Very soon the Cadets began to feel the heat of the sun, and the hard going began to tell on several of them. Sitting in a Crossley is bad training for walking a grouse mountain.
After going about a mile and a half a party of men were seen in front making eastward at full speed down a valley, the end of which Dominic knew was held by a group of soldiers with a machine-gun. Halting his men, he then brought his right wing well round so as to cut off the gunmen’s retreat to the west should they attempt to break back.
The fleeing gunmen were soon lost sight of in dead ground, but presently the sound of firing was heard from the far end of the valley, and after a time the gunmen were seen retreating across the Cadets’ front, and making as hard as they could for the west side of the mountains.
At this point Blake’s men came in sight from the south, and quickly getting in touch with the Cadets’ right wing, completed the cordon. The gunmen, seeing that they were surrounded and all retreat cut off, split up into two parties, took up positions on two kopjes, and waited for the attack.
As a frontal attack would have entailed heavy loss, and seeing that there was another kopje on Blake’s side which would command and enfilade the gunmen’s positions, Dominic ordered the Cadets to pin the gunmen down by their fire, and at the same time sent a signaller to Blake telling him to occupy the commanding kopje. This Blake did, and also sent to the nearest group of soldiers for a machine-gun.
The fight lasted for two hours, and though the gunmen were always subject to a hot fire, and several times a man was seen to spring into the air and collapse in the heather, yet they stuck it gamely until the machine-gun was brought up and opened a heavy fire on both kopjes; the remaining gunmen then stood up and put up their hands.
On the two kopjes the police found twelve dead gunmen and twenty-eight prisoners, eighteen of whom were wounded. And amongst the dead Dominic found Cormac, shot through the heart.
After arranging for the burial of the dead (with the exception of Cormac, who was carried down the mountain-side on a stretcher) and the removal of the prisoners, Dominic took a party of Cadets to search some caves which he knew of about half a mile to the south-west. Here, as he expected, he found that the gunmen had been living in comparative comfort. One cave had been used as a living-room and contained chairs and tables, while two smaller inner ones were fitted up with bunks in tiers like a Boche dug-out, and had heather for bedding.
Towards evening the worn-out Cadets got back to their Crossleys on the pass road which ran along the north shore of the lake; and after leaving a party with a searchlight mounted on a tender to stop any stray gunmen escaping during the night on bicycles by the road to the east, Dominic started for Murrisk in a Crossley with his brother’s body.
Many an evening the two brothers had driven home together over the same road after a happy day’s grouse-shooting, never dreaming that their last journey together would be to bring Cormac’s body to the home of their ancestors.