The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 2 February 1922, Page 3

The Storyteller

(By William O’Brien.)

WHEN WE WERE BOYS

CHAPTER XXXlll.—(Continued.) A low rumble of rebellion was heard here and there around the table. The General threw a rapid glance towards the corner where the growl was deepest, and, in his decisive unconcerned way, proceeded: .“If you had been through the country, gentlemen, I should have asked your advice before coming to a decision; but you cannot know what I know —your advice would be uninformed advice; and, as for the people in command on shore”—with a slight, scornful nod —“their opinion upon a military matter is worth that of spring-chickens as to how necks are to lie twisted. A week ago, if they had their heads fixed on like men, they might have had half the country in a night. The Pigeon House Fort, Cork Barracks, Clonmel, Fermoy, and Bantry Barracks were all swarming with soldiers ready to hand up the keys and their guns to the first man of grit who came to ask for them. The militia regiments were in training—thousand rebel soldiers, ready-made rifles, and all. The constabulary posts could have been chawed up piecemeal. There was not a day to he lost. If they would give me but five hundred men with guns in their hands, I proposed to organise four simultaneous outbreaks of the four Cork militia regiments, cut up the railways and telegraphs, march upon Cork that night—the City of Cork Militia held one of the forts, and a red-hot Irish regiment furnished the mainguard at the Barracks. With Cork in our grip, Bantry was ours for the asking, or yours for the taking; your cargo once landed, and your officers distributed, we. would have had fifty thousand men in arms in Munster alone —men who hadn’t a continent behind them to run away in, like our follows at Bull Run. We had only to win some one decent engagement with the Britishers, and the heart of America would blaze with gratitude to us for paying off her Alabama claims. I tell you the first gun fired at Fort Sumter did not wake a bigger echo through the States than if the news once flashed across that a victorious Irish army held Cork city, with the flag that floated over Slidell and Mason under their feet. The States would be to our- fight what Liverpool was to the Rebels —our arsenal, our base of supplies for privateers and men and moneyour raiding-ground across the Canadian frontier. If once the men who carried Gettysburg were thundering at the doors of “Dublin Castle” don’t tell me that with a couple of millions of disbanded soldiers, our old comrades, panting to be even with England for all her open hostilities and secret hate, America could resist the war-fever— have been into it as sure as she went into Georgia, and we would have heard ‘Yankee Doodle’ the day we entered Dublin, as we did the day we entered Richmond.” “If so last week, why not to-night?” impetuously broke in a young officer, with a pair of burning dark eyes and a heavy sabre-cut across his cheek. No, sir because what would have been a piece of daring soldiership then, and nothing more, would be a piece of criminal idiocy now. Your civilian conspirators make eyes at England enough for a dime theatre; but they are incredible idiots when it comes to business. They lay down a plan of campaign for you in a leading article, and expect you to carry it out with pikeheads of the last century, while they themselves bawl for the police and get locked up. Pheugh! all that I have seen of that for the past week! While they were humming and hawing about giving me my orders, some scoundrel— only practical man of the crowd— my idea to the Castle people, the disaffected regiments were packed off in a single night to India or to England, the militia regiments disembodied, the Channel Fleet ordered round to Bantry Bay, the civilian conspirators sent flying in picturesque attitudes, the pivot men all through the country whisked into gaol in scores and hundreds, and I myself obliged to employ more strategy in being here to-night to prevent a landing than would have

given us Cork City and fifty thousand men in arms a week ago.” A deep growl of anger and betrayal broke from the soldiers. 1 ’ , . / “Then this idea of a Rising to-night is given over?” asked one of the calmest of .them —Colonel O’Moran. “By everybody who knows the stock from the muzzle of a rifle, yes; but these poet-gentlemen in the Fra Diavolo cloaks must have a romantic scene or two with stage shots and blue-fire before they will let down the curtain. They will have the Rising to go on; they have proclamations and a Provisional Government, and everything ready—except powder and shot, or anything to fire them with; they proposed to try me by court-martial for cowardice when I objected to scythes and blackthorn sticks as implements of modern warfare. I have no doubt they could have shot me, if they could have mustered enough of serviceable firearms to furnish a firing-party. Gentlemen,” said the AYest Point veteran, about whose stern mouth lines of scorn had been flitting, “we are just in time, with this gale on our stern, to save ourselves from being ridiculous for life.” “Wal, but, General, speaking not as a kicker now, but as a baldpated grizzly with an ould graw for a fight on the ould sod when it’s to be had so handy,” struck in Captain Mike, “don’t you think ’twould be flying in the face of Providence, having come so far,' to quit without giving the Britishers a hug or two that will leave our autograph with them till we call round agen? Here are the boys making for Coomhola in their thousands this minnit; and here, under the hatches, are the weapons to put in their hands, and here, to the right and left of the Chair, are men with the proper bullion in them to show a good lead. Let us make a night of it, General, anyhow. Bantry will dish us up a supper fit to turn your green turtle, blue-points, and string beans into a five-cent hash for envy. The divvcl’s in the dice if we don’t compose a page of history that we can hand along to the younkers without feeling mean in our gravel.’’/ “Ay, ay, Generallet’s land, and go for Bantry, anyhow!” the younger officers clamored, springing to their feet and clustering eagerly around their chief. “No, sir, I do not undertake this job as a {filibuster,” was the calm reply. “I have no notion of handing over a defenceless country to martial law and bloodshed for the pleasure w of passing an exhilarating evening; and, in any case, the supper you would get at Bantry would be your last supper. Our friends in the garrison sailed out of Cork harbor last night in an Indian troopship ; there is an English regiment in their place the whole design is known; instead of being received with open gates and open arms, our bands would be torn to fragments with the fire of a thousand breechloaders in front, and of the Channel Fleet in flank. And whoever was unlucky enough to escape would escape into a convict’s uniform and penal servitude for life. No, sir, it is soldiers I have led here—to handle rifles, not to pick oakum. As they cannot do what they came for, it only remains to lead them back.” “Back with their tails between their legs! There’s nothing but damnation in it,” cried the young officer with the scarred cheek who had spoken before. “I guess I’ll land, if I’ve got to swim for it.” “Is it you are running this show or I?” asked the General, looking up in his cold tranquil way. “If any man under my command attempts to leave this shipl’ll bore him!” “That’s correct, General. I was wrong. Forgive me!” the young man said, putting out a hand, which the General quietly pressed, remarking: “That’s more like your old Gettysburg form, MacCrossan; sorry I cannot oblige you with another dash for the guns this time.” “But do you mean to say,” cried Ken Rohan, who had been an impatient listener to all this“do you mean to say that a lot of helpless peasant boys are to be allowed to go on and dash themselves against the armed force of England, and that you, who alone'could give them arms or advice, are going to desert them?” “'A bloody shame! And such a chance!” chimed in the Lord Harry, from bottomless depths of dejection. “Our leaders may be all you say—bad conspirators or childish soldiers,” Ken dashed on, with flaming cheek, “but our men are as unselfish, true, and gallant material as ever

a patriot army was built up with. They have risked everything for the sake of the principles you implanted in them — obloquy, treachery, the curse of their Qhurch, the frown of every genteel dastard in the country: they trusted fin your promises of help ; are they to be left facing the breechloaders and the cannon of the Fleet to-night with empty hands, while an Irish-American ship, full of arms and officers, is cutting its cable and flying for its life at their very doors?” “Glory!” murmured the deep voice of Con Lehane. Ken had not noticed that Con’s massive figure had followed the General down the companion-ladder, and blocked the doorway in grim silence during the council of war. ‘‘That is a sensible observation foolishly put,” replied the General, with a quiet, not unkndly, survey of Ken Rohan. “It would be the boss meanness of this century if ye uere to save ourselves without first taking measures to save the men we leave behind us. Our young friend may be reassured. I have spent the better part of this day despatching men through the country to disperse any assembly of the people, and warn them that the whole design is discovered and abandoned. One of my most trusty officers should be at this moment in Coomhola to send the people to their homes. Nothing worse will come of it than a wetling; and, if we get back with no greater glory than that of having saved thousands of human sheep from slaughter, it is glory that a soldier will be prouder of over his pipe by-and-by than the glory we might have bv a night’s cheap buccaneering and getting our names into the papers.” “Now, then, anybody for shore?” sang out Captain Silas’ sharp voice from above. “Yes I!” “Audi!” “And I!” shouted Ken Rohan, Harry Westropp, and Con Lehane, in chorus. “Young fellows, don’t, you go doing anything foolish — anything criminal,” said the General solemnly. " “Take the word of an old soldier for the* only thing to be done for Ireland to-night that isn’t criminal lunacy is to get the people into their beds. I have no right to command you, but your foot is on American ground on this desk; why rush hack deliberately to some miserable death, or worse than death, for Irish rebellion cannot afford a man even a docent means of suicide?” “Relieve me, sir,” said Ken Rohan, who had been warming towards the General,, “we accept your advice, and, in all but quitting the country, will abide by it. But our pool fellov s cannot safely be left-to themselves on an occasion like this. We would hang our heads all our lives if anything happened and we were not there. There are other reasons—there are private reasons,” he stammered, blushing violently, as visions of a soft, bright aerial figure on Lily’s Rock mingled with thoughts of the stricken household at the Mill “ why I, at least, am bound to Ireland.” “Whatever Ken does, I’ll do—if ’twas to scuttle Patsy Di iscoll s yawl on the way back,” said Il'arry, dejectedly. Here s another let him give the word—devil may care whether ’tis to swim or go to the bottom!” cried Con Lehane, in the first ill-humored moment of his life. Tears were trickling down Captain Mike’s yellow cheeks. Boys, he said, folding them tenderly in his huge arms, “I wish an., old Ninth Massachusetts man’s blessing was worth your having— or his ould carcase worth taking with you. Darned but I'd sooner be , on the road to Coomhola with you to-night than thanking the citizens for giving me a handsome plurality for State Treasurer. Gen’lemen, it’s an occasion to make a plain citizen swear bad enough for a basement bar. God bless you boysthat’s all. Ken Rohan, jest you tell friend Neville, from Mike MacCaithy, that even the British Empire might have its chance of escaping damnation, if there was many of his sort visible in that crowd with a powerful lanthorn; and tell Miss Y esti opp that if ever my ould mother’s rosaries smuggles me into Heaven. I’ll think I’m handsomely provided for in the article of eternal bliss if I’m set to live in the- one continent with those purty eyes of hers—God love her! Gen’lemen, we’ve failed to pony up this time; but Mike MacCarthy don’t despair of seeing a line of Irish bayonets charging up the Glen of Coomhola at the double yet.” “Not another minnit to oblige the President and Congress,” bellowed Uncle Sam through the storm. The General put out his hand, with a grave, kind smile. “Good-bye,” he said, almost softly, “You lads have

made me think better of Ireland. If ever again there’s a chance that a soldier may takewho knows? — may meet together yet— will remember the name of .” Ken Bohan almost sank to his knees. It was the name of one of the most brilliant of the famous Federal captains. The next moment the wild sprav was beating in his face, and Patsy Driscoll’s yawl was casting off into the night.

(To be continued.)