Nuala O'Malley

by H. Bedford-Jones

"Turlough and I will fire these ourselves," he told his men that evening as they made supper together, the men looking forward to the night's work with great joy. "Do the rest of you gather on either hand by the stables, with spare muskets and pistols."

So this was done as he said. Because of the storm Brian did not light his beacon after all, but he stocked the tower with food and wine, and told his men to get there, if they could, when the rest was taken. That tower had Brian's chamber in the lower part and a ladder in the upper part, where was great store of powder.

The five falcons were set in front of the hall doorway, where once Brian had come near to being nailed. Brian loosed another of the pigeons, telling Nuala how things chanced, and of the four pirate ships, and set the last bird in the tower in case of need, which proved a lucky thing for him in the end.

Brian and his men slept after meat, while Turlough Wolf remained watching. It was wearing well on to midnight when the old man woke them all, and Brian went to the walls to hear a thud of hoofs and a murmur of men coming across the wind to him. He sent off men to loose the loaded guns on the outer walls at random, and then suddenly flung lighted cressets over the gates.

A wild yell answered this, and bullets from the men who were filling the dry moat, while others scrambled across it and charged up to the gates with small powder-kegs and petards ready. This was not done without scathe, however; Brian's men loosed their muskets, and one by one the heavy bastards thundered out across the snow, though the result was hard to see in the darkness.

There came a ragged flash of musketry in reply, and that abandoned cannon roared out lustily, though its ball passed far overhead. Brian stood on a demi-bastion that half flanked the gates, and after firing his pistol into the men below, he leaped down the steps into the courtyard and joined Turlough behind the falcons.

"One at a time, Turlough. They'll have the gates down in a minute."

While he waited for the storm to fall, Brian saw that two or three of his men had been hit. He wondered dully that the Dark Master had not made a general assault, and concluded that he must wish to save men. It was a long moment that dragged down on him; then a splash of light burst up, the gates were driven inward and shattered, and with a great roar there fell a rain of riven beams and stones and dirt.

Sheltering in the hall doorway, Brian and Turlough stayed unmoving through an instant of black silence. Out of it broke a wild Scots yell, and in the light of the courtyard cressets a wave of men surged up in the breach. Brian's linstock fell on a falcon, and the little gun barked a hail of bullets across the Scots; Turlough's gun followed suit, and the first lines of men went down in a struggling mass.

The Dark Master was not to be beaten this time, however. Another wave of Scots swept up, with a mass of men behind them. While some of Brian's men tried to get the two falcons reloaded, a storm of bullets swept across the courtyard, and Brian saw Turlough turn and run for it through the doorway, while two of the men fell over a falcon.