They were accompanied by two or three scores of their own countrymen; but of these the greater number were soon washed from their rafts and their drowned bodies cast back again upon the beach.
In a few minutes the approaching Saxons had reached the shore; some of the more blood-thirsty dashed through the water in pursuit, but they were either drowned or driven back by the waves.
Just as their bark had passed safely through the surf, the two women saw a dark form swimming swiftly towards them. The fair-haired girl gave a cry for joy, as she distinguished the head of a great war-hound above the water; the animal had been often by the side of the youth during the battle and now love of his master drew him, bruised and bleeding, through the waves. The smaller woman would have beaten him off with her oar; but the other prevented her and aided the animal as he scrambled on to the raft, and threw himself beside the boy. The quarrel over the animal was so violent that the bark was in danger of foundering; the dark woman showed as much fury against the girl as she had shown that day against the enemy.
CHAPTER II.
Gléand dé.
In the days when cells and churches sprang up like mushrooms throughout Hibernia, Saint Kevin had chosen as the site of one of his monasteries that point on the eastern shore of Leinster, where the coast is rendered dangerous by sand-banks.
The little band of monks who dwelt there added to their life of toil a special watch upon the sea; they made the rescue of fugitive Britons their peculiar care; feeling it a sacred duty to protect members of the Faith, who had been driven from their homes by the fire and sword of the heathen. Moreover, S. Kevin, as a child, had been under the guidance of Petroc, a Briton, and for this reason Britons were particularly dear to his followers.
Some days after the battle in Damnonia, the monks, keeping their ceaseless watch upon the sea, saw a raft among the wreckage that the waves were bringing to the shore. At the peril of their lives they dashed into the water and dragged the raft safely to the beach. On it were four unconscious beings. A fine young chieftain with his body sadly pierced and wounded—like a marble Antinous from loss of blood; bearing marks of royal birth in his person and in his princely garments. With his head upon the young prince’s feet was a great war-hound, hoary with age, his hair matted with brine and blood. A big fair girl lay with one arm round the hound’s neck and the other clasped to her heart a man’s sword and torques—of so rich and rare a pattern that only a great king could have possessed them. A little removed from these three beings was a small dark woman from whom the simple monks recoiled at first, saying she had the air of a sorceress; she was clothed royally, like the boy, and was fair, too, as women are accounted fair in Hibernia—having long fine hair of ebony blackness.
It needed much care and skill to bring the three human beings from the death-like trance to which exhaustion and exposure had brought them. But the monks knew their work well; many a homeless Briton had found warmth and comfort at their hands; indeed, the little monastery was already so thronged by castaways that it was thought better to carry the three poor refugees to Saint Kevin’s great monastery at Glendalough—where the sculptured saint may still be seen in the ancient ruin called Priest’s house; he is the central figure in the triangular pediment of the doorway, bearing on his head the crown of the early bishops of Ireland.
Crowned with gold, he is represented to the world; yet, in the life he led in the wilderness, it must have been seldom that crown or mitre adorned his head. His monastery at Glendalough was too luxurious for him, and, for years at a time, he would withdraw himself into the heart of the woods, sheltering in a hollow tree or bee-hive hut; without fire, and existing on herbs and water. In the long trances of prayer, into which he would fall, the beasts rambled fearlessly around him, the birds perched on his arms and shoulders singing and twittering about him. At such times, he said, the leaves and branches gave forth divine music to him. It was the state of spiritual ecstasy common to the early saints; who tested to the full the efficacy of prayer from which they drew the spiritual power that shed a greater influence than a life spent in ceaseless activity.
Glendalough, or Gléand dé, signified Valley of God; it seemed a fitting name, for there the tender-hearted monks laboured every day among the Britons whom they had rescued, sharing with them their own scanty food. Only a ragged hut of wattles with heather beds could be spared to the newcomers; but the monks brought cushions of down to spread upon the heather and begged, from the neighbouring chieftains, warm cloaks and skins of sheep and bear.