The unpleasant sensations of Mr. Delany had for a considerable time subsided into a general tranquillity, nor did his manner in the slightest degree indicate any impatience or displeasure at being so long detained in company with the inveterate solicitor; nor indeed did he articulate one sentence of complaint against the boisterous conduct of his outrageous comrade.
The attorney, on the contrary, not being blessed with so even a temper as Mr. Delany, showed every symptom of inordinate impatience to get out of his company, and exhibited divers samples of plunging, kicking, and muscular convulsion, more novel and entertaining than even those of the most celebrated rope-dancers; he also incessantly vociferated as loud, if not louder than he had ever done upon any former occasion, though not in any particular dialect or language, but as a person generally does when undergoing a cruel surgical operation.
The attorney’s eyes not having any thing to do with the hanging matter, he clearly saw the same crowd approaching which had caused the retrograde movement of his comrades; and, as it approached, he gave himself entirely up for lost, being placed in the very same convenient position for piking as Absalom (King David’s natural son) when General Joab ran him through the body without the slightest resistance; and though the attorney’s toes were not two feet from the ground, he made as much fuss, floundering and bellowing, as if they had been twenty.
The man of law at length became totally exhausted and tranquil, as children generally are when they have no strength to squall any longer. He had, however, in this state of captivity, the consolation of beholding (at every up glance) the bloated, raven-gray visage of the king’s enemy, and his disloyal eyes bursting from their sockets, and full glaring with inanimate revenge on the loyalist who had darkened them. A thrilling horror seized upon the nerves and muscles of the attorney: his sins and clients were now (like the visions in Macbeth, or King Saul and the Witch of Endor) beginning to pass in shadowy review before his imagination. The last glance he could distinctly take, as he looked upward to Heaven for aid, (there being none at Rathfarnan,) gave a dismal glimpse of his once red-and-white engrossing member, now, like the chameleon, assuming the deep purple hue of the rebel jaw it was in contact with, the fingers spread out, cramped, and extended as a fan before the rebel visage; and numbness, the avant-courier of mortification, having superseded torture, he gave himself totally up to Heaven. If he had a hundred prayers, he would have repeated every one of them; but, alas! theology was not his forte, and he was gradually sinking into that merciful insensibility invented by farriers, when they twist an instrument upon a horse’s nostrils, that the torture of his nose may render him insensible to the pains his tail is enduring.
In the mean time the royal troop, which had most prudentially retreated to avoid an overwhelming force, particularly on their flank, as the enemy approached, yielded ground, though gradually. The enemy being all foot, the troop kept only a quarter of a mile from them, and merely retreated a hundred yards at a time, being sure of superior speed to that of the rebels,—when, to the surprise of Captain Ferns, the enemy made a sudden wheel, and took possession of a churchyard upon a small eminence, as if intending to pour down on the cavalry, if they could entice them within distance; but, to the astonishment of the royal troopers, instead of the Irish war-whoop, which they expected, the enemy set up singing and crying in a most plaintive and inoffensive manner. The buck parson, with Malony the bailiff, being ordered to reconnoitre, immediately galloped back, announcing that the enemy had a coffin, and were performing a funeral; but, both swearing that it was a new ambush, and the whole troop coinciding in the same opinion, a further retreat was decided on, which might be now performed without the slightest confusion. It was also determined to carry off their dead, for such it was taken for granted the attorney must have been, by the excess of his agitation, dancing and plunging till they lost sight of him, and also through the contagion and poisonous collision of a struggling rebel, to whom he had been so long cemented.
In order, therefore, to bring off the solicitor, dead or alive, they rallied, formed, and charged, sword in hand, towards the rampike, where they had left Attorney W—— and Mr. Delany in so novel a situation, and where they expected no loving reception.
In the mean time, it turned out that the kicking, plunging, and rope-dancing of the attorney had their advantages; as, at length, the obdurate rope, by the repeated pulls and twists, slipped over the knot of the rampike which had arrested its progress, ran freely, and down came the rebel and royalist together, with an appropriate crash, on the green sod under their gibbet, which seemed beneficently placed there by nature on purpose to receive them.
The attorney’s innocent feet, however, still remained tightly moored to the gullet of the guilty rebel, and might have remained there till they grew or rotted together, had not the opportune arrival of his gallant comrades saved them from mortification.
To effect the separation of Attorney W—— and Mr. Delany was no easy achievement: the latter had gone to his forefathers, but the rope was strong and tight, both able and willing to have hung half a dozen more of them, if employed to do so. Many loyal pen-knives were set instantly at work; but the rope defied them all; the knot was too solid. At length Sergeant Potterton’s broad-sword, having assumed the occupation of a saw, effected the operation without any accident, save sawing across one of the attorney’s veins. The free egress of his loyal gore soon brought its proprietor to his sense of existence; though three of the fingers had got so clever a stretching, that the muscles positively refused to bend any more for them, and they ever after retained the same fan-like expansion as when knotted to Mr. Delany. The index and thumb still retained their engrossing powers, to the entire satisfaction of the club of Skinners’ Alley, of which he was an active alderman.
The maimed attorney was now thrown across a horse and carried to a jingle,[[59]] and sent home with all the honours of war to his wife and children, to make what use they pleased of.