CHAPTER XVIII.
AT ASKEATON.
I was never one to whom it is easy to sit still with folded hands, still less the man to muse darkly for long over the chances and mischances of war. Mine certainly was it not to consider and to see the end of a thing even from its beginning; the hour and its work were enough for me. Scarcely, then, were we come back but I burned to be again on the water with the deck of The Cross of Blood beneath my feet, and rejoice did I exceedingly when my mistress told me what her purpose now was, and bade me get the three galleys ready for sea.
She was resolved to put her whole fortune on the hazard, and to employ her entire strength in the struggle, and, at the same time, to get what aid she could from others.
Thus, undeterred by our encounter with the English ship-of-war—from which we had so hardly emerged—nay, rather made the more determined by it, she had sent messengers, fleet of foot and strong, to Richard Burke, the very day we had arrived at Carrickahooley, inviting him to come to her with his best and his bravest, and, if he would serve her, as he had professed himself ready, to tarry not by the way.
I was nowise in doubt as to what the answer of the MacWilliam would be. Not only was he committed as much as we ourselves to the contest against the Governor, but he had promised to support Grace O’Malley in any manner she might desire; nor could I imagine anything that would give him a keener pleasure than to comply with her request.
Two or three weeks passed, however, before he appeared at the castle, but when he did come it was at the head of a picked company of his gallowglasses, two hundred strong.
In the battles and fights of the previous year our force had been reduced by perhaps a third, and our numbers had been still further lessened in the bloody engagement with The Star of the Sea. Welcome, then, were these stalwart Burkes of Mayo. True, they were unused to the sea, but it was my mistress’s intention that we should all land, and hold ourselves at the disposal of the Earl of Desmond.
“If need be,” said she, discussing her plans with Richard Burke and me, “I will burn the galleys behind me.”
Whether I fought on the sea or on shore was a matter of indifference to me; but I could not hear her say this without a pang, although I recognised to the full the spirit which inspired the words.