Then, seeing I was determined, she sighed, said no more, but kissed me on the cheek—a thing she had not done since I was a little child, playing with her, a child too, on the sands of the shores of Clew Bay.
Thereafter together we went into the chamber of the main tower where de Vilela had been laid. There by his couch was my dear, a presence soft, tender, and full of sweet womanly pity and of the delicate ministries that spring from it. There upon the couch lay the wreck of a man; so calm, so pale, so worn, that he looked like one dead.
“He still breathes,” said Eva, in a whisper.
Perhaps it was the result of the conversation I had just had with Grace O’Malley, or it may have been the subtle influence of that scene, with that quiet figure stretched upon the couch for its centre, but there was no bitterness in my breast when I saw Eva there. Who, indeed, could have felt any other emotion at such a time but that of sorrow?
For two days de Vilela hung between life and death. More than once did it seem that his spirit had left his shattered body, and yet it did not. On the third day the Spaniard rallied; Teige O’Toole, our physician, declared that there was hope; and from that instant Don Francisco began slowly to recover.
All within the castle rejoiced, and I as much as any; but when I saw how constantly Eva was with him, and how the sick man was restless and uneasy in her brief absences from his side, and how she watched over and soothed and tended him, her mere presence being a better restorative than all the healing simples of Teige O’Toole, is it to be marvelled at that I found the determination I had come to of leaving the field open to him, and of withdrawing from it, become more and more difficult to maintain?
Neither did Sir Nicholas nor his army help greatly to distract my thoughts. For there, outside our walls, at a safe distance from our cannon, did the Governor lie day after day for a long week, waiting, doubtless, for the warship that never came.
We did not, on our side, stir out of the castle, for whatever advantage, if any, had been reaped from the sally had been purchased at too heavy a price. Grace O’Malley rightly had come to the conclusion that we had everything to gain by sitting still, and that Sir Nicholas, seeing that he could do nothing against us without ordnance, would soon grow tired of this futile business, and so go back to Galway.
Whether he had heard in some way that the vessel he had expected had been wrecked, or feared that events had happened which had prevented it from being sent at all by Winter, the English Admiral, I know not; but one night he stole away from Burrishoole, and when the morning was come, lo, there was not an Englishman anywhere to be seen.
It was an unfortunate coincidence in one respect that the very morning which saw the siege raised should also have witnessed the arrival of Richard Burke, attended by fifty horsemen and more than a hundred gallowglasses, for if we could have counted on such a number of fighting men in addition to our own, we should certainly have again attacked the Governor’s forces and not stood so much upon our defence.