The Red Hand of Ulster Part 35

Then, very slowly, the great steamer began to move. She went at a snail's pace, as it seemed to me, across the lough to the County Down coast. Very slowly she swept round in a wide circle and steamed back again northward. There was something terrifying in the stately deliberation with which she moved. It was as if some great beast of prey paced as a sentinel in front of his victim, so conscious of his power to seize and kill that he could afford to wait before he sprang.

The crowd behind us was silent now. The laughter and the play had ceased. Children were crowding round the women seeking for hands to hold. Some of the women, vaguely terror-stricken, looked into the faces of the men. Others had drawn a little apart from the rest of the crowd and stood in a group by themselves, staring out at the battleship. There were middle-aged women and quite young women in this group. I raised my field-gla.s.ses and scanned their faces. There was one expression on them, and only one--not fear, but hatred. Women fight sometimes in citizen armies when such things have been called into existence. But it is not their fighting power which makes them important. That is, probably, always quite inconsiderable. What makes them a force to be reckoned with in war is their faculty for hating.

They hate with more concentration and intensity than men do. These women were mindful, perhaps, of the girl with the baby whom c.l.i.thering had seen shot. They realized, perhaps, the menace for husbands, lovers, and sons which lay in the guns of the black ironclad parading sluggishly before their eyes. Remembering and antic.i.p.ating death, they hated the source of it with uncompromising bitterness. The men in the crowd seemed crushed into silence by mere wonder and expectation of some unknown thing. They were not, so far as I could judge, afraid.

They were not excited. They simply waited to see what was to happen to them and their town.

Once more a string of flags fluttered from the ship's mast. Once more the answer came from her consorts. Then for the third time she swept round. We saw her foreshortened; then end on; then foreshortened again as her other side swung into view. At that moment--just before the whole length of her lay flat before our eyes she fired. At first I scarcely realized that she had fired. There was a small cloud of white smoke hanging over her near the bow. That was all for the moment. Then came the horrible sound of the great projectile racing through the air. Then it was past.

Some women in the crowd, a few, shrieked aloud. Some girls ran wildly towards the town, driven, I suppose, to seek shelter of some kind.

Most of the crowd stood silent. Then from some young men who stood together there came a kind of moaning sound. It gathered volume. It, as it were, took shape. Voice after voice took it up. The whole crowd--many hundreds of men and women--sang together the hymn they had all been singing for months past, "O G.o.d, our help in ages past." I do not know how far back towards the town the singing spread, but it would not surprise me to hear that ten thousand voices joined in it.

Bland had his gla.s.ses raised. He was still gazing at the battleship.

"A strange answer," I said, "to make to the first sh.e.l.l of a bombardment."

"Yes," said Bland. "It reminds me of a profane rhyme which I used to hear:

"'There was a young lady of Zion Who sang Sunday-school songs to a lion.'

"But hers, I should say, was the more sensible proceeding of the two."

I was not sure. It is just conceivable--it seemed to me at that moment even likely--that a hymn, sung as that one was, may be the most effective answer to a big gun. There are only certain things which guns can do. When they have destroyed life and ruined buildings their power is spent. But the singing of hymns may, and sometimes does, render men for a time at least, indifferent to the loss of their lives and the ruin of their houses. Against men in the frame of mind which hymn-singing induces the biggest guns are powerless. The original singers fall, perhaps, but the spirit of their singing survives. For each voice silenced by the bursting sh.e.l.ls ten voices take up the song.

The battleship, after firing the gun, swung round and once more slowly steamed across the lough. I waited, tense with excitement, for her to turn again. At the next turn, I felt sure, another sh.e.l.l would come. I was wrong. She turned, more slowly than ever as it seemed. No white smoke issued from her. Again she steamed northwards. Again, opposite Carrickfergus, close to the northern sh.o.r.e, she turned. Right in front of her bows the water was suddenly broken. It was as if some one had dropped a huge stone close to her. The spray of the splash must have fallen on her fore deck.

"My G.o.d!" said Bland, "they're firing at her. Look! From the hill above the town."

I could not look. My eyes were on the ship as she slowly turned. Her side came gradually into view. Then, quite suddenly and for no apparent reason, she staggered. I saw her list over heavily, right herself again, and steam on.

"Hit!" said Bland. "Hit! Hit!"

He danced beside me with excitement.

Two puffs of smoke hung over the ship's decks, one forward, one aft, and blew clear again. But this time we heard no shrieking sh.e.l.ls. She was firing, not at the town, but at the guns on the hill which threatened and wounded her. Then her signal flags ran up again. Before the answer came from the other ships the sea was broken twice close to her. I looked to see her stagger from another blow, heel over, perhaps sink. Her speed increased. In a minute she was rushing towards us, flinging white waves from her great bows. Then she swept round once more. Fire as well as smoke poured from her funnels. She steamed eastwards down the lough. We saw her join the other ships far out. She and they lay motionless together.

The crowd behind us began to sing their hymn again.

Bland and I left our lighthouse and went back towards the town. We pa.s.sed Bob and his men in their trench but they scarcely noticed us.

We pushed our way through the crowd. We pa.s.sed the shipbuilding yard, now full of eager people, discussing the departure of the ship, canva.s.sing the possibility of her coming back again.

"What guns have they on the Cave Hill?" said Bland.

"I don't know," I said. "I did not know that they had any guns."

"I wonder where they got them," said Bland. "I wonder who has command of them."

I could answer, or thought I could answer, both questions. As we struggled through the crowds which thronged the quay I told Bland of the visits of the _Finola_ to our bay and of the piles of huge packing-cases which G.o.dfrey had shown me in the sheds behind the store.

"But who fired them?" said Bland. "Who have you got who understands them? Those were big guns."

"Malcolmson," I said, "always said he understood guns."

"He does," said Bland. "If he'd shot just the least shade better he'd have sunk that ship."

On the bridge we met McConkey, sweating profusely, taking his favourite weapon along at a rapid trot. He stopped when he saw us and halted his breathless team.

"I have her working again," he said, "and she'll shoot the now."

"You're too late," said Bland.

"Is she sunken?" said McConkey. "Man o' man but I'm sorry for it. I wanted sore to have a shot at her."

"She's not sunk," said Bland, "but she's gone. Steamed clean out of range of your gun."

"I'd have liked well to have got to her before she quit," said McConkey. "Did you hear tell what she did with that sh.e.l.l she fired into the town?"

"No," I said. "Did it kill many people?"

"Sorra the one," said McConkey. "But I'll tell you what it did do."

His voice sank to a hoa.r.s.e but singularly impressive whisper. "It made flitters of the statue of the old Queen that was sitting fornint the City Hall. The like of thon is nice work for men that's wearing the King's uniform."

Bland burst into a sudden fit of boisterous laughter.

"You may laugh if it pleases you," said McConkey, "but I'm thinking it's time for loyal men to be getting guns of their own when the Government is that thick with rebels and Papishes that they'd go shooting at the ould Queen who was always a decent woman, so she was, and too good for the like of them."

McConkey's story was perfectly true. The solitary sh.e.l.l which was fired into Belfast fell just outside the City Hall. It injured that building a good deal; and it entirely destroyed the statue of Queen Victoria. It is a curious evidence of the amazing loyalty of the people of Belfast that many of them were more angry at this insult to Majesty than they would have been if the sh.e.l.l had killed half a dozen volunteers. McConkey was not by any means the only man who saw in the accident evidence of an unholy alliance between the Liberal Government and the men whom Babberly was accustomed to describe as "Steeped to the lips in treason."

CHAPTER XXIV

Bland and I stood together outside the City Hall and surveyed the shattered fragments of the statue. The sh.e.l.l must have exploded quite close to it, and I was immensely impressed at first with the terrific power of modern artillery. Then I began to think about the moral effects of the bombardment, and I saw my way to helping Bland in his profession. He had been very kind to me and very helpful. I wanted to do him a good turn if I could.

"This," I said, "is a magnificent opportunity for you. You'll be able to send off a telegram to your newspaper which will make your fortune as a correspondent."

"I don't see that," said Bland. "If there'd been a little slaughter I might have made something out of it. But a statue! Hang it all! One statue is rather a poor bag for the British Fleet. The people are proud of their navy. They've spent a lot of money on it, and they won't like being told that it has. .h.i.t nothing but a statue, after a long morning's shooting."

Bland had not grasped my idea. For a moment I was inclined to keep it for my own use and work it up into an article when I got time. But Bland deserved something from me. I resisted the temptation and gave him the idea.

"I wish," I said, "that I were a special correspondent. I'd--"

"Well," said Bland. "What would you say?"

"I should take that New Zealander who stood on the broken arch of Westminster Bridge and--"

"Macaulay's," said Bland. "I don't think that the public would stand him again. He's played out."

"Not in the way I mean to use him. I should, so to speak, spiritualize him, and--"