the hen hawk was idly drifting into the cove toward the little fishing-smack pier of stone and piles which ran out like a tongue from the lower end of the mound. only two of her men were visible on deck. a group of gulls wheeled and floated about the thick little craft as she crawled landward.
these things the o’mahony vaguely noted as a background to the figure of the traitor by the rock, which he studied now with a hard-lined face and stony glance over the shining rifle-barrel.
he hesitated, let the weapon sink, raised it again—then once for all put it down. he would not shoot linsky.
but the problem what to do instead pressed all the more urgently for solution.
the o’mahony pondered it gravely, with an alert gaze scanning the whole field of the rock, the towered mound and the waters beyond for helping hints. all at once his face brightened in token of a plan resolved upon. he whispered some hurried directions to his companions, and then, gun in hand, quitted his ambush. bending low, with long, stealthy strides, he stole along the line of yew hedge to the rear of the rock which sheltered linsky. he reached it without discovery, and, still noiselessly, half slipped, half leaped down the earthern bank beside it. at this instant his shadow betrayed him. linsky turned, his lips opened to speak. then, without a word, he reeled and fell like a log under a terrific sidelong blow on jaw and skull from the stock of the o’mahony’s clubbed gun.
the excited watchers from the sycamore shield behind saw him fall, and saw their leader spring upon his sinking form and drag it backward out of sight of the martello tower. linsky was wearing a noticeable russet-brown short coat. they saw the o’mahony strip this off the other’s prostrate body and exchange it for his own. then he put on linsky’s hat—a drab, low-crowned felt, pulled well over his eyes—and stood out boldly in the noon sunlight, courting observation from the tower. he took a handkerchief from his pocket and spread it out upon the black surface of the rock, and began pacing up and down before it with his eyes on the tower.
presently the same red-coated apparition was momentarily visible at the land-side window. the o’mahony held up his hand and went through a complicated gesture which should signify that he was coming over to the tower, and desired the other to come down and talk with him. this other gave a sign of comprehension and assent, and disappeared.
the o’mahony walked, unarmed, and with a light, springing step, across the sloping sward to the tower. he paused at the side of its gray wall for an instant, to note that the hen hawk lay only a few feet distant from the pier-end. then he entered the open ground-door of the tower, and found himself in a circular, low, stone room, which, though whitewashed, seemed dark, after the bright sunlight outside. some barrels stood in a row against the wall, and one of these was filled with soiled cotton-waste which had been used for cleaning guns. the newcomer helped himself to a large handful of this, and took from his pocket a compact coil of stout packing-cord. then he moved toward the little iron staircase at the other end of the chamber, and, leaning with his back against it, waited.
the next minute the door above opened, and the clatter of spurred boots rang out on the metal steps. the o’mahony’s sidelong glance saw two legs, clad in blue regimental trowsers with a red stripe, descend past his head, and then the flaring vision of a scarlet jacket.
“well, they’re landing, it seems,” said the officer, as his foot was on the bottom step.
the o’mahony turned like a leopard, and sprang forward, flinging his arm around the other’s neck, and jamming him backward against the steps and wall, while, with his free hand, he thrust the greasy, noxious rags into his mouth and face. the struggle between the two strong men was fierce for a moment. then the officer, blinded and choking under the gag, felt himself being helplessly bound, as if with wires, so tightly were the merciless ligatures drawn round arms and legs and head—and then hoisted into mid-air, and ignominiously jolted forward through space, with the effect of riding pickaback on a giant kangaroo.
the o’mahony emerged from the tower, bent almost double under the burden of the stalwart captive, who still kept up a vain, writhing attempt at resistance. the whole episode had lasted scarcely two minutes, and no one above seemed to have heard the few muffled sounds of the conflict.
0151
with a single glance toward the companions he had left in hiding among the sycamores, he began a hasty, staggering course diagonally down the side of the mound toward the water-front. he did not even stop to learn whether pursuit was on foot, or if his orders had been obeyed concerning linsky.
at the foot of the hill he had to force his way through a thick thorn hedge to gain the roadway leading to the pier. weighted as he was, the task was a difficult one, and when it was at last triumphantly accomplished, his clothes hung in tatters about him, and he was covered with scratches. he doggedly made his way onward, however, with bowed, bare head and set teeth, stumbling along the quay to the vessel’s edge. the hen hawk had been brought up to the pier-corner, and the o’mahony, staggering over the gunwale, let his burden fall, none too gently, upon the deck.
a score of yards to the rear, came, at a loping dog-trot, the five men he had left behind him among the trees. one of them bore an armful of guns and his master’s discarded coat and hat. each of the others grasped either a leg or an arm of the still insensible linsky, and, as they in turn leapt upon the vessel, they slung him, face downward and supinely limp, sprawling beside the officer.
with all swiftness, sails were rattled up, and the weight of half-a-dozen brawny shoulders laid against pike-poles to push the vessel off.
the tower had suddenly taken the alarm! the reverberating “boom-m-m” of a cannon sent its echoes from cliff to cliff, and the casement windows under the machicolated eaves were bristling with gun-barrels flashing in the noon-day sun.
for one anxious minute—even as the red-coats began to issue, like a file of wasps, from the doorway at the bottom of the tower—the sails hung slack. then a shifting land-breeze caught and filled the sheets, the hen hawk shook herself, dipped her beak in the sunny waters—and glided serenely forward.
she was standing out to sea, a fair hundred yards from land, when the score of soldiers came to the finish of their chase on the pier-end, and gazed, with hot faces and short breath, upon her receding hull. she was still within range, and they instinctively half-poised their guns to shoot. but here was the difficulty: the o’mahony had lifted the grotesquely bound and gagged figure of their commanding officer, and held it upright beside him at the helm.
for this reason they forbore to shoot, and contented themselves with a verbal volley of curses and shouts of rage, which may have startled the circling gulls, but raised only a staid momentary smile on the gaunt face of the o’mahony. he shrilled back a prompt rejoinder in the teeth of the breeze, which belongs to polite literature no more than did the cries to which it was a response.
thus the hen hawk ploughed her steady way out to open sea—until the red-coats which had been dodging about on the heights above were lost to sight through even the strongest glass, and the brown headlands of the coast had become only dim shadows of blue haze on the sky line.
linsky had been borne below, to have his head washed and bandaged, and then to sleep his swoon off, if so be that he was to recover sensibility at all during what remained to him of terrestrial existence. the british officer had even before that been relieved of the odious gun-rag gag, and some of the more uncomfortable of his bonds. he had been given a seat, too, on a coil of rope beside the capstan—against which he leaned in obdurate silence, with his brows bent in a prolonged scowl of disgust and wrath. more than one of the crew, and of the non-maritime muirisc men as well, had asked him if he wanted anything, and got not so much as a shake of the head in reply.
the o’mahony paced up and down the forward deck, for a long time, watching this captive of his, and vaguely revolving in his thoughts the problem of what to do with him. the taking of prisoners had been no part of his original scheme. indeed, for that matter, nothing of this original scheme seemed to be left. he had had, he realized now, a distinct foreboding of linsky’s treachery. yet its discovery had as completely altered everything as if it had come upon him entirely unawares. he had done none of the things which he had planned to do. the cathach had been brought for nothing. not a shot had been fired. the martello tower remained untaken.
when he ruminated upon these things he ground his teeth and pressed his thin lips together. it was all linsky’s doing. he had linsky safe below, however. it would be strange indeed if this fact did not turn out to have interesting consequences; but there would be time enough later on to deal with that.
the presence of the british officer was of more immediate importance. the o’mahony walked again past the capstan, and looked his prisoner over askance. he was a tall man, well on in the thirties, slender, yet with athletic shoulders; his close-cropped hair and short moustache were of the color of flax; his face and neck were weather-beaten and browned. the face was a good one, with shapely features and a straightforward expression, albeit, seen now at its worst, under a scowl and the smear of the rags. after much hesitation the o’mahony finally made up his mind to speak, and walked around to confront the officer with an amiable nod.
“s’pose you’re jest mad through an’ through at bein’ grabbed that way an’ tied up like a calf goin’ to market, an’ run out in that sort o’ style,” he said, in a cheerfully confidential tone. “i know i’d be jest bilin’! but i hope you don’t bear no malice. it had to be done, an’ done that way, too! you kin see that yourself.”
the englishman looked up with surly brevity of glance at the speaker, and then contemptuously turned his face away. he said never a word.
the o’mahony continued, affably:
“one thing i’m sorry for: it was pritty rough to have your mouth stuffed with gun-wipers; but, really, there wasn’t anything else handy, and time was pressin’. now what d’ye say to havin’ a drink—jest to rense the taste out o’ your mouth?”
the officer kept his eyes fixed on the distant horizon. his lips twitched under the mustache with a movement that might signify temptation, but more probably reflected an impulse to tell his questioner to go to the devil. whichever it was he said nothing.
the o’mahony spoke again, with the least suspicion of acerbity in his tone.
“see here,” he said; “don’t flatter yourself that i’m worryin’ much whether you take a drink or not; an’ i’m not a man that’s much given to takin’ slack from anybody, whether they wear shoulder-straps or not. you’re my pris’ner. i took you—took you myself, an’ let you have a good lively rassle for your money. it wasn’t jest open an’ aboveboard, p’r’aps, but then you was layin’ there with your men hid, dependin’ on a sneak an’ a traitor to deliver me an’ my fellows into your hands. so it’s as broad as ’tis long. only i don’t want to make it especially rough for you, an’ i thought i’d offer you a drink, an’ have a talk with you about what’s to be done next. but if you’re too mad to talk or drink, either, why, i kin wait till you cool down.”
once more the officer looked up, and this time, after some hesitation, he spoke, stiffly; “i should like some whisky and water, if you have it—and will be good enough,” he said.
the o’mahony brought the beverage from below with his own hand. then, as on a sudden thought, he took out his knife, knelt down and cut all the cords which still bound the other’s limbs.
the officer got gingerly up on his feet, kicked his legs out straight and stretched his arms.
“i wish you had done that before,” he said, taking the glass and eagerly drinking off the contents.
“i dunno why i didn’t think of it,” said the o’mahony, with genuine regret. “fact is, i had so many other things on my mind. this findin’ yourself sold out by a fellow that you trusted with your life is enough to kerflummux any man.”
“that ought not to surprise any irishman, i should think,” said the other, curtly. “however much irish conspiracies may differ in other respects, they’re invariably alike in one thing. there’s always an irishman who sells the secret to the government.”
the o’mahony made no immediate answer. the bitter remark had suddenly suggested to him the possibility that all the other movements in cork and kerry, planned for that day, had also been betrayed! he had been too gravely occupied with his own concerns to give this a thought before. as he turned the notion over now in his mind, it assumed the form of a settled conviction of universal treachery.
“there’s a darned sight o’ truth in what you say,” he assented, seriously, after a pause.
the tone of the reply took the english officer by surprise. he looked up with more interest, and the expression of cold sulkiness faded from his face. “you got off with great luck,” he said. “if they had many more like you, perhaps they might do something worth while. you’re an irish-american, i fancy? and you have seen military service?”
the o’mahony answered both questions with an affirmative nod.
“then i’m astonished,” the officer went on, “that you and men like you, who know what war is really like, should come over here, and spend your money and risk your lives and liberty, without the hope of doing anything more than cause us a certain amount of bother. as a soldier, you must know that you have no earthly chance of success. the odds are ten thousand to one against you.”
the o’mahony’s eyes permitted themselves a momentary twinkle. “well, now, mister,” he said, carelessly; “i dunno so much about that. take you an’ me, now, f’r instance, jest as we stand: i don’t reckon that bettin’ men ’u’d precisely tumble over one another in the rush to put their money on you. maybe i’m no judge, but that’s the way it looks to me. what do you think yourself, now—honest injun?”
the englishman was not responsive to this light view of the situation. he frowned again, and pettishly shrugged his shoulders.
“of course, i did not refer to that!” he said. “my misadventure is ridiculous and—ah—personally inconvenient—but it—ah—isn’t war. you take nothing by it.”
“oh, yes—i’ve taken a good deal—too much, in fact,” said the o’mahony, going off into a brown study over the burden of his acquisitions which his words conjured up. he paced up and down beside his prisoner for a minute or two. then he halted, and turned to him for counsel.
“what do you think, yourself, would be the best thing for me to do with you, now’t i’ve got you?” he asked.
“oh—really!—really, i must decline to advise with you upon the subject,” the other replied, frostily.
“on the one hand,” mused the o’mahony, aloud, “you got scooped in afore you had time to fire a shot, or do any mischief at all—so ’t we don’t owe you no grudge, so to speak. well, that’s in your favor. and then there’s your mouth rammed full of gun-waste—that ought to count some on your side, too.”
the englishman looked at him, curiosity struggling with dislike in his glance, but said nothing.
“on ’t’ other hand,” pursued the o’mahony, “you ain’t quite a prisoner of war, because you was openly dealin’ with a traitor and spy, and playin’ to come the gouge game over me an’ my men. that’s a good deal ag’in’ you. for sake of argument, let’s say the thing is a saw-off, so far as what’s happened already is concerned. the big question is: what’s goin’ to happen?”
“really—” the officer began again, and then closed his lips abruptly.
“yes,” the other went on, “that’s where the shoe pinches. i s’pose now, if i was to land you on the coast yonder, anywhere, you wouldn’t give your word to not start an alarm for forty-eight hours, would you?”
“certainly not!” said the englishman, with prompt decision.
“no, i thought not. of course, the alarm’s been given hours ago, but your men didn’t see me, or git enough of a notion of my outfit to make their description dangerous. it’s different with you.”
the officer nodded his head to indicate that he was becoming interested in the situation, and saw the point.
“so that really the most sensible thing i could do, for myself and my men, ’u’d be to lash you to a keg of lead and drop you overboard—wouldn’t it, now?”
the englishman kept his eyes fixed on the middle distance of gently, heaving waters, and did not answer the question. the o’mahony, watching his unmoved countenance with respect, made pretense of waiting for a reply, and leaned idly against the capstan to fill his pipe. after a long pause he was forced to break the silence.
“it sounds rough,” he said; “but it’s the safest way out of the thing. got a wife an’ family?”
the officer turned for the fraction of an instant to scrowl indignantly, the while he snapped out:
“that’s none of your d——d business!”
whistling softly to himself, with brows a trifle lifted to express surprise, the o’mahony walked the whole length of the deck and back, pondering this reply:
“i’ve made up my mind,” he announced at last, upon his return. “we’ll land you in an hour or so—or at least give you the dingey and some food and drink, and let you row yourself in, say, six or seven miles. you can manage it all right before nightfall—an’ i’ll take my chances on your startin’ the hue-an’-cry.”
“understand, i promise nothing!” interposed the other.
“no, that’s all right,” said the o’mahony. “mind, if i thought there was any way by which you was likely to get these men o’ mine into trouble, i’d have no more scruple about jumpin’ you into the water there than i would about pullin’ a fish out of it. but, as i figure it out, they don’t stand in any danger. as for me—well, as i said, i’ll take my chances. it’ll make me a heap o’ trouble, i dare say, but i deserve that. this trip o’ mine’s been a fool-performance from the word ‘go,’ and it’s only fair i should pay for it.”
the englishman looked up at the yawl rigging, taut under the strain of filled sails; at the men huddled together forward; last of all at his captor. his eyes softened.
“you’re not half a bad sort,” he said, “in—ah—spite of the gun-waste. i should think it likely that your men would never be troubled, if they go home, and—ah—behave sensibly.”
the o’mahony nodded as if a pledge had been given.
“that’s what i want,” he said. “they are simply good fellows who jest went into this thing on my account.”
“but in all human probability,” the officer went on, “you will be caught and punished. it will be a miracle if you escape.”
the o’mahony blew smoke from his pipe with an incredulous grin, and the other went on:
“it does not rest alone with me, i assure you. a minute detailed description of your person, captain harrier, has been in our possession for two days.”
“i-gad! that reminds me,” broke in the o’mahony, his face darkening as he spoke—“the man who gave you that name and that description is lyin’ down-stairs with a cracked skull.”
“i don’t know that it is any part of my duty,” said the officer; “to interest myself in that person, or—ah—what befalls him.”
“no,” said the o’mahony, “i guess not! i guess not!”
