Part 7

Meanwhile a brief and anxious colloquy was going on between the two man-trappers. The urgency of the situation allowed scant time for words, and small choice of deeds. In a few moments the swift rising of the tide would swamp the children on their little ledge of safety, and though that lay within a man’s jump of the Mulrane’s station, to spring upon it without dislodging its other occupants was, by reason of its diminutive size and slippery surface, an altogether impossible feat.

“Musha, good gracious, what at all quare antic is the fellow at now?” commented Mrs Colgan to her criticising companions on the other side of Slughnatraigh, as they saw Pat Mulrane suddenly plunge forward as if about to dive off the lowest shelf of the rock. “Is it fallin’ after his head he’d be, to the back of everythin’ else?”

“Begorra, it’s makin’ a foot-stick of himself he is,” Six-pound-ten averred, “to let the children across,” and so it was.

By wedging his toes tightly into a crevice of the big boulder, and gripping with both hands a hold of the slimy, tawny-podded wreaths on the small one, Pat, prone at full length, just spanned the interval between them, over which Art stepped thus on a footbridge, and returned with a frightened child swinging from either arm. This manœuvre was executed with the utmost despatch, yet barely in time, for Pat’s precarious clutch of the slithery seaweed failed just as the other three were safely landed, so that down he went face foremost into the smothering slough, whence his brother hauled him out, blinded, half-choked, hideous to behold in a mask of blue-black oozy mire, after a desperate wrestle with the clinging horror of Slughnatraigh.

All serious danger, nevertheless, was at an end once they were set high and dry upon the big boulder, where they could wait securely until the rescue was completed with the help of inanimate planks and ropes. The strange childer were before long transferred to the Mulranes’ house, and joined there by the Colgans with their party. Not for many a year had Mrs Mulrane entertained so much company, and more kept dropping in through the afternoon, as rumours reached the town, and brought neighbours to investigate upon the spot.

Deep concern had prevailed at Clochranbeg towards the close of the day before, when Min and Atty were found to have entirely and unaccountably disappeared. Not only were the children general favourites, but a feeling existed that the parish was in some measure responsible for them, and that a slur would be cast upon it if they were allowed, as Joe Fottrell said, “to go to loss.” Most people had a sense that such an event would be unlucky as well as lamentable. Search-parties had been roaming over the bogs all night, and some were still going to and fro among their holes and hillocks; but an opinion that they would not again be seen alive was steadily gaining ground.

Nobody wandered more widely and with a more distracted mind than Mrs O’Hagan, the strange childer’s landlady, who was reproaching herself bitterly for having “maybe scared them away wid blamin’ them for th’ ould kilt hin, and talkin’ about the Union.” She had gone so far afield that the news of their recovery did not find her till near sunset, and even then in the shape of reports at once disquieting and contradictory. Some said that the strange childer had been last seen right in the middle of Slughnatraigh. Some that old Mrs Mulrane had hunted them away from her door, and set the dog at them. Others, with much convincing persistency and detail, related that the man-trappers “were after drowndin’ both of them below on the strand, and they screechin’ the way you might hear them in Derry.”

Her relief was therefore intense when she found them happily established by the Mulranes’ fire, little the worse for their adventures, which several neighbours graphically recounted to her, laying especial stress upon the heroism displayed by Pat Mulrane, who had come, Six-pound-ten said, “widin an ames ace of losin’ his life over it.” Upon Pat, who still looked limp and woebegone as he sat in the chimney-corner, Mrs O’Hagan showered, vastly to his further discomfort, profuse praises and benedictions.

“Long sorry I’d be,” she said in peroration, “to be passin’ remarks agin any person in the parish, but I question is there e’er another boy in it that would take and make a foot-stick of himself above the bewitched ould houle out yonder, that’s neither land nor water, unless ’twas the Divil had the stirrin’ of them together accordin’ to some plan of his own, as is like enough, for the unnathural thrimblin’ and quakin’s in them yit. Sure now, if it wasn’t only for yourself, Pat Mulrane, it’s at the black bottom of that awful place them two little imps of innicent crathurs ’ud be lyin’ this minyit, supposin’ there is a bottom to it at all, instead of sittin’ here as grand as you plase, aitin’ bread and treckle, the bould little tormints, and half the parish heart-scalded runnin’ over the country after them the lenth of the night.”

“Och, they’re welcome, ma’am,” Pat muttered ambiguously.

“Take a cup of tay, ma’am; it’s dry you’re apt to be after all that fine talk you’re givin’ Pat,” his mother said with a sub-acid suavity, for while exulting on his behalf she retained a resentful memory of her last visit to Mrs O’Hagan, and of Dan’s rejected suit.

Mrs O’Hagan accepted the tea unsuspectingly, though protesting that she had only looked in to fetch home the children; yet in the end she went her way without them. The Mulranes were loth to relinquish them so soon, chiefly on account of Maggie Dowling, who from her imprisoning box-bed declared that “the little gossoon wid his quare song done her heart good,” and who seemed sadly cast down by the prospect of their departure. “You might lave them at all events,” Mrs Mulrane suggested, “till the crathur’s tired of the fantigue.” And Mrs O’Hagan consented, mindful of what poverty prevailed in her own and her neighbours’ houses, and not ignorant that the Mulranes were at this time some degrees better off than the rest. As for Min and Atty themselves, the friendliness of Garry, and the abundance of freshly-baked griddle cakes, very sufficiently reconciled them to their change of quarters.

In this way it came about that the strange childer took up their abode with the man-trappers, and one result of it was that the latter shook off the bad name which had been fastened upon them. From that day the youth of Clochranbeg transferred their animosity to unchancy Slughnatraigh, which they thenceforth regarded with increased dread and aversion, and at whose impassively sullen, grey face they pelted vanishing stones from an even more cautious distance than when the man-trappers had been their mark. Six-pound-ten’s oft-repeated narrative of the strange childer’s hair’s-breadth escape always wound up with, “Ay, bedad, ’twas the fine foot-stick he made of himself entirely that time;” and this helped to suggest the new nickname with which it somehow seemed necessary to replace the old. It became customary to speak of Pat Mulrane and his brother as “the foot-sticks,” a title which, in the circumstances, nobody could shout after them with hostile derision. Moreover, as Min and Atty often accompanied them to the strand or the town, they were gradually drawn out of the isolation into which they had shrunk, and began to hold again some intercourse with their kind.

These changes were all more or less soothing to Mrs Mulrane, and under their influence she showed a perceptible diminution in the eccentricity and moodiness of her demeanour. But her clearing sky showed its brightest patch one day when a friend of the M‘Evoys looked in on her charged with what were obviously overtures to the making up of a match between their Lizzie and her Pat. On that occasion she uttered dark and riddling speeches, which would not have misbeseemed an ancient Pythoness, or the heroine of an Æschylean drama, about people whose ignorance and pride “hindered them of taking what was offered them, when belike nothing ailed it all the while except bein’ a dale too good for them, or the likes of them, and who were very apt to find they had missed their chances, if ever they come lookin’ after it again.”

Nevertheless this lifting of her clouds was only partial and transitory. Their shadow dropped upon her once more before the dissatisfied go-between had well re-crossed the threshold, and she fell into a gloomy reverie, standing idle at her door, while the chant of the _Mountain Pig_ came faintly from the inner room, where it was beguiling that long spring afternoon for Maggie Dowling. If she had put her dejection into words they would have run somewhat as follows: “It’s poor Dan I do be thinkin’ bad of. Them other two boys might be right enough, but me heart’s scalded about him, for he didn’t get fairity wid it all, troth he did not. And it’s blamin’ me he is, I well know. There might be a letter at the office agin next Saturday, but it’s not to me he’ll write. Last time it was to Pat, and before that to Maggie and Art; niver a word he sent to me. It’s him I’m thinkin’ bad of, the poor child. But I might maybe get news of him on Saturday.”

OLD ISAAC’S BIGGEST HAUL

Grace M‘Evoy heard the boys talking about it after supper as they sat on the rocks before their doorway, in which she stood knitting; and the conversation very much grieved and vexed her for several reasons. She was the only daughter of old Isaac M‘Evoy, and sister of “the boys,” so called merely because they were still unmarried. They were all three her elders, and she herself was “well on to thirty.” Theirs was a fishing family, and the chief event of her days had always been the going and coming of the boat. Not the same boat, for their old _Granuaile_, condemned as unseaworthy, had lain discarded by the tiny rough pier for the last half-dozen years or so. Her successor and namesake, however, sadly dissatisfied old M‘Evoy, who seldom failed to draw invidious comparisons between the two craft when embarking or disembarking. He had done so this evening as the _Granuaile_ junior was being fastened to a staple wedged in among the boulders.

“Sure, if we’d been in _her_, the crathur,” he had said, looking regretfully at the black, slug-like shape, “we’d ha’ got home in one-half the time. She knew how to be takin’ advantage of every breath of win’ she met wid. But this lump of a baste ’ill go sulkin’ along wid herself before the handiest breeze ever blew in the bay, as sodden as a gob of mud.”

“At all events,” Thady had replied, handing out an oar to Grace, “_she_ isn’t apt to be springin’ a leak on us any minyit, might land us to the bottom like a handful of cockles droppin’ out of your pocket.”

But his father had stumped unheeding across the shingle-strip that led indoors. He was smoking a last pipe now by the hearth, safely beyond hearing of his sons’ discourse, although to Grace in the doorway the voices came so clearly that she sometimes glanced to and fro nervously, apprehensive lest they should penetrate too far.

“The long and the short of it is, it’s too ould he’s gettin’,” summed up Thady, the middle brother; “we’d do a dale better wid him out of the boat.”

“Ay would we so,” said Tim, the youngest, “and himself would as well.”

“If he’d contint himself at all,” Joe said more doubtfully. “Goodness knows he’s been at it long enough. But he’s as headstrong as a two-year-ould; and, sure, how can we go agin the man, if he’s got a mind to be comin’ along?”

“What I was thinkin’ is this,” said Thady; “we might slip out early to-morra very quiet, before he’s awake, and pick up young Farrelly goin’ by the point. _He’s_ smart enough. And then, wid nothin’ on board delayin’ us, we’d have a good chance of a bit of luck.”

“Bedad, now, ’twould be the best way,” Tim said with decision.

“Me father’d be ragin’ and annoyed, belike, over it,” Joe said with doubt.

“Sure, man, it’s one of them things that can’t be helped if he is, like the rain fallin’ straight and the water flowin’ crooked,” said Thady. “He might better be ragin’ than drowndin’ himself and the whole of us, as he might very aisy one of these rough days, let alone losin’ the mackerel on us. It stands to raison we’ll have to take and lave him behind sooner or later if he won’t lave himself. We can bid Grace tell him we didn’t like to be disturbin’ him that early, and she’ll conthrive to pacify him. If he wants to be doin’ somethin’ there’s plinty of nets to mend.”

After a little further discussion this plan was adopted, and as a preliminary step the boys presently went indoors to bed, for they agreed that they must start with the soon-returning summer sun. But their sister lingered for a while in the doorway, looking out into the waning twilight with a pucker of anxiety between her eyes and an angry grief at her heart.

“Cruel annoyed himself ’ill be,” was the burden of her meditations, “cruel annoyed. And he as gay and plisant in his mind this evenin’ as anythin’, and sayin’ it looked to be grand fishin’ weather the morra--and so it will, worse luck; but they’ll all be after slippin’ off wid themselves on him, and nobody only me about the place to thry put a good face on it, and I might as well spare meself the trouble, for he’ll see the raison they done it as plain as I see the moon risin’ up behind Slieve Sterran. Sure now, if I was them, I’d liefer every mackerel ever swum in the green say went to loss than to be vexin’ him that way, the crathur, troth I would so.... And Thady agin him, that he thought a dale on ever,” she continued bitterly. “I wouldn’t scarce have believed it of him. But ah, sure, after all ’tisn’t Thady’s fau’t entirely if Himself’s gettin’ ould--a thrifle ouldish--on us. Goin’ on for eighty he is--and then suppose he went, and by chance anythin’ happint him?” Grace had lived too long by the sea to underrate the risk of such chances. “I daren’t say a word,” she said to herself, “only it’s sorry I am in me heart wid thinkin’ of one thing and the other.”

So, still disconsolately thinking, she shut herself into the dark little house, with a mind full of evil auguries for the morrow.

And next morning everything began to happen very much in accordance with her forecasts. It was serene blue and white weather when she awoke somewhat later than usual, because her unquiet thoughts had delayed her falling asleep. There was not a sound to be heard, and for a while she cherished a hope that her father had been roused after all, and that the plans of the boys for leaving him behind had thus come harmlessly to naught. But presently her heart, hopes and all, sank plump down, like a full jug when you let go its handle in the well, for a call came from without: “Grace! Grace!” in tones of peremptory excitement.

Old Isaac was tramping about on the boulders when she obeyed his summons. He was a tall, long-bearded old man, gaunt and stooped, and Grace fancied that he looked more gaunt and more stooped than usual this morning. The many lines on his face were complicated by fresh creases of anxiety, and the gaze he bent upon his daughter was as intent as if he had been landing a twelve-pound salmon in a doubtful net.

“What the mischief and all’s took the boys and the boat?” was the question he had been waiting there to ask her. The hope he was cherishing was that he might hear they were only gone a little way to get bait, or on some such errand, and would be calling back for him. But Grace replied, in as innocent and matter-of-course a manner as she could: “Is it the boys? Sure they went off wid themselves this good while ago. Startin’ early they had to be for fear of missin’ the tide in the Headstones. Away beyond that they said they would be goin’ after the mackerel, and they thought bad of wakenin’ you out of your sleep.”

Down sank her father’s hope, and up swelled his wrath. “So that’s what they done on me,” he said. “That’s the thrick they’re after playin’ on me--the young thieves of the world!”

“Just for ’fraid of wakenin’ you,” Grace interposed, clinging desperately to her one flimsy excuse. “For ’fraid of wakenin’ you out of your sleep, daddy darlint.”

“Ay, begor, afraid of that they’d be, sure enough,” said he.

“’Deed were they,” Grace said, eagerly receiving his assent as a sign that he accepted her explanation. “Rael quiet and cautious they must ha’ went, the way you wouldn’t be woke.”

“The divil doubt it. Arrah then, git along wid yourself out of that, standin’ there tellin’ lies,” he said, turning upon her with a sudden savageness. “Is it dotin’ and demented you consait I am, forby an ould creepin’ cripple? The schemers, the villins--well enough they seen ’twould be a grand day for the fishin’, so they thought they’d slink off and do whatever plased themselves widout me obsthructin’ of them--that taught every one of them to handle an oar. I’m no better in a boat these times--and it me own boat--than a lump of ballast; that’s the opinion they have of me. And wishin’ the whole pack of them is--Thady and all the rest of yous--wishin’ I was in me clay, instead of to be wastin’ their time, if you plase, and hinderin’ them of their chances because I’m grown a bit stiff and clumsy. Git along wid yourself, and hould your fool’s tongue.”

Grace retreated indoors, where she stood aimlessly by the grey hearth, too much dejected to set about stirring up the smouldering peat-sod. “They’d a right to be ashamed of themselves to go do such a thing on him,” she was thinking, “but I wouldn’t be sayin’ aught agin them anyway behind their backs. ’Twould only annoy Himself there the worse, and indeed now they have him greatly annoyed--a good-for-nothin’ pack they are. And I dunno is there a hand’s turn I could be doin’ for him, unless I baked him a bit of griddle-cake for the breakfast. But as like as not he wouldn’t look at it.”

On these sad reflections broke a sound which sent her darting out of doors again. It was the rattle of a chain, and a grating on the shingle, such as betoken arrivals and departures by water. And there, indeed, was her father, fumbling about the fastenings of the old _Granuaile_. In a moment the rusty bolt slipped, falling with a clank, and he began to shove her down seaward.

“Och, saints above! What are you at, father, at all?” Grace called to him aghast.

But he only continued to push the boat. The light canvas frame slid along expeditiously, and close to the water’s edge he righted it with a sudden twist.

“You aren’t ever thinkin’ to go out in that ould crathur?” Grace protested, pursuing him in extreme consternation. “And she lyin’ there this half-dozen year and more, and leakin’ like twenty sieves.”

“Bedad then, it’s fine and dhry she ought to be by this time,” old Isaac replied grimly.

“To be sure, in coorse you wouldn’t be that cracked and crazy,” Grace asserted with a confidence she was far from feeling.

“Never you mind troublin’ yourself to considher how cracked and how crazy I’ve a fancy to be,” said her father. “Quare enough in his head you might say anybody was that ’ud sit at home the best fishin’ day of the saison; and it’s not what I’m goin’ to do, not for to plase all the impident young rapscallions in Ireland. Run along and be fetchin’ me the coil of line there’s lyin’ on the ledge of the back windy.”

But instead of running Grace sat down on the rugged little pier-end and began to cry miserably in the golden early sunshine. “It’s dhrowndin’ yourself on us you’ll be, I well know,” she said. “And ne’er a bit of breakfast you’ve had, and the fire not made up to be gettin’ you anythin’ quick--och, what ’ill become of me at all at all? For it’s sinkin’ under your feet she’ll be.”

Her father answered nothing, but stumped off into the house, whence he soon re-appeared laden with a coil of line, a small bundle, and a flappy brownish roll--the boat-sail, in fact, which he had reached down from among the rafters. The sight of these final preparations seemed to freeze Grace into composure. She watched him silently for a while as he fitted the little mast into its socket and shifted boards and benches. Then she said, in the tone of one stating some incontrovertible proposition: “Well, you’ll have me along wid you, anyhow, daddy. Joe always says it’s meself’s the great one for pullin’ and balin’ out; and mindin’ the boat I’ll be while yourself’s fishin’.”

At this her father chuckled cheerfully as he spliced a rope. “Why to be sure,” he said, “unless it’s one of the ould hins I’ll be bringin’ along to take care of me, or maybe ould Tib, the cat, ’ud suit me better. In coorse I’ll be takin’ the aither or the other of yous. Just you wait there aisy till I do, me dear.”

“May goodness forgive me, but it’s yourself’s the ungovernable man,” Grace said, and then stood watching him in dumb despair. He had apparently recovered his spirits, and laughed to himself occasionally; but Grace saw his hands shaking as he tied the knots, and she felt bitterly that her own hands were bound into helplessness by some invincible, invisible power.

The fair morning seemed to her like a dismal parody of other fair mornings very long ago, when she, a small child, used to be watching him get ready to go out fishing alone, for the boys were not yet big enough to give any substantial assistance. Hale and hearty he was in those days, and the thought of his ever being otherwise occurred to her no more than did doubts about the sun’s duly rising. And when he had rowed or sailed away she could run indoors to her mother with her razor-shells and wonderfully curious pebbles. Now, with Herself dead on them this ten year, and Himself, old and feeble, setting off to get drowned, for all she could do or say, she seemed to have strayed a terribly long way from that care-free paradise.

Suddenly a change in the light made her look round, and as suddenly she plucked her father by the sleeve. “It isn’t goin’ to be anyways such fine weather, then, at all,” she announced triumphantly. “Look at the fog where it’s blowin’ in like a stone wall. Sorra the boat i’ll be after mackerel in the bay this day whatever.”