During three years he waited sullenly for some worthy prey. On the morning of the 8th February, when he heard the royal salute, he felt that his time had come, and sharpened a knife. He resolved to kill both the Superintendent and the Viceroy. All through the day the close surveillance gave him no chance of getting to the islands which Lord Mayo visited. Evening came, and his victim landed unexpectedly at his very door. He slipped into the woods, crept up Mount Harriet through the jungle side by side with the Viceroy; then dogged the party down again in the dark: but still got no chance. At the foot he almost gave up hope, and resolved to wait for the morrow. But as the Viceroy stepped quickly forward on the jetty, his grey-suited shoulders towering conspicuous in the torch-light, an impulse of despair thrilled through the assassin. He gave up all idea of life, rushed round the guards, and in a moment was on his victim's back.
He was a hillman of great size and strength. When heavily fettered in the condemned cell, he overturned the lamp with his chained ankle, bore down the English sentry by brute strength of body, and wrenched away his bayonet with his manacled hands. He made no pretence of penitence, and was childishly vain of being photographed (for police inquiries in Northern India) as the murderer of a Viceroy. Indeed, some of the above details were only got out of him by a native officer who cunningly begged him for materials for an ode on his deed, to be sung by his countrymen. Neither his name, nor that of his village or tribe, will find record in this book.
The passionate outburst of grief and wrath which then shook India, the slow military pomp of the slain Viceroy's re-entry into his capital, the uncontrollable fits of weeping in the chamber where he lay in state, the long voyage of the mourning ship, and the solemn ceremonial with which Ireland received home her dead son—all these were fitting at the time, and are past.
'Yesterday,' said one of the Dublin papers, 'we saw a State Solemnity vitalised by the subtle spell of national feeling. Seldom are the two things united in an Irish public funeral. When imperial pomp is displayed, the national heart is cold. When the people pay spontaneous homage to the dead, the trappings of the State are absent, its voice mute. Yesterday, for once, this ill-omened rule was broken. Government and the people united in doing honour to an illustrious Irishman.' The Indian Press had given vent to the wild sorrow of many races in many languages; the English newspapers were full of nobly expressed tributes; Parliamentary chiefs had their well-chosen utterances for the nation's loss. But Lord Mayo, as he sat on the top of the sea-girt hill and gazed towards the west, where his dear home lay beyond the sunset, would have prized that united mourning of his countrymen above any panegyric. They laid him at last in the secluded graveyard which he had chosen on his own land.
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