Chapter One.
Wandering Lights.
It was the first time Tim and I had fallen out, and to this day I could scarcely tell you how it arose.
We had gone out on to the headland to drive in the sheep; for the wind was blowing up from seaward, and it was plain to tell that the night would be a wild one. Father was away with the trawlers off Sheep Haven, and would be ill pleased should he return to-morrow to find any of the flock amissing. So, though mother lay sick in the cottage, with none to tend her, Tim and I, because of the dread we had of our father’s displeasure, left her and went out to seek the sheep before the storm broke.
It was no light task, for the dog was lame, and the wind carried back our shouts into our very teeth. The flock had straggled far and wide in search of the scanty grass, and neither Tim nor I had our hearts in the work.
Presently Tim took a stone to dislodge one stubborn ewe, where it hid beside a rock, and, as luck would have it, struck not her but my cheek, which received a sharp cut.
“Faith, and you’ll make a fine soldier when you’re grown,” said I, in a temper, “if that’s the best you can shoot.”
Tim often said he would be a soldier when he came to be a man, and was touchy on the point.
“Shoot, is it?” said he, picking up another stone; “you blackguard, stand where ye are and I’ll show yez.”
And he let fly and struck me again on the self-same place; and I confess I admired his skill more than his brotherly love.
I picked up the stone and flung it back. But the wind took it so that it struck not Tim but the ewe. Whereat Tim laughed loudly and called me a French spalpeen. That was more than I could bear.
“I’ll fight you for that,” said I, flinging my cap on the ground and stamping a foot on it.
“Come on wid ye,” retorted Tim, giving his buckle a hitch.
And there, on the lonely, wind-swept cliff, we two brothers stood up to one another. Con, the dog, limped between us with a whine.
“You might tie the dog to the gate till we’re done, Barry,” said Tim.
“You’re right, Tim,” said I; “I will.”
It took no long time, but ’twas long enough to cool my blood, and when I returned to Tim I had less stomach for the fight than before.
“Was it ‘Frenchman’ you said?” asked I, hoping he might say no.
“Troth and I did,” said he.
But it seemed to me he too was less fiery than when he spoke last.
So we fought. And I know not how it went. We were a fair match. What I lacked in strength I made up for in quickness, and if Tim hit me hard I hit him often.
But it was a miserable business, and our hearts were sorer than our bodies. For we loved one another as we loved our own lives. And on a day like this, when mother lay dying at home, and father was out with the trawlers in the tempest, we lacked spirit to fight in earnest. Only when Tim called me “Frenchman” it was not in me to stand meekly by.
I know that when it was over, and we parted sulky and bruised each his own way, I flung myself on my face at the edge of the cliff and wished I had never been born.
How long I lay I know not.
When I looked up the day was dark with tempest. The whistle of the wind about my ears mingled with the hoarse thunder of the surf as it broke on the beach, four hundred feet below me, and swept round the point into the lough. The taste of brine was on my lips, and now and again flakes of foam whirled past me far inland. From Dunaff to Malin the coast was one long waste of white water. And already the great Atlantic rollers, which for a day past had brought their solemn warning in from the open, were breaking miles out at sea, and racing in on the shore like things pursued.
As for me, my spirits rose as I looked out and saw it all. For I loved the sea in its angry moods. And this promise of tempest seemed somehow to accord with the storm that was raging in my own breast. It made me forget Tim and the sheep, and even mother.
I tried to get up on my feet, but the wind buffeted me back before I reached my knees, and I was fain to lie prone, with my nose to the storm, blinking through half-closed eyes out to sea.
For a long time I lay thus. Then I seemed to descry at the point of the bay windward a sail. It was a minute or more before I could be certain I saw aright. Yes, it was a sail.
What craft could be mad enough in such weather to trust itself to the mercies of the bay? Even my father, the most daring of helmsmen, would give Fanad Head a wide berth before he put such a wind as this at his back. This stranger must be either disabled or ignorant of the coast, or she would never drive in thus towards a lee-shore like ours. Boy as I was, I knew better seamanship than that.
Yet as I watched her, she seemed to me neither cripple nor fool. She was a cutter-rigged craft, long and low in the water, under close canvas, and to my thinking wonderfully light and handy in the heavy sea. She did not belong to these parts—even I could tell that—and her colours, if she had any, had gone with the wind.
The question was, would she on her present tack weather Fanad Head (on which I lay) and win the lough? And if not, how could she escape the rocks on which every moment she was closing?
At first it seemed that nothing could save her, for she broke off short of the point, and drove in within half-a-mile of the rocks. Then, while I waited to see the end of her, she suddenly wore round, and after staggering a moment while the sea broke over her, hauled up to the wind, and careening over, with her mainsail sweeping the water, started gaily on the contrary tack.
It was so unlike anything any of our clumsy trawler boats were capable of, that I was lost in admiration at the suddenness and daring of the manoeuvre. But Fanad was still to be weathered, and close as she sailed to the wind, it seemed hardly possible to gain sea-room to clear it.
Yet she cleared it, even though the black rocks frowned at her not a cable’s length from her lee-quarter, and the wind laid her over so that her mast-head seemed almost to touch them as it passed. Then, once clear, up went her helm as she turned again into the wind, and slipped, with the point on her weather-quarter, into the safe waters of the lough.
I was so delighted watching this adventure from my lonely perch that I did not notice the October afternoon was nearly spent, and that the light was beginning to fade. The storm gathered force every moment, so that when at last I turned to go home I had to crawl a yard or two to shelter before I could stand on my feet.
As for the sheep, unless Tim had driven them in, which was not likely, they would have to shift for themselves for this night. It was too late to see them, and Con, who limped at my heels, had not a yap left in him.
As I staggered home, leaning my back against the wind, I could not help wondering what this strange boat might be, and why she should make for the lough on so perilous a course. She might be a smuggler anxious to avoid the observation of the revenue officers. If so, her cargo must be precious indeed to make up for the risk she ran. Or she might be a foreigner, driven in by one of the king’s cruisers, which had not dared to follow her into the bay.
Whatever she was, she was a pretty sailer, and prettily handled. I wondered if ever I, when I grew to be a man, should be able to weather a point as skilfully.
It was night before I reached our cabin, and all there was dark. Neither Tim nor father was home, the fire was out on the hearth, and the poor fevered sufferer lay tossing and breathing hard on the bed.
She was worse, far worse than when we left her in the morning; and I could have died of shame when I came to think that all those hours she had lain alone and untended. I struck a light and put it in the window.
“Is that Barry?” said she faintly.
“Ay, mother, it’s Barry,” said I, going to the bed and bending over her.
“Bring the light, and let me look at you,” she said.
I obeyed. She scrutinised my face eagerly, and then turned her head wearily on the pillow.
“Barry,” said she presently.
“Well?” said I, as I took the hot worn hand in mine.
She lay silent a long while, so that I thought she had fallen asleep, then she said,—
“Where is father?”
“Away with the boats.”
“And Tim?”
“I can’t say. Tim and I fought the day, and—”
“Fought? Ay, there’ll be fighting enough before wrong’s made right, Barry. Listen! I’m dying, son, but I must see him before I go.”
“Is it Tim?” said I.
“No.” Then she lifted herself in her bed, and her face was wild and excited as she clutched my hand. “Barry, it’s Gorman I must see—Maurice Gorman. Fetch him to me. Make him come. Tell him I’m a dying woman, and must speak before I go. There’s time yet—go, Barry!”
“Mr Gorman!” exclaimed I. What could my mother want with his honour down at Knockowen?
“Ay, and quickly—or it will be too late.”
Knockowen was across the lough, five miles up above Dunree. It would be hours on a night like this before he could be here. But my mother continued to moan, “Go, Barry—make haste.” So, much against my will, I put on my cap and prepared to leave her alone. At the door she called me back.
“Kiss me, Barry,” said she. Then before I could obey her she fell to raving.
“Give me back the lassie,” she cried, “dead or alive. She’s more to me than all Kilgorman! Trust me, Mr Maurice—I’ll breathe never a word if you’ll but save Mike. It’s false—he never had a hand in it! Some day truth will out—if the lad’s mine no harm shall come to him. I’ll use him against you, Mr Maurice. The truth’s buried, but it’s safe. There’s more than earth under a hearthstone.” And she laughed in a terrible way.
After a minute she opened her eyes again and saw me.
“Not gone, Barry? For pity’s sake, fetch him, or I must go myself.” And she even tried to get up from her bed.
This settled it, and I rushed from the house, whimpering with misery and terror.
What was it all about? Why did she send me away thus on a fool’s errand? For Mr Gorman was not likely to come out on a night like this at the bidding of Mike Gallagher’s English wife.
If there had only been some one I could have sent to mind her while I was gone! But our cabin on the bleak headland was miles from a neighbour—Knockowen, whither I was speeding, was indeed the nearest place.
For a lad of twelve it was no easy task on a dark stormy night like this to cross the lough. But I thought nothing of that. Most of my short life I had spent afloat, and I knew every rock and creek along the shores.
The boat lay tugging at her moorings when I got down to her, as if impatient to be away. Luckily her mast was up. It would need but the least taste of canvas to run her across. The business would be coming back in the face of the wind.
Sure enough, when I cast off, she rushed through the water like something mad. And again my spirits rose as I heard the hiss of the foam at her bows, and felt her rear and plunge among the big boisterous waves.
After a time I could catch the light at Knockowen as it flickered in the wind, and put up my helm so as to clear the shoal. This would bring me close under Kilgorman rock, whence I could drive before the wind as far as Knockowen.
To my surprise, as I closed in on the shore I saw strange lights at the water’s edge, and casting my eyes up towards Kilgorman (which I never did in those days without a qualm, because of the ghost that haunted it) I seemed to see a moving light there also.
I said a hurried prayer, and put round my helm into the wind before my time. Even the shoal, thought I, was less to fear than the unearthly terrors of that awful deserted house.
By good luck the strong wind carried me in clear of the bank and so into fairly still water, and in half-an-hour more I was in under the light of Knockowen, mooring my boat in his honour’s little harbour.
It must have been near midnight, and I was wondering how I should waken the house and deliver my message, when a voice close beside me said,—
“Are the guns all landed and taken up to the house?”
It was his honour’s voice. But I could not see him in the dark.
“I beg your pardon, your honour,” said I, “it’s me, Barry Gallagher.”
A quick step came down to where I stood, and a hand was laid on my shoulder.
“You! What do you here?” said his honour sharply, for he had evidently expected some one else.
“If you please, sir, my mother’s sick, and she sent me to bid you come before she died.”
He made a startled gesture, as I thought, and said, “What does she want me for?”
“It’s to tell your honour something. I couldn’t rightly say what, for she spoke strangely.”
“I’ll come in the morning if the weather mends,” said he.
“I’ve the boat here for you, sir,” I ventured to say, for I guessed the morning would be too late.
“Leave her there, and go up to the house. You may sleep in the kitchen.”
What could I do? For the first time that night I knew for certain I hated his honour. My mother’s dying message was nothing to him. And she, poor soul, lay in the cabin alone.
Knockowen was a poor shambling sort of house. Strangers wondered why Maurice Gorman, who owned Kilgorman as well, chose to live in this place instead of the fine mansion near the lough mouth. But to the country people this was no mystery. Kilgorman had an evil name, and for twelve years, since its late master died, had stood desolate and empty—tenanted only, so it was said, by a wandering ghost, and no place for decent Christian folk to dwell in.
As I lay curled up that stormy night in his honour’s kitchen, I could not help thinking of the strange lights I had seen as I rowed in by the shore. Where did they come from, and what did they mean? I shuddered, and said one prayer more as I thought of it.
Then my curiosity got the better of me, and I crept to the window and looked out. The wind howled dismally, but the sky was clearing, and the moon raced in and out among the clouds. Away down across the lough I could see the dim outline of Fanad, below which was the little home where, for all I knew, my mother at that moment lay dead. And opposite it loomed out the grey bleak hill below which, even by this half light, I fancied I could detect the black outline of Kilgorman standing grimly in the moonlight.
It may have been fancy, but as I looked I even thought I could see once more moving lights between the water’s edge and the house, and I slunk back to my corner by the fire with a shiver.
Presently, his honour came in with a candle. He had evidently been up all night, and looked haggard and anxious.
“Get up,” said he, “and make the boat ready.”
I rose to obey, when he called me back.
“Come here,” said he harshly. And he held the candle to my face and stared hard at me. It was a sinister, sneering face that looked into mine, and as I returned the stare my looks must have betrayed the hatred that was in my mind.
“Which of Gallagher’s boys are you?” he demanded.
“Barry, plaze your honour.”
“How old are you?”
“I think twelve, sir—the same as Tim.” For Tim and I were twins.
He looked hard at me again, and then said, “What was it your mother sent word?”
“She said would your honour plaze to come quick, for she felt like dying, and wished to spake to you before.”
“Was that all?”
“Indeed, sir, she talked queerly the night about a dead lassie, and called on your honour to save my father, if you plaze, sir.”
He went to a cupboard and poured himself out a glass of raw whisky and drank it. Then he beckoned to me to follow him down to the boat.