The Northern Iron Part 25

"I have known two great and good men," he said. "You, my lord, and one whose name you might count contemptible, James Hope, the weaver, of Templepatrick. I think myself happy that I have had the goodwill of both. And, my lord, I think Ireland the most unhappy country in the world because to-day these two men will be in arms against each other."

He sobbed. Then, lest he should betray more emotion, went quickly from the inn.

He found his uncle waiting for him outside the church.

"Well, Neal," he said, "how have you sped? You have a basket; I hope it is full. See here, I have four loaves of bread. The baker man would have denied me. He suspected me, but I had my answer for him. I told him I was groom to a great lord who was staying in the inn. I made free with the name of your friend, Lord Dunseveric. I told him that if he refused my lord the bread he wanted he would hang him for his insolence. I got the bread. For the first time and the last I have been a serving man.

Now, back, back as fast as we can go to our hungry comrades."

After they left the town Donald Ward grew grave again.

"My lad," he said, "we shall have a fight to-day--a fight worth fighting. It won't be the first time I've looked on bare steel or heard the bullets sing. I know what fighting means, and I know this, that many of us will lie low enough before the sun sets. It may be my luck to come through or it may not. I have a sort of feeling that I am to fire my last shots to-day. Don't look at me like that, boy, I'm not frightened.

I'll fight none the worse. But I want to settle a little bit of business with you now that we are alone. I have a paper here, I wrote it last night while you slept; I signed it this morning, and I have it witnessed. I got a parson to witness it, a kind of curate man, a poor creature. I caught him going into the church to say prayers, and made him witness my signature. I had time enough, for you were longer at the inn than I was at the baker's. Here it is for you, Neal. In case of my death it makes you owner of my share of a little business in the town of Boston. My partner is managing it now. We own a few ships, and were making money when I left. But it did not suit me. I got the fighting fever into my blood during the war. I couldn't settle down to books and figures. Maybe you'll take to the work. If you do you ought to stand a good chance of dying a rich man, and you'll be comfortably off the day you hand that paper to my partner. Not a word now, not a word. I know what you want to say. Twist your lips into a smile again. Look as if you were happy whatever you feel, and when all's said and done you ought to be happy. Whatever the end of it may be we'll get our bellies full of fighting to-day, and what has life got to give a man better than that?"

CHAPTER XII

After breakfast Donald Ward led his party along the road up which M'Cracken's force must march to reach Antrim. At about noon he met the advance guard of United Irishmen. Several of Donald's companions were recognised by these men, and his party were led back to where M'Cracken himself marched with the central division of his army. It was then that Neal first saw this leader--a tall, fair-haired, gentle-faced man, dressed in a white and green uniform, armed with a sword. He spoke to Donald Ward, and then calling Neal, questioned him about the condition of the town of Antrim. Neal repeated all that Lord Dunseveric had said, and told how he had been shown a copy of the proclamation.

"You will not tell anyone else what you have told me, Mr. Ward," said M'Cracken, "the news that our plans are known to the enemy might be discouraging to the men. It does not alter my determination to take Antrim to-day. Now I must give you your orders and your posts." He called Donald Ward to him. "You will take charge of our two pieces of cannon," he said. "They are at the rear of the force. Neal Ward, you will join the first division of the army--the musketeers--and place yourself under James Hope's command. I think this is what both you and he would wish. Felix Matier and James Bigger will do likewise. Moylin, you and your two friends will march with the pikemen, whom I lead myself. Some of the men have arms for you."

The party had fallen somewhat to the rear of the column during this conversation with M'Cracken. Neal and his two companions hurried forward at once in order to reach the division of musketeers which was in the van. They had opportunity as they pa.s.sed along to admire the steady march and the determined bearing of the men. Green flags were everywhere displayed. The long pikes, iron spear-heads fastened on stout poles, were formidable weapons in the hands of strong men. An almost unbroken silence was preserved in the ranks. The northern Irishmen are not great talkers at any time. Set to work of deadly earnest, they become very silent, very grim.

There were men in the little army belonging to some of the finest fighting stocks in the world. There were descendants of the fiery Celtic tribes to whom Owen Roe O'Neill taught patience and discipline; who, under him, if he had lived, might well have broken even Cromwell's Ironsides and sent the mighty Puritan back to his England a beaten man.

Despised, degraded, enslaved for more than a century, these had yet in them the capacity for fighting. There were also the great-grandsons of the citizen soldiers of Derry--of the men who stood at bay so doggedly behind their walls, whom neither French military art nor Celtic valour, nor the long suffering of famine and disease, could cow into surrender.

There were others--newcomers to the soil of Ireland--who brought with them to Ulster the traditions of the Scottish Covenantors, memories of many a fierce struggle against persecution, of conflict with the dragoons of Claverhouse. All these, whose grandfathers had stood in arms for widely different causes, marched together on Antrim, an embodiment of Wolfe Tone's dream of a united Ireland. Their flags were green, vividly symbolic of the blending of the Protestant orange with the ancient Irish blue. M'Cracken, with such troops behind him, might march hopefully, even though he knew that the cavalry, infantry, and artillery were hurrying against him along the banks of the Six Mile Water, from Blaris Camp and Carrickfergus.

James Hope greeted Neal warmly.

"There is a musket for you," he said, "and your own share of the cartridges you helped to save. There's a lad here, a slip of a boy, who is carrying them for you."

He looked round and pointed out the boy to Neal.

"There he is; you may march in the ranks along with him."

Neal took his place beside a boy with bright red hair and a pleasant smiling face, who handed him a musket and a pouch of cartridges.

"Them's yours, Neal Ward. Jemmy Hope bid me bring them for you."

"But what are you to do?" said Neal. "You have no musket for yourself."

"Faith I couldn't use it if I had. I never shot off one of them guns in my life. I'd be as like to hit myself as any one. I'll just go along with you, I have a sword, and I'll be able to use that if I get the chance."

Neal looked at the lad beside him, noted his smooth face and sparkling eyes.

"You must be very young," he said, "too young for this work."

"I might be older than you now, young as I look. But is thon Mr. Matier coming till us? Go you and talk to him if you want. I won't have him here, marching along with me."

At about half-past one Hope halted his musketeers. He was in sight of Antrim, and he waited for orders. It was clear that the town was held by English troops. Their red coats were visible in the main street, but, without that, the houses which burnt here and there gave sufficient evidence of the presence of a ravishing army.

M'Cracken made a speech to his men--an eloquent speech. Now-a-days we are inclined to look with some contempt on men who make eloquent speeches. We are so accustomed to the perpetual flow of our Sunday oratory that we have come to think of speeches as mere preliminaries to copious draughts of porter in public-houses--a sort of grace before drink, to which no sensible man attaches any particular importance.

But the orators of M'Cracken's day spoke seriously, with a sense of responsibility, because all of them--Flood, Grattan, and the rest--spoke to armed men, who might at any time draw swords to give effect to the speaker's words. M'Cracken spoke to men with swords already drawn and muskets loaded. Therefore, he had some right to be eloquent, and his hearers had some right to cheer.

Felix Matier had somehow laid hands on Phelim, the blind piper, and set him playing. A hundred voices, voices of marching men, caught the tune, whistled, and sang it. Matier's own voice rang out clearest and loudest of all. It was, the "Ma.r.s.eillaise" they sang--a not inappropriate anthem for soldiers about to fight for the liberty of man. But James Hope had something else in his mind besides the storming of a French Bastille and the guillotining of a French aristocracy. He believed that he was fighting: for Ireland, and the foreign tune was not to his mind. Laying his hand on Matier's shoulder he commanded silence. Then whispering to Phelim, he set a fresh tune going on the pipes. An ancient Irish war march shrilled through the ranks--a tune with a rush in it--a tune which sends the battle fever through men's veins. Now and then the pa.s.sion of it reaches a climax, and the listeners, almost in spite of themselves, must shout aloud. It is called "Brian Boroimhe's March," and it may be that his warriors shouted when the pipers played it marching on Clontarf against the Danes. Hope's musketeers heard it, whistled it as the piper played, hummed it in deep voices, and always, when the moment came, shouted aloud.

The musketeers halted, and the pikemen pa.s.sed them by. The broad, straight street lay before them, and at the end of it, half sheltered by the market house, were the English infantry. Behind them, blocking the end of the street, splitting it as it were into two roads, which run to the right and left, was the wall of Lord Ma.s.sereene's demesne. Across the bridge the English cannon, almost too late, were being hurried by an escort of sweating dragoons. There was work with them for Hope's musketeers and Donald Ward's two bra.s.s six-pounders. But between the infantry and M'Cracken's men was a body of cavalry, sitting in shelter behind the wall which surrounded the church. These would cut the musketeers to pieces. The pikemen must face them first.

The hors.e.m.e.n wheeled from their shelter and charged. The long pikes were lowered, steadied, held in bristling line. There was trampling, shouting, cursing, torn horses, wounded men, dust, and confusion. Then the hors.e.m.e.n turned back, musket bullets followed them, men reeled from the saddles, horses stumbled, the pikemen at the lower end of the street shook themselves and cheered. They had tasted victory. A louder cheer followed. Another body of pikemen, true almost to the moment of their time, marched in along the Carrickfergus Road and joined M'Cracken.

The whole body moved forward together. Down the street to meet them thundered the dragoons who had brought the cannon in across the bridge.

Hope's musketeers fired again, but no bullets could stop the furious charge. The dragoons were on the pikes--among the pike men, There was stabbing and cutting, pike and sabre clashed. Again the cavalry were driven back, again the musket bullets followed them--musket bullets fired by marksmen. M'Cracken, at the head of his men, pushed forward.

The dragoons took shelter, the English artillery and infantry opened fire. The street was swept with grape-shot and bullets.

Neal, in the front rank of Hope's men, was loading and firing rapidly.

He heard a shout behind him.

"Way there, make way!"

He turned. Donald Ward and two men with him had got one of their six-pounders mounted on a country cart. They dragged the gun to the middle of the road. Donald, sweating and dusty, but calm and alert, with a grim smile on his face, laid the gun, loaded, fired. Again he fired.

The gun was well aimed. His shot ploughed its way among the men who served the English guns, but at the second discharge a round shot flung it from its carriage and laid it useless on the road. The man who stood beside it cursed and flung his hands up in despair. Donald Ward turned quickly.

"Back," he said, "get the other gun."

The pikemen pressed on against the storm of grape and cannister and bullets. The guns ceased firing to let the dragoons charge. Again the pikemen knelt to receive them, and flung them back. At last the wall of the churchyard was reached. The pikemen leaped into the churchyard and breathed in safety. A flag was raised above the wall, a green flag. A wild cheer greeted it. Hope shouted an order to his men. They rushed forward along the ground that had been so hardly won, and took their places with their comrades behind the wall. Leaning over it, or finding loopholes in the rough masonry, they opened fire on the infantry before them. A large body of pikemen crossed the road and entered a lane. They pressed along behind the houses of the street to turn the flank of the English infantry who were drawn up against the demesne wall. The English commander saw his danger, and sent dragoons charging down the street again. But Hope's musketeers were in the churchyard this time. They fired at close range. The dragoons hesitated. The remaining pikemen rushed out on them. The colonel reeled in his saddle, struck by a bullet. His men wavered. In one instant the pikemen were among them.

Three hors.e.m.e.n shouted to the men to rally, and with the flats of their swords struck at those who were retreating. But the dragoons had had too much of the pikes. They turned and fled up the street. Sweeping to the left they galloped in confusion from the battle. The three hors.e.m.e.n who did not fly were surrounded. The main body of the pikemen pressed forward; the flanking party joined them. The English infantry and gunners were driven through the gates and took shelter behind the walls of the demesne.

In the middle of the street the three hors.e.m.e.n fought for their lives against a handful of men who had held back from the main charge. Neal recognised two of them--saw with horror Lord Dun-severic and Maurice cutting at the pikes with their swords. He leaped the wall and rushed to their help. The third horseman--the unfortunate Lord O'Neill--was separated far from them. He fell from his saddle, ripped by a pike thrust. Lord Dunseveric's horse was stabbed, and threw its rider to the ground. Maurice leaped down and raised his father. The two stood back to back while the pikemen pressed on them. Then Neal reached them. With his musket clubbed he beat down two of the pikes. The men cursed him, and, furious at his interference, thrust at him. A sword flashed suddenly beside him, and a pike, which would have pierced him, was turned aside.

Neal saw that the red-haired boy who marched with him in the morning had followed him from the churchyard and was fighting fiercely by his side.

The pikemen realised that they were attacking their friends. Leaving Neal and his protector, they ran to join their comrades.

"Yield yourselves," shouted Neal. "You are my prisoners. Yield and you are safe."

Lord Dunseveric bowed.

"Thank you, Neal," he said, quietly, "we yield to you."

A bullet struck the ground at their feet, and then another. The soldiers behind the demesne wall were firing at them. The boy who had saved Neal from the pike thrust gave a sudden cry and sank on the ground.

"I think," said Lord Dunseveric, "you had better pick up that boy and walk in front of us. It is possible that our men will cease firing when they see that Maurice and I are between them and you."

Neal stooped and raised the boy.

"I can walk fine," he said, "if you let me put my arm round your neck."

There was a pause in the fighting. The English infantry drawn up on the terrace behind the wall would not fire on Lord Dunseveric and his son.

Hope's musketeers in the churchyard watched in silence while the little procession approached them. Neal, with his arm round the wounded boy, walked first. Lord Dunseveric, following, drew his snuff-box from his pocket, tapped it, and took a pinch, drawing the powder into his nostrils with deliberate enjoyment.

"It seems, Maurice," he said, with a slight smile, "that we are people of considerable importance. Two armies are looking on while we march to captivity, and yet we do not appear in a very heroic light. We are the prisoners of one badly-armed young man and a wounded boy."