“The sun, God forgive me for callin’ it a sun! will be near Dooey Head this minute,” Maire a Crick reminded the party, who had forgotten about the tide in the heat of the discussion. Now they hurried off, breaking into a run from time to time, Judy Farrel leading, her little pinched figure doubling up almost into a knot when she coughed. Last in the race were Norah Ryan and Maire a Crick.
II
THE darkness was falling as the women raced down the crooked road that ran to Dooey foreshore. A few birch bushes, with trembling branches tossing hither and thither like tangled tresses, bounded the road at intervals. The sky was overcast with low-hanging, slatey clouds, and in the intervening distance between foreshore and horizon no separate object could be distinguished: everything there had blended together in grey, formless mistiness. There was hardly a word spoken; the pattering of bare feet, Judy Farrel’s cough and the hard, laboured breathing of the elder women were all that could be heard.
One of the party, well in advance, barefooted and carrying her shoes hung round her neck with a piece of string, struck her toe sharply against a rock.
“The curse of the devil!” she exclaimed; then in a quieter voice: “It’s God’s blessin’ that I haven’t my brogues on my feet, for they would be ruined entirely.”
A belated bird cried sharply and its call was carried in from the sea ... somewhere in the distance a cow lowed—the sound was prolonged in a hundred ravines ... the bar moaned fretfully as if in a troubled sleep ... the snow ceased to fall and some stars glittered bright as diamonds in the cold heavens.
“Mother of God! It’s on the turn,” Maire a Crick shouted, and hurried as rapidly as her legs would permit down the hill. At intervals some of the party following her would stumble, fall, turn head over heels and rise rapidly again. They came to the strand, raced across it, making little noise with their feet as they ran and with their bodies as they fell. Norah Ryan’s head shook fitfully from side to side as she tried to keep pace with her companions.
They were not aware of the proximity of the dhan until they were in the water and splashing it all around them. When half-way across Maire a Crick found the water at her breast; another step and it reached her chin. Those behind could only see a black head bobbing in the waves.
“Come back, Maire a Crick!” Biddy Wor shouted. “Ye’ll be drownded if ye go one step at all further.”
The old woman turned, came back slowly and solemnly, without speaking a word.