"Peter is right," he said. "'Twas the concussion affected the brain. I have heard of such a freak shot, but never seen it happen before."
Moira clung to my arms.
"And he is really dead? The padre is really dead? And he unshriven, without a comfort of the Church! Oh, holy saints, be his advocates! Sure, was there ever a crueler end?"
She collapsed in a passion of weeping.
"Conduct her below, Robert," said my great-uncle. "We will follow you."
She suffered me to lead her from the poop without objection, more like a child than ever, sobbing and protesting and repeating the same things over and over again, in an abandonment of grief which only the Irish can attain.
"'Tis you are the kind friend," she stammered when we had reached her stateroom, "And oh, Bob, I have the sore need of you, I that am an orphan in a pirate ship. Troth, I haven't a friend in the wide world unless it be you and Master Corlaer. But I am the bad, selfish girl to be thinking of my own plight, and the father that loved me this moment gone up to Peter's Gate, and him without the holy wafer to his lips or so much as a prayer said over him. Ah, what ill deed did we do, either one of us, that he should be taken from me so, without a word of parting? The sisters were always after saying we must reconcile ourselves to God's mercy, but 'tis little mercy has been shown to me."
I quieted her at last, brought her a swallow of brandy and induced her to lie down.
"I mustn't be crying the way I will have done," she apologized, gulping her sobs. "Himself will be needing all the prayers I can say, and a boiling of candles, too. Do you go on, Bob—only promise you'll not leave me by my lone if there's more fighting. I could never stand to hear the thundering of the cannon after—after—that—and no one by to bid me take heart o' grace."
The gray dawnlight was seeping through the stern windows when I rejoined my great-uncle and Peter in the main cabin. Peter was as placid as ever, puffing industriously at a long clay pipe; but my relative displayed more concern than I remembered to have observed in him at any time in the past.