Confessions Of Con Cregan, the Irish Gil Blas

by Charles James Lever

If I slept, then, it was more owing to my utter weariness and exhaustion than to that languid frame of mind; and although too tired to dream, my first waking thought was how to commence hostilities against the rats. As to any personal hand-to-hand action, I need scarcely say I declined engaging in such; and, my supply of gunpowder being scanty, the method I hit upon was to make a species of grenade, by inserting a quantity of powder with a sufficiency of broken glass into a bottle, leaving an aperture through the cork for a fuse; then, having smeared the outside of the bottle plentifully with oil, of which I discovered a supply in bladders suspended from the ceiling, I retired to my berth, with the other extremity of the fuse in my hand, ready to ignite when the moment came.

I had not long to wait; my enemies, bold from long impunity, came fearlessly forward, and surrounded the bottle in myriads; it became a scene like an election row, to witness their tumbling and rolling over each other. Nor could I bring myself to cut short the festivity, till I began to entertain fears for the safety of the bottle, which already seemed to be loosened from its bed of clay. Then at last I applied a match to my cord, and almost before I could cover my head with the blanket, the flask exploded, with a crash and a cry that showed me its success. The battle-field was truly a terrible sight, for the wounded were far more numerous than the dead, and I, shame to say, had neither courage nor humanity to finish their sufferings, but lay still, while their companions dragged them away in various stages of suffering.

I at first supposed that this was an exploit that could only succeed but once, and that the well-known sagacity of the creatures would have made them avoid so costly a temptation. Nothing of the kind; they were perfect Scythians in their love of oil; and as often as I repeated my experiment, they were ready to try their fortunes. Or perhaps they had some of the gambler's element in their nature, and each felt that he might win where others lost.

I had made Halkett a promise that for a couple of days, at least, I would not hoist the signal-flag, lest any accident should induce Sir Dudley to suspect my place of refuge, so that I was completely reduced to my campaign against the rats for occupation and amusement. So far as I could discover, the little island, traverse it how I would, never varied, the same rise and swell of surface, clad with loose stone, lay on every side; and so depressing had this mournful uniformity become to me that I rarely ventured out of the hut, or, when I did, it was to sit upon the little bench outside the door, from which a sea view extended over the wide waters of the Gulf.

To sit here and try to decipher the names cut into the wood was my constant occupation. What histories, too, did I weave of those who carved these letters; and how did they fix themselves in my mind, each name suggesting an identity, till I felt as if I had known them intimately. Some seemed the precious work of weeks; and it was easy to see that after the letters were cut, the sculptor had gone on embellishing and ornamenting his work for very lack of labor. Others, again, were mere initials, and one was a half-finished name, leaving me to the perpetual doubt whether he had been rescued from his captivity, or died ere it was completed.

Between my hours spent here and the little duties of my household, with usually three or four explosions against my rats, the day went over,—I will not say rapidly, but pass it did; and each night brought me nearer to the time when I should hoist my signal, and hope—ay, that was the great supporter through all—hope for rescue.

It was now the third night of my being on the island, and I sat at my fire trying to invent some new mode for the destruction of my enemies, for my last charge of powder had been expended. I had nothing remaining, save the loading in my pistol. It was true that I had succeeded to a great extent; the creatures no longer appeared with their former air of assurance, nor in large bodies. Their army was evidently disorganized; they no longer took the field in battalions, but in scattered guerilla parties, without discipline or courage. Even had my ammunition lasted, it is more than doubtful that my tactics would have continued to have the same success; they had begun to dread the bottle, like a reformed drunkard. Often have I seen them approach within a few feet of it, and wait patiently till some younger and more adventurous spirit would venture nearer, and then, at the slightest stir,—the least rustling of my bed-clothes,—away they went in full career. It was evident that the secret, like most great mysteries of the same kind, had had its day. This was consolatory, too, as I had no longer the means of continuing my siege operations; while the caution and reserve of the enemy suggested a system of defence of the simplest, but most effectual kind, which was, to place a certain number of bottles at different parts of the hut, the very sight of which inspired terror; and if followed by any noise, was certain to secure me, for some time at least, from all molestation.

Shall I tell the reader how this stratagem first occurred to me? It was simply thus: In one of the early but unrecorded years of my history, I used to act as driver to the Moate and Kilbeggan caravan,—not, indeed, as the recognized coachee of that very rickety and most precarious conveyance, but as a kind of “deputy assistant” to the paid official, who, having a wife at Kilbeggan, usually found some excuse for stopping at Clara, and sending me forward with the passengers,—a proceeding, I am bound to own, not over consistent with humanity to “man or beast.” Many were the misadventures of that luckless conveniency, and the public were loud in their denunciations of it; but as nobody knew the proprietors, nor did the most searching scrutiny detect the existence of a “way-bill,” the complaints were uttered to the wind, and I was at full liberty “to do my stage” in three hours, or one half the time, as I fancied.

The passengers at length learned this valuable fact, and found that greasing my palm was a sure method of oiling the wheels. All complaints gradually subsided; in fact, the dumb animals were the only ones who had any right to make them. I drove them at a very brisk pace,—a thriving trade; the caravan became popular, and my fame rose as the horses' condition declined. At last the secret was discovered; and instead of my imposing whip of four yards and a half of whipcord, they reduced me to a stunted bit of stick, with a little drooping lash that would n't reach the tail of my one leader. My receipts fell off from that hour; in fact, instead of praises and sixpences, I now got nothing but curses and hard names; and at one hill, near “Horse-leap,” which I used in my prosperous days to “go at” in a slashing canter, amid a shower of encomiums, I was now obliged to stagger slowly up, with four-and-twenty small farmers, and maybe a priest, in full cry at my sulkiness, laziness, incivility, and other good gifts; and all this, ay, and more, for lack of a bit of whipcord.

I have been told that very great people will stoop to low alliances when hard pressed; even cabinet ministers, I believe, have now and then acknowledged very dubious allies. Let not Con Cregan, then, be reproached if he called in the help of a little bare-footed boy who used to beg on the hill of Horse-leap, and who, at the sound of the approaching caravan, sallied forth with a long branch of an ash-tree, and belabored the team into some faint resemblance to a canter. Through this auxiliary I recovered in part my long-lost popularity, and was likely to be again reinstated in public favor, when my assistant caught the measles, and I was once more reduced to my own efforts.