Just at dawn he left them—after the human sacrifice had taken place.
He had not realised that the wild and terrible night would end in such a sacrifice. And it was only when it happened that the full horror of the festival burst upon him. Then—just as suddenly as he had entered upon the scene—he turned and left it.
He went forward blindly. Stumbling, sometimes, over the prostrate bodies of bacchantes—stupid with mead, half-dead from excess. The day had fully dawned, the fires were waning, the air was full of smoke.
Once he hurried forward surrounded by a bellowing herd of cattle; and once he narrowly escaped being gored to death by a maddened bull. The forests through which he passed swarmed with the sheep and oxen of Rath and Dun—herding with the forest swine, and deer, and bears. Weird creatures, whom he could scarcely term men, fled at his approach; they had been startled from their forest-lairs and were now returning—shaggy-haired, blink-eyed, stained with woad, and clad in skins of sheep and bear.
Once only he stopped in his wild flight; when he found a stag wounded fatally in an encounter with a fellow stag; he stayed to plunge his sword to its heart and end its sufferings. In doing so he shed tears to think of the sufferings and terror of the animals in the night just past.
His speed was terrific as he ran through marsh and forest, tearing his way through bracken and knee-holly. He fled as though pursued; and it was himself he fled from—his own flesh and mind degraded by the dread rites in which he had shared.
He threw himself upon a runaway horse and went on, and on, and on—with ever the scene of blood and fire before him.
A little child with a face like the morning, passed by, singing as it went, carrying flowers mixed with hawthorn leaves. All around lay cultivated fields, gardens, and rows of bee-hives; beasts were basking in the sun.
Such was the scene upon which Cormac opened his eyes. How long he had slept he did not know, but he found himself lying on a mass of dry moss beneath an oak tree. Someone had covered his half-naked body with a sheep-skin and he lay warm and comfortable. For a moment he thought he was back with S. Kevin’s monks and that the Beltane festival was a bad dream. Then full remembrance came, and he cowered down in the moss and covered his face with his hands. He, a Christian, had entered into the foul and bloody rites of the Druids.