At five o’clock on this February morning it was still dark. For more than half an hour a light had been from time to time visible, flitting about in the inhabited parts of the castle. There was no answering gleams from any of the cottage windows, along the other side of the village green; but all the same, solitary figures began to emerge from the cabins, until eighteen men had crossed the open space and were gathered upon the little stone pier at the edge of the muirisc. They stood silently together, with only now and again a whispered word, waiting for they knew not what.
Presently, by the faint semblance of light which was creeping up behind the eastern hills, they saw Jerry, Malachy and Dominic approaching, each bearing a burden on his back. These were two of the long coffin-like boxes and two kegs, one prodigiously heavy, the other by comparison light. They were deposited on the wharf without a word, and the two first went back again, while Dominic silently led the others in the task of bestowing what all present knew to be guns, lead and powder, on board the Hen Hawk. This had been done, and the men had again waited for some minutes before The O’Mahony made his appearanee.
He advanced through the obscure morning twilight with a brisk step, whistling softly as he came. The men noted that he wore shooting-clothes, with gaiters to the knee, and a wide-brimmed, soft, black hat, even then known in Ireland as the American hat, just as the Americans had previously called it the Kossuth.
Half-way, but within full view of the waiting group, he stopped, and looked critically at the sky. Then he stepped aside from the path, and took off this hat of his. The men wondered what it meant.
Jerry was coming along again from the castle, his arms half filled with parcels. He stopped beside the chief, and stood facing the path, removing his cap as well.
Then the puzzled observers saw Malachy looming out of the misty shadows, also bare-headed, and carrying at arms length before him a square case, about in bulk like a hat-box. As he passed The O’Mahony and Jerry they bowed, and then fell in behind him, and marched, still uncovered, toward the landing-place.
The tide was at its flood, and the Hen Hawk had been hauled by ropes up close to the wharf. Malachy, with stolid face and solemn mien, strode in fine military style over the gunwale and along the flush deck to the bow. Here he deposited his mysterious burden, bowed to it, and then put on the hat he had been carrying under his arm.
The men crowded on board at this—all save two, who now rowed forward in a small boat, and began pulling the Hen Hawk out over the bar with a hawser. As the unwieldy craft slowly moved, The O’Mahony turned a long, ruminative gaze upon the sleeping hamlet they were leaving behind. The whole eastern sky was awake now with light—light which lay in brilliant bars of lemon hue upon the hill-tops, and mellowed upward through opal and pearl into fleecy ashen tints. The two in the boat dropped behind, fastened their tiny craft to the stern, and clambered on board.
A fresh, chill breeze caught and filled the jib once they had passed the bar, and the crew laid their hands upon the ropes, expecting orders to hoist the mainsail and mizzen-sheets. But The O’Mahony gave no sign, and lounged in silence against the tiller, spitting over the taffrail into the water, until the vessel had rounded the point and stood well off the cliffs, out of sight of Muirisc, plunging softly along through the swell. Then he beckoned Dominic to the helm, and walked over toward the mast, with a gesture which summoned the whole score of men about him. To them he began the first speech he had ever made in his life:
“Now, boys,” he said, “prob’ly you’ve noticed that the name’s been painted off the starn of this ere vessel, over night. You must ’a’ figured it out from that, that we’re out on the loose, so to speak. Thay’s only a few of ye that have ever known me as a Fenian. It was agin the rules that you should know me, but I’ve known you all, an’ I’ve be’n watchin’ you drill, night after night, unbeknown to you. In fact, it come to the same thing as my drillin’ you myself—because, until I taught your center, Jerry, he knew about as much about it as a pig knows about ironin’ a shirt. Well, now you all see me. I’m your boss Fenian in these parts.”
“Huroo!” cried the men, waving their hats.
I don’t really suppose this intelligence surprised them in the least, but they fell gracefully in with The O’Mahony’s wish that it should seem to do so, as is the polite wont of their race.
“Well,” he continued, colloquially, “here we are! We’ve been waitin’ and workin’ for a deuce of a long time. Now, at last, they’s somethin’ for us to do. It ain’t my fault that it didn’t come months and months ago. But that don’t matter now. What I want to know is: are you game to follow me?”
“We are, O’Mahony!” they called out, as one man.
“That’s right. I guess you know me well enough by this time to know I don’t ask no man to go where I’m afeared to go myself. There’s goin’ to be some fightin’, though, an’ you fellows are new to that sort of thing. Now, I’ve b’en a soldier, on an’ off, a good share of my life. I ain’t a bit braver than you are, only I know more about what it’s like than you do. An’ besides, I should be all-fired sorry to have any of ye git hurt. You’ve all b’en as good to me as your skins could hold, an’ I’ll do my best to see you through this thing, safe an’ sound.”
“Cheers for The O’Mahony!” some one cried out, excitedly; but he held up a warning hand.
“Better not holler till you git out o’ the woods,” he said, and then went on: “Seein’ that you’ve never, any of you, be’n under fire, I’ve thought of somethin’ that’ll help you to keep a stiff upper-lip, when the time comes to need it. A good many of you are O’Mahonys born; all of you come from men who have followed The O’Mahony of their time in battle. Well, in them old days, you know, they used to carry their cathach with them, to bring ’em luck, same as American boys spit on their bait when they’re fishin’. So I’ve had Malachy, here, bring along a box, specially made for the purpose, an’ it’s chuck full of the bones of a family saint of mine. We found him—me an’ Jerry—after the wind had blown part of the convent down, layin’ just where he was put when he died, with the crucifix in his hands, and a monk’s gown on. I ain’t a very good man, an’ p’r’aps you fellows have noticed that I ain’t much of a hand for church, or that sort of thing; but I says to myself, when I found this dead an’ dried bo............