Blake now turned his attention to the sister’s house, and when this proved a blank, he determined to try Drumcar Lodge as a last resource; but at the time of the landing of arms at Errinane, every police barrack and coastguard station within a radius of many miles had been burnt, so that it was impossible to get any news of the place without going there, the nearest barrack in Blake’s district being fifty miles away.
A “travelling circus” of Auxiliaries happened to be passing through Ballybor, and the leader undertook to investigate the lodge and let Blake know if they found any trace of Joyce. Blake advised them to surround the lodge in the day-time, as, owing to the wild and mountainous nature of the country, a night attack would be impossible.
On the whole, the gunmen treated old Faherty, the caretaker, and his children well, especially the son, Patsy, in the hope that he would join them; but, luckily for himself, the lad had a wholesome dread of firearms. After he had been at the lodge some days, in spite of feeling quite secure, Joyce, with the instinct of the hunted, began to look about for a bolt-hole in case of need; though in the midst of the wilds the lodge had serious drawbacks, being situated on the side of a slope, so that any one leaving the lodge would at once come under observation from several points, and, moreover, an arm of the sea cut off all escape to the north.
In fact, escape seemed very doubtful, until by chance Patsy mentioned that in a boat-house, hidden by trees, on the shore of the bay, there was a large motor-launch, which he had learnt to drive the previous summer. The next time the old man went to Errinane for provisions, he brought back with him twenty gallons of petrol (duly entered up in his absent master’s account), and Joyce felt easier in his mind.
On a pouring wet afternoon the five gunmen were playing nap in front of a comfortable turf fire in the drawing-room, while old Faherty’s daughter brewed poteen punch for them, and Patsy was reading a novel in an arm-chair, when a long-haired boy dashed in with the news that a large party of Auxiliary Cadets had rushed through Errinane, taken two countrymen they had met on the road as guides, and were surrounding the lodge from all sides except the sea. Joyce had launched the motor-boat only the previous day, and within a few minutes they were under way, heading for the mouth of the bay with the throttle full open. Seeing the launch in the bay below them as they reached the front of the lodge, the Cadets opened fire, but before they could get on to their target the launch vanished in the thick mist of rain.
As pursuit was out of the question, the Auxiliaries drove straight to Errinane Post Office, only to find the wires cut. They then went on to the nearest town, and wired to the naval authorities at Queenstown, hoping that they might be able to get in touch with a destroyer off the west coast by wireless, and so capture Joyce at sea.
Joyce knew that the hue-and-cry would be up, and that it would be fatal to land anywhere on the coast near Errinane; and as the sea was calm, he made up his mind to cut across a big bay to the north and make for Buntarriv, a narrow passage between an island and the mainland, which would lead them to Trabawn Bay, on the shores of which lay his own country.
The launch left the slip at Drumcar at 1 P.M., and Joyce made out that at eight miles an hour they ought to reach Buntarriv Sound at four o’clock and Trabawn Bay in another hour, which should give them plenty of time to land before darkness set in. Unfortunately, when out in the open Atlantic, the engine stopped, and Patsy, who was thoroughly frightened by now, would only sit down and cry. Two of the gunmen knew something of motors, and after nearly two hours discovered that the carburetter was choked with dirt, and it was nearly six o’clock before the Sound was within sight: another quarter of an hour and they would have been too late. As it was, a destroyer opened fire on them just as they were entering the Sound, and they were only saved by the failing light.
Knowing that the destroyer could not follow them, and afraid of wrecking the launch in the dark, they anchored and waited for the moon to rise, and eventually landed on the shore of Trabawn Bay. Joyce was at last in his own country, and before day broke the gunmen were safely lodged in different mountain farms close to Joyce’s home, and the next day Patsy was handed over to the local Volunteers to be returned to Drumcar. The following day they took the launch to a bay surrounded by high cliffs, where no human being except an odd herd ever went, and beached her at the height of the tide on the sandy shore, where they left her for future use.
After a few days at home Joyce began to get restless, and resolved to visit his married sister in the Bunrattey district; but the local Volunteers could only supply them with two bicycles, and the distance was too far to walk—forty-two miles as the crow flies. However, he learnt from a postman that a police patrol visited Ballyscaddan, a small village about sixteen miles east of Ballyrick, daily, and were in the habit of leaving their bicycles outside a public-house which they frequented.