Knowing the treachery that was contemplated, Grace O’Malley had had all the refugees confined during the previous night within the buildings of the castle, and not suffered to go abroad except in the daytime, and now when I heard the request I felt a certainty that the men who made it could be no other than those whose voices I had overheard, and who were the traitors in the pay of the Governor.
As it was above all things necessary they should have no suspicion that we had any knowledge of their purpose, I gave my officer an answer in an offhand manner, saying I would see these kernes in a little while, and, if I found them likely to make good soldiers, might add them to the guard.
Debating with myself whether I should at once go and tell my mistress what I thought, and also, if I was correct in my surmise, what was the best way in which to proceed, so that the discomfiture of these men might be complete, the night grew apace, and still I had come to no decision.
Suddenly, a slight, scarcely-seen motion—so slight, so scarcely-seen that it might have been caused by the vagrant breath of a passing breeze, only there was a perfect calm—seemed to the keenness of my sea-trained vision to make itself felt by a sort of tremulousness in that breadth of shadow that lay opposite me under the cold gleam of the stars, which I knew to be the side of the hill on which was the abbey.
Sounds, too, there came, but so faintly that I could not disentangle them from the ordinary voices of the night. Then, as I strained my eyes and ears, both sound and motion faded away as in a dream. I waited and watched for some minutes, but all was as silent as death.
Thinking I might have been mistaken, I went down from the battlements, and calling to the officer who had spoken of the wish of the refugee kernes, I bade him bring them to me in a chamber that served as a guard-room.
As I entered, a solitary wolf-call came howling through the air, and then, as the kernes came in, there was a second.
The first wolf-call had startled me, for surely, with such a host near us, it was a strange thing for a wolf to be thus close at hand; but when I heard the second one there was no doubt left in my mind. These calls were no other than the calls of human wolves signalling each other.
So, bidding the men to be kept in the guard-room till I returned, I went to the gate, and told de Vilela that I conjectured the enemy was stealing upon us in the darkness to take us by surprise, expecting that their allies within our walls would have so contrived as to make the way easy for them, and I said I thought I could now put my hand on these very men.