The Northern Iron

by George A. Birmingham

The anger died out of Neal’s heart. This last appeal left him with no feeling but tenderness. He thought of his father, a lone man, waiting for news of him, of Donald, of the battle, and the cause. He thought of Una St. Clair and the ever-new marvel of the love that she had confessed to him. Still he hesitated. Brought up in the stern faith of the Puritans, he believed that because a thing offered a prospect of great delight it must somehow be wrong. The longing to see Una again came on him, sweeping over all other thought and emotion as the flowing spring-tide in late September sweeps over the broad sands of the northern coast. To see her, to hear her, to touch her, perhaps to kiss her again, was the one thing supremely desirable in life. Therefore, he felt instinctively that it must be a tempter’s voice which showed him the way to the fulfilment of such desire.

“Are you sure,” he asked, “that you are not, out of love for me, advising me to do wrong?”

“I am sure,” said Hope.

Afterwards they talked of how Neal might best accomplish his journey to Dunseveric. It was clear to Hope, as it had been to Maurice St. Clair, that the main roads must be avoided, and that all travelling must be done by night; but it was not very easy to go through an unknown country by night, and until Neal got as far as Ballymoney he could not be sure of being able to find his way.

“I might manage it,” he said, “if I could keep to the main road. I have travelled it once and I think I should not miss it even at night, but how am I to get along lanes and across fields which I have never seen without losing myself?”

“Ah,” said Hope, “that is a difficulty, and yet there is a way out of it. Phelim, the blind piper, is with us here. God knows how he got safe from the battle yesterday, and found his way to us. He will be no use to us any more, only a hindrance. We shall not march to battle again with our pipes playing and our colours flying. I think I shall be able to persuade him to act as your guide. The blind leading the ignorant, eh, Neal? But Phelim knows every lane and path in the country. How he does I don’t know. Perhaps some new sense is developed in the blind. Anyway, night and day are alike to him. If he takes you as far as the neighbourhood of Ballymoney you’ll be able to find the rest of the way afterwards yourself.”

That night, while M’Cracken marched the remnant of his army to Slievemis, Neal and blind Phelim set off on their journey north. They travelled safely in the rear of the yeomen who were searching the country side. Neal lay hid all one day in a little wood while Phelim, who seemed to want little rest and no sleep, wandered in the neighbourhood and brought back tidings of the doings of the yeomen who had passed. Before daybreak the next morning Neal left his guide behind him and made his way to the sandhills near Port Ballin-trae. He lay in a hollow near the mouth of the river Bush. He understood from what Phelim had told him that Captain Twinely and his men had pushed northwards in pursuit of him, and that he had followed in their tracks. He realised that there must be a large force gathered in Bushmills and Ballintoy, and that the whole country would be scoured to find him. Therefore, though he was within a few miles of his home, he dare not stir in the daytime. He lay in his sandy hollow through the long hot day, with the sound of the sea in his ears. He slept for an hour or two now and then. Once he crept among the dunes to a place where a little stream trickled down, in order to get a drink, but he did not venture to stay beside the stream. For some time he amused himself by plaiting the spiked grass into stiff green rods, and then, from a razor shell which he found in his hollow, he fashioned pike heads for the ends of the rods. Afterwards he picked all the yellow crow-toes within reach, and the broad mauve flowers of the wild convolvulus. He set them out in gay beds, like flowers growing in gardens, and edged them round with borders of wild thyme. Then, with great labour, he collected forty or fifty snail shells and laid them in rows, making each row consist only of those like each other in colouring. He had lines of dark brown shells, of pale yellow, and of striped shells. These again he subdivided according to the width and number of their stripes. Once he ventured to creep to a place from which he could watch the sea. He saw that the tide was flowing. Below him on the strand were a number of seagulls, strutting, fluttering, shrieking, splashing with wing-tips and feet in the oncoming waves. He supposed that the young fry of some fish must have drifted shorewards, and that the birds were feasting on them. Then’, at the far end of the bay, he saw men’s figures moving, near the Black Rock, among the boats hauled up on the shore in the creek from which he and Maurice and Una had set out to fish on Rackle Roy. A dread seized him that these might be yeomen. Since he had come within reach of home, since he had seen and heard the sea, since he had breathed the familiar salt-laden air, his courage had left him. He felt a very coward, desperately anxious not to be caught and dragged back again to the horror of death. He wanted to live now that he was back at home and almost within reach of Una. He eyed the distant figures anxiously, and then crept back and lay trembling in his hollow among his ordered snail-shells and the flowers, already withered, which he had plucked and planted in the sand.

At last the sun set. Neal waited for an hour while the June twilight slowly faded. He watched the sandhills round his lair turn from bright yellow to grey, watched them while they seemed in the fading light to grow loftier, and assume a weird majesty which was not their’s in the daytime. The objects near at hand, the faded flowers, and the snail-shells, and the rods of woven bent, lost their bright colours and became almost invisible. The eternal roaring of the sea seemed to be subdued, as if even it felt awed by the stillness of the June night. The sand on which he lay was damped with dew. Only the sharp cry of the corncrake broke the solemnity of the night.

He rose, and, peering anxiously before him as each fresh stretch of his way became visible, crossed the sandhills. Avoiding the stepping-stones and the regular crossing-place, he waded through the brook which ran gurgling between the sandhills and the rough track beyond them. He crossed it, and, skirting the rear of a cottage, reached the top of the Runkerry cliffs. Far below him the sea rushed, white-lipped, against the rocks. The tide was almost full. The scene was as it had been ten days ago, ten years ago, a whole lifetime ago, when he walked this same way with Donald Ward. Still keeping close to the sea, he avoided the high road near the Causeway, plodded along the stony track past the Rocking Stone and the Wishing Well, climbed the Shepherd’s Path, and once more walked along the verge of the cliff above Port na Spaniard and the Horse Shoe Bay and Pleaskin Head. He reached Port Moon, and saw far below him the glimmer of a light in the rude shelter where fishermen lodge in summer time. Avoiding the farmhouse near him on his right, and the lane which led past it to the high road, he went on, clinging close to the sea as if for safety. He rested a while in the shelter of the ruins of Dun-severic Castle, and then went on till his feet were stumbling among the graves of Templeastra, where the dust of his mother lay. It was dark now. He guessed that he must have been an hour and a half on his way. He came close to the manse—his home. Below him lay Ballintoy Strand, with its sentinel white rocks which keep eternal watch against invading seas. Between him and his home there was the road to cross and the meadow to wade through. It must, as he guessed, be eleven o’clock. His father and Hannah Macaulay would be in bed. He would have to rouse them with cautious tapping upon window panes.

He reached the back of the house at last, and saw, to his amazement, that a light burned in the kitchen, and that the door stood wide open. A dread seized him. Perhaps the house was occupied by soldiers. For a moment he thought of turning back again to the sea and the cliffs. But he wanted food, and it was absolutely necessary for him to communicate with some one. His plan was to lie hid in the Pigeon Cave, but he must have food brought to him day by day, and he must let his father or Hannah know where he was going.