Part 16 (1/2)
Haray March skies are curdling hard and high above blackharsh and dry across a dreary sheet of bog, still red and yelloith the stains of winter frost One brown knoll alone breaks the waste, and on it a few leafless wind-clipt oaks stretch their iant hairy spiders, above a desolate pool which crisps and shi+vers in the biting breeze, while from beside its brink rises a mournful cry, and sweeps down, faint and fitful, a, picking their road as, a co fast, clad cap-a-pie in helmet and quilted jerkin, with arquebus on shoulder, and pikes trailing behind the the guns at Smerwick fort, and have since then seen many a bloody fray, and shall see gy ponies, the taller in armor, stained and rusted with many a storm and fray, the other in brilliant inlaid cuirass and helold, a quaint contrast enough to the arron which carries him and his finery Beside them, secured by a cord which a pikeed Irish kerne, whose only clothing is his ragged yellow h which his eyes peer out, right and left, in uide of the colas; and woe to him if he play theh,” says the dingy officer to the gay one ”I wonder how, having once escaped froe to co-water and mud”
”A very pleasant country, my friend Amyas; what you say in jest, I say in earnest”
”Hillo! Our tastes have changed places I am sick of it already, as you foretold Would Heaven that I could hear of so in a hammock onceand rock, that you coht you had spied out the nakedness of the land long ago”
”Bog and rock? Nakedness of the land? What is needed here but prudence and skill, justice and law? This soil, see, is fat enough, if men were here to till it These rocks--who knohat old and jewels found already in divers parts; and Daniel, my brother Humphrey's German assayer, assures me that these rocks are of the very same kind as those which yield the silver in Peru Tut, racious majesty would but bestow on me some few square miles of this same wilderness, in seven years' tiood help”
”Humph! I should be more inclined to stay here, then”
”So you shall, and be et in my mine- rents and my corn-rents, and ht of the bear's-paw?”
”Well enough for such short reckonings as yours would be, on the profit side at least No, no--I'd sooner carry lime all my days from Cauldy to Bideford, than pass another twelve- the children of wrath There is a curse upon the face of the earth, I believe”
”There is no curse upon it, save the old one offorth to thee' But if you root up the thorns and thistles, A wheat instead; and if you till the ground like a h and barroay nature's curse, and other fables of the school fashi+on which afterwards obtained for hiood Christian less deserve it) the imputation of atheism
”It is sword and bullet, I think, that are needed here, before plough and harrow, to clear away soone where the Desmonds are, there is no peace for Ireland”
”Hu, I fear And yet--Irish lords? These very traitors are better English blood than ho hunt them down When Yeo here slew the Desmond the other day, he no more let out a drop of Irish blood, than if he had slain the lord deputy himself”
”His blood be on his own head,” said Yeo, ”He looked as wild a savage as the worst of theh cut off his arm before he told us who he was: and then, your worshi+p, having a price upon his head, and like to bleed to death too--”
”Enough, enough, good fellow,” said Raleigh ”Thou hast done as given thee to do Strange, Aes--Hibernis ipsis hiberniores! Is there so venolish h, if their tyrants would let theeman has her majesty than the Inchiquin, who, they say, is Prince of The of all Ireland, if every hts in the land of wrongs, man But the Inchiquin knoell that the true Irish Esau has no worse enemy than his supplanter, the Norht be, if we had been bred up masters over the bodies and souls of men, in some remote land where law and order had never coes, a Papist a slaves; a thousand easyit honor to serve his pleasure, a thousand wild ruffians deee: and let hi us cast the first stone”
”Ay,” went on Raleigh to himself, as the conversation dropped ”What hadst thou been, Raleigh, hadst thou been that Desmond whose lands thou now desirest? What wilt thou be when thou hast them? Will thy children sink doards, as these noble barons sank? Will the genius of tyranny and falsehood find soil within thy heart to grow and ripen fruit? What guarantee hast thou for doing better here than those ent before thee? And yet, cannot I do justice and love mercy? Can I not establish plantations, build and sow, and h with corn? Shall I not have hts, and raise ht-errantry, to redeelorious queen whoenerous race? Trustful and tenderhearted they are--none more; and if they be fickle and passionate, will not that very softness of temper, which makes theood? Yes--here, away fro a people who should bless ht be el's e? And will my house be indeed the house of God, the foundations of which are loyalty, and its bulwarks righteousness, and not the house of fame, whose walls are of the soap-bubble, and its floor a sea of glass reat--When will the day coreat, like this sa on by ht for the morrow than the birds of God? Greatness? I have tasted that cup within the last twelve months; do I not know that it is sweet in the mouth, but bitter in the belly? Greatness? And was not Essex great, and John of Austria great, and Deso, had stood for ages higher than I shall ever hope to climb--castles, and lands, and slaves by thousands, and five hundred gentlemen of his name, who had vowed to forswear God before they forswore him and well have they kept their vow! And now, dead in a turf-hovel, like a coney in a burrow! Leigh, what noise was that?”
”An Irish howl, I fancied: but it ca; it ht, sir captain, to ly stories here of pucks and banshees, and what not of ghosts There it was again, wailing just like a woht before Des for Baltinglas; for his turn is likely to come next--not that I believe in such old wives' tales”
”Shauide, ”do you hear that cry in the bog?”
The guide put on the lish-- ”Sha in ta pool”
”An otter, he ht Stay, no! Did you not hear it then, Shamus? It was a woman's voice”
”Shamus is shi+ck in his ears ever since Christo after Desmond if he lies,” said Amyas ”Ancient, we had better send a few men to see what it is; thereto death, as I have seen many a one”
”And I too, poor wretches; and by no fault of their own or ours either: but if their lords will fall to quarrelling, and then drive each other's cattle, and waste each other's lands, sir, you know--”
”I know,” said Ao?”
”Cry youborn of woman”
”Well, what of that?” said Amyas, with a smile
”But these pucks, sir The wild Irish do say that they haunt the pools; and they do noup to them; but when you are past, sir, they jump on your back like to apes, sir,--and who can tackle that , ancient,” said Raleigh, ”thou h, and then if the puck jumps on thee as thou comest back, just run in with him here, and I'll buy hie, andhih! but you talk rashly! But if I h-- 'Where duty calls To brazen walls, How base the slave who flinches'
Lads, who'll follow me?”
”Thou askest for volunteers, as if thou wert to lead a forlorn hope Pull away at the usquebaugh, lish is oozed away Stay, I'll go h ”As the queen's true knight- errant, I am bound to be behindhand in no adventure Who knows but weto cut off the head of some saffron-mantled princess?” and he diser your precious--”
”Pooh,” said Raleigh ”I wear an aue's end, whereby, sir ancient, neither can a ghost see me, nor I see them Come with us, Yeo, the Desmond-slayer, and ill shame the devil, or be shamed by hihten , captains?”
”Tut! Devonshi+re men, and heath-trotters born, and not know our way over a peat moor!”
And the three strode away
They splashed and scrambled for some quarter of a mile to the knoll, while the cry becahost nor otter, sirs, but a true Irish howl, as Captain Leigh said; and I'll warrant Master Shao,” said Yeo
And in fact, they could now hear plainly the ”Ochone, Ochonorie,” of so over the boulders of the knoll, in another irl, sluttish and unke, as usual, was the a her black dishevelled hair, and every now and then throwing up her head, and bursting into a long mournful cry, ”for all the world,” as Yeo said, ”like a dumb four- footed hound, and not a Christian soul”
On her knees lay the head of asoutane of a Romish priest One look at the attitude of his limbs told theh's spirit, susceptible of all poetical ie scene,--the bleak and bitter sky, the shapeless bog, the stunted trees, the savage girl alone with the corpse in that utter desolation And as she bent her head over the still face, and called wildly to him who heard her not, and then, utterly unain that dreary wail into the dreary air, they felt a sacred horror, which almost made them turn away, and leave her unquestioned: but Yeo, whose nerves were of tougher fibre, asked quietly-- ”Shall I go and search the fellow, captain?”
”Better, I think,” said Airl, and spoke to her in English She looked up at hi eyes, and then shook her head, and returned to her laently laid his hand on her arm, and lifted her up, while Yeo and Ae and coarse-featured man, but wasted and shrunk as if by fas were craether, as if the man had died of cold or famine Yeo drew back the clothes froirl screamed and wept, but made no effort to stop him
”Ask her who it is? Yeo, you know a little Irish,” said Airl made no answer ”The stubborn jade won't tell, of course, sir If she were but a h”
”Ask her who killed him?”