“‘Begging your pardon, ma’am,’ he said, ‘but I’m after finding what maybe belongs to you hid away in the thatch.’
“With that he threw down the red cloak, for it was a red cloak he had in his hand. She didn’t speak a word, but she laid down the baby out of her arms and she walked out of the house. That was the last my father seen of her. And that was the last anyone on the island seen of her, unless maybe Anthony. Nobody knows what he saw. He stopped off the drink from that day; but it wasn’t much use his stopping it. He used to go round at spring tides to the bay where he had seen her first. He did that five times, or maybe six. After that he took to his bed and died. It could be that his heart was broke.”
We slipped past the point of the pier. Peter crept forward and crouched on the deck in front of the mast I peered into the gloom to catch sight of our mooring-buoy.
“Let her away a bit yet,” said Peter. “Now luff her, luff her all you can.”
The boat edged up into the wind. Peter, flat on his stomach, grasped the buoy and hauled it on board. The fore-sheets beat their tattoo on the deck. The boom swung sharply across the boat.
Ten minutes later we were leaning together across the boom gathering in the mainsail.
“What became of the boys?” I asked.
“Is it Anthony O’Flaherty’s boys? The last of them went to America twenty years ago. But sure that was before you came to these parts.”