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No Defense, Complete

by Gilbert Parker · English · Gutenberg #6295 · 472,456 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: No Defense, Complete

Author: Gilbert Parker


        
Release date: November 20, 2004 [eBook #6295]
                Most recently updated: December 29, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6295

Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NO DEFENSE, COMPLETE ***



Produced by David Widger





NO DEFENSE

By Gilbert Parker



CONTENTS

     BOOK I.
     I.        THE TWO MEET
     II.       THE COMING OF A MESSENGER
     III.      THE QUARREL
     IV.       THE DUEL
     V.        THE KILLING OF ERRIS BOYNE
     VI.       DYCK IN PRISON
     VII.      MOTHER AND DAUGHTER
     VIII.     DYCK’S FATHER VISITS HIM
     IX.       A LETTER FROM SHEILA

     BOOK II
     X.        DYCK CALHOUN ENTERS THE WORLD AGAIN
     XI.       WHITHER NOW?
     XII.      THE HOUR BEFORE THE MUTINY
     XIII.     TO THE WEST INDIES
     XIV.      IN THE NICK OF TIME
     XV.       THE ADMIRAL HAS HIS SAY

     BOOK III
     XVI.      A LETTER
     XVII.     STRANGERS ARRIVE
     XVIII.    AT SALEM
     XIX.      LORD MALLOW INTERVENES
     XX.       OUT OF THE HANDS OF THE PHILISTINES
     XXI.      THE CLASH OF RACE
     XXII.     SHEILA HAS HER SAY
     XXIII.    THE COMING OF NOREEN
     XXIV.     WITH THE GOVERNOR
     XXV.      THEN WHAT HAPPENED





CHAPTER I. THE TWO MEET

“Well, good-bye, Dyck. I’ll meet you at the sessions, or before that at
the assizes.”

It was only the impulsive, cheery, warning exclamation of a wild young
Irish spirit to his friend Dyck Calhoun, but it had behind it the humour
and incongruity of Irish life.

The man, Dyck Calhoun, after whom were sent the daring words about the
sessions and the assizes, was a year or two older than his friend, and,
as Michael Clones, his servant and friend, said, “the worst and best
scamp of them all”--just up to any harmless deviltry.

Influenced by no traditions or customs, under control of no stern
records of society, Calhoun had caused some trouble in his time by the
harmless deeds of a scapegrace, but morally--that is, in all relations
of life affected by the ten commandments--he was above reproach. Yet he
was of the sort who, in days of agitation, then common in Ireland, might
possibly commit some act which would bring him to the sessions or
the assizes. There never was in Ireland a cheerier, braver, handsomer
fellow, nor one with such variety of mind and complexity of purpose.

He was the only child of a high-placed gentleman; he spent all the money
that came his way, and occasionally loaded himself with debt, which his
angry father paid. Yet there never was a gayer heart, a more generous
spirit, nor an easier-tempered man; though, after all, he was only
twenty-five when the words with which the tale opens were said to him.

He had been successful--yet none too successful--at school and Trinity
College, Dublin. He had taken a pass degree, when he might have captured
the highest honours. He had interested people of place in the country,
but he never used promptly the interest he excited. A pretty face, a
fishing or a shooting expedition, a carouse in some secluded tavern,
were parts of his daily life.

At the time the story opens he was a figure of note among those who
spent their time in criticizing the government and damning the Irish
Parliament. He even became a friend of some young hare-brained rebels of
the time; yet no one suspected him of anything except irresponsibility.
His record was clean; Dublin Castle was not after him.

When his young friend made the remark about the sessions and assizes,
Calhoun was making his way up the rocky hillside to take the homeward
path to his father’s place, Playmore. With the challenge and the
monstrous good-bye, a stone came flying up the hill after him and
stopped almost at his feet. He made no reply, however, but waved a hand
downhill, and in his heart said:

“Well, maybe he’s right. I’m a damned dangerous fellow, there’s no doubt
about that. Perhaps I’ll kill a rebel some day, and then they’ll take me
to the sessions and the assizes. Well, well, there’s many a worse fate
than that, so there is.”

After a minute he added:

“So there is, dear lad, so there is. But if I ever kill, I’d like it
to be in open fight on the hills like this--like this, under the bright
sun, in the soft morning, with all the moor and valleys still, and the
larks singing--the larks singing! Hooray, but it’s a fine day, one of
the best that ever was!”

He laughed, and patted his gun gently.

“Not a feather, not a bird killed, not a shot fired; but the looking was
the thing--stalking the things that never turned up, the white heels we
never saw, for I’m not killing larks, God love you!”

He raised his head, looking up into the sky at some larks singing above
him in the heavens.

“Lord love you, little dears,” he added aloud. “I wish I might die with
your singing in my ears, but do you know what makes Ireland what it
is? Look at it now. Years ago, just when the cotton-mills and the
linen-mills were doing well, they came over with their English
legislation, and made it hard going. When we begin to get something,
over the English come and take the something away. What have we done, we
Irish people, that we shouldn’t have a chance in our own country? Lord
knows, we deserve a chance, for it’s hard paying the duties these days.
What with France in revolution and reaching out her hand to Ireland
to coax her into rebellion; what with defeat in America and drink
in Scotland; what with Fox and Pitt at each other’s throats, and the
lord-lieutenant a danger to the peace; what with poverty, and the cow
and children and father and mother living all in one room, with the
chickens roosting in the rafters; what with pointing the potato at the
dried fish and gulping it down as if it was fish itself; what with the
smell and the dirt and the poverty of Dublin and Derry, Limerick and
Cork--ah, well!” He threw his eyes up again.

“Ah, well, my little love, sing on! You’re a blessing among a lot of
curses; but never mind, it’s a fine world, and Ireland’s the best part
of it. Heaven knows it--and on this hill, how beautiful it is!”

He was now on the top of a hill where he could look out towards the bog
and in towards the mellow, waving hills. He could drink in the yellowish
green, with here and there in the distance a little house; and about
two miles away smoke stealing up from the midst of the plantation where
Playmore was--Playmore, his father’s house--to be his own one day.

How good it was! There, within his sight, was the great escarpment of
rock known as the Devil’s Ledge, and away to the east was the black spot
in the combe known as the Cave of Mary. Still farther away, towards the
south, was the great cattle-pasture, where, as he looked, a thousand
cattle roamed. Here and there in the wide prospect were plantations
where Irish landlords lived, and paid a heavy price for living. Men did
not pay their rents. Crops were spoiled, markets were bad, money was
scarce, yet--

“Please God, it will be better next year!” Michael Clones said, and
there never was a man with a more hopeful heart than Michael Clones.

Dyck Calhoun had a soul of character, originality, and wayward
distinction. He had all the impulses and enthusiasms of a poet, all the
thirst for excitement of the adventurer, all the latent patriotism of
the true Celt; but his life was undisciplined, and he had not ordered
his spirit into compartments of faith and hope. He had gifts. They were
gifts only to be borne by those who had ambitions.

Now, as he looked out upon the scene where nature was showing herself
at her best, some glimmer of a great future came to him. He did not know
which way his feet were destined to travel in the business of life. It
was too late to join the navy; but there was still time enough to be a
soldier, or to learn to be a lawyer.

As he gazed upon the scene, his wonderful deep blue eyes, his dark brown
hair thick upon his head, waving and luxuriant like a fine mattress, his
tall, slender, alert figure, his bony, capable hands, which neither sun
nor wind ever browned, his nervous yet interesting mouth, and his long
Roman nose, set in a complexion rich in its pink-and-cream hardness and
health--all this made him a figure good to see.

Suddenly, as he listened to the lark singing overhead, with his face
lifted to the sky, he heard a human voice singing; and presently there
ran up a little declivity to his left a girl--an Irish girl of about
seventeen years of age.

Her hat was hanging on her arm by a green ribbon. Her head was covered
with the most wonderful brown, waving hair. She had a broad, low
forehead, Greek in its proportions and lines. The eyes were bluer even
than his own, and were shaded by lashes of great length, which slightly
modified the firm lines of the face, with its admirable chin, and mouth
somewhat large with a cupid’s bow.

In spite of its ardent and luscious look, it was the mouth of one who
knew her own mind and could sustain her own course. It was open when
Dyck first saw it, because she was singing little bits of wild lyrics
of the hills, little tragedies of Celtic life--just bursts of the Celtic
soul, as it were, cheerful yet sad, buoyant and passionate, eager yet
melancholy. She was singing in Irish too. They were the words of songs
taught her by her mother’s maid.

She had been tramping over the hills for a couple of hours, virile,
beautiful, and alone. She wore a gown of dark gold, with little green
ribbons here and there. The gown was short, and her ankles showed.
In spite of the strong boots she wore they were alert, delicate, and
shapely, and all her beauty had the slender fullness of a quail.

When she saw Dyck, she stopped suddenly, her mouth slightly open. She
gave him a sidelong glance of wonder, interest, and speculation. Then
she threw her head slightly back, and all the curls gathered in a bunch
and shook like bronze flowers. It was a head of grace and power, of
charm and allurement--of danger.

Dyck was lost in admiration. He looked at her as one might look at a
beautiful thing in a dream. He did not speak; he only smiled as he gazed
into her eyes. She was the first to speak.

“Well, who are you?” she asked with a slightly southern accent in her
voice, delicate and entrancing. Her head gave a little modest toss, her
fine white teeth caught her lower lip with a little quirk of humour;
for she could see that he was a gentleman, and that she was safe from
anything that might trouble her.

He replied to her question with the words:

“My name? Why, it’s Dyck Calhoun. That’s all.”

Her eyes brightened. “Isn’t that enough?” she asked gently.

She knew of his family. She was only visiting in the district with her
mother, but she had lately heard of old Miles Calhoun and his wayward
boy, Dyck; and here was Dyck, with a humour in his eyes and a touch of
melancholy at his lips. Somehow her heart went out to him.

Presently he said to her: “And what’s your name?”

“I’m only Sheila Llyn, the daughter of my mother, a widow, visiting at
Loyland Towers. Yes, I’m only Sheila!”

She laughed.

“Well, just be ‘only Sheila,”’ he answered admiringly, and he held out a
hand to her. “I wouldn’t have you be anything else, though it’s none of
my business.”

For one swift instant she hesitated; then she laid her hand in his.

“There’s no reason why we should not,” she said. “Your father’s
respectable.”

She looked at him again with a sidelong glance, and with a whimsical,
reserved smile at her lips.

“Yes, he’s respectable, I agree, but he’s dull,” answered Dyck. “For an
Irishman, he’s dull--and he’s a tyrant, too. I suppose I deserve that,
for I’m a handful.”

“I think you are, and a big handful too!”

“Which way are you going?” he asked presently.

“And you?”

“Oh, I’m bound for home.” He pointed across the valley. “Do you see that
smoke coming up from the plantation over there?”

“Yes, I know,” she answered. “I know. That’s Playmore, your father’s
place. Loyland Towers is between here and there. Which way were you
going there?”

“Round to the left,” he said, puzzled, but agreeable.

“Then we must say good-bye, because I go to the right. That’s my nearest
way.”

“Well, if that’s your nearest way, I’m going with you,” he said,
“because--well, because--because--”

“If you won’t talk very much!” she rejoined with a little air of
instinctive coquetry.

“I don’t want to talk. I’d like to listen. Shall we start?”

A half-hour later they suddenly came upon an incident of the road.

It was, alas, no uncommon incident. An aged peasant, in a sudden fit of
weakness, had stumbled on the road, and, in falling, had struck his
head on a stone and had lost consciousness. He was an old peasant of the
usual Irish type, coarsely but cleanly dressed. Lying beside him was
a leather bag, within which were odds and ends of food and some small
books of legend and ritual. He was a peasant of a superior class,
however.

In falling, he had thrown over on his back, and his haggard face was
exposed to the sun and sky. At sight of him Dyck and Sheila ran forward.
Dyck dropped on one knee and placed a hand on the stricken man’s heart.

“He’s alive, all right,” Dyck said. “He’s a figure in these parts. His
name’s Christopher Dogan.”

“Where does he live?”

“Live? Well, not three hundred yards from here, when he’s at home, but
he’s generally on the go. He’s what the American Indians would call a
medicine-man.”

“He needs his own medicine now.”

“He’s over eighty, and he must have gone dizzy, stumbled, fallen, and
struck a stone. There’s the mark on his temple. He’s been lying here
unconscious ever since; but his pulse is all right, and we’ll soon have
him fit again.”

So saying, Dyck whipped out a horn containing spirit, and, while Sheila
lifted the injured head, he bathed the old man’s face with the spirit,
then opened the mouth and let some liquor trickle down.

“He’s the cleanest peasant I ever saw,” remarked Sheila; “and he’s
coming to. Look at him!”

Yes, he was coming to. There was a slight tremor of the eyelids, and
presently they slowly opened. They were eyes of remarkable poignancy and
brightness--black, deep-set, direct, full of native intelligence. For an
instant they stared as if they had no knowledge, then understanding came
to them.

“Oh, it’s you, sir,” his voice said tremblingly, looking at Dyck. “And
very kind it is of ye!” Then he looked at Sheila. “I don’t know ye,” he
said whisperingly, for his voice seemed suddenly to fail. “I don’t know
ye,” he repeated, “but you look all right.”

“Well, I’m Sheila Llyn,” the girl said, taking her hand from the old
man’s shoulder.

“I’m Sheila Llyn, and I’m all right in a way, perhaps.”

The troubled, piercing eyes glanced from one to the other.

“No relation?”

“No--never met till a half-hour ago,” remarked Dyck.

The old man drew himself to a sitting posture, then swayed slightly. The
hands of the girl and Dyck went out behind his back. As they touched his
back, their fingers met, and Dyck’s covered the girl’s. Their eyes met,
too, and the story told by Dyck in that moment was the beginning of a
lifetime of experience, comedy, and tragedy.

He thought her fingers were wonderfully soft, warm, and full of life;
and she thought that his was the hand of a master-of a master in the
field of human effort. That is, if she thought at all, for Dyck’s warm,
powerful touch almost hypnotized her.

The old peasant understood, however. He was standing on his feet now.
He was pale and uncertain. He lifted up his bag, and threw it over his
shoulder.

“Well, I’m not needing you any more, thank God!” he said.

“So Heaven’s blessing on ye, and I bid ye good-bye. You’ve been kind to
me, and I won’t forget either of ye. If ever I can do ye a good turn,
I’ll do it.”

“No, we’re not going to leave you until you’re inside your home,” said
Dyck.

The old man looked at Sheila in meditation. He knew her name and her
history. Behind the girl’s life was a long prospect of mystery. Llyn was
her mother’s maiden name. Sheila had never known her father. Never to
her knowledge had she seen him, because when she was yet an infant her
mother had divorced him by Act of Parliament, against the wishes of her
church, and had resumed her maiden name.

Sheila’s father’s name was Erris Boyne, and he had been debauched,
drunken, and faithless; so at a time of unendurable hurt his wife had
freed herself. Then, under her maiden name, she had brought up her
daughter without any knowledge of her father; had made her believe he
was dead; had hidden her tragedy with a skilful hand.

Only now, when Sheila was released from a governess, had she moved out
of the little wild area of the County Limerick where she lived; only
now had she come to visit an uncle whose hospitality she had for so
many years denied herself. Sheila was two years old when her father
disappeared, and fifteen years had gone since then.

One on either side of the old man, they went with him up the hillside
for about three hundred yards, to the door of his house, which was
little more than a cave in a sudden lift of the hill. He swayed as he
walked, but by the time they reached his cave-house he was alert again.

The house had two windows, one on either side of the unlocked doorway;
and when the old man slowly swung the door open, there was shown an
interior of humble character, but neat and well-ordered. The floor was
earth, dry and clean. There was a bed to the right, also wholesome and
dry, with horse-blankets for cover. At the back, opposite the doorway,
was a fireplace of some size, and in it stood a kettle, a pot, and a
few small pans, together with a covered saucepan. On either side of
the fireplace was a three-legged stool, and about the middle of the
left-hand wall of the room was a chair which had been made out of a
barrel, some of the staves having been sawn away to make a seat.

Once inside the house, Christopher Dogan laid his bag on the bed and
waved his hands in a formula of welcome.

“Well, I’m honoured,” he said, “for no one has set foot inside this
place that I’d rather have here than the two of ye; and it’s wonderful
to me, Mr. Calhoun, that ye’ve never been inside it before, because
there’s been times when I’ve had food and drink in plenty. I could have
made ye comfortable then and stroked ye all down yer gullet. As for you,
Miss Llyn, you’re as welcome as the shining of the stars of a night when
there’s no moon. I’m glad you’re here, though I’ve nothing to give ye,
not a bite nor sup. Ah, yes--but yes,” he suddenly cried, touching his
head. “Faith, then, I have! I have a drap of somethin’ that’s as good
as annything dhrunk by the ancient kings of Ireland. It’s a wee cordial
that come from the cellars of the Bishop of Dunlany, when I cured his
cook of the evil-stone that was killing her. Ah, thank God!”

He went into a corner on the left of the fireplace, opened an old jar,
thrust his arm down, and drew out a squat little bottle of cordial. The
bottle was beautifully made. It was round and hunched, and of glass,
with an old label from which the writing had faded.

With eyes bright now, Christopher uncorked the bottle and smelled the
contents. As he did so, a smile crinkled his face.

“Thank the Lord! There’s enough for the two of ye--two fine
tablespoonfuls of the cordial that’d do anny man good, no matter how bad
he was, and turn an angel of a woman into an archangel. Bless yer Bowl!”

When Christopher turned to lift down two pewter pots, Calhoun reached up
swiftly and took them from the shelf. He placed them in the hands of the
old man, who drew a clean towel of coarse linen from a small cupboard in
the wall above his head.

She and Dyck held the pots for the old man to pour the cordial into
them. As he said, there was only a good porridge-spoon of liqueur for
each. He divided it with anxious care.

“There’s manny a man,” he said, “and manny and manny a lady, too, born
in the purple, that’d be glad of a dhrink of this cordial from the
cellar of the bishop.

“Alpha, beta, gamma, delta is the code, and with the word delta,” he
continued, “dhrink every drop of it, as if it was the last thing you
were dhrinking on earth; as if the Lord stooped down to give ye a cup of
blessing from His great flagon of eternal happiness. Ye’ve got two kind
hearts, but there’s manny a day of throuble will come between ye and the
end; and yet the end’ll be right, God love ye! Now-alpha, beta, gamma,
delta!”

With a merry laugh Dyck Calhoun turned up his cup and drained the liquid
to the last drop. With a laugh not quite so merry, Sheila raised her mug
and slowly drained the green happiness away.

“Isn’t it good--isn’t it like the love of God?” asked the old man.
“Ain’t I glad I had it for ye? Why I said I hadn’t annything for ye to
dhrink or eat, Lord only knows. There’s nothing to eat, and there’s only
this to dhrink, and I hide it away under the bedclothes of time, as one
might say. Ah, ye know, it’s been there for three years, and I’d almost
forgot it. It was a little angel from heaven whispered it to me whir
ye stepped inside this house. I dunno why I kep’ the stuff. Manny’s the
time I was tempted to dhrink it myself, and manny’s the time something
said to me, ‘Not yet.’ The Lord be praised, for I’ve had out of it more
than I deserve!”

He took the mugs from their hands, and for a minute stood like some
ancient priest who had performed a noble ritual. As Sheila looked at
him, she kept saying to herself:

“He’s a spirit; he isn’t a man!”

Dyck’s eye met that of Sheila, and he saw with the same feeling what was
working in her heart.

“Well, we must be going,” he said to Christopher Dogan. “We must get
homeward, and we’ve had a good drink--the best I ever tasted. We’re
proud to pay our respects to you in your own house; and goodbye to you
till we meet again.”

His hand went out to the shoulder of the peasant and rested there for a
second in friendly feeling. Then the girl stretched out her hand also.
The old man took the two cups in one hand, and, reaching out the other,
let Sheila’s fingers fall upon his own. He slowly crooked his neck, and
kissed her fingers with that distinction mostly to be found among those
few good people who live on the highest or the lowest social levels, or
in native tents.

“Ah, please God we meet again! and that I be let to serve you, Miss
Sheila Llyn. I have no doubt you could do with a little help some time
or another, the same as the rest of us. For all that’s come between
us three, may it be given me, humble and poor, to help ye both that’s
helped me so!”

Dyck turned to go, and as he did so a thought came to him.

“If you hadn’t food and drink for us, what have you for yourself,
Christopher?” he asked. “Have you food to eat?”

“Ah, well--well, do ye think I’m no provider? There was no food cooked
was what I was thinking; but come and let me show you.”

He took the cover off a jar standing in a corner. “Here’s good flour,
and there’s water, and there’s manny a wild shrub and plant on the
hillside to make soup, and what more does a man want? With the scone
cooked and inside ye, don’t ye feel as well as though ye’d had a pound
of beef or a rasher of bacon? Sure, ye do. I know where there’s clumps
of wild radishes, and with a little salt they’re good--the best. God
bless ye!”

A few moments later, as he stood in his doorway and looked along the
road, he saw two figures, the girl’s head hardly higher than the man’s
shoulder. They walked as if they had much to get and were ready for it.

“Well, I dunno,” he said to himself. “I dunno about you, Dyck Calhoun.
You’re wild, and ye have too manny mad friends, but you’ll come all
right in the end; and that pretty girl--God save her!--she’ll come with
a smile into your arms by and by, dear lad. But ye have far to go and
much to do before that.”

His head fell, his eyes stared out into the shining distance.

“I see for ye manny and manny a stroke of bad luck, and manny a wrong
thing said of ye, and she not believing wan of them. But oh, my God, but
oh!”--his clenched hands went to his eyes. “I wouldn’t like to travel
the path that’s before ye--no!”

Down the long road the two young people travelled, gossiping much, both
of them touched by something sad and mysterious, neither knowing why;
both of them happy, too, for somehow they had come nearer together than
years of ordinary life might have made possible. They thought of the old
man and his hut, and then broke away into talk of their own countryside,
of the war with France, of the growing rebellious spirit in Ireland, of
riots in Dublin town, of trouble at Limerick, Cork, and Sligo.

At the gate of the mansion where Sheila was visiting, Dyck put into her
hands the wild flowers he had picked as they passed, and said:

“Well, it’s been a great day. I’ve never had a greater. Let’s meet
again, and soon! I’m almost every day upon the hill with my gun, and
it’d be worth a lot to see you very soon.”

“Oh, you’ll be forgetting me by to-morrow,” the girl said with a little
wistfulness at her lips, for she had a feeling they would not meet on
the morrow. Suddenly she picked from the bunch of wild flowers he had
given her a little sprig of heather.

“Well, if we don’t meet--wear that,” she said, and, laughing over her
shoulder, turned and ran into the grounds of Loyland Towers.




CHAPTER II. THE COMING OF A MESSENGER

When Dyck entered the library of Playmore, the first words he heard were
these:

“Howe has downed the French at Brest. He’s smashed the French fleet and
dealt a sharp blow to the revolution. Hurrah!”

The words were used by Miles Calhoun, Dyck’s father, as a greeting to
him on his return from the day’s sport.

Now, if there was a man in Ireland who had a narrow view and kept his
toes pointed to the front, it was Miles Calhoun. His people had lived in
Connemara for hundreds of years; and he himself had only one passion in
life, which was the Protestant passion of prejudice. He had ever been
a follower of Burke--a passionate follower, one who believed the French
Revolution was a crime against humanity, a danger to the future of
civilization.

He had resisted more vigorously than most men the progress of
revolutionary sentiments in Ireland. He was aware that his son had far
less rigid opinions than himself; that he even defended Wolfe Tone and
Thomas Emmet against abuse and damnation. That was why he had delight in
slapping his son in the face, whenever possible, with the hot pennant of
victory for British power.

He was a man of irascible temperament and stern views, given to fits
of exasperation. He was small of stature, with a round face, eyes that
suddenly went red with feeling, and with none of the handsomeness of his
son, who resembled his mother’s family.

The mother herself had been a beautiful and remarkable woman. Dyck was,
in a sense, a reproduction of her in body and mind, for a more cheerful
and impetuous person never made a household happier or more imperfect
than she made hers.

Her beauty and continual cheerfulness had always been the joy of Dyck’s
life, and because his mother had married his father--she was a woman of
sense, with all her lightsome ways--he tried to regard his father with
profound respect. Since his wife’s death, however, Miles Calhoun had
deteriorated; he had become unreasonable.

As the elder Calhoun made his announcement about the battle of Brest and
the English victory, a triumphant smile lighted his flushed face, and
under his heavy grey brows his eyes danced with malicious joy.

“Howe’s a wonder!” he said. “He’ll make those mad, red republicans hunt
their holes. Eh, isn’t that your view, Ivy?” he asked of a naval captain
who had evidently brought the news.

Captain Ivy nodded.

“Yes, it’s a heavy blow for the French bloodsuckers. If their ideas
creep through Europe and get hold of England, God only knows what the
end will be! In their view, to alter everything is the only way to
put things right. No doubt they’ll invent a new way to be born before
they’ve finished.”

“Well, that wouldn’t be a bad idea,” remarked Dyck. “The present way has
its demerits.”

“Yes, it throws responsibility upon the man, and gives a heap of trouble
to the woman,” said Captain Ivy with a laugh; “but they’ll change it
all, you’ll see.”

Dyck poured himself a glass of port, held it up, sniffed the aroma,
and looked through the beautiful red tinge of the wine with a happy and
critical eye.

“Well, the world could be remade in a lot of ways,” he declared. “I
shouldn’t mind seeing a bit of a revolution in Ireland--but in England
first,” he hastened to add. “They’re a more outcast folk than the
Irish.” His father scoffed.

“Look out, Dyck, or they’ll drop you in jail if you talk like that!” he
chided, his red face growing redder, his fingers nervously feeling
the buttons on his picturesque silk waistcoat. “There’s conspiracy in
Ireland, and you never truly know if the man that serves you at your
table, or brings you your horse, or puts a spade into your ground, isn’t
a traitor.”

At that moment the door opened, and a servant entered the room. In his
hand he carried a letter which, with marked excitement, he brought to
Miles Calhoun.

“Sure, he’s waiting, sir,” he said.

“And who’s he?” asked his master, turning the letter over, as though to
find out by looking at the seal.

“Oh, a man of consequence, if we’re to judge by the way he’s clothed.”

“Fit company, then?” his master asked, as he opened the heavily sealed
letter.

“Well, I’m not saying that, for there’s no company good enough for us,”
 answered the higgledy-piggledy butler, with a quirk of the mouth; “but,
as messengers go, I never seen one with more style and point.”

“Well, bring him to me,” said Miles Calhoun. “Bring him to me, and I’ll
form my own judgment--though I have some confidence in yours.”

“You could go further and fare worse, as the Papists say about
purgatory,” answered the old man with respectful familiarity.

Captain Ivy and Dyck grinned, but the head of the house seemed none too
pleased at the freedom of the old butler.

“Bring him as he is,” said Miles Calhoun. “Good God!” he added, for
he just realized that the stamp of the seal was that of the
Attorney-General of Ireland.

Then he read the letter and a flush swept over his face, making its red
almost purple.

“Eternal damnation--eternal damnation!” he declared, holding the paper
at arm’s length a moment, inspecting it. He then handed it to Dyck.
“Read that, lad. Then pack your bag, for we start for Dublin by daylight
or before.”

Dyck read the brief document and whistled softly to himself.

“Well, well, you’ve got to obey orders like that, I suppose,” Dyck said.
“They want to question us as to the state of the country here.”

“I think we can tell them something. I wonder if they know how wide your
travel is, how many people you see; and if they know, how did they come
to know? There’s spies all over the place. How do I know but the man
who’s just left this room isn’t a spy, isn’t the enemy of all of us
here?”

“I’d suspect Michael Clones,” remarked Dyck, “just as soon as Mulvaney.”

“Michael Clones,” said his father, and he turned to Captain Ivy,
“Michael Clones I’d trust as I’d trust His blessed Majesty, George III.
He’s a rare scamp, is Michael Clones! He’s no thicker than a cardboard,
but he draws the pain out of your hurt like a mustard plaster. A man
of better sense and greater roguery I’ve never met. You must see him,
Captain Ivy. He’s only about twelve years older than my son, but, like
my son, there’s no holding him, there’s no control of him that’s any
good. He does what he wants to do in his own way--talks when he wants
to talk, fights when he wants to fight. He’s a man of men, is Michael
Clones.”

At that moment the door opened and the butler entered, followed by a
tall, thin, Don Quixote sort of figure.

“His excellency,” said Mulvaney, with a look slightly malevolent, for
the visitor had refused his name. Then he turned and left the room.

At Mulvaney’s words, an ironical smile crossed the face of the newcomer.
Then he advanced to Miles Calhoun. Before speaking, however, he glanced
sharply at Captain Ivy, threw an inquisitive look at Dyck, and said:

“I seem to have hurt the feelings of your butler, sir, but that cannot
be helped. I have come from the Attorney-General. My name is Leonard
Mallow--I’m the eldest son of Lord Mallow. I’ve been doing business in
Limerick, and I bring a message from the Attorney-General to ask you to
attend his office at the earliest moment.”

Dyck Calhoun, noting his glance at a bottle of port, poured out a glass
of the good wine and handed it over, saying:

“It’ll taste better to you because you’ve been travelling hard, but it’s
good wine anyhow. It’s been in the cellar for forty years, and that’s
something in a land like this.”

Mallow accepted the glass of port, raised it with a little gesture of
respect, and said:

“Long life to the King, and cursed be his enemies!” So saying he flung
the wine down his throat--which seemed to gulp it like a well--wiped his
lips with a handkerchief, and turned to Miles Calhoun again.

“Yes, it’s good wine,” he said; “as good as you’d get in the cellars of
the Viceroy. I’ve seen strange things as I came. I’ve seen lights on the
hills, and drunken rioters in the roads and behind hedges, and once a
shot was fired at me; but here I am, safe and sound, carrying out my
orders. What time will you start?” he added.

He took it for granted that the summons did not admit of rejection, and
he was right. The document contained these words:

   Trouble is brewing; indeed, it is at hand. Come, please, at once to
   Dublin, and give the Lord-Lieutenant and the Government a report
   upon your district. We do not hear altogether well of it, but no
   one has the knowledge you possess. In the name of His Majesty you
   are to present yourself at once at these offices in Dublin, and be
   assured that the Lord-Lieutenant will give you warm welcome through
   me. Your own loyalty gives much satisfaction here. I am, sir,
               Your obedient servant,
                         JOHN MCNOWELL.

“You have confidence in the people’s loyalty here?” asked Mallow.

“As great as in my own,” answered Dyck cheerily. “Well, you ought to
know what that is. At the same time, I’ve heard you’re a friend of one
or two dark spirits in the land.”

“I hold no friendships that would do hurt to my country,” answered Dyck
sharply.

Mallow smiled satirically. “As we’re starting at daylight, I suppose, I
think I’ll go to bed, if it may be you can put me up.”

“Oh, Lord, yes! We can put you up, Mr. Mallow,” said the old man. “You
shall have as good a bed as you can find outside the Viceregal Lodge--a
fourposter, wide and long. It’s been slept in by many a man of place
and power. But, Mr. Mallow, you haven’t said you’ve had no dinner, and
you’ll not be going to bed in this house without your food. Did you
shoot anything to-day, Dyck?” he asked his son.

“I didn’t bring home a feather. There were no birds to-day, but there
are the ducks I shot yesterday, and the quail.”

“Oh, yes,” said his father, “and there’s the little roast pig, too. This
is a day when we celebrate the anniversary of Irish power and life.”

“What’s that?” asked Mallow.

“That’s the battle of the Boyne,” answered his host with a little
ostentation.

“Oh, you’re one of the Peep-o’-Day Boys, then,” remarked Mallow.

“I’m not saying that,” answered the old man. “I’m not an Ulsterman, but
I celebrate the coming of William to the Boyne. Things were done that
day that’ll be remembered when Ireland is whisked away into the Kingdom
of Heaven. So you’ll not go to bed till you’ve had dinner, Mr. Mallow!
By me soul, I think I smell the little porker now. Dinner at five,
to bed at eight, up before daylight, and off to Dublin when the light
breaks. That’s the course!” He turned to Captain Ivy. “I’m sorry,
captain, but there’s naught else to do, and you were going to-morrow at
noon, anyhow, so it won’t make much difference to you.”

“No difference whatever,” replied the sailorman. “I have to go to
Dublin, too, and from there to Queenstown to join my ship, and from
Queenstown to the coast of France to do some fighting.”

“Please God!” remarked Miles Calhoun. “So be it!” declared Mallow.

“Amen!” said Dyck.

Once again Dyck looked the visitor straight in the eyes, and back in the
horizon of Mallow’s life-sky there shone the light of an evil star.

“There’s the call to dinner,” remarked Miles Calhoun, as a bell began
ringing in the tower outside. “Come with me, Mr. Mallow, and I’ll show
you your room. You’ve had your horse put up, I hope?”

“Yes, and my bag brought in.”

“Well, come along, then. There’s no time to lose. I can smell the porker
crawling from the oven.”

“You’re a master of tempting thoughts,” remarked Mallow
enthusiastically.

“Sheila--Sheila!” said Dyck Calhoun to himself where he stood.




CHAPTER III. THE QUARREL.

The journey to Dublin was made by the Calhouns, their two guests, and
Michael Clones, without incident of note. Arrived there, Miles Calhoun
gave himself to examination by Government officials and to assisting
the designs of the Peep-o’-Day Boys; and indeed he was present at the
formation of the first Orange Lodge.

His narrow nature, his petty craft and malevolence, were useful in a
time of anxiety for the State. Yet he had not enough ability to develop
his position by the chances offered him. He had not a touch of genius;
he had only bursts of Celtic passion, which he had not mind enough to
control.

Indeed, as days, weeks and months went on, his position became less
valuable to himself, and his financial affairs suffered from his own and
his agent’s bad management. In his particular district he was a power;
in Dublin he soon showed the weaker side of his nature. He had a bad
habit of making foes where he could easily have made friends. In his
personal habits he was sober, but erratic.

Dyck had not his father’s abstention from the luxuries of life. He
drank, he gamed, he went where temptation was, and fell into it. He
steadily diminished his powers of resistance to self-indulgence until
one day, at a tavern, he met a man who made a great impression upon him.

This man was brilliant, ebullient, full of humour, character and life,
knowing apparently all the lower world of Dublin, and moving with an
assured step. It was Erris Boyne, the divorced husband of Mrs. Llyn and
the father of Sheila Llyn; but this fact was not known to Dyck. There
was also a chance of its not becoming known, because so many years had
passed since Erris Boyne was divorced.

One day Erris Boyne said to Dyck:

“There’s a supper to-night at the Breakneck Club. Come along and have a
skinful. You’ll meet people worth knowing. They’re a damned fine lot of
fellows for you to meet, Calhoun!”

“The Breakneck Club isn’t a good name for a first-class institution,”
 remarked Dyck, with a pause and a laugh; “but I’ll come, if you’ll fetch
me.”

Erris Boyne, who was eighteen years older than Dyck, laughed, flicked a
little pinch of snuff at his nose with his finger.

“Dear lad, of course I’ll come and fetch you,” he said. “There’s many
a man has done worse than lead a gay stripling like you into pleasant
ways. Bring along any loose change you have, for it may be a night of
nights.”

“Oh, they play cards, do they, at the Breakneck Club?” said Dyck, alive
with interest.

“Well, call it what you like, but men must do something when they
get together, and we can’t be talking all the time. So pocket your
shillings.”

“Are they all the right sort?” asked Dyck, with a little touch of
malice. “I mean, are they loyal and true?”

Erris Boyne laid a hand on Dyck’s arm.

“Come and find out. Do you think I’d lead you into bad company? Of
course Emmet and Wolfe Tone won’t be there, nor any of that lot; but
there’ll be some men of the right stamp.” He watched Dyck carefully out
of the corner of his eye. “It’s funny,” he added, “that in Ireland the
word loyal always means being true to the Union Jack, standing by King
George and his crowd.”

“Well, what would you have?” said Dyck. “For this is a day and age when
being loyal to the King is more than aught else in all the Irish world.
We’re never two days alike, we Irish. There are the United Irishmen and
the Defenders on one side, and the Peepo’-Day Boys, or Orangemen, on the
other--Catholic and Protestant, at each other’s throats. Then there’s
a hand thrust in, and up goes the sword, and the rifles, pikes, and
bayonets; and those that were ready to mutilate or kill each other fall
into each other’s arms.”

Erris Boyne laughed. “Well, there’ll soon be an end to that. The Irish
Parliament is slipping into disrepute. It wouldn’t surprise me if
the astute English bribe them into a union, to the ruin of Irish
Independence. Yet maybe, before that comes, the French will have a try
for power here. And upon my word, if I have to live under foreign rule,
I’d as leave have a French whip over me as an English!” He came a step
nearer, his voice lowered a little. “Have you heard the latest news from
France? They’re coming with a good-sized fleet down to the south coast.
Have you heard it?”

“Oh, there’s plenty one hears one doesn’t believe is gospel,” answered
Dyck, his eyes half closing. “I’m not believing all I hear, as if it
was a prayer-meeting. Anything may happen here; Ireland’s a woman--very
uncertain.”

Dyck flicked some dust from his waistcoat, and dropped his eyes, because
he was thinking of two women he had known; one of them an angel now in
company of her sister angels--his mother; the other a girl he had met
on the hills of Connemara, a wonderfully pretty girl of seventeen. How
should he know that the girl was Erris Boyne’s daughter?--although there
were times when some gesture of Boyne, some quick look, some lifting of
the eyebrows, brought back the memory of Sheila Llyn, as it did now.

Since Dyck left his old home he had seen her twice; once at Loyland
Towers, and once at her home in Limerick. The time he had spent with her
had been very brief, but full of life, interest, and character. She was
like some piquant child, bold, beautiful, uncertain, caressing in her
manner one instant, and distant at another.

She had said radiant things, had rallied him, had shown him where a
twenty-nine-pound salmon had been caught in a stream, and had fired
at and brought down a pheasant outside the covert at Loyland Towers.
Whether at Loyland Towers, or at her mother’s house in Limerick, there
was no touch of forwardness in her, or in anything she said or did. She
was the most natural being, the freest from affectation, he had ever
known.

As Erris Boyne talked to him, the memory of Sheila flooded his mind,
and on the flood his senses swam like swans. He had not her careful
composure. He was just as real, but he had the wilfulness of man. She
influenced him as no woman had ever yet done; but he saw no happy ending
to the dream. He was too poor to marry; he had no trade or profession;
his father’s affairs were in a bad way. He could not bring himself to
join the army or the navy; and yet, as an Irishman moved by political
ideals, with views at once critical and yet devoted to the crown, he was
not in a state to settle down.

He did not know that Erris Boyne was set to capture him for the rebel
cause. How could he know that Boyne was an agent of the most evil forces
in Ireland--an agent of skill and address, prepossessing, with the face
of a Celtic poet and the eye of an assassin?

Boyne’s object was to bring about the downfall of Dyck Calhoun--that
is, his downfall as a patriot. At the Breakneck Club this bad business
began. Dyck had seen many people, representing the gaiety and deviltry
of life; but it was as though many doubtful people, many reckless ones,
all those with purposes, fads, and fancies, were there. Here was an
irresponsible member of a Government department; there an officer of
His Majesty’s troops; beyond, a profligate bachelor whose reputation for
traitorous diplomacy was known and feared. Yet everywhere were men known
in the sporting, gaming, or political world, in sea life or land life,
most of whom had a character untouched by criticism.

It was at this club that Dyck again met that tall, ascetic messenger
from the Attorney-General, who had brought the message to Miles Calhoun.
It was with this man--Leonard Mallow, eldest son of Lord Mallow--that
Dyck, with three others, played cards one afternoon.

The instinctive antipathy which had marked their first introduction was
carried on to this later meeting. Dyck distrusted Mallow, and allowed
his distrust exercise. It was unfortunate that Mallow won from him
three-fourths of the money he had brought to the club, and won it with a
smile not easy to forgive.

Dyck had at last secured sudden success in a scheme of his cards when
Mallow asked with a sneer:

“Did you learn that at your home in heaven?”

“Don’t they teach it where you live in hell?” was Dyck’s reply.

At this Mallow flicked Dyck across the face with his handkerchief.

“That’s what they teach where I belong.”

“Well, it’s easy to learn, and we’ll do the sum at any time or place you
please.” After a moment Dyck continued: “I wouldn’t make a fuss over it.
Let’s finish the game. There’s no good prancing till the sport’s ready;
so I’ll sit and learn more of what they teach in hell!”

Dyck had been drinking, or he would not have spoken so; and when he
was drunk daring was strong in him. He hated profoundly this man-so
self-satisfied and satanic.

He kept a perfect coolness, however. Leonard Mallow should not see that
he was upset. His wanton wordiness came to his rescue, and until the
end of the game he played with sang-froid, daring, and skill. He loved
cards; he loved the strife of skill against skill, of trick against
trick, of hand against hand. He had never fought a duel in his life, but
he had no fear of doing so.

At length, having won back nearly all he had lost, he rose to his feet
and looked round.

“Is there any one here from whom I can ask a favour?”

Several stepped forward. Dyck nodded. One of them he knew. It was Sir
Almeric Foyle.

“Thank you, Sir Almeric,” he said; “thank you. Shall it be swords or
pistols?” he asked his enemy, coolly.

“Swords, if you please,” remarked Mallow grimly, for he had a gift with
the sword.

Dyck nodded again.

“As you will. As you will!”




CHAPTER IV. THE DUEL

It was a morning such as could only be brought into existence by the
Maker of mornings in Ireland. It was a day such as Dublin placed away
carefully into the pantechnicon of famous archives.

The city of Dublin was not always clean, but in the bright, gorgeous sun
her natural filth was no menace to the eye, no repulse to the senses.
Above the Liffey, even at so early an hour, the heat shimmers like a
silver mist. The bells of churches were ringing, and the great cathedral
bells boomed in thrilling monotony over the peaceful city. Here and
there in the shabby yet renowned streets, horsemen moved along; now
and then the costermonger raised his cry of fresh fruit, flowers, and
“distinguished vegetables.”

People moved into church doorways on their way to mass or
confession--some bright and rather gorgeous beings, some in deep
mourning, shy, reserved, and obscure. Here and there, also, in certain
streets--where officials lived or worked--were soldiers afoot; soldiers
with carbines and long bayonets, with tall, slightly peaked hats, smart
red coats, belts crossing their breasts, knee-breeches and leggings, and
all with epaulets shining. They were in marked contrast to the peasant
folk with the high-peaked soft hat, knee-breeches, rough tail-coat, and
stockings, some with rifles, some with pikes, some with powder-horns
slung under their arms or in the small of the back.

Besides this show of foot-soldiers--that is, regulars and irregulars of
the Cornwallis Regiment, and men of the Defenders and the Peep-o’-Day
Boys--there were little groups of cavalry making their way to the
parade-ground, the castle, the barracks, or the courts.

Beyond these there was the jaunting-car trundling over the rough
cobblestone street, or bumping in and out of dangerous holes. Whips
cracked, and the loud voices of jarveys shouted blatant humour and Irish
fun at horse and passenger. Here and there, also, some stately coach,
bedizened with arms of the quality, made its way through the chief
streets, or across the bridges of the Liffey.

Then came the general population, moving cheerfully in the inspiriting
sun; for Irishmen move so much in a moist atmosphere that on a sunshiny
day all tristesse of life seems changed, as in a flash, into high
spirits and much activity. Not that the country, at its worst, is
slow-footed or depressed; for wit is always at the elbow of want.

Never in all Ireland’s years had she a more beautiful day than that
in which Dyck Calhoun and the Hon. Leonard Mallow met to settle their
account in a secluded corner of Phoenix Park. It was not the usual
place for duels. The seconds had taken care to keep the locale from the
knowledge of the public; especially as many who had come to know of the
event at the Breakneck Club were eager to be present.

The affair began an hour after sunrise. Neither Dyck nor Leonard Mallow
slept at home the night before, but in separate taverns near Phoenix
Park. Mallow came almost jauntily to the obscure spot. Both men had
sensitiveness, and both entered the grounds with a certain sense of
pleasure.

Dyck moved and spoke like a man charged with some fluid which had
abstracted him from life’s monotonous routine. He had to consider the
chance of never leaving the grounds alive; yet as he entered the place,
where smooth grass between the trees made good footing for the work to
be done, the thrill of the greenery, the sound of the birds, the flick
of a lizard across the path, and the distant gay leap of a young deer,
brought to his senses a gust of joyous feeling.

“I never smelled such air!” he said to one of the seconds. “I never saw
the sun so beautiful!” He sniffed the air and turned his face towards
the sun. “Well, it’s a day for Ireland,” he added, in response to a
gravely playful remark of Sir Almeric Foyle. “Ireland never was so
sweet. Nature’s provoking us!”

“Yes, it’s a pity,” said Sir Almeric. “But I’m not thinking of bad luck
for you, Calhoun.”

Dyck’s smile seemed to come from infinite distance. He was not normal;
he was submerged. He was in the great, consuming atmosphere of the
bigger world, and the greater life. He even did not hate Mallow at the
moment. The thing about to be done was to him a test of manhood. It was
a call upon the courage of the soul, a challenge of life, strength, and
will.

As Mallow entered the grounds, the thought of Sheila Llyn crossed Dyck’s
mind, and the mental sight of her gladdened the eyes of his soul. For
one brief instant he stood lost in the mind’s look; then he stepped
forward, saluted, shook hands with Mallow, and doffed his coat and
waistcoat.

As he did so, he was conscious of a curious coldness, even of dampness,
in the hand which had shaken that of Mallow. Mallow’s hand had a clammy
touch--clammy, but firm and sure. There was no tremor in the long, thin
fingers nor at the lips--the thin, ascetic lips, as of a secret-service
man--but in his eyes was a dark fire of purpose. The morning had touched
him, but not as it had thrown over Dyck its mantle of peace. Mallow
also had enjoyed the smell and feeling of it all, but with this
difference--it had filled him with such material joy that he could not
bear the thought of leaving it. It gave him strength of will, which
would add security to his arm and wrist. Yet, as he looked at Dyck, he
saw that his work was cut out for him; for in all his days he had never
seen a man so well-possessed, so surely in hand.

Dyck had learned swordsmanship with as skilled a master as Ireland had
known, and he had shown, in getting knowledge of the weapon, a natural
instinct and a capacity worthy of the highest purpose. He had handled
the sword since he was six, and his play was better than that of most
men; but this was, in fact, his first real duel. In the troubled state
of Ireland, with internal discord, challenge, and attack, he had more
than once fought, and with success; but that was in the rough-and-tumble
of life’s chances, as it were, with no deliberate plan to fight
according to the rules. Many times, of course, in the process of
his training, he had fought as men fight in duels, but with this
difference--that now he was permitted to disable or kill his foe.

It was clear that one or the other would not leave this ground--this
verdant, beautiful piece of mother earth--exactly as he entered it. He
would leave it wounded, incapable, or dead. Indeed, both might leave
it wounded, and the chances of success were with the older man, Mallow,
whose experience would give him an advantage.

Physically, there was not a vast deal to choose between the two men.
Mallow was lank and tall, nervously self-contained, finely concentrated,
and vigorous. Dyck was broad of shoulder, well set up, muscular, and
with a steadier eye than that of his foe. Also, as the combat developed,
it was clear that he had a hand as steady as his eye. What was more, his
wrist had superb strength and flexibility; it was as enduring and vital
as the forefoot and ankle of a tiger. As a pair they were certainly
notable, and would give a good account of themselves.

No one of temperament who observed the scene could ever forget it. The
light was perfect--evenly distributed, clear enough to permit accuracy
of distance in a stroke. The air was still, gently bracing, and, like
most Irish air, adorably sweet.

The spot chosen for the fight was a sort of avenue between great trees,
whose broad leaves warded off the direct sun, and whose shade had as
yet no black shadows. The turf was as elastic to the foot as a firm
mattress. In the trees, birds were singing with liveliness; in the
distance, horned cattle browsed, and a pair of horses stood gazing at
the combatants, startled, no doubt, by this invasion of their pasturage.
From the distance came the faint, mellow booming of church-bells.

The two men fighting had almost the air of gladiators. Their coats were
off, and the white linen of their shirts looked gracious; while the
upraised left hand of the fighters balancing the sword-thrust and the
weight of the body had an almost singular beauty. Of the two, Dyck was
the more graceful, the steadier, the quicker in his motions.

Vigilant Dyck was, but not reckless. He had made the first attack, on
the ground that the aggressor gains by boldness, if that boldness is
joined to skill; and Dyck’s skill was of the best. His heart was warm.
His momentary vision of Sheila Llyn remained with him--not as a vision,
rather as a warmth in his inmost being, something which made him
intensely alert, cheerful, defiant, exactly skilful.

He had need of all his skill, for Mallow was set to win the fight. He
felt instinctively what was working in Dyck’s mind. He had fought a
number of duels, and with a certain trick or art he had given the end
to the lives of several. He became conscious, however, that Dyck had a
particular stroke in mind, which he himself was preventing by masterful
methods. It might be one thing or another, but in view of Dyck’s
training it would perhaps be the Enniscorthy touch.

Again and again Dyck pressed his antagonist backward, seeking to muddle
his defence and to clear an opening for his own deadly stroke; but the
other man also was a master, and parried successfully.

Presently, with a quick move, Mallow took the offensive, and tried to
unsettle Dyck’s poise and disorganize his battle-plan. For an instant
the tempestuous action, the brilliant, swift play of the sword,
the quivering flippancy of the steel, gave Dyck that which almost
disconcerted him. Yet he had a grip of himself, and preserved his
defence intact; though once his enemy’s steel caught his left shoulder,
making it bleed. The seconds, however, decided that the thrust was not
serious, and made no attempt to interrupt the combat.

Dyck kept singularly cool. As Mallow’s face grew flushed, his own grew
paler, but it was the paleness of intensity and not of fear. Each man’s
remarkable skill in defence was a good guarantee against disaster due to
carelessness. Seldom have men fought so long and accomplished so little
in the way of blood-letting. At length, however, Dyck’s tactics changed.
Once again he became aggressive, and he drove his foe to a point where
the skill of both men was tried to the uttermost. It was clear the time
had come for something definite. Suddenly Dyck threw himself back with
an agile step, lunged slightly to one side, and then in a gallant
foray got the steel point into the sword-arm of his enemy. That was
the Enniscorthy stroke, which had been taught him by William Tandy,
the expert swordsman, and had been made famous by Lord Welling, of
Enniscorthy. It succeeded, and it gave Dyck the victory, for Mallow’s
sword dropped from his hand.

A fatigued smile came to Mallow’s lips. He clasped the wounded arm with
his left hand as the surgeon came forward.

“Well, you got it home,” he said to Dyck; “and it’s deftly done.”

“I did my best,” answered Dyck. “Give me your hand, if you will.”

With a wry look Mallow, now seated on the old stump of a tree, held out
his left hand. It was covered with blood.

“I think we’ll have to forego that courtesy, Calhoun,” he said. “Look
at the state of my hand! It’s good blood,” he added grimly. “It’s damned
good blood, but--but it won’t do, you see.”

“I’m glad it was no worse,” said Dyck, not touching the bloody hand.
“It’s a clean thrust, and you’ll be better from it soon. These great
men”--he smiled towards the surgeons--“will soon put you right. I got
my chance with the stroke, and took it, because I knew if I didn’t you’d
have me presently.”

“You’ll have a great reputation in Dublin town now, and you’ll deserve
it,” Mallow added adroitly, the great paleness of his features, however,
made ghastly by the hatred in his eyes.

Dyck did not see this look, but he felt a note of malice--a distant
note--in Mallow’s voice. He saw that what Mallow had said was fresh
evidence of the man’s arrogant character. It did not offend him,
however, for he was victor, and could enter the Breakneck Club or Dublin
society with a tranquil eye.

Again Mallow’s voice was heard.

“I’d have seen you damned to hell, Calhoun, before I’d have apologized
at the Breakneck Club; but after a fight with one of the best swordsmen
in Ireland I’ve learned a lot, and I’ll apologize now--completely.”

The surgeon had bound up the slight wound in Dyck’s shoulder, had
stopped the bleeding, and was now helping him on with his coat. The
operation had not been without pain, but this demonstration from his
foe was too much for him. It drove the look of pain from his face; it
brought a smile to his lips. He came a step nearer.

“I’m as obliged to you as if you’d paid for my board and lodging,
Mallow,” he said; “and that’s saying a good deal in these days.
I’ll never have a bigger fight. You’re a greater swordsman than
your reputation. I must have provoked you beyond reason,” he went on
gallantly. “I think we’d better forget the whole thing.”

“I’m a Loyalist,” Mallow replied. “I’m a Loyalist, and if you’re one,
too, what reason should there be for our not being friends?”

A black cloud flooded Calhoun’s face.

“If--if I’m a Loyalist, you say! Have you any doubt of it? If you
have--”

“You wish your sword had gone into my heart instead of my arm, eh?”
 interrupted Mallow. “How easily I am misunderstood! I meant nothing by
that ‘if.’” He smiled, and the smile had a touch of wickedness. “I
meant nothing by it-nothing at all. As we are both Loyalists, we must be
friends. Good-bye, Calhoun!”

Dyck’s face cleared very slowly. Mallow was maddening, but the look of
the face was not that of a foe. “Well, let us be friends,” Dyck answered
with a cordial smile. “Good-bye,” he added. “I’m damned sorry we had to
fight at all. Good-bye!”




CHAPTER V. THE KILLING OF ERRIS BOYNE

“There’s many a government has made a mess of things in Ireland,” said
Erris Boyne; “but since the day of Cromwell the Accursed this is the
worst. Is there a man in Ireland that believes in it, or trusts it?
There are men that support it, that are served by it, that fill their
pockets out of it; but by Joseph and by Mary, there’s none thinks there
couldn’t be a better! Have a little more marsala, Calhoun?”

With these words, Boyne filled up the long glass out of which Dyck
Calhoun had been drinking--drinking too much. Shortly before Dyck had
lost all his cash at the card-table. He had turned from it penniless and
discomfited to see Boyne, smiling, and gay with wine, in front of him.

Boyne took him by the arm.

“Come with me,” said he. “There’s no luck for you at the tables to-day.
Let’s go where we can forget the world, where we can lift the banner of
freedom and beat the drums of purpose. Come along, lad!”

Boyne had ceased to have his earlier allurement for Dyck Calhoun, but
his smile was friendly, his manner was hospitable, and he was on the
spot. The time was critical for Dyck--critical and dangerous. He had
lost money heavily; he had even exhausted his mother’s legacy.

Of late he had seen little of his father, and the little he had seen
was not fortunate. They had quarrelled over Dyck’s wayward doings. Miles
Calhoun had said some hard things to him, and Dyck had replied that he
would cut out his own course, trim his own path, walk his own way. He
had angered his father terribly, and Miles, in a burst of temper, had
disclosed the fact that his own property was in peril. They had been,
estranged ever since; but the time had come when Dyck must at least
secure the credit of his father’s name at his bank to find the means of
living.

It was with this staring him in the face that Erris Boyne’s company
seemed to offer at least a recovery of his good spirits. Dissipated as
Boyne’s look was, he had a natural handsomeness which, with good care of
himself personally, well-appointed clothes, a cheerful manner, and witty
talk, made him palatable to careless-living Dublin.

This Dublin knew little of Boyne’s present domestic life. It did not
know that he had injured his second wife as badly as he had wronged his
first--with this difference, however, that his first wife was a lady,
while his second wife, Noreen, was a beautiful, quick-tempered, lovable
eighteen-year-old girl, a graduate of the kitchen and dairy, when he
took her to himself. He had married her in a mad moment after his first
wife--Mrs. Llyn, as she was now called--had divorced him; and after
the first thrill of married life was over, nothing remained with Boyne
except regret that he had sold his freedom for what he might, perhaps,
have had without marriage.

Then began a process of domestic torture which alienated Noreen from
him, and roused in her the worst passions of human nature. She came to
know of his infidelities, and they maddened her. They had no children,
and in the end he had threatened her with desertion. When she had
retorted in strong words, he slapped her face, and left her with an ugly
smile.

The house where they lived was outside Dublin, in a secluded spot,
yet not far from stores and shops. There was this to be said for
Noreen--that she kept her home spotlessly clean, even with two
indifferent servants. She had a gift for housewifery, which, at its
best, was as good as anything in the world, and far better than could be
found in most parts of Ireland.

Of visitors they had few, if any, and the young wife was left alone to
brood upon her wrongs. Erris Boyne had slapped her face on the morning
of the day when he met Dyck Calhoun in the hour of his bad luck. He did
not see the look in her face as he left the house.

Ruthless as he was, he realized the time had come when by bold effort he
might get young Calhoun wholly into his power. He began by getting Dyck
into the street. Then he took him by an indirect route to what was,
reputedly, a tavern of consequence. There choice spirits met on
occasion, and dark souls, like Boyne, planned adventures. Outwardly it
was a tavern of the old class, superficially sedate, and called the Harp
and Crown. None save a very few conspirators knew how great a part
it played in the plan to break the government of Ireland and to ruin
England’s position in the land.

The entrance was by two doors--one the ordinary public entrance, the
other at the side of the house, which was on a corner. This could be
opened by a skeleton key owned by Erris Boyne.

He and Dyck entered, however, by the general entrance, because Boyne had
forgotten his key. They passed through the bar-parlour, nodding to one
or two habitues, and presently were bestowed in a room, not large, but
well furnished. It was quiet and alluring on this day when the world
seemed disconcerting. So pleasantly did the place affect Dyck’s spirits
that, as he sat down in the room which had often housed worse men than
himself, he gave a sigh of relief.

They played cards, and Dyck won. He won five times what he had lost at
the club. This made him companionable.

“It’s a poor business-cards,” he said at last. “It puts one up in the
clouds and down in the ditch all at the same time. I tell you this,
Boyne--I’m going to stop. No man ought to play cards who hasn’t a
fortune; and my fortune, I’m sorry to say, is only my face!” He laughed
bitterly.

“And your sword--you’ve forgotten that, Calhoun. You’ve a lot of luck in
your sword.”

“Well, I’ve made no money out of it so far,” Dyck retorted cynically.

“Yet you’ve put men with reputations out of the running, men like
Mallow.”

“Oh, that was a bit of luck and a few tricks I’ve learned. I can’t start
a banking-account on that.”

“But you can put yourself in the way of winning what can’t be bought.”

“No--no English army for me, thank you--if that’s what you mean.”

“It isn’t what I mean. In the English army a man’s a slave. He can
neither eat, nor drink, nor sleep without being under command. He has to
do a lot of dirty work without having voice in the policy. He’s a child
of discipline and order.”

“And a damned good thing that would be for most of us!” retorted Dyck.
“But I’m not one of the most.”

“I know that. Try a little more of this marsala, Calhoun. It’s the best
in the place, and it’s got a lot of good stuff. I’ve been coming to the
Harp and Crown for many years, and I’ve never had a bad drink all that
time. The old landlord is a genius. He doesn’t put on airs. He’s a good
man, is old Swinton, and there’s nothing good in the drink of France
that you can’t get here.”

“Well, if that’s true, how does it happen?” asked Dyck, with a little
flash of interest. “Why should this little twopenny, one-horse place--I
mean in size and furnishments--have such luck as to get the best there
is in France? It means a lot of trouble, eh?”

“It means some trouble. But let me tell you”--he leaned over the table
and laid a hand on Dyck’s, which was a little nervous--“let me speak as
an old friend to you, if I may. Here are the facts. For many a year, you
know as well as I do, ships have been coming from France to Ireland
with the very best wines and liquors, and taking back the very best
wool--smuggled, of course. Well, our little landlord here is the
damnedest rogue of all. The customs never touch him. From the coast
the stuff comes up to Dublin without a check, and, as he’s a special
favourite, he gets the best to be had in la belle France.”

“Why is he such a favourite?” asked Dyck.

Erris Boyne laughed, not loudly, but suggestively. “When a lady kisses a
man on the lips, of her own free will, and puts her arm around his neck,
is it done, do you think, because it’s her duty to do it or die? No,
it’s because she likes the man; because the man is a good friend to
her; because it’s money in her pocket. That’s the case with old Swinton.
France kisses him, as it were, because”--he paused, as though debating
what to say--“because France knows he’d rather be under her own
revolutionary government than under the monarchy of England.”

His voice had resonance, and, as he said these words, it had insistence.

“Do you know, Calhoun, I think old Swinton is right. We suffer here
because monarchy, with its cruel hand of iron, mistrusts us, brutalizes
us.”

He did not see enlightenment come into the half-drunken eyes of Dyck.
He only realized that Dyck was very still, and strangely, deeply
interested.

“I tell you, Calhoun, we need in Ireland something of the spirit that’s
alive in France to-day. They’ve cleaned out the kings--Louis’s and
Marie’s heads have dropped into the basket. They’re sweeping the dirt
out of France; they’re cleaning the dark places; they’re whitewashing
Versailles and sawdusting the Tuileries; they’re purging the
aristocratic guts of France; they’re starting for the world a
reformation which will make it clean. Not America alone, but England,
and all Europe, will become republics.”

“England?” asked Dyck in a low, penetrating voice. “Aye, England,
through Ireland. Ireland will come first, then Wales, Scotland, and
England. Dear lad, the great day is come--the greatest the world has
ever known. France, the spirit of it, is alive. It will purge and
cleanse the universe!”

The suspicious, alert look passed from Dyck’s eyes, but his face had
become flushed. He reached out and poured himself another glass of wine.

“What you say may be true, Boyne. It may be true, but I wouldn’t put
faith in it--not for one icy minute. I don’t want to see here in Ireland
the horrors and savagery of France. I don’t want to see the guillotine
up on St. Stephen’s Green.”

Boyne felt that he must march carefully. He was sure of his game; but
there were difficulties, and he must not throw his chances away. Dyck
was in a position where, with his inflammable nature, he could be
captured.

“Well, I’ll tell you, Calhoun. I don’t know which is worse--Ireland
bloody with shootings and hangings, Ulster up in the north and Cork
in the south, from the Giant’s Causeway to Tralee; no two sets of feet
dancing alike, with the bloody hand of England stretching out over the
Irish Parliament like death itself; or France ruling us. How does the
English government live here? Only by bribery and purchases. It buys its
way. Isn’t that true?”

Dyck nodded. “Yes, it’s true in a way,” he replied. “It’s so, because
we’re what we are. We’ve never been properly put in our places. The heel
on our necks--that’s the way to do it.”

Boyne looked at the flushed, angry face. In spite of Dyck’s words, he
felt that his medicine was working well.

“Listen to me, Calhoun,” he said softly. “You’ve got to do something.
You’re living an idle life. You’re in debt. You’ve ruined your
independent fortune at the tables. There are but two courses open to
you. One is to join the British forces--to be a lieutenant, a captain,
a major, a colonel, or a general, in time; to shoot and cut and hang and
quarter, and rule with a heavy rod. That’s one way.”

“So you think I’m fit for nothing but the sword, eh?” asked Dyck with
irony. “You think I’ve got no brains for anything except the army.”

Boyne laughed. “Have another drink, Calhoun.” He poured out more wine.
“Oh, no, not the army alone; there’s the navy--and there’s the French
navy! It’s the best navy in the world, the freest and the greatest, and
with Bonaparte going at us, England will have enough to do--too
much, I’m thinking. So there’s a career in the French navy open. And
listen--before you and I are two months older, the French navy will
be in the harbours of Ireland, and the French army will land here.” He
reached out and grasped Dyck’s arm. “There’s no liberty of freedom under
the Union Jack. What do you think of the tricolour? It’s a great flag,
and under it the world is going to be ruled--England, Spain, Italy,
Holland, Prussia, Austria, and Russia--all of them. The time is ripe.
You’ve got your chance. Take it on, dear lad, take it on.”

Dyck did not raise his head. He was leaning forward with both arms on
the table, supporting himself firmly; his head was bowed as though
with deep interest in what Boyne said. And, indeed, his interest was
great--so great that all his manhood, vigour, all his citizenship, were
vitally alive. Yet he did not lift his head.

“What’s that you say about French ships in the harbours of Ireland?” he
said in a tone that showed interest. “Of course, I know there’s been a
lot of talk of a French raid on Ireland, but I didn’t know it was to be
so soon.”

“Oh, it’s near enough! It’s all been arranged,” replied Boyne. “There’ll
be ships-war-ships, commanded by Hoche. They’ll have orders to land
on the coast, to join the Irish patriots, to take control of the
operations, and then to march on--”

He was going to say “march on Dublin,” but he stopped. He was playing a
daring game. If he had not been sure of his man, he would not have been
so frank and fearless.

He did not, however, mislead Dyck greatly. Dyck had been drinking a good
deal, but this knowledge of a French invasion, and a sense of what Boyne
was trying to do, steadied his shaken emotions; held him firmly in the
grip of practical common sense. He laughed, hiccuped a little, as though
he was very drunk, and said:

“Of course the French would like to come to Ireland; they’d like to
seize it and hold it. Why, of course they would! Don’t we know all
that’s been and gone? Aren’t Irishmen in France grown rich in industry
there after having lost every penny of their property here? Aren’t there
Irishmen there, always conniving to put England at defiance here by
breaking her laws, cheating her officers, seducing her patriots? Of
course; but what astounds me is that a man of your standing should
believe the French are coming here now to Ireland. No, no, Boyne; I’m
not taking your word for any of these things. You’re a gossip; you’re a
damned, pertinacious, preposterous gossip, and I’ll say it as often as
you like.”

“So it’s proof you want, is it? Well, then, here it is.”

Boyne drew from his pocket a small leather-bound case and took from it a
letter, which he laid on the table in front of Dyck.

Dyck looked at the document, then said:

“Ah, that’s what you are, eh?--a captain in the French artillery! Well,
that’d be a surprise in Ireland if it were told.”

“It isn’t going to be told unless you tell it, Calhoun, and you’re too
much of a sportsman for that. Besides:

“Why shouldn’t you have one of these if you want it--if you want it!”

“What’d be the good of my wanting it? I could get a commission here in
the army of George III, if I wanted it, but I don’t want it; and any
man that offers it to me, I’ll hand it back with thanks and be damned to
you!”

“Listen to me, then, Calhoun,” remarked Boyne, reaching out a hand to
lay it on Dyck’s arm.

Dyck saw the motion, however, and carefully drew back in his chair. “I’m
not an adventurer,” he said; “but if I were, what would there be in it
for me?”

Boyne misunderstood the look on Dyck’s face. He did not grasp the
meaning behind the words, and he said to him:

“Oh, a good salary--as good as that of a general, with a commission and
the spoils of war! That’s the thing in the French army that counts for
so much--spoils of war. When they’re out on a country like this, they
let their officers loose--their officers and men. Did you ever hear tell
of a French army being pinched for fodder, or going thirsty for drink,
or losing its head for poverty or indigence?”

“No, I never did.”

“Well, then, take the advice of an officer of the French army resident
now in Dublin,” continued Boyne, laughing, “who has the honour of being
received as the friend of Mr. Dyck Calhoun of Playmore! Take your hand
in the game that’s going on! For a man as young as you, with brains and
ambition, there’s no height he mightn’t reach in this country. Think
of it--Ireland free from English control; Ireland, with all her dreams,
living her own life, fearless, independent, as it was in days of yore.
Why, what’s to prevent you, Dyck Calhoun, from being president of the
Irish Republic? You have brains, looks, skill, and a wonderful tongue.
None but a young man could take on the job, for it will require
boldness, skill, and the recklessness of perfect courage. Isn’t it good
enough for you?”

“What’s the way to do it?” asked Dyck, still holding on to his old self
grimly. “How is it to be done?” He spoke a little thickly, for, in spite
of himself, the wine was clogging his senses. It had been artistically
drugged by Boyne.

“Listen to me, Calhoun,” continued Boyne. “I’ve known you now some time.
We’ve come in and gone out together. This day was inevitable. You were
bound to come to it one way or another. Man, you have a heart of iron;
you have the courage of Caesar or Alexander; you have the chance of
doing what no Englishman could ever do--Cromwell, or any other. Well,
then, don’t you see the fateful moment has come in Irish life and
history? Strife everywhere! Alone, what can we do? Alone, if we try to
shake off the yoke that binds us we shall be shattered, and our last
end be worse than our first. But with French ships, French officers and
soldiers, French guns and ammunition, with the trained men of the French
army to take control here, what amelioration of our weakness, what
confidence and skill on our side! Can you doubt what the end will be?
Answer me, man, don’t you see it all? Isn’t it clear to you? Doesn’t
such a cause enlist you?”

With a sudden burst of primitive anger, Dyck got to his feet, staggering
a little, but grasping the fatal meaning of the whole thing. He looked
Erris Boyne in the eyes. His own were bloodshot and dissipated, but
there was a look in them of which Boyne might well take heed.

Boyne had not counted on Dyck’s refusal; or, if it had occurred to
him, the remedy, an ancient one, was ready to his fingers. The wine was
drugged. He had watched the decline of Dyck’s fortunes with an eye of
appreciation; he had seen the clouds of poverty and anxiety closing
in. He had known of old Miles Calhoun’s financial difficulties. He had
observed Dyck’s wayside loitering with revolutionists, and he had taken
it with too much seriousness. He knew the condition of Dyck’s purse.

He was not prepared for Dyck’s indignant outburst.

“I tell you this, Erris Boyne, there’s none has ever tried me as you
have done! What do you think I am--a thing of the dirty street-corner,
something to be swept up and cast into the furnace of treason? Look you,
after to-day you and I will never break bread or drink wine together.
No--by Heaven, no! I don’t know whether you’ve told me the truth or not,
but I think you have. There’s this to say--I shall go from this place
to Dublin Castle, and shall tell them there--without mentioning your
name--what you’ve told about the French raid. Now, by God, you’re a
traitor! You oughtn’t to live, and if you’ll send your seconds to me
I’ll try and do with you as I did with Leonard Mallow. Only mark me,
Erris Boyne, I’ll put my sword into your heart. You understand--into
your filthy heart!”

At that moment the door of the room opened, and a face looked in for
an instant-the face of old Swinton, the landlord of the Harp and Crown.
Suddenly Boyne’s look changed. He burst into a laugh, and brought his
fists down on the table between them with a bang.

“By Joseph and by Mary, but you’re a patriot, Calhoun! I was trying to
test you. I was searching to find the innermost soul of you. The French
fleet, my commission in the French army, and my story about the landlord
are all bosh. If I meant what I told you, do you think I’d have been so
mad as to tell you so much, damn it? Have you no sense, man? I wanted to
find out exactly how you stood-faithful or unfaithful to the crown--and
I’ve found out. Sit down, sit down, Calhoun, dear lad. Take your hand
off your sword. Remember, these are terrible days. Everything I said
about Ireland is true. What I said about France is false. Sit down, man,
and if you’re going to join the king’s army--as I hope and trust you
will--then here’s something to help you face the time between.” He threw
on the table a packet of notes. “They’re good and healthy, and will buy
you what you need. There’s not much. There’s only a hundred pounds, but
I give it to you with all my heart, and you can pay it back when the
king’s money comes to you, or when you marry a rich woman.”

He said it all with a smile on his face. It was done so cleverly,
with so much simulated sincerity, that Dyck, in his state of
semi-drunkenness, could not, at the instant, place him in his true
light. Besides, there was something handsome and virile in Boyne’s
face--and untrue; but the untruth Dyck did not at the moment see.

Never in his life had Boyne performed such prodigies of dissimulation.
He was suddenly like a schoolboy disclosing the deeds of some
adventurous knight. He realized to the full the dangers he had run in
disclosing the truth; for it was the truth that he had told.

So serious was the situation, to his mind, that one thing seemed
inevitable. Dyck must be kidnapped at once and carried out of Ireland.
It would be simple. A little more drugged wine, and he would be asleep
and powerless--it had already tugged at him. With the help of his
confreres in the tavern, Dyck could be carried out, put on a lugger, and
sent away to France.

There was nothing else to do. Boyne had said truly that the French fleet
meant to come soon. Dyck must not be able to give the thing away before
it happened. The chief thing now was to prime him with the drugged wine
till he lost consciousness, and then carry him away to the land of the
guillotine. Dyck’s tempestuous nature, the poetry and imagination of
him, would quickly respond to French culture, to the new orders of the
new day in France. Meanwhile, he must be soaked in drugged drink.

Already the wine had played havoc with him; already stupefaction was
coming over his senses. With a good-natured, ribald laugh, Boyne
poured out another glass of marsala and pushed it gently over to Dyck’s
fingers.

“My gin to your marsala,” he said, and he raised his own glass of gin,
looking playfully over the top to Dyck.

With a sudden loosening of all the fibres of his nature, Dyck raised the
glass of marsala to his lips and drained it off almost at a gulp.

“You’re a prodigious liar, Boyne,” he said. “I didn’t think any one
could lie so completely.”

“I’ll teach you how, Calhoun. It’s not hard. I’ll teach you how.”

He passed a long cigar over the table to Dyck, who, however, did not
light it, but held it in his fingers. Boyne struck a light and held it
out across the small table. Dyck leaned forward, but, as he did so, the
wine took possession of his senses. His head fell forward in sleep, and
the cigar dropped from his fingers.

“Ah, well--ah, well, we must do some business now!” remarked Boyne. He
leaned over Dyck for a moment. “Yes, sound asleep,” he said, and laughed
scornfully to himself. “Well, when it’s dark we must get him away. He’ll
sleep for four or five hours, and by that time he’ll be out on the way
to France, and the rest is easy.”

He was about to go to the door that led into the business part of the
house, when the door leading into the street opened softly, and a woman
stepped inside. She had used the key which Boyne had forgotten at his
house.

At first he did not hear her. Then, when he did turn round, it was too
late. The knife she carried under her skirt flashed out and into Boyne’s
heart. He collapsed on the floor without a sound, save only a deep sigh.

Stooping over, Noreen drew the knife out with a little gurgling cry--a
smothered exclamation. Then she opened the door again--the side-door
leading into the street-closed it softly, and was gone.

Two hours afterwards the landlord opened the door. Erris Boyne lay in
his silence, stark and still. At the table, with his head sunk in his
arms, sat Dyck Calhoun, snoring stertorously, his drawn sword by his
side.

With a cry the old man knelt on the floor beside the body of Erris
Boyne.




CHAPTER VI. DYCK IN PRISON

When Dyck Calhoun waked, he was in the hands of the king’s constables,
arrested for the murder of Erris Boyne. It was hard to protest his
innocence, for the landlord was ready to swear concerning a quarrel
he had seen when he opened the door for a moment. Dyck, with sudden
caution, only said he would make all clear at the trial.

Dublin and Ireland were shocked and thrilled; England imagined she had
come upon one of the most violent episodes of Irish history. One journal
protested that it was not possible to believe in Dyck Calhoun’s guilt;
that his outward habits were known to all, and were above suspicion,
although he had collogued--though never secretly, so far as the world
knew--with some of the advanced revolutionary spirits. None of the loyal
papers seemed aware of Erris Boyne’s treachery; and while none spoke of
him with approval, all condemned his ugly death.

Driven through the streets of Dublin in a jaunting-car between two of
the king’s police, Dyck was a mark for abuse by tongue, but was here and
there cheered by partizans of the ultra-loyal group to which his father
adhered. The effect of his potations was still upon him, and his mind
was bemused. He remembered the quarrel, Boyne’s explanation, and the
subsequent drinking, but he could recall nothing further. He was sure
the wine had been drugged, but he realized that Swinton, the landlord,
would have made away with any signs of foul play, as he was himself an
agent of active disloyalty and a friend of Erris Boyne. Dyck could not
believe he had killed Boyne; yet Boyne had been found with a wound in
his heart, and his own naked sword lying beside him on the table. The
trouble was he could not absolutely swear innocence of the crime.

The situation was not eased by his stay in jail. It began with a
revelation terribly repugnant to him. He had not long been lodged in the
cell when there came a visit from Michael Clones, who stretched out his
hands in an agony of humiliation.

“Ah, you didn’t do it--you didn’t do it, sir!” he cried. “I’m sure you
never killed him. It wasn’t your way. He was for doing you harm if he
could. An evil man he was, as all the world knows. But there’s one thing
that’ll be worse than anything else to you. You never knew it, and I
never knew it till an hour ago. Did you know who Erris Boyne was? Well,
I’ll tell you. He was the father of Miss Sheila Llyn. He was divorced by
Mrs. Llyn many years ago, for having to do with other women. She took to
her maiden name, and he married again.

“Good God! Good God!” Dyck Calhoun made a gesture of horror. “He Sheila
Llyn’s father! Good God!”

Suddenly a passion of remorse roused him out of his semi-stupefaction.

“Michael, Michael!” he said, his voice hoarse, broken. “Don’t say such a
thing! Are you sure?” Michael nodded.

“I’m sure. I got it from one that’s known Erris Boyne and his first wife
and girl--one that was a servant to them both in past days. He’s been
down to Limerick to see Mrs. Llyn and the beautiful daughter. I met him
an hour ago, and he told me. He told me more. He told me Mrs. Llyn spoke
to him of your friendship with Erris Boyne, and how she meant to tell
you who and what he was. She said her daughter didn’t even know her
father’s name. She had been kept in ignorance.”

Dyck seated himself on the rough bed of the cell, and stared at Michael,
his hands between his knees, his eyes perturbed.

“Michael,” he said at last, “if it’s true--what you’ve told me--I don’t
see my way. Every step in front of me is black. To tell the whole truth
is to bring fresh shame upon Mrs. Llyn and her daughter, and not to tell
the whole truth is to take away my one chance of getting out of this
trouble. I see that!”

“I don’t know what you mean, sir, but I’ll tell you this--none that
knows you would believe you’d murder Erris Boyne or anny other man.”

Dyck wiped the sweat from his forehead.

“I suppose you speak the truth, Michael, but it isn’t people who’ve
known me that’ll try me; and I can’t tell all.”

“Why not, if it’ll help you?”

“I can’t--of course I can’t. It would be disgrace eternal.”

“Why? Tell me why, sir!”

Dyck looked closely, firmly, at the old servant and friend. Should he
tell the truth--that Boyne had tried to induce him to sell himself to
the French, to invoke his aid against the English government, to share
in treason? If he could have told it to anybody, he would have done
so to Michael; but if it was true that in his drunken blindness he had
killed Boyne, he would not seek to escape by proving Boyne a traitor.

He believed Boyne was a servant of the French; but unless the facts came
out in the trial, they should not have sure origin in himself. He would
not add to his crime in killing the father of the only girl who had ever
touched his heart, the shame of proving that father to be one who should
have been shot as a traitor.

He had courage and daring, but not sufficient to carry him through that
dark chapter. He would not try to save himself by turning public opinion
against Erris Boyne. The man had been killed by some one, perhaps--and
the thing ached in his heart--by himself; but that was no reason why the
man’s death should not be full punishment for all the wrong he had done.

Dyck had a foolish strain in him, after all. Romance was his deadly foe;
it made him do a stupid, if chivalrous, thing. Meanwhile he would warn
the government at once about the projected French naval raid.

“Michael,” said Dyck, rising again, “see my father, but you’re not
to say I didn’t kill Boyne, for, to tell the truth, I don’t know. My
head”--he put his hand to it with a gesture of despair--“my head’s a
mass of contradictions. It seems a thousand years since I entered that
tavern! I can’t get myself level with all that’s happened. That Erris
Boyne should be the father of the sweet girl at Limerick shakes
me. Don’t you see what it means? If I killed him, it spoils
everything--everything. If I didn’t kill him, I can only help myself by
blackening still more the life of one who gave being to--”

“Aye, to a young queen!” interrupted Michael.

“God knows, there’s none like her in Ireland, or in any other country at
all!”

Suddenly Dyck regained his composure; and it was the composure of one
who had opened the door of hell and had realized that in time--perhaps
not far off--he also would dwell in the infernal place.

“Michael, I have no money, but I’m my father’s heir. My father will not
see me starve in prison, nor want for defence, though my attitude shall
be ‘no defence.’ So bring me decent food and some clothes, and send to
me here Will McCormick, the lawyer. He’s as able a man as there is in
Dublin. Listen, Michael, you’re not to speak of Mrs. Llyn and Miss Llyn
as related to Erris Boyne. What will come of what you and I know and
don’t know, Heaven only has knowledge; but I’ll see it through. I’ve
spoiled as good chances as ever a young man had that wants to make his
way; but drink and cards, Michael, and the flare of this damned life at
the centre--it got hold of me. It muddled, drowned the best that was in
me. It’s the witch’s kitchen, is Dublin. Ireland’s the only place in the
world where they make saints of criminals and pray to them; where they
lose track of time and think they’re in eternity; where emotion is
saturnine logic and death is the touchstone of life. Michael, I don’t
see any way to safety. Those fellows down at the tavern were friends of
Erris Boyne. They’re against me. They’ll hang me if they can!”

“I don’t believe they can do it, master. Dublin and Ireland think more
of you than they did of Erris Boyne. There’s nothing behind you except
the wildness of youth--nothing at all. If anny one had said to me at
Playmore that you’d do the things you’ve done with drink and cards since
you come to Dublin, I’d have swore they were liars. Yet when all’s said
and done, I’d give my last drop of blood as guarantee you didn’t kill
Erris Boyne!”

Dyck smiled. “You’ve a lot of faith in me, Michael--but I’ll tell you
this--I never was so thirsty in my life. My mouth’s like a red-hot iron.
Send me some water. Give the warder sixpence, if you’ve got it, and send
me some water. Then go to Will McCormick, and after that to my father.”

Michael shook his head dolefully.

“Mr. McCormick’s aisy--oh, aisy enough,” he said. “He’ll lep up at the
idea of defendin’ you, but I’m not takin’ pleasure in goin’ to Miles
Calhoun, for he’s a hard man these days. Aw, Mr. Dyck, he’s had a lot of
trouble. Things has been goin’ wrong with Playmore. ‘Pon honour, I don’t
know whether anny of it’ll last as long as Miles Calhoun lasts. There’ll
be little left for you, Mr. Dyck. That’s what troubles me. I tell you
it’d break my heart if that place should be lost to your father and you.
I was born on it. I’d give the best years of the life that’s left me to
make sure the old house could stay in the hands of the Calhouns. I say
to you that while I live all I am is yours, fair and foul, good and
bad.” He touched his breast with his right hand. “In here is the soul
of Ireland that leps up for the things that matter. There’s a
song--but never mind about a song; this is no place for songs. It’s a
prison-house, and you’re a prisoner charged--”

“Not charged yet, not charged,” interrupted Dyck; “but suspected of and
arrested for a crime. I’ll fight--before God, I’ll fight to the last!
Good-bye, Michael; bring me food and clothes, and send me cold water at
once.”

When the door closed softly behind Michael Clones, Dyck sat down on the
bed where many a criminal patriot had lain. He looked round the small
room, bare, unfurnished, severe-terribly severe; he looked at the blank
walls and the barred window, high up; he looked at the floor--it was
discoloured and damp. He reached out and touched it with his hand. He
looked at the solitary chair, the basin and pail, and he shuddered.

“How awful--how awful!” he murmured. “But if it was her father, and if I
killed him”--his head sank low--“if I killed her father!”

“Water, sir.”

He looked up. It was the guard with a tin of water and a dipper.




CHAPTER VII. MOTHER AND DAUGHTER

“I don’t believe he’s guilty, mother.”

The girl’s fine eyes shone with feeling--with protest, indignation,
anguish. As she spoke, she thrust her head forward with the vigour of
a passionate counsel. Sheila Llyn was a champion who would fight to the
last gasp for any cause she loved.

A few moments before, she had found her mother, horror-stricken, gazing
at a newspaper paragraph sent from Dublin.

Sheila at once thought this to be the cause of her mother’s agitation,
and she reached out a hand for it. Her mother hesitated, then handed
the clipping to her. Fortunately it contained no statement save the bare
facts connected with the killing of Erris Boyne, and no reference to
the earlier life of the dead man. It said no more than that Dyck Calhoun
must take his trial at the sessions.

It also stated that Dyck, though he pleaded “not guilty,” declared
frankly, through Will McCormick, the lawyer, that he had no memory of
aught that happened after he had drunk wine given him by Erris Boyne. He
said that he and Boyne had quarrelled, but had become reconciled again,
and that the drink was a pledge of their understanding. From the time
he had taken the drink until he waked in the hands of the king’s
constables, he had no memory; but he was sure he had not killed
Boyne. The fact that there was no blood on his sword was evidence.
Nevertheless, he had been committed for trial.

Mrs. Llyn was sorely troubled. She knew of her daughter’s interest
in Dyck Calhoun, and of Dyck’s regard for Sheila. She had even looked
forward to marriage, and she wished for Sheila no better fate, because
nearly all she knew of Dyck was to his credit. She was unaware that his
life in Dublin had been dissipated.

If Dyck was guilty--though she could not believe it--there would be
an end of romance between him and Sheila, and their friendship must be
severed for ever. Her daughter did not know that Erris Boyne was her
father, and she must not know--in any case not yet; but if Dyck was
condemned, it was almost sure he would be hanged.

She wondered about Boyne’s widow, whose name did not appear in the
paragraph she had seen. She knew that Noreen was beautiful, but that
he had married far beneath him socially. She had imagined Erris Boyne
living in suburban quiet, not drawing his wife into his social scheme.

That is what had happened. The woman had lived apart from the daily
experiences of her husband’s life in Dublin; and it had deepened her
bitterness against him. When she had learned that Erris Boyne was no
more faithful to her than he had been to his previous wife, she had gone
mad; and Dyck Calhoun was paying the price of her madness.

Mrs. Llyn did not know this. She was a woman of distinguished bearing,
though small, with a wan, sad look in her eyes always, but with a
cheerful smile. She was not poor, but well-to-do, and it was not
necessary to deny herself or her daughter ordinary comforts, and even
many of the luxuries of life.

Her hair was darker than her daughter’s, black and wavy, with here and
there streaks of grey. These, however, only added dignity to a head
beautifully balanced, finely moulded, and, in the language of the day,
most genteelly hung. She was slender, buoyant in movement yet composed,
and her voice was like her daughter’s, clear, gentle, thrilling.

Her mind and heart were given up to Sheila and Sheila’s future. That was
why a knowledge of the tragedy that had come to Dyck Calhoun troubled
her as she had not been troubled since the day she first learned of
Erris Boyne’s infidelity to herself.

“Let us go to Dublin, mother,” said Sheila with a determined air, after
reading the clipping.

“Why, my dear?”

The woman’s eyes, with their long lashes, looked searchingly into her
daughter’s face. She felt, as the years went on, that Sheila had gifts
granted to few. She realized that the girl had resources which would
make her a governing influence in whatever sphere of life she should be
set. Quietly, Sheila was taking control of their movements, and indeed
of her own daily life. The girl had a dominating skill which came
in part from herself, and also to a degree from her father; but her
disposition was not her father’s-it was her mother’s.

Mrs. Llyn had never known Sheila to lie or twist the truth in all her
days. No one was more obedient to wise argument; and her mother had a
feeling that now, perhaps, the time had come when they two must have a
struggle for mastery. There was every reason why they should not go to
Dublin. There Sheila might discover that Erris Boyne was her father, and
might learn the story of her mother’s life.

Sheila had been told by her mother that her father had passed away
abroad when she was a little child. She had never seen her father’s
picture, and her mother had given her the impression that their last
days together had not been happy. She had always felt that it was better
not to inquire too closely into her father’s life.

The years had gone on and then had come the happy visit to Loyland
Towers, where she had met Dyck Calhoun. Her life at that moment had been
free from troublesome emotions; but since the time she had met Dyck at
the top of the hill, a new set of feelings worked in her.

She was as bonny a lass as ever the old world produced--lithe, with a
body like that of a boy, strong and pleasant of face, with a haunting
beauty in the eyes, a majesty of the neck and chin, and a carriage which
had made Michael Clones call her a queen.

She saw Dyck only as, a happy, wild son of the hilltop. To her he was a
man of mettle and worth, and irresponsible because he had been given
no responsibility. He was a country gentleman of Ireland, with all the
interest and peril of the life of a country gentleman.

“Yes, we ought to go to Dublin, mother. We could help him, perhaps,”
 Sheila insisted.

The mother shook her head mournfully.

“My child, we could do him no good at all--none whatever. Besides, I
can’t afford to visit Dublin now. It’s an expensive journey, and the
repairs we’ve been doing here have run me close.”

A look of indignation, almost of scorn, came into the girl’s face.

“Well, if I were being tried for my life, as Dyck Calhoun is going to
be, and if I knew that friends of mine were standing off because of a
few pounds, shillings, and pence, I think I’d be a real murderer!”

The mother took her daughter’s hand. She found it cold.

“My dear,” she said, clasping it gently, “you never saw him but three
times, and I’ve never seen him but twice except in the distance; but I
would do anything in my power to help him, if I could, for I like him.
The thing for us to do--”

“Yes, I know--sit here, twist our thumbs, and do nothing!”

“What more could we do if we went to Dublin, except listen to gossip,
read the papers and be jarred every moment? My dear, our best place is
here. If the spending of money could be of any use to him, I’d spend
it--indeed I would; but since it can’t be of any use, we must stay in
our own home. Of one thing I’m sure--if Dyck Calhoun killed Erris Boyne,
Boyne deserved it. Of one thing I’m certain beyond all else--it was
no murder. Mr. Calhoun wasn’t a man to murder any one. I don’t
believe”--her voice became passionate--“he murdered, and I don’t believe
he will be hanged.”

The girl looked at her mother with surprise. “Oh, dearest, dearest!” she
said. “I believe you do care for him. Is it because he has no mother,
and you have no son.”

“It may be so, beloved.”

Sheila swept her arms around her mother’s neck and drew the fine head to
her breast.

At that moment they heard the clatter of hoofs, and presently they saw a
horse and rider pass the window.

“It’s a government messenger, mother,” Sheila said.

As Sheila said, it was a government messenger, bearing a packet to Mrs.
Llyn--a letter from her brother in America, whom she had not seen for
many years.

The brother, Bryan Llyn, had gone out there as a young man before the
Revolutionary War. He had prospered, taking sides against England in the
war, and become a man of importance in the schemes of the new republican
government. Only occasionally had letters come from him to his sister,
and for nearly eleven years she had not had a single word from him.

When she opened the packet now, she felt it would help to solve--she
knew not how--the trouble between herself and her daughter. The letter
had been sent to a firm in Dublin with which Bryan Llyn had done
business, with instructions that it should be forwarded to his sister.
It had reached the hands of a government official, who was a brother of
a member of the firm, and he had used the government messenger, who was
going upon other business to Limerick, to forward it with a friendly
covering note, which ended with the words:

   The recent tragedy you have no doubt seen in the papers must have
   shocked you; but to those who know the inside the end was
   inevitable, though there are many who do not think Calhoun is
   guilty. I am one of them. Nevertheless, it will go hard with him,
   as the evidence is strong against him. He comes from your part of
   the country, and you will be concerned, of course.

Sheila watched her mother reading, and saw that great emotion possessed
her, though the girl could not know the cause. Presently, however,
Mrs. Llyn, who had read the letter from her brother, made a joyful
exclamation.

“What is it, mother dear?” Sheila asked eagerly. “Tell me!”

The mother made a passionate gesture of astonishment and joy; then she
leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, with the letter--which was
closely written, in old-fashioned punctiliousness--in her hands.

“Oh, my dear, my dear!” she said. “How strange it all is! Your Uncle
Bryan is immensely rich. He has no children and no family; his health is
failing.”

She seemed able to get no further.

“Well, what is it, mother?” asked Sheila again.

For an instant Mrs. Llyn hesitated; then she put the letter into
Sheila’s hands.

“Read it, my child,” she said. “It’s for you as much as for me--indeed,
more for you than for me.” Sheila took the letter. It ran as follows:

   DEAREST SISTER:

   It is eleven years since I wrote to you, and yet, though it may seem
   strange, there have not been eleven days in all that time in which I
   have not wished you and Sheila were here. Sheila--why, she is a
   young woman! She’s about the age you were when I left Ireland, and
   you were one of the most beautiful and charming creatures God ever
   gave life to. The last picture I have of you was a drawing made
   soon after your marriage--sad, bad, unhappy incident. I have kept
   it by me always. It warms my heart in winter; it cools my eyes in
   summer.

   My estate is neither North nor South, but farther South than North.
   In a sense it is always summer, but winter on my place would be like
   summer in Norway--just bitingly fresh, happily alert. I’m writing
   in the summer now. I look out of the window and see hundreds of
   acres of cotton-fields, with hundreds upon hundreds of negroes at
   work. I hear the songs they sing, faint echoes of them, even as I
   write. Yes, my black folk do sing, because they are well treated.

   Not that we haven’t our troubles here. You can’t administer
   thousands of acres, control hundreds of slaves, and run an estate
   like a piece of clockwork without creaks in the machinery. I’ve
   built it all up out of next to nothing. I landed in this country
   with my little fortune of two thousand pounds. This estate is worth
   at least a quarter of a million now. I’ve an estate in Jamaica,
   too. I took it for a debt. What it’ll be worth in another twenty
   years I don’t know. I shan’t be here to see. I’m not the man I was
   physically, and that’s one of the reasons why I’m writing to you
   to-day. I’ve often wished to write and say what I’m going to say
   now; but I’ve held back, because I wanted you to finish your girl’s
   education before I said it

   What I say is this: I want you and Sheila to come here to me, to
   make my home your home, to take control of my household, and to let
   me see faces I love about me as the shadows enfold me.

   Like your married life, mine was unsuccessful, but not for the same
   reason. The woman I married did not understand--probably could not
   understand. She gave me no children. We are born this way, or
   that. To understand is pain and joy in one; to misconceive is to
   scatter broken glass for bare feet. Yet when I laid her away, a few
   years ago, I had terrible pangs of regret, which must come to the
   heart that has striven in vain. I did my best; I tried to make her
   understand, but she never did. I used at first to feel angry; then
   I became patient. But I waked up again, and went smiling along,
   active, vigorous, getting pleasure out of the infinitely small
   things, and happy in perfecting my organization.

   This place, which I have called Moira, is to be yours--or, rather,
   Sheila’s. So, in any case, you will want to come and see the home I
   have made this old colonial mansion, with its Corinthian pillars and
   verandah, high steps, hard-wood floors polished like a pan, every
   room hung in dimity and chintz, and the smell of fruit and flowers
   everywhere. You will want to see it all, and you’ll want to live
   here.

   There’s little rain here, so it’s not like Ireland, and the green is
   not so green; but the flowers are marvellously bright, and the birds
   sing almost as well as they sing in Ireland, though there’s no lark.
   Strange it is, but true, the only things that draw me back to
   Ireland in my soul are you, and Sheila, whom I’ve never seen, and
   the lark singing as he rises until he becomes a grey-blue speck, and
   then vanishing in the sky.

   Well, you and the lark have sung in my heart these many days, and
   now you must come to me, because I need you. I have placed to your
   credit in the Bank of Ireland a thousand pounds. That will be the
   means of bringing you here--you and Sheila--to my door, to Moira.
   Let nothing save death prevent your coming. As far as Sheila’s eye
   can see-north, south, east, and west--the land will be hers when I’m
   gone. Dearest sister, sell all things that are yours, and come to
   me. You’ll not forget Ireland here. Whoever has breathed her air
   can never forget the hills and dells, the valleys and bogs, the
   mountains, with their mists of rain, the wild girls, with their bare
   ankles, their red petticoats, and their beautiful, reckless air.
   None who has ever breathed the air of Ireland can breathe in another
   land without memory of the ancient harp of Ireland. But it is as a
   memory-deep, wonderful, and abiding, yet a memory. I sometimes
   think I have forgotten, and then I hear coming through this Virginia
   the notes of some old Irish melody, the song of some wayfarer of
   Mayo or Connemara, and I know then that Ireland is persuasive and
   perpetual; but only as a memory, because it speaks in every pulse
   and beats in every nerve.

   Oh, believe me, I speak of what I know! I have been away from
   Ireland for a long time, and I’m never going back, but I’ll bring
   Ireland to me. Come here, colleen, come to Virginia. Write to me,
   on the day you get this letter, that you’re coming soon. Let it be
   soon, because I feel the cords binding me to my beloved fields
   growing thinner. They’ll soon crack, but, please God, they won’t
   crack before you come here.

   Now with my love to you and Sheila I stretch out my hand to you.
   Take it. All that it is has worked for is yours; all that it wants
   is you.

               Your loving brother,

                            BRYAN.

As Sheila read, the tears started from her eyes; and at last she could
read no longer, so her mother took the letter and read the rest of it
aloud. When she had finished, there was silence--a long warm silence;
then, at last, Mrs. Llyn rose to her feet.

“Sheila, when shall we go?”

With frightened eyes Sheila sprang up.

“I said we must go to Dublin!” she murmured.

“Yes, we will go to Dublin, Sheila, but it will be on our way to Uncle
Bryan’s home.”

Sheila caught her mother’s hands.

“Mother,” she said, after a moment of hesitation, “I must obey you.”

“It is the one way, my child-the one thing to do. Some one in prison
calls--perhaps; some one far away who loves you, and needs us,
calls--that we know. Tell me, am I not right? I ask you, where shall we
go?”

“To Virginia, mother.”

The girl’s head dropped, and her eyes filled with tears.




CHAPTER VIII. DYCK’S FATHER VISITS HIM

In vain Dyck’s lawyer, Will McCormick, urged him to deny absolutely
the killing of Erris Boyne. Dyck would not do so. He had, however,
immediately on being jailed, written to the government, telling of the
projected invasion of Ireland by the French fleet, and saying that it
had come to him from a sure source. The government had at once taken
action.

Regarding the death of Boyne, the only thing in his favour was that his
own sword-point was free from stain. His lawyer made the utmost of this,
but to no avail. The impression in the court was that both men had been
drinking; that they had quarrelled, and that without a duel being fought
Dyck had killed his enemy.

That there had been no duel was clear from the fact that Erris Boyne’s
sword was undrawn. The charge, however, on the instigation of the
Attorney-General, who was grateful for the information about France, had
been changed from murder to manslaughter; though it seemed clear that
Boyne had been ruthlessly killed by a man whom he had befriended.

On one of the days of the trial, Dyck’s father, bowed, morose, and
obstinate, came to see him. That Dyck and Boyne had quarrelled had been
stated in evidence by the landlord, Swinton, and Dyck had admitted it.
Miles Calhoun was bent upon finding what the story of the quarrel was;
for his own lawyer had told him that Dyck’s refusal to give the cause
of the dispute would affect the jury adversely, and might bring him
imprisonment for life. After the formalities of their meeting, Miles
Calhoun said:

“My son, things are black, but they’re not so black they can’t be
brightened. If you killed Erris Boyne, he deserved it. He was a bad man,
as the world knows. That isn’t the point. Now, there’s only one kind of
quarrel that warrants non-disclosure.”

“You mean about a woman?” remarked Dyck coldly.

The old man took a pinch of snuff nervously. “That’s what I mean. Boyne
was older than you, and perhaps you cut him out with a woman.”

A wry smile wrinkled the corners of Dyck’s mouth. “You mean his wife?”
 he asked with irony. “Wife--no!” retorted the old man. “Damn it, no! He
wasn’t the man to remain true to his wife.”

“So I understand,” remarked Dyck; “but I don’t know his wife. I never
saw her, except at the trial, and I was so sorry for her I ceased to be
sorry for my self. She had a beautiful, strange, isolated face.”

“But that wouldn’t influence Boyne,” was the reply. “His first wife
had a beautiful and interesting face, but it didn’t hold him. He went
marauding elsewhere, and she divorced him by act of parliament. I
don’t think you knew it, but his first wife was one of your
acquaintances--Mrs. Llyn, whose daughter you saw just before we left
Playmore. He wasn’t particular where he made love--a barmaid or a
housekeeper, it was all the same to him.”

“I hope the daughter doesn’t know that Erris Boyne was her father,” said
Dyck.

“There’s plenty can tell her, and she’ll hear it sooner or later.”

Miles Calhoun looked at his son with dejection.

His eyes wandered over the grimly furnished cell. His nose smelled the
damp of it, and suddenly the whole soul of him burst forth.

“You don’t give yourself a chance of escape, Dyck You know what Irish
juries are. Why don’t you tell the truth about the quarrel? What’s the
good of keeping your mouth shut, when there’s many that would profit by
your telling it?”

“Who would profit?” asked Dyck.

“Who would profit!” snarled the old man. “Well, you would profit first,
for it might break the dark chain of circumstantial evidence. Also, your
father would profit. I’d be saved shame, perhaps; I’d get relief from
this disgrace. Oh, man, think of others beside yourself!

“Think of others!” said Dyck, and a queer smile lighted his haggard
face. “I’d save myself if I honourably could.”

“The law must prove you guilty,” the old man went on. “It’s not for you
to prove yourself innocent. They haven’t proved you guilty yet.”

The old man fumbled with a waistcoat button. His eyes blinked hard.

“You don’t see,” he continued, “the one thing that’s plain to my eyes,
and it’s this--that your only chance of escape is to tell the truth
about the quarrel. If the truth were told, whatever it is, I believe
it would be to your credit--I’ll say that for you. If it was to your
credit, even if they believe you guilty of killing Erris Boyne, they’d
touch you lightly. Ah, in the name of the mother you loved, I ask you to
tell the truth about that quarrel! Give it into the hands of the jury,
and let them decide. Haven’t you got a heart in you? In the name of
God--”

“Don’t speak to me like that,” interrupted Dyck, with emotion. “I’ve
thought of all those things. I hold my peace because--because I hold my
peace. To speak would be to hurt some one I love with all my soul.”

“And you won’t speak to save me--your father--because you don’t love me
with all your soul! Is that it?” asked Miles Calhoun.

“It’s different--it’s different.”

“Ah, it’s a woman!”

“Never mind what it is. I will not tell. There are things more shameful
than death.”

“Yes,” snarled the other. “Rather than save yourself, you bring
dishonour upon him who gave you birth.”

Dyck’s face was submerged in colour.

“Father,” said he, “on my honour I wouldn’t hurt you if I could help it,
but I’ll not tell the world of the quarrel between that man and myself.
My silence may hurt you, but some one else would be hurt far more if I
told.”

“By God, I think you’re some mad dreamer slipped out of the ancient
fold! Do you know where you are? You’re in jail. If you’re found guilty,
you’ll be sent to prison at least for the years that’ll spoil the making
of your life; and you do it because you think you’ll spare somebody.
Well, I ask you to spare me. I don’t want the man that’s going to
inherit my name, when my time comes, to bring foulness on it. We’ve been
a rough race, we Calhouns; we’ve done mad, bad things, perhaps, but none
has shamed us before the world--none but you.”

“I have never shamed you, Miles Calhoun,” replied his son sharply. “As
the ancients said, ‘alis volat propriis’--I will fly with my own wings.
Come weal, come woe, come dark, come light, I have fixed my mind, and
nothing shall change it. You loved my mother better than the rest of the
world. You would have thought it no shame to have said so to your own
father. Well, I say it to you--I’ll stand by what my conscience and
my soul have dictated to me. You call me a dreamer. Let it be so. I’m
Irish; I’m a Celt. I’ve drunk deep of all that Ireland means. All that’s
behind me is my own, back to the shadowy kings of Ireland, who lost life
and gave it because they believed in what they did. So will I. If I’m to
walk the hills no more on the estate where you are master, let it be so.
I have no fear; I want no favour. If it is to be prison, then it shall
be prison. If it is to be shame, then let it be shame. These are
days when men must suffer if they make mistakes. Well, I will suffer,
fearlessly if helplessly, but I will not break the oath which I have
taken. And so I will not do it--never--never--never!”

He picked up the cloak which the old man had dropped on the floor, and
handed it to him.

“There is no good in staying longer. I must go into court again
to-morrow. I have to think how my lawyer shall answer the evidence
given.”

“But of one thing have you thought?” asked his father. “You will not
tell the cause of the quarrel, for the reason that you might hurt
somebody. If you don’t tell the cause, and you are condemned, won’t that
hurt somebody even more?”

For a moment Dyck stood silent, absorbed. His face looked pinched, his
whole appearance shrivelled. Then, with deliberation, he said:

“This is not a matter of expediency, but of principle. My heart tells me
what to do, and my heart has always been right.”

There was silence for a long time. At last the old man drew the cloak
about his shoulders and turned towards the door.

“Wait a minute, father,” said Dyck. “Don’t go like that. You’d better
not come and see me again. If I’m condemned, go back to Playmore; if I’m
set free, go back to Playmore. That’s the place for you to be. You’ve
got your own troubles there.”

“And you--if you’re acquitted?”

“If I’m acquitted, I’ll take to the high seas--till I’m cured.”

A moment later, without further words, Dyck was alone. He heard the door
clang.

He sat for some time on the edge of his bed, buried in dejection.
Presently, however, the door opened. “A letter for you, sir,” said the
jailer.




CHAPTER IX. A LETTER FROM SHEILA

The light of the cell was dim, but Dyck managed to read the letter
without great difficulty, for the writing was almost as precise as
print. The sight of it caught his heart like a warm hand and pressed it.
This was the substance of the letter:

   MY DEAR FRIEND:

   I have wanted to visit you in prison, but my mother has forbidden
   it, and so, even if I could be let to enter, I must not disobey her.
   I have not read the papers giving an account of your trial. I only
   know you are charged with killing a bad man, notorious in Dublin
   life, and that many think he got his just deserts in being killed.

   I saw Christopher Dogan only a week ago, before we came to Dublin.
   His eyes, as he talked of you, shone like the secret hill-fires
   where the peasants make illegal drink.

   “Look you,” he said to me, “I care not what a jury decides. I know
   my man; and I also know that if the fellow Boyne died by his hand,
   it was in fair fight. I have read Dyck Calhoun’s story in the
   stars; and I know what his end will be. It will be fair, not foul;
   good, not bad; great, not low. Tell him that from me, miss,” was
   what he said.

   I also will not believe that your fate is an evil one, that the law
   will grind you between the millstones of guilt and dishonour; but if
   the law should call you guilty, I still will not believe. Far away
   I will think of you, and believe in you, dear, masterful, madman
   friend. Yes, you are a madman, for Michael Clones told me--faith,
   he loves you well!--that you’ve been living a gay life in Dublin
   since you came here, and that the man you are accused of killing
   was in great part the cause of it.

   I think I never saw my mother so troubled in spirit as she is at
   this time. Of course, she could not feel as I do about you. It
   isn’t that which makes her sad and haggard; it is that we are
   leaving Ireland behind.

   Yes, she and I are saying good-bye to Ireland. That’s why I think
   she might have let me see you before we went; but since it must not
   be, well, then, it must not. But we shall meet again. In my soul
   I know that on the hills somewhere far off, as on the first day we
   met, we shall meet each other once more. Where are we going? Oh,
   very far! We are going to my Uncle Bryan--Bryan Llyn, in Virginia.
   A letter has come from him urging us to make our home with him. You
   see, my friend--

Then followed the story which Bryan Llyn had told her mother and
herself, and she wrote of her mother’s decision to go out to the new,
great home which her uncle had made among the cotton-fields of the
South. When she had finished that part of the tale, she went on as
follows:

   We shall know your fate only through the letters that will follow
   us, but I will not believe in your bad luck. Listen to me--why
   don’t you come to America also? Oh, think it over! Don’t believe
   the worst will come. When they release you from prison, innocent
   and acquitted, cross the ocean and set up your tent under the Stars
   and Stripes. Think of it! Nearly all those men in America who
   fought under Washington and won were born in these islands. They
   took with them to that far land the memory and love of these old
   homes. You and I would have fought for England and with the British
   troops, because we detest revolution. Here, in Ireland, we have
   seen its evils; and yet if we had fought for the Union Jack beyond
   the mountains of Maine and in the lonely woods, we should, I
   believe, in the end have said that the freedom fought for by the
   American States was well won.

   So keep this matter in your mind, for my mother and I will soon be
   gone. She would not let me come to you,--I think I have never seen
   her so disturbed as when I asked her, and she forbade me to write to
   you; but I disobey her. Well, this is a sad business. I know my
   mother has suffered. I know her married life was unhappy, and that
   her husband--my father-died many a year ago, leaving a dark trail of
   regret behind him; but, you see, I never knew my father. That was
   all long ago, and it is a hundred times best forgotten.

   Our ship sails for Virginia in three days, and I must go. I will
   keep looking back to the prison where lies, charged with an evil
   crime, of which he is not guilty, a young man for whom I shall
   always carry the spirit of good friendship.

   Do not believe all will not go well. Let us keep the courage of
   our hearts and the faith of our souls--and I hope I always shall!
   I believe in you, and, believing, I say good-bye. I say farewell in
   the great hope that somehow, somewhere, we shall help each other on
   the way of life. God be with you!
                  I am your friend,
                         SHEILA LLYN.

   P. S.--I beg you to remember that America is a good place for a
   young man to live in and succeed.

Dyck read the letter with a wonderful slowness. He realized that by
happy accident--it could be nothing else--Mrs. Llyn had been able to
keep from her daughter the fact that the man who had been killed in the
tavern by the river was her father. It was clear that the girl was kept
much to herself, read no newspapers, and saw few people, and that
those whom she saw had been careful to hold their peace about her close
relationship to Erris Boyne. None but the evil-minded would recall the
fact to her.

Sheila’s ignorance must not be broken by himself. He had done the right
thing--he had held his peace for the girl’s sake, and he would hold it
to the end. Slowly he folded up the letter, pressed it to his lips, and
put it in the pocket over his heart.




CHAPTER X. DYCK CALHOUN ENTERS THE WORLD AGAIN

“Is it near the time?” asked Michael Clones of his friend, as they stood
in front of the prison.

His companion, who was seated on a stone, wrapped in dark-green
coverings faded and worn, and looking pinched with cold in the dour
November day, said, without lifting his head:

“Seven minutes, an’ he’ll be out, God bless him!”

“And save him and protect him!” said Michael. “He deserved punishment
no more than I did, and it’s broke him. I’ve seen the grey gather at his
temples, though he’s only been in prison four years. He was condemned
to eight, but they’ve let him free, I don’t know why. Perhaps it was
because of what he told the government about the French navy. I’ve seen
the joy of life sob itself down to the sour earth. When I took him the
news of his father’s death, and told him the creditors were swallowing
what was left of Playmore, what do you think he did?”

Old Christopher Dogan smiled; his eyes twinkled with a mirth which had
more pain than gaiety. “God love you, I know what he did. He flung out
his hands, and said: ‘Let it go! It’s nothing to me.’ Michael, have I
said true?”

Michael nodded.

“Almost his very words you’ve used, and he flung out his hands, as you
said.

“Aye, he’ll be changed; but they’ve kept the clothes he had when he went
to prison, and he’ll come out in them, I’m thinking--”

“Ah, no!” interrupted Michael. “That can’t be, for his clothes was
stole. Only a week ago he sent to me for a suit of my own. I wouldn’t
have him wear my clothes--he a gentleman! It wasn’t fitting. So I sent
him a suit I bought from a shop, but he wouldn’t have it. He would leave
prison a poor man, as a peasant in peasant’s clothes. So he wrote to
me. Here is the letter.” He drew from his pocket a sheet of paper, and
spread it out. “See-read it. Ah, well, never mind,” he added, as old
Christopher shook his head. “Never mind, I’ll read it to you!” Thereupon
he read the note, and added: “We’ll see him of the Calhouns risin’ high
beyant poverty and misfortune some day.”

Old Christopher nodded.

“I’m glad Miles Calhoun was buried on the hilltop above Playmore. He had
his day; he lived his life. Things went wrong with him, and he paid the
price we all must pay for work ill-done.”

“There you’re right, Christopher Dogan, and I remember the day the
downfall began. It was when him that’s now Lord Mallow, Governor of
Jamaica, came to summon Miles Calhoun to Dublin. Things were never the
same after that; but I well remember one talk I had with Miles Calhoun
just before his death. ‘Michael,’ he said to me, ‘my family have had
many ups and downs, and some that bear my name have been in prison
before this, but never for killing a man out of fair fight.’ ‘One of
your name may be in prison, sir,’ said I, ‘but not for killing a man out
of fair fight. If you believe he did, there’s no death bad enough for
you!’ He was silent for a while; then at last he whispered Mr. Dyck’s
name, and said to me: ‘Tell him that as a Calhoun I love him, and as his
father I love him ten times more. For look you, Michael, though we never
ran together, but quarrelled and took our own paths, yet we are both
Calhouns, and my heart is warm to him. If my son were a thousand times a
criminal, nevertheless I would ache to take him by the hand.’”

“Hush! Look at the prison gate,” said his companion, and stood up.

As the gates of the prison opened, the sun broke through the clouds and
gave a brilliant phase to the scene. Out of the gates there came slowly,
yet firmly, dressed in peasant clothes, the stalwart but faded figure of
Dyck Calhoun.

Terribly changed he was. He had entered prison with the flush upon his
cheek, the lilt of young manhood in his eyes, with hair black and hands
slender and handsome. There was no look of youth in his face now. It was
the face of a middle-aged man from which the dew of youth had vanished,
into which life’s storms had come and gone. Though the body was held
erect, yet the head was thrust slightly forward, and the heavy eyebrows
were like a pent-house. The eyes were slightly feverish, and round
the mouth there crept a smile, half-cynical but a little happy. All
freshness was gone from his hands. One hung at his side, listless,
corded; the other doffed his hat in reply to the salute of his two
humble friends.

As the gates closed behind him he looked gravely at the two men, who
were standing not a foot apart. There swept slowly into his eyes,
enlarging, brightening them, the glamour of the Celtic soul. Of all
Ireland, or all who had ever known him, these two were the only ones
welcoming him into the world again! Michael Clones, with his oval red
face, big nose, steely eye, and steadfast bearing, had in him the soul
of great kings. His hat was set firmly on his head. His knee-breeches
were neat, if coarse; his stockings were clean. His feet were well shod,
his coat worn, and he had still the look that belongs to the well-to-do
peasant. He was a figure of courage and endurance. Dyck’s hand went out
to him, and a warm smile crept to his lips.

“Michael--ever--faithful Michael!”

A moisture came to Michael’s eyes. He did not speak as he clasped the
hand Dyck offered him. Presently Dyck turned to old Christopher with a
kindly laugh.

“Well, old friend! You, too, come to see the stag set loose again?
You’re not many, that’s sure.” A grim, hard look came into his face, but
both hands went out and caught the old man’s shoulders affectionately.
“This is no day for you to be waiting at prison’s gates, Christopher;
but there are two men who believe in me--two in all the world. It isn’t
the killing,” he added after a moment’s silence--“it isn’t the killing
that hurts so. If it’s true that I killed Erris Boyne, what hurts most
is the reason why I killed him.”

“One way or another--does it matter now?” asked Christopher gently.

“Is it that you think nothing matters since I’ve paid the price, sunk
myself in shame, lost my friends, and come out with not a penny left?”
 asked Dyck. “But yes,” he added with a smile, wry and twisted, “yes, I
have a little left!”

He drew from his pocket four small pieces of gold, and gazed ironically
at them in his palm.

“Look at them!” He held out his hand, so that the two men could see the
little coins. “Those were taken from me when I entered prison. They’ve
been in the hands of the head of the jail ever since. They give them to
me now--all that’s left of what I was.”

“No, not all, sir,” declared Michael. “There’s something left from
Playmore--there’s ninety pounds, and it’s in my pocket. It was got from
the sale of your sporting-kit. There was the boat upon the lake, the
gun, and all kinds of riffraff stuff not sold with Playmore.”

Dyck nodded and smiled. “Good Michael!”

Then he drew himself up stiffly, and blew in and out his breath as if
with the joy of living. For four hard years he had been denied the free
air of free men. Even when walking in the prison-yard, on cold or fair
days, when the air was like a knife or when it had the sun of summer in
it, it still had seemed to choke him.

In prison he had read, thought, and worked much. They had at least done
that for him. The Attorney-General had given him freedom to work with
his hands, and to slave in the workshop like one whose living depended
on it. Some philanthropic official had started the idea of a workshop,
and the officials had given the best of the prisoners a chance to learn
trades and make a little money before they went out into the world. All
that Dyck had earned went to purchase things he needed, and to help his
fellow prisoners or their families.

Where was he now? The gap between the old life of nonchalance,
frivolity, fantasy, and excitement was as great as that between heaven
and hell. Here he was, after four years of prison, walking the highway
with two of the humblest creatures of Ireland, and yet, as his soul
said, two of the best.

Stalking along in thought, he suddenly became conscious that Michael and
Christopher had fallen behind. He turned round.

“Come on. Come on with me.” But the two shook their heads.

“It’s not fitting, you a Calhoun of Playmore!” Christopher answered.

“Well, then, list to me,” said Dyck, for he saw the men could not bear
his new democracy. “I’m hungry. In four years I haven’t had a meal
that came from the right place or went to the right spot. Is the little
tavern, the Hen and Chickens, on the Liffeyside, still going? I mean the
place where the seamen and the merchant-ship officers visit.”

Michael nodded.

“Well, look you, Michael--get you both there, and order me as good a
meal of fish and chops and baked pudding as can be bought for money.
Aye, and I’ll have a bottle of red French wine, and you two will have
what you like best. Mark me, we’ll sit together there, for we’re one of
a kind. I’ve got to take to a life that fits me, an ex-jailbird, a man
that’s been in prison for killing!”

“There’s the king’s army,” said Michael. “They make good officers in
it.”

A strange, half-sore smile came to Dyck’s thin lips.

“Michael,” said he, “give up these vain illusions. I was condemned for
killing a man not in fair fight.

“I can’t enter the army as an officer, and you should know it. The king
himself could set me up again; but the distance between him and me is
ten times round the world and back again!” But then Dyck nodded kindly.
It was as if suddenly the martyr spirit had lifted him out of rigid,
painful isolation, and he was speaking from a hilltop. “No, my friends,
what is in my mind now is that I’m hungry. For four years I’ve eaten the
bread of prison, and it’s soured my mouth and galled my belly. Go you to
that inn and make ready a good meal.”

The two men started to leave, but old Christopher turned and stretched a
hand up and out.

“Son of Ireland, bright and black and black and bright may be the
picture of your life, but I see for you brightness and sweet faces, and
music and song. It’s not Irish music, and it’s not Irish song, but the
soul of the thing is Irish. Grim things await you, but you will conquer
where the eagle sways to the shore, where the white mist flees from the
hills, where heroes meet, where the hand of Moira stirs the blue and the
witches flee from the voice of God. There is honour coming to you in the
world.”

Having said his say, with hand outstretched, having thrilled the air
with the voice of one who had the soul of a prophet, the old man turned.
Head bent forward, he shuffled away with Michael Clones along the stony
street.

Dyck watched them go, his heart beating hard, his spirit overwhelmed.

It was not far to the Castle, yet every footstep had a history. Now and
again he met people who knew him. Some bowed a little too profoundly,
some nodded; but not one stopped to speak to him, though a few among
them were people he had known well in days gone by. Was it the clothes
he wore, or was it that his star had sunk so low that none could keep
it company? He laughed to himself in scorn, and yet there kept ringing
through his brain all the time the bells of St. Anselm’s, which he was
hearing:

       “Oh, God, who is the sinner’s friend,
        Make clean my soul once more!”

When he arrived at the Castle walls he stood and looked long at them.

“No, I won’t go in. I won’t try to see him,” he said at last. “God, how
strange Ireland is to me! The soil of it, the trees of it, the grass of
it, are dearer than ever, but--I’ll have no more of Ireland. I’ll ask
for nothing. I’ll get to England. What’s Ireland to me? I must make
my way somewhere. There’s one in there”--he nodded towards the
Castle--“that owes me money at cards. He should open his pockets to me,
and see me safe on a ship for Australia; but I’ve had my fill of every
one in Ireland. There’s nothing here for me but shame. Well, back I’ll
go to the Hen and Chickens, to find a good dinner there.”

He turned and went back slowly along the streets by which he had come,
looking not to right nor left, thinking only of where he should go and
what he should do outside of Ireland.

At the door of the inn he sniffed the dinner Michael had ordered.

“Man alive!” he said as he entered the place and saw the two men with
their hands against the bright fire. “There’s only one way to live, and
that’s the way I’m going to try.”

“Well, you’ll not try it alone, sir, if you please,” said Michael. “I’ll
be with you, if I may.”

“And I’ll bless you as you go,” said Christopher Dogan.




CHAPTER XI. WHITHER NOW?

England was in a state of unrest. She had, as yet, been none too
successful in the war with France. From the king’s castle to the poorest
slum in Seven Dials there was a temper bordering on despair. Ministries
came and went; statesmen rose and fell. The army was indifferently
recruited and badly paid. England’s battles were fought by men of whom
many were only mercenaries, with no stake in England’s rise or fall.

In the army and navy there were protests, many and powerful, against the
smallness of the pay, while the cost of living had vastly increased. In
more than one engagement on land England had had setbacks of a serious
kind, and there were those who saw in the blind-eyed naval policy, in
the general disregard of the seamen’s position, in the means used for
recruiting, the omens of disaster. The police courts furnished the navy
with the worst citizens of the country. Quota men, the output of the
Irish prisons--seditious, conspiring, dangerous--were drafted for the
king’s service.

The admiralty pursued its course of seizing men of the mercantile
marine, taking them aboard ships, keeping them away for months from the
harbours of the kingdom, and then, when their ships returned, denying
them the right of visiting their homes. The press-gangs did not confine
their activities to the men of the mercantile marine. From the streets
after dusk they caught and brought in, often after ill-treatment, torn
from their wives and sweethearts, knocked on the head for resisting,
tradesmen with businesses, young men studying for the professions,
idlers, debtors, out-of-work men. The marvel is that the British fleets
fought as well as they did.

Poverty and sorrow, loss and bereavement, were in every street, peeped
mournfully out of every window, lurked at street corners. From all parts
of the world adventurers came to renew their fortunes in the turmoil
of London, and every street was a kaleidoscope of faces and clothes and
colours, not British, not patriot, not national.

Among these outlanders were Dyck Calhoun and Michael Clones. They
had left Ireland together in the late autumn, leaving behind them the
stirrings of the coming revolution, and plunging into another revolt
which was to prove the test and trial of English character.

Dyck had left Ireland with ninety pounds in his pocket and many tons’
weight of misery in his heart. In his bones he felt tragedies on foot in
Ireland which concession and good government could not prevent. He had
fled from it all. When he set his face to Holyhead, he felt that he
would never live in Ireland again. Yet his courage was firm as he made
his way to London, with Michael Clones--faithful, devoted, a friend
and yet a servant, treated like a comrade, yet always with a little
dominance.

The journey to London had been without event, yet as the coach rolled
through country where frost silvered the trees; where, in the early
morning, the grass was shining with dew; where the everlasting green
hedges and the red roofs of villages made a picture which pleased the
eye and stirred the soul, Dyck Calhoun kept wondering what would be his
future. He had no profession, no trade, no skill except with his sword;
and as he neared London Town--when they left Hendon--he saw the smoke
rising in the early winter morning and the business of life spread out
before him, brave and buoyant.

As from the heights of Hampstead he looked down on the multitudinous
area called London, something throbbed at his heart which seemed like
hope; for what he saw was indeed inspiring. When at last, in the Edgware
Road, he drew near to living London, he turned to Michael Clones and
said:

“Michael, my lad, I think perhaps we’ll find a footing here.”

So they reached London, and quartered themselves in simple lodgings in
Soho. Dyck walked the streets, and now and then he paid a visit to the
barracks where soldiers were, to satisfy the thought that perhaps in the
life of the common soldier he might, after all, find his future. It was,
however, borne in upon him by a chance remark of Michael one day--“I’m
not young enough to be a recruit, and you wouldn’t go alone without me,
would you?”--that this way to a livelihood was not open to him.

His faithful companion’s remark had fixed Dyck’s mind against entering
the army, and then, towards the end of the winter, a fateful
thing happened. His purse containing what was left of the ninety
pounds--two-fifths of it--disappeared. It had been stolen, and in all
the bitter days to come, when poverty and misery ground them down, no
hint of the thief, no sign of the robber, was ever revealed.

Then, at last, a day when a letter came from Ireland. It was from the
firm in which Bryan Llyn of Virginia had been interested, for the letter
had been sent to their care, and Dyck had given them his address in
London on this very chance. It reached Dyck’s hands on the day after
the last penny had been paid out for their lodgings, and they faced
the streets, penniless, foodless--one was going to say friendless. The
handwriting was that of Sheila Llyn.

At a street corner, by a chemist’s shop where a red light burned, Dyck
opened and read the letter. This is what Sheila had written to him.

   MY DEAR FRIEND:

   The time is near (I understand by a late letter to my mother from an
   official) when you will be freed from prison and will face the world
   again. I have not written you since your trial, but I have never
   forgotten and never shall. I have been forbidden to write to you or
   think of you, but I will take my own way about you. I have known
   all that has happened since we left Ireland, through the letters my
   mother has received. I know that Playmore has been sold, and I am
   sorry.

   Now that your day of release is near, and you are to be again a free
   man, have you decided about your future? Is it to be in Ireland?
   No, I think not. Ireland is no place for a sane and level man to
   fight for honour, fame, and name. I hear that things are worse
   there in every way than they have been in our lifetime.

   After what has happened in any case, it is not a field that offers
   you a chance. Listen to me. Ireland and England are not the only
   places in the world. My uncle came here to Virginia a poor man.
   He is now immensely rich. He had little to begin with, but he was
   young like you--indeed, a little older than you--when he first came.
   He invested wisely, worked bravely, and his wealth grew fast. No
   man needs a fortune to start the business of life in this country.
   He can get plenty of land for almost nothing; he can get credit for
   planting and furnishing his land, and, if he has friends, the credit
   is sure.

   All America is ready for “the likes of you.” Think it over, and
   meanwhile please know there has been placed with the firm in Dublin
   money enough to bring you here with comfort. You must not refuse
   it. Take it as a loan, for I know you will not take it as a gift.

   I do not know the story of the killing, even as it was told in
   court. Well, some one killed the man, but not you, and the truth
   will out in time. If one should come to me out of the courts of
   heaven, and say that there it was declared you were a rogue, I
   should say heaven was no place for me. No, of one thing I am sure--
   you never killed an undefended man. Wayward, wanton, reckless,
   dissipated you may have been, but you were never depraved--never!

   When you are free, lift up your shoulders to all the threats of
   time, then go straight to the old firm where the money is, draw it,
   take ship, and come here. If you let me know you are coming, I will
   be there to meet you when you step ashore, to give you a firm hand-
   clasp; to tell you that in this land there is a good place for you,
   if you will win it.

   Here there is little crime, though the perils of life are many.
   There is Indian fighting; there are Indian depredations; and not a
   dozen miles from where I sit men have been shot for crimes
   committed. The woods are full of fighters, and pirates harry the
   coast. On the wall of the room where I write there are carbines
   that have done service in Indian wars and in the Revolutionary War;
   and here out of the window I can see hundreds of black heads-slaves,
   brought from Africa and the Indies, slaves whose devotion to my
   uncle is very great. I hear them singing now; over the white-tipped
   cotton-fields there flows the sound of it.

   This plantation has none of the vices that belong to slavery. Here
   life is complete. The plantation is one great workshop where trades
   are learned and carried out-shoeing, blacksmithing, building,
   working in wood and metal.

   I am learning here--you see I am quite old, for I am twenty-one now
   --the art of management. They tell me that when my uncle’s day is
   done--I grieve to think it is not far off--I must take the rod of
   control. I work very, very hard. I have to learn figures and
   finance; I have to see how all the work is done, so that I shall
   know it is done right. I have had to discipline the supervisors and
   bookkeepers, inspect and check the output, superintend the packing,
   and arrange for the sale of the crop-yes, I arranged for the sale of
   this year’s crop myself. So I live the practical life, and when I
   say that you could make your home here and win success, I do it with
   some knowledge.

   I beg you take ship for the Virginian coast. Enter upon the new
   life here with faith and courage. Have no fear. Heaven that has
   thus far helped you will guide you to the end.

   I write without my mother’s permission, but my uncle knows, and
   though he does not approve, he does not condemn.

   Once more good-bye, my dear friend, and God be with you.

                    SHEILA LLYN.

   P. S.--I wonder where you will read this letter. I hope it will
   find you before your release. Please remember that she who wrote it
   summons you from the darkness where you are to light and freedom
   here.

Slowly Dyck folded up the letter, when he had read it, and put it in his
pocket. Then he turned with pale face and gaunt look to Michael Clones.

“Michael,” said he, “that letter is from a lady. It comes from her new
home in Virginia.”

Michael nodded.

“Aye, aye, sir, I understand you,” he said. “Then she doesn’t know the
truth about her father?” Dyck sighed heavily. “No, Michael, she doesn’t
know the truth.”

“I don’t believe it would make any difference to her if she did know.”

“It would make all the difference to me, Michael. She says she wishes
to help me. She tells me that money’s been sent to the big firm in
Dublin-money to take me across the sea to Virginia.”

Michael’s face clouded.

“Yes, sir. To Virginia--and what then?”

“Michael, we haven’t a penny in the world, you and I, but if I took
one farthing of that money I should hope you would kill me. I’m hungry;
we’ve had nothing to eat since yesterday; but if I could put my hands
upon that money here and now I wouldn’t touch it. Michael, it looks as
if we shall have to take to the trade of the footpad.”




CHAPTER XII. THE HOUR BEFORE THE MUTINY

In the days when Dyck Calhoun was on the verge of starvation in
London, evil naval rumours were abroad. Newspapers reported, one with
apprehension, another with tyrannous comment, mutinous troubles in the
fleet.

At first the only demand at Spithead and the Nore had been for an
increase of pay, which had not been made since the days of Charles II.
Then the sailors’ wages were enough for comfortable support; but in 1797
through the rise in the cost of living, and with an advance of thirty
per cent. on slops, their families could barely maintain themselves. It
was said in the streets, and with truth, that seamen who had fought with
unconquerable gallantry under Howe, Collingwood, Nelson, and the other
big sea-captains, who had borne suffering and wounds, and had been in
the shadow of death--that even these men damned a system which, in its
stern withdrawal of their class for long spaces of time from their own
womenfolk, brought evil results to the forecastle.

The soldier was always in touch with his own social world, and he had
leave sufficient to enable him to break the back of monotony. He drank,
gambled, and orated; but his indulgences were little compared with the
debauches of able-bodied seamen when, after months of sea-life, they
reached port again. A ship in port at such a time was not a scene of
evangelical habits. Women of loose class, flower-girls, fruit-sellers,
and costermongers turned the forecastle into a pleasure-house where
the pleasures were not always secret; where native modesty suffered no
affright, and physical good cheer, with ribald paraphrase, was notable
everywhere.

“How did it happen, Michael?”

As he spoke, Dyck looked round the forecastle of the Ariadne with a
restless and inquisitive expression. Michael was seated a few feet away,
his head bent forward, his hands clasped around his knees.

“Well, it don’t matter one way or ‘nother,” he replied; “but it was like
this. The night you got a letter from Virginia we was penniless; so at
last I went with my watch to the pawnbroker’s. You said you’d wait till
I got back, though you knew not where I was goin’. When I got back, you
were still broodin’. You were seated on a horse-block by the chemist’s
lamp where you had read the letter. It’s not for me to say of what you
were thinkin’; but I could guess. You’d been struck hard, and there had
come to you a letter from one who meant more to you than all the rest of
the world; and you couldn’t answer it because things weren’t right. As
I stood lookin’ at you, wonderin’ what to do, though, I had twelve
shillin’s in my pocket from the watch I’d pawned, there came four men,
and I knew from their looks they were recruitin’ officers of the navy. I
saw what was in their eyes. They knew--as why shouldn’t they, when they
saw a gentleman like you in peasant clothes?--that luck had been agin’
us.

“What the end would have been I don’t know. It was you that solved the
problem, not them. You looked at the first man of them hard. Then you
got to your feet.

“‘Michael,’ says you quietly, ‘I’m goin’ to sea. England’s at war, and
there’s work to do. So let’s make for a king’s ship, and have done with
misery and poverty.’

“Then you waved a hand to the man in command of the recruitin’ gang, and
presently stepped up to him and his friends.

“‘Sir,’ I said to you, ‘I’m not going to be pressed into the navy.’

“‘There’s no pressin’, Michael,’ you answered. ‘We’ll be quota men.
We’ll do it for cash--for forty pounds each, and no other. You let them
have you as you are. But if you don’t want to come,’ you added, ‘it’s
all the same to me.’

“Faith, I knew that was only talk. I knew you wanted me. Also I knew the
king’s navy needed me, for men are hard to get. So, when they’d paid
us the cash--forty pounds apiece--I stepped in behind you, and here we
are--here we are! Forty pounds apiece--equal to three years’ wages of
an ordinary recruit of the army. It ain’t bad, but we’re here for three
years, and no escape from it. Yes, here we are!”

Dyck laughed.

“Aye, here we’re likely to remain, Michael. There’s only this to be
said--we’ll be fighting the French soon, and it’s easy to die in the
midst of a great fight. If we don’t die, Michael, something else will
turn up, maybe.”

“That’s true, sir! They’ll make an officer of you, once they see you
fight. This is no place for you, among the common herd. It’s the dregs
o’ the world that comes to the ship’s bottom in time of peace or war.”

“Well, I’m the dregs of the world, Michael. I’m the supreme dregs.”

Somehow the letter from Virginia had decided Dyck Calhoun’s fate for
him. Here he was--at sea, a common sailor in the navy. He and Michael
Clones had eaten and drunk as sailors do, and they had realized that, as
they ate and drank on the River Thames, they would not eat and drink
on the watery fairway. They had seen the tank foul with age, from which
water was drawn for men who could not live without it, and the smell of
it had revolted Dyck’s senses. They had seen the kegs of pickled meat,
and they had been told of the evil rations given to the sailors at sea.

The Ariadne had been a flag-ship in her day, the home of an admiral and
his staff. She carried seventy-four guns, was easily obedient to her
swift sail, and had a reputation for gallantry. From the first hour
on board, Dyck Calhoun had fitted in; with a discerning eye he had
understood the seamen’s needs and the weaknesses of the system.

The months he had spent between his exit from prison and his entrance
into the Ariadne had roughened, though not coarsened, his outward
appearance. From his first appearance among the seamen he had set
himself to become their leader. His enlistment was for three years, and
he meant that these three should prove the final success of this naval
enterprise, or the stark period in a calendar of tragedy.

The life of the sailor, with its coarseness and drudgery, its inadequate
pay, its evil-smelling food, its maggoty bread, its beer drawn from
casks that once had held oil or fish, its stinking salt-meat barrels,
the hideous stench of the bilge-water--all this could in one sense be
no worse than his sufferings in jail. In spite of self-control, jail
had been to him the degradation of his hopes, the humiliation of his
manhood.

He had suffered cold, dampness, fever, and indigestion there, and it
had sapped the fresh fibre of life in him. His days in London had been
cruel. He had sought work in great commercial concerns, and had almost
been grateful when rejected. When his money was stolen, there seemed
nothing to do, as he said to Michael Clones, but to become a footpad or
a pirate. Then the stormy doors of the navy had opened wide to him; and
as many a man is tempted into folly or crime by tempestuous nature,
so he, forlorn, spiritually unkempt, but physically and mentally
well-composed, in a spirit of bravado, flung himself into the bowels of
the fleet.

From the moment Dyck arrived on board the Ariadne he was a marked
man. Ferens, a disfranchised solicitor, who knew his story, spread the
unwholesome truth about him among the ship’s people, and he received
attentions at once offensive and flattering. The best-educated of the
ship’s hands approached him on the grievances with which the whole navy
was stirring.

Something had put a new spirit into the life of his majesty’s ships; it
was, in a sense, the reflection of the French Revolution and Tom Paine’s
Age of Reason. What the Americans had done in establishing a republic,
what France was doing by her revolution, got into the veins and minds of
some men in England, but it got into the veins and minds of the sailor
first; for, however low his origin, he had intercourse not given to the
average landsman. He visited foreign ports, he came in touch with other
elements than those of British life and character.

Of all the ships in the navy the Ariadne was the best that Dyck Calhoun
could have entered. Her officers were humane and friendly, yet firm; and
it was quite certain that if mutiny came they would be treated well. The
agitation on the Ariadne in support of the grievances of the sailors was
so moderate that, from the first, Dyck threw in his lot with it. Ferens,
the former solicitor, first came to him with a list of proposals, which
only repeated the demands made by the agitators at Spithead.

“You’re new among us,” said Ferens to Dyck. “You don’t quite know what
we’ve been doing, I suppose. Some of us have been in the navy for two
years, and some for ten. There are men on this ship who could tell
you stories that would make your blood run cold--take my word for it.
There’s a lot of things goin’ on that oughtn’t to be goin’ on. The time
has come for reform. Have a look at this paper, and tell me what you
think.”

Dyck looked at the pockmarked face of Ferens, whose record in the courts
was a bad one, and what he saw did not disgust him. It was as though
Ferens had stumbled and been badly hit in his fall, but there were
no signs of permanent evil in his countenance. He was square-headed,
close-cropped, clear-eyed, though his face was yellow where it was not
red, and his tongue was soft in his head.

Dyck read the paper slowly and carefully. Then he handed it back without
a word.

“Well, what have you got to say?” asked Ferens. “Nothing? Don’t you
think that’s a strong list of grievances and wrongs?”

Dyck nodded. “Yes, it’s pretty strong,” he said, and he held up his
hand. “Number One, wages and cost of living. I’m sure we’re right there.
Cost of living was down in King Charles’s time, and wages were down
accordingly. Everything’s gone up, and wages should go up. Number Two,
the prize-money scandal. I’m with you there. I don’t see why an officer
should get two thousand five hundred times as much as a seaman. There
ought to be a difference, but not so much. Number Three, the food
ought to be better; the water ought to be better. We can’t live on rum,
maggoty bread, and foul water--that’s sure. The rum’s all right; it’s
powerful natural stuff, but we ought to have meat that doesn’t stink,
and bread that isn’t alive. What’s more, we ought to have lots of
lime-juice, or there’s no protection for us when we’re out at sea with
the best meat taken by the officers and the worst left to us; and with
foul water and rotten food, there’s no hope or help. But, if we’re going
in for this sort of thing, we ought to do it decently. We can’t slap
a government in the mouth, and we can’t kick an admiral without paying
heavy for it in the end. If it’s wholesome petitioning you’re up to, I’m
with you; but I’m not if there’s to be knuckle-dusting.”

Ferens shrugged a shoulder.

“Things are movin’, and we’ve got to take our stand now when the time is
ripe for it, or else lose it for ever. Over at Spithead they’re gettin’
their own way. The government are goin’ to send the Admiralty Board down
here, because our admiral say to them that it won’t be safe goin’ unless
they do.”

“And what are we going to do here?” asked Dyck. “What’s the game of the
fleet at the Nore?”

Ferens replied in a low voice:

“Our men are goin’ to send out petitions--to the Admiralty and to the
House of Commons.”

“Why don’t you try Lord Howe?”

“He’s not in command of a fleet now. Besides, petitions have been sent
him, and he’s taken no notice.”

“Howe? No notice--the best admiral we ever had! I don’t believe it,”
 declared Dyck savagely. “Why, the whole navy believes in Howe. They
haven’t forgotten what he did in ‘94. He’s as near to the seaman as the
seaman is to his mother. Who sent the petitions to him?”

“They weren’t signed by names--they were anonymous.”

Dyck laughed.

“Yes, and all written by the same hand, I suppose.” Ferens nodded.

“I think that’s so.”

“Can you wonder, then, that Lord Howe didn’t acknowledge them? But I’m
still sure he acted promptly. He’s a big enough friend of the sailor to
waste no time before doing his turn.”

Ferens shook his head morosely.

“That may be,” he said; “but the petitions were sent weeks ago, and
there’s no sign from Lord Howe. He was at Bath for gout. My idea is he
referred them to the admiral commanding at Portsmouth, and was told
that behind the whole thing is conspiracy--French socialism and English
politics. I give you my word there’s no French agent in the fleet, and
if there were, it wouldn’t have any effect. Our men’s grievances are not
new. They’re as old as Cromwell.”

Suddenly a light of suspicion flashed into Ferens’s face.

“You’re with us, aren’t you? You see the wrongs we’ve suffered, and how
bad it all is! Yet you haven’t been on a voyage with us. You’ve only
tasted the life in harbour. Good God, this life is heaven to what we
have at sea! We don’t mind the fightin’. We’d rather fight than eat.”
 An evil grin covered his face for a minute. “Yes, we’d rather fight than
eat, for the stuff we get to eat is hell’s broil, God knows! Did you
ever think what the life of the sailor is, that swings at the top of a
mast with the frost freezin’ his very soul, and because he’s slow, owin’
to the cold, gets twenty lashes for not bein’ quicker? Well, I’ve seen
that, and a bad sight it is. Did you ever see a man flogged? It ain’t a
pretty sight. First the back takes the click of the whip like a damned
washboard, and you see the ridges rise and go purple and red, and the
man has his breath knocked clean out of him with every blow. Nearly
every stroke takes off the skin and draws the blood, and a dozen will
make the back a ditch of murder. Then the whipper stops, looks at the
lashes, feels them tender like, and out and down it comes again. When
all the back is ridged and scarred, the flesh, that looked clean and
beautiful, becomes a bloody mass. Some men get a hundred lashes, and
that’s torture and death.

“A man I knew was flogged told me once that the first blow made his
flesh quiver in every nerve from his toe-nails to his finger-nails, and
stung his heart as if a knife had gone through his body. There was agony
in his lungs, and the time between each stroke was terrible, and yet the
next came too soon. He choked with the blood from his tongue, lacerated
with his teeth, and from his lungs, and went black in the face. I
saw his back. It looked like roasted meat; yet he had only had eighty
strokes.

“The punishments are bad. Runnin’ the gauntlet is one of them. Each
member of the crew is armed with three tarry rope-yarns, knotted at
the ends. Then between the master-at-arms with a drawn sword and two
corporals with drawn swords behind, the thief, stripped to the waist,
is placed. The thing is started by a boatswain’s mate givin’ him a dozen
lashes. Then he’s slowly marched down the double line of men, who flog
him as he passes, and at the end of the line he receives another dose
of the cat from the boatswain’s mate. The poor devil’s body and head
are flayed, and he’s sent to hospital and rubbed with brine till he’s
healed.

“But the most horrible of all is flogging through the fleet. That’s
given for strikin’ an officer, or tryin’ to escape. It’s a sickenin’
thing. The victim is lashed by his wrists to a capstan-bar in the ship’s
long-boat, and all the ship’s boats are lowered also, and each ship
in harbour sends a boat manned by marines to attend. Then, with the
master-at-arms and the ship’s surgeon, the boat is cast off. The
boatswain’s mate begins the floggin’, and the boat rows away to the
half-minute bell, the drummer beatin’ the rogue’s march. From ship to
ship the long-boat goes, and the punishment of floggin’ is repeated. If
he faints, he gets wine or rum, or is taken back to his ship to recover.
When his back is healed he goes out to get the rest of his sentence.
Very few ever live through it, or if they do it’s only for a short time.
They’d better have taken the hangin’ that was the alternative. Even a
corpse with its back bare of flesh to the bone has received the last
lashes of a sentence, and was then buried in the mud of the shore with
no religious ceremony.

“Mind you, there’s many a man gets fifty lashes that don’t deserve them.
There’s many men in the fleet that’s stirred to anger at ill-treatment,
until now, in these days, the whole lot is ready to see the thing
through--to see the thing through--by heaven and by hell!”

The pockmarked face had taken on an almost ghastly fervour, until it
looked like a distorted cartoon-vindictive, fanatical; but Dyck, on
the edge of the river of tragedy, was not ready to lose himself in the
stream of it.

As he looked round the ship he felt a stir of excitement like nothing
he had ever known, though he had been brought up in a country where men
were by nature revolutionists, and where the sword was as often outside
as inside the scabbard. There was something terrible in a shipboard
agitation not to be found in a land-rising. On land there were a
thousand miles of open country, with woods and houses, caves and cliffs,
to which men could flee for hiding; and the danger of rebellion was
less dominant. At sea, a rebellion was like some beastly struggle in one
room, beyond the walls of which was everlasting nothingness. The thing
had to be fought out, as it were, man to man within four walls, and God
help the weaker!

“How many ships in the fleet are sworn to this agitation?” Dyck asked
presently.

“Every one. It’s been like a spread of infection; it’s entered at every
door, looked out of every window. All the ships are in it, from the
twenty-six-hundred-tonners to the little five-hundred-and-fifty-tonners.
Besides, there are the Delegates.”

He lowered his voice as he used these last words. “Yes, I know,” Dyck
answered, though he did not really know. “But who is at the head?”

“Why, as bold a man as can be--Richard Parker, an Irishman. He was once
a junior naval officer, and left the navy and went into business; now he
is a quotaman, and leads the mutiny. Let me tell you that unless there’s
a good round answer to what we demand, the Nore fleet’ll have it out
with the government. He’s a man of character, is Richard Parker, and the
fleet’ll stand by him.”

“How long has he been at it?” asked Dyck.

“Oh, weeks and weeks! It doesn’t all come at once, the grip of the
thing. It began at Spithead, and it worked right there; and now it’s
workin’ at the Nore, and it’ll work and work until there isn’t a ship
and there isn’t a man that won’t be behind the Delegates. Look. Half the
seamen on this ship have tasted the inside of a jail; and the rest come
from the press-gang, and what’s left are just the ragged ends of street
corners. But”--and here the man drew himself up with a flush--“but
there’s none of us that wouldn’t fight to the last gasp of breath for
the navy that since the days of Elizabeth has sailed at the head of all
the world. Don’t think we mean harm to the fleet. We mean to do it good.
All we want is that its masters shall remember we’re human flesh and
blood; that we’re as much entitled to good food and drink on sea as on
land; and that, if we risk our lives and shed our blood, we ought to
have some share in the spoils. We’re a great country and we’re a great
people, but, by God, we’re not good to our own! Look at them there.”

He turned and waved a hand to the bowels of the ship where sailors
traded with the slop-sellers, or chaffered with women, or sat in groups
and sang, or played rough games which had no vital meaning; while here
and there in groups, with hands gesticulating, some fanatics declared
their principles. And the principles of every man in the Nore fleet so
far were embraced in the four words--wages, food, drink, prize-money.

Presently Ferens stopped short. “Listen!” he said.

There was a cry from the ship’s side not far away, and then came little
bursts of cheering.

“By Heaven, it’s the Delegates comin’ here!” he said. He held up a
warning palm, as though commanding silence, while he listened intently.
“Yes, it’s the Delegates. Now look at that crowd of seamen!” He swung
his hand towards the bowels of the ship. Scores of men were springing to
their feet. Presently there came a great shouting and cheers, and then
four new faces appeared on deck. They were faces of intelligence, but
one of them had the enlightened look of leadership.

“By Judas, it’s our leader, Richard Parker!” declared Ferens.

What Dyck now saw was good evidence of the progress of the agitation.
There were officers of the Ariadne to be seen, but they wisely took no
notice of the breaches of regulation which followed the arrival of the
Delegates. Dyck saw Ferens speak to Richard Parker after the men had
been in conference with Parker and the Delegates, and then turn towards
himself. Richard Parker came to him.

“We are fellow countrymen,” he said genially. “I know your history.
We are out to make the navy better--to get the men their rights. I
understand you are with us?”

Dyck bowed. “I will do all possible to get reforms in wages and food put
through, sir.”

“That’s good,” said Parker. “There are some petitions you can draft,
and some letters also to the Admiralty and to the Houses of Lords and
Commons.”

“I am at your service,” said Dyck.

He saw his chance to secure influence on the Ariadne, and also to do
good to the service. Besides, he felt he might be able to check the
worst excesses of the agitation, if he got power under Parker. He was
free from any wish for mutiny, but he was the friend of an agitation
which might end as successfully as the trouble at Spithead.




CHAPTER XIII. TO THE WEST INDIES

A fortnight later the mutiny at the Nore shook and bewildered the
British Isles. In the public journals and in Parliament it was declared
that this outbreak, like that at Spithead, was due partly to political
strife, but more extensively to agents of revolution from France and
Ireland.

The day after Richard Parker visited the Ariadne the fleet had been put
under the control of the seamen’s Delegates, who were men of standing
in the ships, and of personal popularity. Their first act was to declare
that the fleet should not leave port until the men’s demands were
satisfied.

The King, Prime Minister, and government had received a shock greater
than that which had come with the announcement of American independence.
The government had armed the forts at Sheerness, had sent troops and
guns to Gravesend and Tilbury, and had declared war upon the rebellious
fleet.

At the head of the Delegates, Richard Parker, with an officer’s
knowledge, became a kind of bogus admiral, who, in interview with the
real admirals and the representatives of the Admiralty Board, talked
like one who, having power, meant to use it ruthlessly. The government
had yielded to the Spithead mutineers, giving pardon to all except the
ringleaders, and granting demands for increased wages and better food,
with a promise to consider the question of prize-money; but the Nore
mutineers refused to accept that agreement, and enlarged the Spithead
demands. Admiral Buckner arrived on board his flag-ship, the Sandwich,
without the deference due to an admiral, and then had to wait three
hours for Parker and the Delegates on the quarter-deck. At the interview
that followed, while apologizing to the admiral for his discourtesy,
Parker wore his hat as quasi-admiral of the fleet. The demands of the
Delegates were met by reasoning on the part of Buckner, but without
effect: for the seamen of the Nore believed that what Spithead could get
by obstinacy the Nore could increase by contumacy; and it was their firm
will to bring the Lords of the Admiralty to their knees.

The demands of the Nore Delegates, however, were rejected by the
Admiralty, and with the rejection two regiments of militia came from
Canterbury to reinforce the Sheerness garrison. The mutineers were
allowed to parade the town, so long as their conduct was decent, as
Admiral Buckner admitted it to be; but Parker declared that the presence
of the militia was an insult to the seamen in the Nore fleet.

Then ensued the beginning of the terror. When Buckner presented the
Admiralty’s refusal to deal with the Delegates, there came quick
response. The reply of the mutineers was to row into Sheerness harbour
and take away with them eight gunboats lying there, each of which fired
a shot at the fort, as if to announce that the mutineers were now the
avowed enemies of the government.

Thereupon the rebels ordered all their ships together at the Great Nore,
ranging them into two crescents, with the newly acquired gunboats at the
flanks. The attitude of the authorities gave the violent mutineers their
opportunity. Buckner’s flag was struck from the mainmast-head of the
Sandwich, and the red flag was hoisted in its place.

The Delegates would not accept an official pardon for their mutiny
through Buckner. They demanded a deputation from the Admiralty, Parker
saying that no accommodation could occur without the appearance of
the Lords of the Admiralty at the Nore. Then followed threatening
arrangements, and the Delegates decided to blockade the Thames and the
Medway.

It was at this time that Dyck Calhoun--who, by consent of Richard
Parker, had taken control of the Ariadne--took action which was to alter
the course of his own life and that of many others.

Since the beginning of the mutiny he had acted with decision, judgment,
and strength. He had agreed to the Ariadne joining the mutinous ships,
and he had skilfully constructed petitions to the Admiralty, the House
of Commons, and the King. His habit of thought, his knowledge of life,
made him a power. He believed that the main demands of the seamen were
just, and he made a useful organization to enforce them. It was only
when he saw the mutineers would not accept the terms granted to the
Spithead rebels that a new spirit influenced him.

He had determined to get control of the Ariadne. His gift as a speaker
had conquered his fellow-sailors, and the fact that he was an ex-convict
gave them confidence that he was no friend of the government.

One of the first things he did, after securing his own pre-eminence on
the ship, was to get the captain and officers safely ashore. This he did
with skill, and the crew of the ship even cheered them as they left.

None of the regular officers of the Ariadne were left upon her,
except Greenock, the master of the ship, whose rank was below that of
lieutenant, and whose duties were many and varied under the orders of
the captain. Greenock chose to stay, though Dyck said he could go if he
wished. Greenock’s reply was that it was his duty to stay, if the ship
was going to remain at sea, for no one else could perform his duties or
do his work.

Then, by vote, Dyck became captain of the ship. He did not, however,
wear a captain’s uniform--blue coat, with white cuffs, flat
gold buttons; with lace at the neck, a white-sleeved waistcoat,
knee-breeches, white silk stockings, and a three-cornered black hat
edged with gold lace and ornamented with a cockade; with a black cravat,
a straight dress sword, a powdered cue tied with a black-silk ribbon,
and epaulets of heavy gold stuff completing the equipment. Dyck, to the
end of his career at sea, wore only the common seaman’s uniform.

Dyck would not have accepted the doubtful honour had he not had long
purposes in view. With Ferens, Michael Clones, and two others whom
Ferens could trust, a plan was arranged which Dyck explained to his
fellow-seamen on the Ariadne.

“We’ve come to the parting of the ways, brothers,” he said. “We’ve all
become liable to death for mutiny. The pardon offered by the King has
been refused, and fresh demands are made. There, I think, a real wrong
has been done by our people. The Ariadne is well supplied with food and
water. It is the only ship with sufficiency. And why? Because at
the beginning we got provisions from the shore in time; also we got
permission from Richard Parker to fill our holds from two stopped
merchant-ships. Well, the rest of the fleet know what our food and drink
fitment is. They know how safe we are, and to-day orders have come to
yield our provisions to the rest of the fleet. That is, we, who have
taken time by the forelock, must yield up our good gettings to bad
receivers. I am not prepared to do it.

“On shore the Admiralty have stopped the supply of provisions to us and
to all the fleet. Our men have been arrested at Gravesend, Tilbury, and
Sheerness. The fleet could not sail now if it wished; but one ship can
sail, and it is ours. The fleet hasn’t the food to sail. On Richard
Parker’s ship, the Sandwich, there is food only for a week. The others
are almost as bad. We are in danger of being attacked. Sir Erasmus
Gower, of the Neptune, has a fleet of warships, gunboats, and amateur
armed vessels getting ready to attack us. The North Sea fleet has come
to help us, but that doesn’t save us. I’ll say this--we are loyal men
in this fleet, otherwise our ships would have joined the enemy in the
waters of France or Holland. They can’t go now, in any case. The men
have lost heart. Confidence in our cause has declined. The government
sent Lords of the Admiralty here, and they offered pardon if we accepted
the terms of the Spithead settlement. We declined the terms. That was a
bad day for us, and put every one of our heads in a noose.

“For the moment we have a majority in men and ships; but we can’t
renew our food or drink, or ammunition. The end is sure against us. Our
original agitation was just; our present obduracy is madness. This ship
is suspected. It is believed by the rest of the fleet--by ships like the
Invincible--that we’re weak-kneed, selfish, and lacking in fidelity to
the cause. That’s not true; but we have either to fight or to run, and
perhaps to do both.

“Make no mistake. The government are not cowards; the Admiralty are
gentlemen of determination. If men like Admiral Howe support the
Admiralty--Howe, one of the best friends the seaman ever had--what do
you think the end will be? Have you heard what happened at Spithead? The
seamen chivvied Admiral Alan Gardner and his colleagues aboard a ship.
He caught hold of a seaman Delegate by the collar and shook him.
They closed in on him. They handled him roughly. He sprang on the
hammock-nettings, put the noose of the hanging-rope round his neck, and
said to the men who advanced menacingly:

“‘If you will return to your duty, you may hang me at the yard-arm!’

“That’s the kind of stuff our admirals are made of. We have no quarrel
with the majority of our officers. They’re straight, they’re honest,
and they’re true to their game. Our quarrel is with Parliament and the
Admiralty; our struggle is with the people of the kingdom, who have
not seen to it that our wrongs are put right, that we have food to eat,
water to drink, and money to spend.”

He waved a hand, as though to sweep away the criticisms he felt must be
rising against him.

“Don’t think because I’ve spent four years in prison under the sternest
discipline the world offers, and have never been a seaman before, that
I’m not fitted to espouse your cause. By heaven, I am--I am--I am--I
know the wrongs you’ve suffered. I’ve smelled the water you drink. I’ve
tasted the rotten meat. I’ve seen the honest seaman who has been for
years upon the main--I’ve seen the scars upon his back got from a brutal
officer who gave him too big a job to do, and flogged him for not doing
it. I know of men who, fevered with bad food, have fallen, from the
mainmast-head, or have slipped overboard, glad to go, because of the
wrongs they’d suffered.

“I’ll tell you what our fate will be, and then I’ll put a question
to you. We must either give up our stock of provisions or run for it.
Parker and the other Delegates proclaim their comradeship; yet they have
hidden from us the king’s proclamation and the friendly resolutions of
the London merchants. I say our only hope is to escape from the Thames.
I know that skill will be needed, but if we escape, what then? I say if
we escape, because, as we sail out, orders will be given for the other
mutiny ships to attack us. We shall be fired on; we shall risk our
lives. You’ve done that before, however, and will do it again.

“We have to work out our own problem and fight our own fight. Well, what
I want to know is this--are we to give in to the government, or do we
stand to be hammered by Sir Erasmus Gower? Remember what that means.
It means that if we fight the government ships, we must either die in
battle, or die with the ropes round our necks. There is another way.
I’m not inclined to surrender, or to stand by men who have botched our
business for us. I’m for making for the sea, and, when I get there, I’m
for striking for the West Indies, where there’s a British fleet fighting
Britain’s enemies, and for joining in and fighting with them. I’m for
getting out of this river and away from England. It’s a bold plan, but
it’s a good one. I want to know if you’re with me. Remember, there’s
danger getting out, and there’s danger when and if we get out. The other
ships may pursue us. The Portsmouth fleet may nab us. We may be caught,
and, if we are, we must take the dose prepared for us; but I’m for
making a strong rush, going without fear, and asking no favour. I won’t
surrender here; it’s too cowardly. I want to know, will you come to the
open sea with me?”

There were many shouts of assent from the crowd, though here and there
came a growl of dissent.

“Not all of you are willing to come with me,” Dyck continued vigorously.
“Tell me, what is it you expect to get by staying here? You’re famished
when you’re not poisoned; you’re badly clothed and badly fed; you’re
kept together by flogging; you’re treated worse than a convict in
jail or a victim in a plague hospital. You’re not paid as well as your
grandfathers were, and you’re punished worse. Here, on the Ariadne,
we’re not skulkers. We don’t fear our duty; we are loyal men. Many of
you, on past voyages, fighting the enemy, lived on burgoo and molasses
only, with rum and foul water to drink. On the other ships there
have been terrible cruelty and offence. Surgeons have neglected and
ill-treated sick men and embezzled provisions and drinks intended for
the invalids. Many a man has died because of the neglect of the ship’s
surgeons; many have been kicked about the head and beaten, and haven’t
dared to go on the sick list for fear of their officers. The Victualling
Board gets money to supply us with food and drink according to measure.
They get the money for a full pound and a full gallon, and we get
fourteen ounces of food and seven pints of liquor, or less. Well, what
do you say, friends, to being our own Victualling Board out in the open
sea, if we can get there?

“We may have to fight when we get out; but I’m for taking the Ariadne
into the great world battle when we can find it. This I want to
ask--isn’t it worth while making a great fight in our own way, and
showing that British seamen can at once be mutineers and patriots? We
have a pilot who knows the river. We can go to the West Indian Islands,
to the British fleet there. It’s doom and death to stay here; and it may
be doom and death to go. If we try to break free, and are fired on, the
Admiralty may approve of us, because we’ve broken away from the rest.
See now, isn’t that the thing to do? I’m for getting out. Who’s coming
with me?”

Suddenly a burly sailor pushed forward. He had the head of a viking. His
eyes were strong with enterprise. He had a hand like a ham, with long,
hairy fingers.

“Captain,” said he, “you’ve put the thing so there can be only one
answer to it. As for me, I’m sick of the way this mutiny has been
bungled from first to last. There’s been one good thing about
it only--we’ve got order without cruelty, we’ve rebelled without
ravagement; but we’ve missed the way, and we didn’t deal with the
Admiralty commissioners as we ought. So I’m for joining up with the
captain here”--he waved a hand towards Dyck--“and making for open sea.
As sure as God’s above, they’ll try to hammer us; but it’s the only
way.”

He held a handkerchief-a dirty, red silk thing. “See,” he continued,
“the wind is right to take us out. The other ships won’t know what we’re
going to do until we start. I’m for getting off. I’m a pressed man. I
haven’t seen my girl for five years, and they won’t let me free in port
to go and see her. Nothing can be worse than what we have to suffer now,
so let’s make a break for it. That’s what I say. Come, now, lads, three
cheers for Captain Calhoun!”

A half-hour later, on the captain’s deck, Dyck gave the order to pass
eastward. It was sunset when they started, and they had not gone a
thousand yards before some of the mutineering ships opened fire on the
Ariadne. The breeze was good, however, and she sailed bravely through
the leaden storm. Once twice--thrice she was hit, but she sped on. Two
men were killed and several were wounded. Sails were torn, and the high
bulkheads were broken; but, without firing a shot in reply, the Ariadne
swung clear at last of the hostile ships and reached safe water.

On the edge of the open sea Dyck took stock of the position. The Ariadne
had been hit several times, and the injury done her was marked. Before
morning the dead seamen were sunk in watery graves, and the wounded were
started back to health again. By daylight the Ariadne was well away from
the land.

The first thing Dyck had done, after escaping from the river, was to
study the wants of the Ariadne and make an estimate for the future with
Greenock, the master. He calculated they had food and water enough to
last for three months, even with liberal provisioning. Going among the
crew, he realized there was no depression among them; that they seemed
to care little where they were going. It was, however, quite clear they
wished to fight--to fight the foes of England.

He knew his task was a hard one, and that all efforts at discipline
would have dangers. He knew, also, that he could have no authority,
save personality and success. He set himself, therefore, to win the
confidence of Greenock and the crew, and he began discipline at once.
He knew that a reaction must come; that the crew, loose upon their own
trail, would come to regret the absence of official command. He realized
that many of them would wish to return to the fleet at the Nore, but
while the weather was good he did not fear serious trouble. The danger
would come in rough weather or on a becalmed sea.

They had passed Beachy Head in the mist. They had seen no battle-ship,
and had sighted no danger, as they made their way westward through the
Channel. There had been one moment of anxiety. That was when they passed
Portsmouth, and had seen in the far distance, to the right of them, the
mastheads of Admiral Gardner’s fleet.

It was here that Dyck’s orderly, Michael Clones, was useful. He brought
word of murmuring among the more brutish of the crew, that some of them
wished to join Gardner’s fleet. At this news, Dyck went down among the
men. It was an unusual thing to do, but it brought matters to an issue.

Among the few dissatisfied sailors was one Nick Swaine, who had been
the cause of more trouble on the Ariadne than any other. He had a
quarrelsome mind; he had been influenced by the writings of Wolfe Tone,
the Irish rebel. One of the secrets of Dyck’s control of the crew was
the fact that he was a gentleman, and was born in the ruling class, and
this was anathema to Nick Swaine. His view of democracy was ignorance
controlling ignorance.

By nature he was insolent, but under the system of control pursued by
the officers of the Ariadne, previous to the mutiny, he had not been
able to do much. The system had bound him down. He had been the slave of
habit, custom, and daily duty. His record, therefore, was fairly clean
until two days after the escape from the Thames and the sighting of the
Portsmouth fleet. Then all his revolutionary spirit ran riot in him.
Besides, the woman to whom he had become attached at the Nore had been
put ashore on the day Dyck gained control. It roused his enmity now.

When Dyck came down, he had the gunners called to him, admonishing them
that drill must go on steadily, and promising them good work to do. Then
he turned to the ordinary seamen.

At this moment Nick Swaine strode forward within a dozen feet of Dyck.

“Look there!” he said, and he jerked a finger towards the distant
Portsmouth fleet. “Look there! You’ve passed that.”

Dyck shrugged a shoulder.

“I meant to pass it,” he said quietly.

“Give orders to make for it,” said Nick with a sullen eye.

“I shall not. And look you, my man, keep a civil tongue to me, who
command this ship, or I’ll have you put in irons.”

“Have me put in irons!” Swaine cried hotly. “This isn’t Dublin jail. You
can’t do what you like here. Who made you captain of this ship?”

“Those who made me captain will see my orders carried out. Now, get you
back with the rest, or I’ll see if they still hold good.” Dyck waved a
hand. “Get back when I tell you, Swaine!”

“When you’ve turned the ship to the Portsmouth fleet I’ll get back, and
not till then.”

Dyck made a motion of the hand to some boatswains standing by. Before
they could arrest him, Swaine flung himself towards Dyck with a knife in
his hand.

Dyck’s hand was quicker, however. His pistol flung out, a shot was
fired, and the knife dropped from the battered fingers of Nick Swaine.

“Have his wounds dressed, then put him in irons,” Dyck commanded.

From that moment, in good order and in good weather, the Ariadne sped on
her way westward and southward.




CHAPTER XIV. IN THE NICK OF TIME

Perhaps no mutineer in the history of the world ever succeeded, as did
Dyck Calhoun, in holding control over fellow-mutineers on the journey
from the English Channel to the Caribbean Sea. As a boy, Dyck had been
an expert sailor, had studied the machinery of a man-of-war, and his
love of the sea was innate and deep-seated; but his present success
was based upon more than experience. Quite apart from the honour of his
nature, prison had deepened in him the hatred of injustice. In soul he
was bitter; in body he was healthy, powerful, and sane.

Slowly, sternly, yet tactfully, he had broken down the many customs
of ship life injurious to the welfare of the men. Under his system the
sailors had good coffee for breakfast, instead of a horrible mixture
made of burnt biscuits cooked in foul water. He gave the men pea-soup
and rice instead of burgoo and the wretched oatmeal mess which was the
staple thing for breakfast. He saw to it that the meat was no longer a
hateful, repulsive mass, two-thirds bone and gristle, and before it
came into the cook’s hands capable of being polished like mahogany. He
threatened the cook with punishment if he found the meals ill-cooked.

In all the journey to the West Indian seas there had been only three
formal floggings. His attitude was not that of the commander who
declared:

“I will see the man’s backbone, by God!”

He wished to secure discipline without cruelty. His greatest difficulty,
at the start, was in making lieutenants. That he overcame by appointing
senior midshipmen before the Ariadne was out of the Channel. He offered
a lieutenancy to Ferens, who had the courage to decline it.

“Make me purser,” remarked Ferens. “Make me purser, and I’ll do the job
justly.”

As the purser of the Ariadne had been sent to the sick-bay and was
likely to die (and did die subsequently), Ferens was put into his
uniform-three-cornered cocked hat, white knee-breeches, and white
stockings. The purser of a man-of-war was generally a friend of the
captain, going with him from ship to ship.

Of the common sailors, on the whole, Dyck had little doubt. He had
informed them that, whatever happened, they should not be in danger;
that the ship should not join the West Indian fleet unless every man
except himself received amnesty. If the amnesty was not granted, then
one of two things should happen--the ship must make for a South American
port, or she must fight. Fighting would not frighten these men.

It was rather among the midshipmen that Dyck looked for trouble.
Sometimes, with only two years’ training at Gosport, a youngster became
a midshipman on first going to sea, and he could begin as early as
eleven years of age. A second-rate ship like the Ariadne carried
eighteen midshipmen; and as six lieutenants were appointed from them,
only twelve remained. From these twelve, in the dingy after-cockpit,
where the superficial area was not more than twelve square feet; where
the air was foul, and the bilges reeked with a pestilential stench;
where the purser’s store-room near gave out the smell of rancid butter
and poisonous cheese; where the musty taint of old ropes came to them,
there was a spirit of danger.

Dyck was right in thinking that in the midshipmen’s dismal berth the
first flowers of revolt to his rule would bloom.

Sailors, even as low as the pig-sty men, had some idea of fair play; and
as the weeks that had passed since they left the Thames had given them
better food and drink, and lessened the severity of those above them,
real obedience had come.

It was not strange that the ship ran well, for all the officers under
the new conditions, except Dyck himself, had had previous experience.
The old lieutenants had gone, but midshipmen, who in any case were
trained, had taken their places. The rest of the ship’s staff were the
same, except the captain; and as Dyck had made a friend of Greenock
the master, a man of glumness, the days were peaceful enough during the
voyage to the Caribbean Sea.

The majority saw that every act of Dyck had proved him just and capable.
He had rigidly insisted on gun practice; he had keyed up the marines to
a better spirit, and churlishness had been promptly punished. He was,
in effect, what the sailors called a “rogue,” or a “taut one”--seldom
smiling, gaunt of face but fearless of eye, and with a body free from
fatigue.

As the weather grew warmer and the days longer, and they drew near to
the coast of Jamaica, a stir of excitement was shown.

“You’d like to know what I’m going to do, Michael, I suppose?” said Dyck
one morning, as he drank his coffee and watched the sun creeping up the
sky.

“Well, in three days we shall know what’s to become of us, and I have
no doubt or fear. This ship’s a rebel, but it’s returning to duty.
We’ve shown them how a ship can be run with good food and drink and fair
dealing, and, please God, we’ll have some work to do now that belongs to
a man-of-war!”

“Sir, I know what you mean to do,” replied Michael. “You mean to get all
of us off by giving yourself up.”

“Well, some one has to pay for what we’ve done, Michael.” A dark,
ruthless light came into Dyck’s eyes. “Some one’s got to pay.” A grim
smile crossed his face. “We’ve done the forbidden thing; we’ve mutinied
and taken to the open sea. We were fired on by the other mutiny ships,
and that will help our sailors, but it won’t help me. I’m the leader. We
ought, of course, to have taken refuge with the nearest squadron of the
king’s ships. Well, I’ve run my luck, and I’ll have to pay.”

He scratched his chin with a thumb-nail-a permanent physical trait. “You
see, the government has pardoned all the sailors, and will hang only the
leaders. I expect Parker is hung already. Well, I’m the leader on the
Ariadne. I’m taking this ship straight to his majesty’s West Indian
fleet, in thorough discipline, and I’ll hand it over well-found,
well-manned, well-officered, on condition that all go free except
myself. I came aboard a common sailor, a quota man, a prison-bird,
penniless. Well, have I shown that I can run a ship? Have I learned the
game of control? During the weeks we’ve been at sea, bursting along,
have I proved myself?”

Michael smiled. “What did I say to you the first night on board, sir?
Didn’t I say they’d make an officer of you when they found out what
brains you had? By St. Patrick, you’ve made yourself captain with the
good-will of all, and your iron hand has held the thing together. You’ve
got a great head, too, sir.”

Dyck looked at him with a face in which the far future showed.

“Michael, I’ve been lucky. I’ve had good men about me. God only knows
what would have happened to me if the master hadn’t been what he is--a
gentleman who knows his job-aye, a gentleman through and through! If he
had gone against me, Michael”--he flicked a finger to the sky--“well,
that much for my chances! I’d have been dropped overboard, or stabbed in
my cabin, as was that famous Captain Pigot, son of an admiral, who had
as much soul as you’d find in a stone-quarry. When two men had dropped
from the masts, hurrying to get down because of his threat that the last
man should be thrashed--when the two men lay smashed to pieces at his
feet, Pigot said: ‘Heave the lubbers overboard.’ That night, Michael,
the seamen rose, crept to his cabin, stabbed him to death, pitched his
body overboard, put his lieutenants to sea in open boats, and then ran
away to South America. Well, I’ve escaped that fate, because this was a
good ship, and all the officers knew their business, and did it without
cruelty. I’ve been well served. It was a great thing making the new
lieutenants from the midshipmen. There never was a better lot on board a
ship.”

Michael’s face clouded. “Sir, that’s true. The new lieutenants have
done their work well, but them that’s left behind in the midshipmen’s
berth--do you think they’re content? No, sir. The only spot on board
this ship where there lurks an active spirit against you is in the
midshipmen’s berth. Mischief’s there, and that’s what’s brought me to
you now.”

Dyck smiled. “I know that. I’ve had my eye on the midshipmen. I’ve never
trusted them. They’re a hard lot; but if the rest of the ship is with
me, I’ll deal with them promptly. They’re not clever or bold enough
to do their job skilfully. They’ve got some old hands down
there--hammock-men, old stagers of the sea that act as servants to them.
What line do they take?”

Michael laughed softly.

“What I know I’ve got from two of them, and it is this--the young
gentlemen’ll try to get control of the ship.”

The cynicism deepened in Dyck’s face.

“Get control of the ship, eh? Well, it’ll be a new situation on a king’s
ship if midshipmen succeed where the rest dare not try. Now, mark what
I’m going to do.”

He called, and a marine showed himself.

“The captain’s compliments to the master, and his presence here at once.
Michael,” he continued presently, “what fools they are! They’re scarcely
a baker’s dozen, and none of them has skill to lead. Why, the humblest
sailor would have more sense than to start a revolt, the success of
which depends upon his personal influence, and the failure of which
must end in his own ruin. Does any one think they’re the kind to lead a

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