hands. Perhaps even his courage was hardly proof against so sudden, so late a respite. He looked with a hardly repressed shudder on the dreary face of the bog, on the gleaming water, on the dripping furze bushes. "I thank you kindly, father, for your prayers!" he said. "The words of a good man avail much!"

No more was said. For a few yards Bale walked unsteadily, shaken by his escape from a death the prospect of which had evoked as much rage as fear. But he recovered himself speedily, and, urged by O'Sullivan's continual injunctions to hasten, the party were not long in retracing their steps. They reached the road, and went along it, but in the direction of the landing-place. In a few minutes they were threading their way in single file across the saucer-like waste which lay to landward of the hill overlooking the jetty and the inlet.

"Are you taking us to the French sloop?" Colonel John asked.

"You'll be as wise as the lave of us by-and-by!" Og answered sulkily.

They crossed the shoulder near the tower, which loomed uncertainly through the fog, and they strode down the slope to the stone pier. The mist lay low on the water, and only the wet stones of the jetty, and a boat or two floating in the angle between the jetty and the shore, were visible. The tide was almost at the flood. Og bade the men draw in one of the boats, ordered Colonel Sullivan and Bale to go into the bow, and the pikemen to take the oars. He and the two firelock-men--the messenger had vanished--took their seats in the stern.

"Pull out, you cripples," he said. "And be pulling stout, and there'll be flood enough to be bringing us back."

The men bent to the clumsy oars, and the boat slid down the inlet, and passed under the beam of the French sloop, which lay moored farther along the jetty. Not a sign of life appeared on deck as they passed; the ship seemed to be deserted. Half a dozen strokes carried the boat beyond view of it, and the little party were alone on the bosom of the water, that lay rocking smoothly between its unseen banks. Some minutes were spent in stout rowing, and the oily swell began to grow longer and slower. They were near the mouth of the inlet, and abreast of the east-and-west-running shore of the bay. Smoothly as the sea lapped the beach under the mist, the boat began to rise and fall on the Atlantic rollers.

"Tis more deceitful than a pretty colleen," O'Sullivan Og said, "is the sea-fog, bad cess to it! My own father was lost in it. Will you be seeing her, boys?"

"Ye'll not see her till ye touch her!" one of the rowers answered.

"And the tide running?" the other said. "Save us from that same!"

"She's farther out by three gunshots!" struck in a firelock-man. "We'll be drifting back, ye thieves of the world, if ye sit staring there! Pull, an' we'll be inshore an' ye know it."

For some minutes the men pulled steadily onwards, while one of the passengers, apprised that their destination was the Spanish war-vessel which had landed Cammock and the Bishop, felt anything but eager to reach it. A Spanish war-ship meant imprisonment and hardship without question, possibly the Inquisition, persecution, and death. When the men lay at last on their oars, and swore that they must have passed the ship, and they would go no farther, he alone listened indifferently, nay, felt a faint hope born in him.

"'Tis a black Protestant fog!" O'Sullivan cried. "Where'll we be, I wonder?"

"Sure, ye can make no mistake," one answered. "The wind's light off the land."

"We'll be pulling back, lads."

"That's the word."

The men put the boat about, a little sulkily, and started on the return journey. The sound of barking dogs and crowing cocks came off the land with that clearness which all sounds assume in a fog. Suddenly Colonel John, crouching in the bow, where was scant room for Bale and himself, saw a large shape loom before him. Involuntarily he uttered a warning cry, O'Sullivan echoed it, the men tried to hold the boat. In doing this, however, one man was quicker than the other, the boat turned broadside on to her former course, and before the cry was well off O'Sullivan Og's lips, it swept violently athwart a cable hauled taut by the weight of a vessel straining to the flow of the tide. In a twinkling the boat careened, throwing its occupants into the water.

Colonel John and Bale were nearest to the hawser, and managed, suddenly as the thing