“Nothing at first. We bumped about a bit for five or six hours, and Temple got frightfully sick again. I never saw a man sicker. Hazlewood kept on muddling about with charts, and doing sums on sheets of paper, and consulting with O’Meara. I suppose they wanted to make sure that they’d got to the right place. At last, just about sunset, a small steamer turned up. She hung about all night, and next day we started early, about four o’clock, and got the guns out of her, or some of them. We couldn’t take the whole cargo, of course, in a 30-ton yacht I don’t know how many more guns she had. Perhaps she hadn’t any more. Only our little lot Anyhow, I was jolly glad when the job was over. There was a bit of a roll—nothing much, you know, but quite enough to make it pretty awkward. Temple got over his sea-sickness, which was a comfort. I suppose the excitement cured him. The way we worked was this—but I daresay you wouldn’t understand, even if I told you.”
“Is it very technical? I mean, must you use many sea words?”
“Must,” said Sam. “We were at sea, you know.”
“Well,” I said, “perhaps you’d better leave that part out. Tell me what you did with the guns when you’d got them.”
“Right. It was there the fun really came in. Not that I’m complaining about the other part. It was sport all right, but the funny part, the part you’ll like, came later. What about another cigar?”
I rang the bell, and got two more cigars for Sam.
“We had rather a tiresome passage home,” he said. “It kept on falling calm, and O’Meara’s motor isn’t very powerful. It took us a clear week to work our way up to the County Down coast. It was there we landed, in a poky little harbour. We went in at night, and had to wait for a full tide to get in at all. We got the sails of the boat outside, and just strolled in, so to speak, with the wretched little engine doing about half it could. Hazlewood told me that he expected four motor-cars to meet us, and that I was to take one of them, and drive like hell into County Armagh. There I was to call at a house belonging to O’Meara, and hand over my share of the guns. He said he hoped I knew my way about those parts, because it would be awkward for me trying to work with road maps when I ought to drive fast. I said I knew that country like the palm of my hand. The governor’s parish is up there, you know.”
Sam certainly ought to know County Down. He was brought up there, and must have walked, cycled, and driven over most of the roads.
“The only thing I didn’t know,” said Sam, “was O’Meara’s house. I’d never heard of his having a house in that part of the country. However, he said he’d only taken it lately, and that when I got over the border into Armagh there’d be a man waiting to show me where to go. He told me the road I was to take and I knew every turn of the way, so I felt pretty sure of getting there. It was about two in the morning when we got alongside the pier. The four motors were there all right, but there wasn’t a soul about except the men in charge of them. We got out the guns. They were done up in small bundles and the cartridges in handy little cases; but it took us till half-past four o’clock to get them ashore. By that time there were a few people knocking about; but they didn’t seem to want to interfere with us. In fact, some of them came and helped us to pack the stuff into the cars. They were perfectly friendly.”
“That doesn’t surprise me in the least,” I said “The people up there are nearly all Protestants. Most of them were probably Volunteers themselves. I daresay it wasn’t the first cargo they’d helped to land.”