Patsy Part 5

"I do not see that you do much lying up," retorted G.o.dfrey McCulloch, his eyes dark and beady in the semi-dark; "you are off ash.o.r.e more than half the time--"

"After that little slip of a Ferris girl, Patsy," said an Irishman from Antrim. "I saw the pair of you go down the glen together, and may I never see Cushendal more if you had not your arm about her waist behind the d.y.k.e--"

Stair's clenched fist shut in the remainder of the sentence. The Rathlain man choked as he swallowed a couple of teeth, and felt his raw lip acrid upon the gap.

"Tell them you lie--tell them before you spit--or I will send the rest of your teeth after those two!"

The man gasped out that "Sure it was only a joke--"

"A joke, was it?" said Stair fiercely; "then I hope you will consider the teeth you have swallowed as the cream of it!"

The men were silent--not from fear at all, but because any two of them had a right to settle such differences in their own way.

"Will the Irishman not sell us because of Stair Garland's fist closing his mouth so awkward like?" inquired a second Rerrick man, lying at the shoulder of G.o.dfrey McCulloch.

"Not by a great deal," said G.o.dfrey, "perhaps he will kill Stair if he can, though Stair is more likely to kill him. But he will not lay information as to the lads of the Free Trade. He will remember what happened to Luke Finney and James Tynan when they thought to lift the hundred pound reward out for Captain Maxwell of the Scaur."

"What was that?" said the youth at his elbow.

"Have you not heard? It is a Colvend story, too," said McCulloch. "We took them out into mid-channel and tied each man to an old anchor with his fifty pounds in jingling gold about his neck. For which cause Luke Finney and James Tynan, two rusty anchors and a hundred guineas of unrusted gold lie in the gut of the North Channel to this day."

"Is the water deep?" the young man asked.

"Deeper than any diver will reach till the judgment day," quoth G.o.dfrey.

"This Rathlin man will think twice before he plays Judas to the lads of the Trade."

"It must have been worst when they were over the side before the anchors went plunk!" The young fellow shuddered. A clean death in a fair fight he did not mind more than another, but dangling there tied to an anchor--"_Ugh!_" said the lad.

That night a cargo was to be run into the Abbey Burnfoot Bay, close by the house of Julian Wemyss. The King's s.h.i.+ps had settled themselves, one in Belfast Lough, and the sloop-of-war well round the point into Loch Ryan. The _Good Intent_ might therefore discharge her cargo in peace, and the boats were ready on the beach of the Water Cave to put the Inch Ryan refugees in charge of the pack horses which were to carry the stuff inland, distributing as they went.

The lads were riotous to be off, and Stair had to exercise his authority, backed by G.o.dfrey McCulloch's experience and influence over the eastern men, to keep them quiet in the cove till the time should come for the _Good Intent_ to cast anchor in the bay.

The chastis.e.m.e.nt of the Rathlin man had cowed the wildest spirits, and, still more than the fear of Stair, the acquiescence of the company in the justice of the punishment. Nevertheless, those in the cave were restless and uneasy, setting their heads out to sniff the salt of the sea beneath, and craning their necks through the spy-hole to watch the sand-pipers wheeling as if dancing new-fangled waltzes, or probing the sands after little sh.e.l.lfish and sea worms, never getting in each other's way, but each working quietly along, like a minister in his own parish.

Stair Garland was lost in admiration of the glory of the sea and sand at sunset. The crying of the island curlews coming down each in long plane flight eased his mind. _w.i.l.l.y-wha_--_w.i.l.l.y-wha!_ they called in long diminuendo, before they settled.

Presently the mist began to rise out of the hollows and hung out over the sea from Inch Ryan to the mainland crags like the stretched awning of a tent. Stair gave the lads leave to go on the balcony while he himself started on a tour of inspection. He would have liked to take G.o.dfrey McCulloch with him. But he knew that his own following would be jealous and resent his pa.s.sing them over, so he contented himself with saying, "Attend to what G.o.dfrey says, boys. He has seen more than all of us put together. Fergus" (this to his elder brother), "knock the heads of any men who make a noise. No one shall come with us to-night who does not obey now!"

Stair went out by the little pa.s.sage, spoken of in other chronicles, which opened into the inner towers of the ancient castle of the Herons.

He found himself among rugged, heathy ground, the hollow palm of the island, now suffused with milky opalescence, for the sun was setting.

Hardly could Stair see from one tuft to another, but out of the tinted mist swooped first two and then three birds like angels appearing out of a white heaven. Magnified by the mist Stair hardly recognized the green and black summer uniform of the golden plover, but he heard their softly wistful cries everywhere.

And as the mist s.h.i.+fted and flowed everywhere more and more were revealed, doing sentry duty each on his tussock of bent-gra.s.s, while behind his mate effaced herself upon her four eggs or led her little flock into the deepest of the growing heather and among the white meadows of cotton-gra.s.s which blew about them, more downy than even the youngest nestling.

Stair made his way to the most easterly point of the isle--that nearest to the Burnfoot Bay. Already the fog was bunching and billowing uneasily. He noted that it was losing its steady, even pour over the island. "It will lift," he muttered.

And from far away there came the sound of a schooner's mainsail being brought down as her head came to the wind, the plunge of an anchor, and then, through a gap in the gloom, the tall, bare mast of a s.h.i.+p in the direction of the new house of Abbey Burnfoot.

"The _Good Intent_!" he muttered. "She must be very sure of herself to come to anchor like that. Still that is Captain Penman's business. If he can discharge his cargo, I can put it out of harm's way. We shall have two hundred lads on the beach by midnight, and whatever force they may bring against us, we can go through them with the strong hand!"

CHAPTER V

PATSY'S CONFESSIONS

Patsy had said nothing at home about her race over the moors to save the Glenanmays lads from the press-gang, and when her Uncle Julian, having talked to Captain Laurence, approached her on the subject, my lady replied that she was at the Bothy of Blairmore to help her friend Jean Garland.

"And where was Jean when the 'press' found you there alone?" said Julian Wemyss, smiling.

"She was outside, keeping watch for her brothers," said Patsy, looking at him with bright, clear eyes that could not be other than truthful.

But Uncle Julian had had much experience, and he only smiled more knowingly than ever.

"And the famous costume which so witched the men of war?" he asked.

"Oh, that," said Patsy, "I had to run, and you can't run fast in a frieze coat with many capes!"

"No." Uncle Julian nodded his head; "sandals cross-gartered, a bathing dress and a sas.h.!.+ I would that I had been one of His Majesty's officers to see you."

"I shall dress up for you some time," affirmed Patsy soothingly, "if you will give me the yellow sandals for my very own."

"Ah," said Uncle Julian, "of that I am not sure. They recall something which makes them precious to me."

The girl clasped her hands delightedly.

"Oh, a story at last," she cried, nestling against him. "I shall not tell a soul. You shall see how I can keep a secret."

"But I shall see still better if I do not tell it you!"

"Oh, how abominable of you, Uncle Julian! And I thought you loved me."

"The yellow sandals remind me of a time when I was young--young as you, and a great deal more foolis.h.!.+"

"But they are a girl's sandals, Uncle Julian--you said so yourself when you lent them to me."

"Indeed, both of them would hardly cover a man's foot!"

"Who was she? Oh, where did you meet her? Did you love her very much?"

"I met her on a little coasting boat belonging to her father, on which I had taken pa.s.sage from Chios to Smyrna. She knew no English. I knew only one sentence of modern Greek, and I was not sure of the meaning even of that. So I had to be careful. I had it from a poem which was making a noise at the time."

"Oh, _I_ know," cried Patsy, "Louis is always saying it over to me: _Zoe mou, sas agapo!_ What does it mean?"

"That I did not know at the time, but I know what I meant the words to mean."

"Was she _very_ lovely?"