They scrambled to their feet with uncovered heads, and clustered about him, jostling one another for possession of his hands, and affectionately patting his shoulders and stroking his sleeves, the while they strove to express in their own tongue, or in the poetic phrases they had fashioned for themselves out of a practical foreign language, the sincerity of their sorrow. But the Irish peasant has been schooled through many generations to face the necessity of exile, and to view the breaking of households, the separation of kinsmen, the recurring miseries attendant upon an endless exodus across the seas, with the philosophy of the inevitable. None of these men dreamed of attempting to dissuade The O’Mahony from his purpose, and they listened with melancholy nods of comprehension when he had secured silence, and spoke again:
“You can all see that it’s got to be,” he said, in conclusion. “And now I want you to promise me this: I don’t expect you’ll have trouble with the police. They won’t get over from Balleydehob for another day or two—and by that time I shall be gone, and the Hen Hawk, too—an’ if they bring over the dingey I gave the Englishman to land in, why, of course there won’t be a man, woman or child in Muirisc that ever laid eyes on it before.”
“Sure, Heaven ’u’d blast the eyes that ’u’d recognize that same boat,” said one, and the others murmured their confidence in the hypothetical miracle.
“Well, then, what I want you to promise is this: That you’ll go on as you have been doin’, workin’ hard, keepin’ sober, an’ behavin’ yourselves, an’ that you’ll mind what Jerry says, same as if I said it myself. An’ more than that—an’ now this is a thing I’m specially sot on—that you’ll look upon that little gal, Kate O’Mahony, as if she was a daughter of mine, an’ watch over her, an’ make things pleasant for her, an’—an’ treat her like the apple of your eye.”
If there was an apple in The O’Mahony’s eye, it was for the moment hidden in a vail of moisture. The faces of the men and their words alike responded to his emotion.
Then one of them, a lean and unkempt old mariner, who even in this keen February air kept his hairy breast and corded, sunburnt throat exposed, and whose hawk-like eyes had flashed through fifty years of taciturnity over heaven knows what wild and fantastic dreams born of the sea, spoke up:
“Sir, by your l’ave, I’ll mesilf be her bodyguard and her servant, and tache her the wather as befits her blood, and keep the very sole of her fut from harrum.”
“Right you are, Murphy,” said The O’Mahony. “Make that your job.”
No one remembered ever having heard Murphy speak so much at one time before. To the surprise of the group, he had still more to say.
“And, sir—I’m not askin’ it be way of ricompinse,” the fierce-faced old boatman went on—“but w’u’d your honor grant us wan requist?”