Shortly before Cormac raided Murrisk, a new and simple manager had arrived at one of the Ballybor banks. The arrival of a new bank manager in an Irish provincial town is always the signal for all in financial difficulties to get busy and try their luck with the fresh arrival, and amongst the new manager’s first visitors came the Urban Council, who by sheer bluff managed to get their already big overdraft increased by some thousand pounds. A fresh election being within sight, they then proceeded to borrow a derelict steam-roller from the County Council, who had practically ceased to function, and to spend the money steam-rolling the streets of Ballybor. In this way they hoped to catch the votes of the labourers by the payment of high wages, and of the shopkeepers and owners of cars by improved streets.
Being in a great hurry to get on with the good work, they forgot that the streets had never been steam-rolled before, and that the gas-and water-pipes were very near the surface, with the result that for every yard of street the roller passed over one or more gas- or water-pipes burst, and the town soon smelt like the inside of a gas-works.
The consequent proceedings give a very fair idea of the Celtic capacity for public affairs, and of how the country would be run under “Home Rule,” or any other kind of rule except the “Union.”
Instead of stopping the steam-rolling until all mains and pipes had been relaid at a sufficient depth to resist the rolling, they solemnly proceeded to roll, burst, and mend from one end of the main street to the other, to the huge delight of all the local plumbers, who also had votes.
Luckily the money was exhausted by the time the main street was finished, and though the greater part of the surface was excellent, the ridges made by digging up the pipes at intervals would break the axle of an unsuspecting stranger’s car, to the great benefit of the local garages.
The police barracks at Ballybor are situated in a “cul-de-sac” off the main street, at the corners of which stand the principal hotel and a bank, and all cars going to or from the barracks must pass this corner.
Word was brought to Cormac in his mountain dug-out that his brother left Ballybor Barracks early every morning with a Crossley full of Cadets, and that they spent the whole day and often most of the night searching the surrounding country for him. Before leaving Ballybor he had witnessed the steam-rolling comic opera, and bicycling by night to Ballybor, he lay up during the day, got in touch with a plumber, borrowed his tools and barrow, and late that afternoon (in the plumber’s clothes, and slouch hat pulled well over his face) started to dig up the road between the bank and the hotel.
Human nature always seems to regard the digging up of a street in the light of a huge joke, and during his work Cormac was not only chaffed by the bank manager and the hotel loafers, but by the police themselves. When it was dusk he was joined by a Volunteer with a charge of gelignite, which had been raided from a Government ship off the south-east coast and brought to the west by car, and the two proceeded to lay a contact-mine in the centre of the road. They then filled in the earth, returned the tools and barrow to the plumber, and bicycled back to the mountains.
While Cormac was busy laying his mine, Dominic and Blake were poring over an Ordnance-map in the barracks not sixty yards away. Having come to the conclusion that it was quite useless to search the countryside piecemeal, and hearing a rumour of what was going on in the mountains through one of the forced food contractors having made a bitter complaint to a passing police patrol, they were now planning to surround the southern half of the Slievenamoe Mountains, and organising a great drive, and the next two days were spent working out the details.
About 9 A.M. a mineral-water lorry, in order to turn, backed up the cul-de-sac, and the mine being well and truly laid, disappeared in a sheet of flame, wrecking the bank and hotel. Hardly had the sound of the explosion died away, and before the police left the barracks to investigate, every young man in Ballybor of the shopkeeper class had his bicycle out and was off as hard as he could pedal. A Volunteer greatly resembles a mountain hare: directly the hunt is up he makes at top speed for high ground, and the harder you press both the faster they leg it up the mountains. Blake and Dominic managed to control their men, and no reprisals followed, the only arrest being the unfortunate plumber who had lent his outfit to Cormac, and whose bicycle had been “borrowed” by an agitated shop-boy.