Grace O'Malley, Princess and Pirate

by Robert Machray

I was in as many moods as there were hours in the day, until I felt a shame of myself and of my weakness born in me. At first, I had chafed and fretted like a spoiled child; then a sullen and savage temper had possessed me, so that I could see that the crews of the galleys observed me, thinking that perhaps the bite of my wounds still hurt and galled; now, recovering myself, I bade myself endure hardness, and bear the lash of the whip of fate, and be a man.

But my dear was very dear to me, and my heart rebelled.

In the meantime I was going backward and forward among the islands and on the mainland, distributing portions of the plunder we had taken from the galleons to the widows and relatives of those who had fallen in the fighting, as was the custom of Grace O’Malley with her people. Other parts of the spoil were for greater security put into the strong chambers under the castle and elsewhere.

There remained the chest of gold and various vessels and chains and rings of silver and gold, many of them richly jewelled, to be hidden away, and, for this purpose, Grace O’Malley and I went in a boat by ourselves to the Caves of Silence under the Hill of Sorrow. And as I rowed, and considered the while what significance there was in the gold not being restored to those who made claim to being its owners, I experienced a sudden lightening of my spirits.

I reasoned that there must be some doubt in the mind of my mistress of the truth of the story she had been told of the chest of gold, or else she would not have kept it. She could not entirely trust them—de Vilela and Fitzgerald—or she would have returned the money to them. So I thought, but even this comfort was taken from me.

When we had reached the dark, narrow strait that lies between the high cliffs, the grim sentinels which guard the entrance to the caves, the boat shot into it like an arrow, and, without a word, we went swiftly for a distance of half a mile or more—the zip-drip of the oars alone being heard, eerie and startling, as the sound shivered up the black walls of rock.

There, jutting out from them, was the Red Crag, that is in shape like the head of a bull even to the horns; beyond, a strip of beach, and, at the side of it, a ledge of grey-blue stone; then again the rock walls, ever narrowing and becoming yet more narrow, until they closed in an archway, and we lost the light of day as the boat passed on up the fissure that runs deep into the bowels of the Hill of Sorrow. There was not room for rowing, and I forced the boat along with a hook, Grace O’Malley having lighted a torch.

Then we came to the black, slippery block of stone which seems to close up the passage, but the secret of which was known to us, and to us only.

Here we entered—by what way I may never tell—and were in the first cave of silence, a vast, gloomy, ghostly, dimly-lit hall, with tables and altars and seats carved out of the living rock by hands dead these many thousand years, and on the floor where it was stone and not water, a grey, powdered dust, faintly coloured here and there as with specks of rust—and all that dust was once alive, for these caves are the graves of men.

Out of this vast chamber opened a number of smaller caves, that looked not unlike the cells of monks—and monks of some sort perhaps were they who lived and died here. And everywhere silence—a chill, brooding, fearful, awful silence; and the living rock, hewn and cut; and the floors that were partly stone and partly water; and the grey, rust-spotted dust of death!