CHAPTER XI

ON DRINANE HEAD

Notwithstanding Manus's valorous undertaking to come and call her in the morning, Norah took the precaution of getting up after he had gone and drawing back the curtains and pulling up the blind, so that the first gleam of the gray dawn might fall into her room and wake her. She had but just huddled back into bed again when she heard the drawing-room door open and good-nights being exchanged. A minute later the handle of her own door was softly turned and Anstace came in, carefully shading her candle with her hand to keep its light from falling on her little sister's face. Norah closed her eyes tight and feigned to be asleep. She was afraid of Anstace questioning her about her unusual wakefulness, but it gave her an uncomfortable sense of deceit to feel Anstace with cautious touch drawing the tumbled bed-clothes straight, and tucking them in comfortably about her. Then she went away as softly as she had come, and Norah fell asleep and started up, as it seemed to herself, but a few minutes afterwards, to find the window opposite her bed a square of pale-grayish light, and the different objects in the room becoming dimly visible.

It was only after a minute or two's partial bewilderment that she could remember what it was which impended that morning, and why she ought to be awake. In a moment, however, it all came back to her mind, and she slipped hastily out upon the floor. Manus had not come to call her as yet, but it would be well, all the same, to know whether it were already three o'clock or not. A strange, ghostly little figure Norah looked as she stole along the passage and down the stairs in her night-gown and bare feet to where the tall old clock in the hall ticked solemnly on, its ticking sounding ever so much louder now in the silence of the house than it did ordinarily during the day-time.

Norah had to mount on a chair so as to bring her face upon a level with that of the clock before she could make out the position of the two hands, and ascertain that it was as yet but half-past two. Back to bed, therefore, she had to journey; but she did not venture to lie down, lest sleep should steal upon her unawares. She sat up straight instead, with her knees drawn up to her chin and the blankets pulled round her shoulders, waiting till, after what seemed to her an interminable time, the clock downstairs told out the hour with three ringing metallic strokes.

There was still no stir from Manus's side of the house, and so she started off on her peregrinations once more. She crept past the door of Roderick's room, which was next to that of Manus, with bated breath. The handle of the door made what seemed an appallingly loud noise as she turned it. Within all was darkness, and the deep, regular breathing, which was the only sound to be heard, betokened that Lanty's peril had not interfered with Manus's slumbers as much as he himself had expected.

"Manus, it has struck three!" whispered Norah from the door.

There was no answer. The breathing continued as regularly as before, and Norah had to make her way across the room in dread of tumbling over some of the furniture and making a clatter, which would arouse half the household.

"Manus, wake up!" she whispered again as she reached the bed. "It's time to dress."

"Eh--ah--hi--what's the matter?" came in indistinct gurglings from amongst the bed-clothes.

"It's three o'clock, Manus--past it. And we're to go up to warn Lanty; don't you remember?"

"Lanty!" in very sleepy accents. "Oh, bother, Norah, we'll leave Lanty alone!"

It was quite evident that the enterprise bore a very different aspect to Manus now, just roused out of his warm sleep, from what it had done a few hours before.

"But the police and Captain Lester are going up to look for him, and they'll take his still away, and carry him and his friends off to prison."

"Nonsense! Not they! Trust old Lanty to look after himself. He'll show them a trick or two if they come making trouble up there. I don't believe they'll find the way, and very likely we shouldn't either."

"But we ought to try," urged Norah, not a little taken aback at this unexpected change of front on Manus's part.

"Oh, it's too great a fag, and I'm tired. Go back to bed, Norah, it'll be all right, you'll see."

And a rustling of the bed-clothes betokened that Manus, after giving this comfortable assurance, had turned over and disposed himself to sleep once more.

Norah retired baffled from the room. It was full daylight by this time, the cold, cheerless light of dawn, and she stood in the lobby window, looking at the gray world outside, and debating with herself what she should do. Perhaps, as Manus had said, it would be all right, and Lanty's hiding-place would remain undiscovered, but on the other hand Captain Lester, for all his jollity and good-humour, did not look like a man who would follow a wild-goose chase, and probably he had made himself well acquainted with the whereabouts of the still before starting on his present enterprise. Norah thought of Lanty's ugly, good-natured face, and of his kindness to her the day of the seal-hunt. She was a little girl who did not forget kindness very readily; and then there were Biddy and Tom and Bride to be thought of. What a disgrace and a sorrow it would be to all of them if Lanty should be marched along the road handcuffed on his way to Ennis jail, as Manus had said he would be! No, the police should not take Lanty if she could help it--that was a determination to which Norah very quickly came, and since Manus would not go with her she would go alone out on Drinane Head, and warn him of his danger. She thought that from Manus's description of the place upon the previous night she could hardly fail to find it.

It must be confessed that it required all Norah's self-command, when she went back to her own little room, to keep her from plunging into bed again, it looked so invitingly warm, and the raw chill of the early morning had penetrated to her very bones. She withstood the temptation bravely, however, and by the time that she had deluged her face abundantly with cold water, and scrubbed it into a glow with a rough towel, and had huddled in all haste into her clothes, the last remnant of sleepiness had disappeared.

It was a strange sensation to step out-of-doors into the freshness of the day which had but just begun. The birds were awake, and twittered loudly in the trees as Norah walked down the avenue, but they and she seemed the only things that were astir as yet. The cattle were still lying down in the fields, as they had lain during the night, and the doors of the few cabins which she passed upon the road were shut, and not even a curl of smoke rose upwards from the chimneys. It was a longer walk than Norah had expected, but she kept the lofty frowning headland for which she was bound well in view, and trudged steadily on. The road grew rougher and steeper as she went, and dwindled down at last into a mere cattle-track which led out upon the open moorland and left her free to make her way in what direction she pleased.

Norah had never been so far from home by herself before, but that did not trouble her much, any more than did the heathery solitude on which she found herself. She had grown used to lonely rambles since they had come to live at Kilshane, and her only fear was that she might miss the snug retreat in which Lanty and his confederates carried on their illegal practices, or that she might not reach it in time to enable them to escape. She found that walking through the deep heather, which reached almost to her waist, was very hard and tiring work, and here and there she came upon soft, swampy places into which her feet sunk with, a squelching sound, and threatened more than once to stick fast altogether. All the same she struggled onwards and upwards valiantly, sometimes helped on her way by a bare slope of limestone which cropped out above the heather, and sometimes having to make a long step to cross a rift or crevice, which seemed to go down into unknown depths, but which was filled almost to the brim with little green ferns and mosses, and trailing brambles, which had established themselves in there out of reach of cutting blasts.

A yellow glow had been spreading gradually higher into the sky, and the tops of the great mountains to her left were bathed in sunlight. Suddenly, as Norah walked along, she saw her own shadow thrown before her on the rocks--the sun, a red, rayless disc, had risen up over the mountains, and in a moment the dull monotony of the landscape broke into sudden life and colour. It was the first sunrise which Norah had ever been out-of-doors to witness, but its beauty awoke little response in her, her only thought being that if the sun had risen it must be getting late--late, that is, for what she had to do, and that it behoved her to hurry on if her expedition was not to fail of its purpose. Panting, she struggled on up the steep heathery incline, till she stopped all at once with a little gasp of wonder and relief--she had reached the end of the long ascent, and almost at her very feet the great cliff sank sheer to the sea, five hundred feet below.

For a brief moment the little girl stood still to recover her breath, whilst the keen salt wind blew her hair and her short skirts about. A sea-gull circled close above her uttering its short, plaintive cry, then with extended wings glided far out over the abyss. No other living thing was in view on all the wide waste of heather and sea, in the midst of which she stood, a little solitary speck.

She could walk faster now, for here, on the edge of the cliffs, exposed to the fierce western gales, not even the heather could grow; there were only a few inches of black peaty soil covering the rocks. The long, level rays of the early sun shone upon her as she hurried along, and far beneath her the great Atlantic surges broke in foam upon the rocks. She had to make more than one detour to avoid yawning clefts that ran far inland, another rise had to be struggled up, and she stood at last on the very summit of Drinane Head.

Immediately below her was a hollow, a little green oasis which seemed scooped out from the surrounding wilderness, and with a great throb of joy Norah recognized the description which Manus had given her, and knew she had arrived at the secluded retreat in which Lanty had deemed that he might securely carry on his lawless trade. The little mountain tarn lay in the centre of the circle of green, its black sullen waters not brightened even by the morning sunshine; a tiny stream flowed out of it and fell over the edge of the cliffs, to be blown away in mist and spray long before the sea was reached. Facing her, midway between the lake and the cliffs, was the thatched hovel of which Manus had spoken, built against a rock, so that the wreaths of blue peat-smoke which curled up from its roof seemed to rise out of the very ground.

No one, police-constable or anyone else, was in sight, and by all appearances she was still in time to accomplish her errand. Slipping, scrambling, jumping from ledge to ledge of the rocks, Norah descended from the height on which she stood into the little dell below. She had to cross the streamlet which purled and gurgled between banks of close mountain turf in its short course to the sea. A large stone, however, had been placed in its bed to facilitate such crossings, and a moment later Norah was knocking boldly at the door of the hovel.

A shuffling of feet was heard within, a subdued muttering of voices, then the door was cautiously opened a little way, and a fierce-looking man with unkempt red hair and beard appeared. Norah recognized him at once as the steersman of the boat which they had encountered down below on their return from Ballintaggart Cave.

"Is Lanty Hogan here, please?" she enquired, whilst he stared in speechless amazement at his unlooked-for visitor.

"An' what wud Lanty be doin' up here on the bare mountain, an' him wid his father's good house to shtop in?" the man returned in true Irish fashion, answering one question by asking another.

"But Lanty has been here, I know," Norah said earnestly, "and if he's here still will you tell him, please, that Norah O'Brien is here and wants to see him about something very important?"

"An' what ailed ye, Miss Norah, to be runnin' up here afther me an' it scarce cockshout yit? Shure there's nothin' gone amiss down in Kilshane?"

And there was genuine anxiety in Lanty's face as he unceremoniously thrust the first speaker to one side and appeared in the doorway himself. He was only in his shirt and trousers, and his face had a sodden, smoke-bleared look.

"There is nothing wrong at Kilshane, thank you, Lanty," Norah began rather nervously, for two or three other men in similar attire had clustered at the door, all gazing at her and evidently curious to learn her errand. "Captain Lester, the resident magistrate, stayed at our house last night, and he and Mr. Roderick are coming up here this morning with a lot of policemen to search for your still. Master Manus heard them talking about it after dinner last night, so I came up to tell you."

"Tare an' ages!"

Lanty almost knocked Norah over as he dashed out of the house, and in another minute was bounding like a cat up the rocky knoll from which she had just descended. Screening himself behind a block of limestone which topped the summit, he crouched for a moment, gazing about him, his eyes shaded from the sun, then came springing down again as actively as he had gone up.

"The child's i' the right!" he ejaculated breathlessly, as he got back, "an' sorra moment to lose! The peelers is movin' up to take us back-ways an' front-ways an' all sides at wanst, but wid the help o' goodness we'll sarcumvint thim theer boys yit."

The men drew away from the door into the centre of the floor, speaking in hoarse, excited murmurs; and Norah, impelled by curiosity, stepped inside, where she could see the interior of the hovel and what was going on there.

A roaring turf-fire burnt at the farther end, making the heat of the room almost unendurable, and a skinny, wrinkled old woman, with locks of grizzled hair escaping from under the red handkerchief round her head, was engaged in tending it. On a tripod above the fire stood a tall, strangely-shaped vessel, closed at the top save for a pipe that issued from it and wound in many spiral coils round the inside of a large tub filled with cold water and placed upon the hearth. The pipe passed out again at the bottom of the tub, discharging the freshly-distilled spirits which had been condensed within it in its passage through the cold water into a large earthenware pan which acted as receiver. Norah had hardly had time, however, to contemplate this strange and rude apparatus when, at an order given in Irish by the red-bearded man who had opened the door to her, two of the other men lifted the still off the fire, and carrying it outside the door, poured the boiling liquor within it into the little stream; another caught up the earthenware pan and emptied it in similar fashion.

"A sin an' shame to be sendin' the good potheen over the racks to the fishes," muttered the red-bearded man, whom the others called Malachy, and who seemed to exercise some sort of authority over the lawless crew. "Stir yerselves, boys," he went on louder, "or they'll be on ye afore all's done."

The still itself, and the tripod on which it had stood, the tub with the "worm" still coiled within it, and all the other portions of the apparatus were carried up to the tarn and sunk in its dark, peat-stained water, so also were two kegs of whisky which were brought out from the inner room of the hovel. Malachy himself seized a broken spade, which formed part of an accumulation of rubbish in one corner, and carried spadeful after spadeful of blazing peats out of the house, flinging them, hissing and spluttering, into the stream, till the furnace on the hearth had been reduced to the limits of an ordinary domestic fire. A big black pot was suspended over it, in the place where the still had been; water and meal were hastily poured in, and the old woman took her stand before it, an iron spoon in her hand, stirring as composedly as if she had never assisted in any more dubious enterprise than preparing stirabout for the breakfast of her son and his friends.

"Now, thim theer boys may come as soon as plazes thim, an' we'll be ready to bid thim the top o' the marnin'," chuckled Malachy, when the preparations indoors were completed and the men who had gone to sink the still and the other appliances in the tarn had straggled back to the hovel again. Then, as his eye fell on Norah, whom in the bustle everyone had forgotten, but who had remained standing just within the door watching all these proceedings with the keenest interest, he exclaimed, "Murdher alive, what'll we do wid the child at all, at all?"

Strangely enough, this question had not occurred to any of the band before, and at that moment four black dots came into view upon the heathery skyline above the little lake. They were the heads of men moving steadily down upon the cabin. A minute or two later two more dark figures appeared high up on the rocky crest which Lanty had scaled to get a view. Clearly the house was surrounded and escape from it cut off.

"Hoide her in theer, quick!" suggested one of the men, pointing towards the inner room.

"An' if it's minded to sarch the house they'd be," retorted Malachy contemptuously, "sure the little darlin' wud be desthroyed for comin' to bring us warnin', an' us desthroyed along of her."

"'Tis the born gomeral that y'are!" exclaimed the old woman, who had hitherto continued to stir the black pot assiduously, but who seemed now to wake up suddenly to the emergency of the situation. Still grasping the iron spoon in one hand, she caught the terrified Norah by the other, and dragged her unceremoniously towards the fire.

"Tak' the cheer an' sit down," she said authoritatively.

Malachy obeyed his mother, as Norah took her to be, by bringing forward the solitary wooden chair of which the establishment boasted, and seating himself upon it by the fire. With a sudden grab the old woman pulled Norah's hat off and flung it amongst the lumber in the corner, then snatching up an old tartan shawl which lay on the window-ledge, she put it over the little girl's head and wrapped it hastily about her.

"Stand her beside ye an' she'll pass for wan o' yer own," she said, giving Norah a push towards her son as she spoke.

"Niver fear, 'cushla, nayther hurt nor harm shall come to ye," whispered Malachy encouragingly, as he drew her to stand at his knee. "Stand still an' kape yer mouth shut, that's all that's for you to do."