The red winter sun sank to hide itself below the waste of Atlantic waters as the Hen Hawk, still held snugly in the grasp of the breeze, beat round the grim cliffs of Three-Castle Head, and entered Dun-manus Bay. The Englishman had been set adrift hours before, and by this time, no doubt, the telegraph had spread to every remotest point on the Southern and Western coast warning descriptions of the vessel and its master. Perhaps even now their winged flight into the west was being followed from Cape Clear, which lay behind them in the misty and darkening distance. Still the Hen Hawk’s course was confidently shaped homeward, for many miles of bog and moorland separated Muirisc from any electric current.
The O’Mahony had hung in meditative solitude over the tiller for hours, watching the squatting groups of retainers playing silently at “spoil-five” on the forward deck, and revolving in his mind the thousand and one confused and clashing thoughts which this queer new situation suggested. As the sun went down he called to Jerry, and the two, standing together at the stern, looked upon the great ball of fire descending behind the gray expanse of trackless waters, without a word. Rude and untutored as they were, both were conscious, in some vague way, that when this sun should rise again their world would be a different thing.
“Well, pard,” said the master, when only a bar of flaming orange marked where the day had gone, “it’ll be a considerable spell, I reckon, afore I see that sort o’ thing in these waters again.”
“Is it l’avin’ the country we are, thin?” asked Jerry, in a sympathetic voice.
“No, not exactly. You’ll stay here. But I cut sticks to-morrow.”
“Sure, then, it’s not alone ye’ll be goin’. Egor! man, didn’t I take me Bible-oath niver to l’ave yeh, the longest day ye lived? Ah—now, don’t be talkin’!”
“That’s all right, Jerry—but it’s got to be that way,” replied The O’Mahony, in low regretful tones. “I’ve figured it all out. It’ll be mighty tough to go off by myself without you, pard, but I can’t leave the thing without somebody to run it for me, and you are the only one that fills the bill. Now don’t kick about it, or make a fuss, or think I’m using you bad. Jest say to yourself—‘Now he’s my friend, an’ I’m his’n, and if he says I can be of most use to him here, why that settles it.’ Take the helm for a minute, Jerry. I want to go for’ard an’ say a word to the men.”
The O’Mahony looked down upon the unintelligible game being played with cards so dirty that he could not tell them apart, and worn by years of use to the shape of an egg, and waited with a musing smile on his face till the deal was exhausted. The players and onlookers formed a compact group at his knees, and they still sat or knelt or lounged on the deck as they listened to his words.
“Boys,” he said, in the gravely gentle tone which somehow he had learned in speaking to these men of Muirisc, “I’ve been tellin’ Jerry somethin’ that you’ve got a right to know, too. I’m goin’ to light out to-morrow—that is, quit Ireland for a spell. It may be for a good while—maybe not. That depends. I hate like the very devil to go—but it’s better for me to skip than to be lugged off to jail, and then to state’s prison—better for me an’ better for you. If I get out, the rest of you won’t be bothered. Now—hold on a minute till I git through!—now between us we’ve fixed up Muirisc so that it’s a good deal easier to live there than it used to be. There’ll be more mines opened up soon, an’ the lobster fact’ry an’ the fishin’ are on a good footin’ now. I’m goin’ to leave Jerry to keep track o’ things, along with O’Daly, an’ they’ll let me know regular how matters are workin’, so you won’t suffer by my not bein’ here.”
“Ah—thin—it’s our hearts ’ll be broken entirely wid the grief,” wailed Dominic, and the others, seizing this note of woe as their key, broke forth in a chorus of lamentation.