The sun was shining brightly in a clear sky next morning, when the people of Muirisc finally got up out of bed, and, still rubbing their eyes, strolled forth to note the ravages of last night’s storm, and talk with one another about it.
There was much to marvel at and discuss at length in garrulous groups before the cottage doors. One whole wing of the ancient convent structure—that which tradition ascribed to the pious building fervor of Cathal an Diomuis, or “the Haughty”—had been thrown down during the night, and lay now a tumbled mass of stones and timber piled in wild disorder upon the d茅bris of previous ruins. But inasmuch as the fallen building had long been roofless and disused, and its collapse meant only another added layer of chaos in the deserted convent-yard, Muirisc did not worry its head much about it, and even yawned in Cormac O’Daly’s face as he wandered from one knot of gossips to another, relating legends about Cathal the Proud.
What interested them considerably more was the report, confirmed now by O’Daly himself, that just before the crash came, six people in the reception hall of the convent had distinctly heard the voice of the Hostage from the depths below the cloistral building. Everybody in Muirisc knew all about the Hostage. They had been, so to speak, brought up with him. Prolonged familiarity with the pathetic story of his death in exile, here at Muirisc, and constant contact with his name as perpetuated in the title of their unique convent, made him a sort of oldest inhabitant of the place. Their lively imaginations now quickly built up and established the belief that he was heard to complain, somewhere under the convent, once every fifty years. Old Ellen Dumphy was able to fix the period with exactness because when the mysterious sound was last heard she was a young woman, and had her face bound up, and was almost “disthracted wid the sore teeth.”
But most interesting of all was the fact that there, before their eyes, riding easily upon the waters of the Muirisc, lay the Hen Hawk, as peacefully and safely at anchor as if no gale had ever thundered upon the cliffs outside. The four men of her crew, when they made their belated appearance in the morning sunlight out-of-doors, were eagerly questioned, and they told with great readiness and a flowering wealth of adjectives the marvelous story of how The O’Mahony aimed her in pitch darkness at the bar, and hurled her over it at precisely the psychological moment, with just the merest scraping of her keel. To the seafaring senses of those who stood now gazing at the vessel there was more witchcraft in this than in the subterranean voice of the Hostage even.
“Ah, thin, ’tis our O’Mahony’s the grand divil of a man!” they murmured, admiringly.
No work was to be expected, clearly, on the day after such an achievement as this. The villagers stood about, and looked at the squat coaster, snugly raising and sinking with the lazy movement of the tide, and watched for the master of Muirisc to show himself. They had never before been conscious of such perfect pride in and affection for this strange Americanized chieftain of theirs. By an unerring factional instinct, they felt that this apotheosis of The O’Mahony in their hearts involved the discomfiture of O’Daly and the nuns, and they let the hereditary bard feel it, too.
“Ah, now, Cormac O’Daly,” one of the women called out to the poet, as he hung, black-visaged and dejected, upon the skirts of the group, “tell me man, was it anny of yer owld Diarmids and Cathals ye do be perplexin’ us wid that wud a-steered that boat beyond over the bar at black midnight, wid a gale outside fit to blow mountains into the say? Sure, it’s not botherin’ his head wid books, or delutherin’ his moind wid ancestral mummeries, or wearyin’ the bones an’ marrow out of the saints wid attendin’ their business instead of his own, that our O’Mahony do be after practicin’.”
The bard opened his lips to reply. Then the gleam of enjoyment in the woman’s words which shone from all the faces roundabout, dismayed him. He shook his head, and walked away in silence. Meanwhile The O’Mahony, after a comfortable breakfast, and a brief consultation with Jerry, had put on his hat and strolled out through the pretentious arched doorway of his tumble-down abode. From the outer gate he saw the clustered villagers upon the wharf, and guessed what they were saying and thinking about him and his boat. He smiled contentedly to himself, and lighted a cigar. Then, sucking this with gravity, hands in pockets and hat well back on head, he turned and sauntered across the turreted corner of his castle into the ancient church-yard, which lay between it and the convent. The place was one crowded area of mortuary wreckage—flat tombstones sunken deep into the earth; monumental tablets, once erect, now tipping at every crazy angle; pre-historic, weather-beaten runic crosses lying broken and prone; more modern and ambitious sarcophagi of brick and stone, from which sides or ends had fallen away, revealing to every eye their ghostly contents; the ground covered thickly with nettles and umbrageous weeds, under which the unguided foot continually encountered old skulls and human bones—a grave-yard such as can be seen nowhere in the world save in western Ireland.
The O’Mahony picked his way across this village Golgotha, past the ruins of the ancient church, and into the grounds to the rear of the convent buildings, clambering as he went over whole series of tumbled masonry heaped in weed-grown ridges, until he stood upon the edge of the havoc wrought by this latest storm.
No rapt antiquary ever gazed with more eagerness upon the remains of a pre-Aryan habitation than The O’Mahony now displayed in his scrutiny of the destruction worked by last night’s storm, and of the group of buildings its fury had left unscathed. He took a paper from his pocket, and compared a rude drawing upon it with various points in the architecture about him which he indicated with nods of the head. People watching him might have differed as to whether he was a student of antiquities, a builder or an insurance agent. Probably none would have guessed that he was striving to identify some one of the numerous chimneys-before him with a certain fireplace which he knew of, five-and-twenty feet underground.
As he stood thus, absorbed in calculation, he felt a little hand steal into his big palm, and nestle there confidingly. His face put on a pleased smile, even before he bent it toward the intruder.
“Hello, Skeezucks, is that you?” he said, gently. “Well, they’ve gone an’ busted your ole convent up the back, here, in great shape, ain’t they?”
Every one of the score of months that had passed since these two first met, seemed to have added something to the stature of little Kate O’Mahony. She had grown, in truth, to be a tall girl for her age—and an erect girl, holding her head well in air, into the bargain. Her face had lost its old shy, scared look—at least in this particular company. It was filling out into the likeness of a pretty face, with a pleasant glow of health upon the cheeks, and a happy twinkle in the big, dark eyes.
For answer, the child lifted and swung his hand, and playfully butted her head sidewise against his waist.
“’Tis I that wouldn’t mind if it all came down,” she said, in the softest West Carbery brogue the ear could wish.
“What!” exclaimed the other, in mock consternation. “Well, I never! Why, here’s a gal that don’t want to go to school, or learn now to read an’ cipher or nothin’! P’r’aps you’d ruther work in the lobster fact’ry?”
“No, I’d sail in the boat with you,” said Kate, promptly and with confidence.
The O’Mahony laughed aloud.
“I guess you’d a got your fill of it yisterday, sis,&rdquo............