The Northern Iron Read online

  Produced by David Widger

  THE NORTHERN IRON

  By George A. Birmingham

  Dublin: Maunsel & Co., Limited

  1907

  TO FRANCIS JOSEPH BIGGER,

  ARDRIGH, BELFAST.

  _My Dear Bigger,_

  _This story, as you have already guessed, is the fruit of a recentholiday spent in County Antrim. The writing of it has been a greatpleasure, for almost every place mentioned in it recalls the goodness ofthe friends who received me and made my holiday a happy one. I think ofkind people when I write of Dunseveric and Ballintoy--of hours spent intheir company among the Runkerry cliffs, the sandhills, the Skerries,and of the morning on which I swam, like Neal and Una, into the RockPigeons' Cave, I remember a time--full of interest and delight--spentwith you when I mention Donegore, Antrim, and Temple-Patrick. My minddwells on an older, a very dear friend and relative, when I tell ofNeal's visit to Belfast. And the book is more than the recollection of asummer holiday. I go back in it to my own country--to places familiarto me in boyhood as the mountains and bays of Mayo are now; to days verylong ago, when I caught cuddings and lithe off the Black Rock or RackleRoy and learned to swim in the Blue Pool at Port Ballintrae. Yet I knowthat I could not, for all that I remembered of my boyhood or learnedduring my holiday, have written this story without your help. You toldme what I wanted to know, you corrected, patiently, my manuscript, andyou have helped me to enter into the spirit of the time. For all thisI owe you many thanks, and if I have succeeded in writing a story whichinterests my readers they, too, will owe you thanks._

  _I have tried to be faithful to the facts of history and to representthe thoughts and feelings of the men who took part in the_

  "Out, unhappy far off things And battles long ago,"

  _of which I chose to write. Most of my characters are purely imaginary.Of the men who really lived and acted in 1798 only one--JamesHope--appears prominently in my story. In his case I have taken painsto understand what manner of man he was before I wrote of him, and Ibelieve that, feeble though my presentation of his character may be, youwill not find it actually untruthful._

  _I am your friend,_

  _GEORGE A. BIRMINGHAM._

  THE NORTHERN IRON

  CHAPTER I

  The road which connects Portrush with Ballycastle skirts, so far as anyroad can and dare, the sea coast. Sometimes it is driven inland a mileor so by the impossibility of crossing tracts of sandhills. The moundsand hollows of these dunes are for ever shifting and changing. Theloose sand is blown into new fantastic heights and valleys by the wintergales. No road could be built on such insecure foundation. Elsewhere theroad shrinks back among the shelterless fields for fear of mighty cliffsby which this northern Antrim coast is defended from the Atlantic. Noengineer in the eighteenth century, when the road was made, daredlay his metal close to the Causeway cliffs or the awful precipiceof Pleaskin Head. Still, now and then, in places where there are nosandhills and the cliffs are not appalling, the road ventures, for amile or two, to run within a few hundred yards of the sea, before it isswept, like a cord bent by the wind, further inland. Thus, after passingthe ruins of Dunseveric Castle, the traveller sees close beneath himthe white limestone rocks and broad yellow stretch of Ballintoy Strand.Here, when northerly gales are blowing, he may, if he is not swept offhis feet, cling desperately to his garments and watch the great wavescurl their feathered crests as they rush shorewards. He may listen,awestruck, to the ocean's roar of amazement when it batters in vain thehard north coast, the rocks and sand which defy even the strength of theAtlantic.

  A quarter of a mile back from this piece of road there stood, in 1798,the meeting-house of the Presbyterians and their minister's manse.The house stands on the site of a bare, shelterless hill. It is threestoreys high--a narrow, gaunt building, grey walled, black-slated. Itsonly entrance is at the back, and on the shoreward side. This househas disdained the shelter which might have been found further inland oramong its fellow-houses in the street of Ballintoy. It faces due north,preferring an outlook upon the sea to the warmth and light of a southernaspect. It is bare of all architectural ornament. Its windows arefew and small. The rooms within are gloomy, even in early summer. Itsarchitect seems to have feared this gloominess, for he planned great baywindows for three rooms, one above the other. He built the bay. It jutsout for the whole height of the house, breaking the flatness of thenorthern wall. But his heart failed him in the end. He dared not putsuch a window in the house. He walled up the whole flat front of thebay. Only in its sides did he place windows. Through these there is aside view of the sea and a side view of the main wall of the house. Theyare comparatively safe. The full force of the tempest does not strikethem fair.

  In one of the gloomy rooms on a bright morning in the middle of Maysat the Reverend Micah Ward, the minister. The sun shone outside on theyellow sand, the green water, and the white rocks; but neither sun norsea had tempted Micah Ward from his books. Great leather-covered folioslay at his elbow on the table. Before him were an open Hebrew Bible, aSeptuagint with queer, contracted lettering, and an old yellow-leavedVulgate. The subject of his studies was the Book of Amos, who was theruggedest, the fiercest, and the most democratic of the Hebrew prophets.Micah Ward's face was clean-shaved and marked with heavy lines. Thick,bushy brows hung over eyes which were keen and bright in spite of allhis studying. Looking at his face, a man might judge him to be hard,narrow, strong--perhaps fanatical. Near the window:--one of the slantingwindows through which it is tantalising to look--sat a young man, tallbeyond the common, well knit, strong--Neal Ward, the minister's son. Hehad grown hardy in the keen sea air and firm of will under his father'srigid discipline. He had never known a mother's care, for Margaret Ward,a bright-faced woman, ill-mated, so they said, with the minister, neverrecovered strength after her son's birth. She lingered for a year, andthen died. They laid her body in Templeastra Graveyard, near thesea. Over her grave her husband set a stone with an austerely-wordedinscription to keep her name in memory:--"The burying-ground of MicahWard. Margaret Neal, his wife, 1778." Such inscriptions are to be foundin scores in the graveyards of Antrim. The hard, brave men who choseto mark thus the resting-places of their dead disdained parade of theiraffliction and their heart-break, and held their creed so firmly thatthey felt no need of any text to remind them of the resurrection of thedead.

  Neal Ward, like his father, had books and papers before him, but hisattention was not fixed on them. Now and then, with spasmodic energy,he copied a passage from the page before him. Then, with a sigh, he laidhis pen down and gazed out of the window. His father took no notice ofthe young man's want of application. No words passed between the two.Then suddenly the silence was broken by a cry from the field below thehouse--

  "Hello! Neal! Neal Ward! Hello! Are you there?"

  The young man started to his feet and made a step to the window.Then turning, he looked at his father. The frown on Micah Ward's browdeepened slightly. Otherwise he made no sign of having heard the cry.He went on writing in his careful, deliberate manner. The voice fromoutside reached the room again.

  "Neal! Neal Ward! Come out. What right has a man to shut himself indoorson a day like this?"

  Neal stood irresolute, looking at his father. At last he spoke.

  "Can I go out, father? I have almost finished the transcription of thepassage which you set me."

  Micah Ward laid down his pen, sprinkled sand on his paper, and lookedup. He gazed steadily at his son. The young man's eyes dropped. Herepeated his question in a voice that was nearly trembling.

  "Can I go out, father?"

  "Who is it calls you, Neal?"

  "It is Maurice St. Clair."

  "Maurice St. Clair," repeated Micah Ward. Then, with a note of d
eepscorn in his voice, "The Hon. Maurice St. Clair, the son of LordDun-severic. Are you to do his bidding, to run like a dog when he callsyou?"

  "He is my friend, father."

  "Is he a fit friend for you? Have I not told you that his people and ourpeople are enemies the one to the other? That the oppression wherewiththey oppress us--but there. Go, since you want to go. You do notunderstand as yet. Some day you will understand."

  Neal left the room without haste, closing the door quietly. Once free ofhis father's presence he seized a cap and ran from the house. Half-waybetween him and the high road, knee deep in meadow grass, stood MauriceSt. Clair.

  "Come along, come along quick," he shouted. "I had nearly given up hopeof getting you out. We're off for a day's fishing to Rackle Roy. We'llbag a pigeon or two at the mouth of the cave before we land. Brown-Eyesis down on the road waiting for us with rods and guns. We've allday before us. My lord is off to Ballymoney, and can't be back tillsupper-time."

  "What takes Lord Dunseveric to Ballymoney to-day?" asked Neal. "There'sno magistrates' meeting, is there?"

  "No. He's gone to meet our aunt, Madame de Tourneville. She's beencoming these five years, ever since she ran away from Paris at the timeof the Terror; but it's only now she has succeeded in arriving."

  Together the two young men crossed the field and vaulted the wall whichseparated the manse land from the road. The girl whom her brother calledBrown-Eyes waited for them. The name suited her well, and came naturallyfrom Maurice. He was tall and fair, yellow-haired, blue-eyed, largelimbed, a fine type of Antrim Irishman, the heir of the form and faceof generations of St. Clairs of Dunseveric. The girl, Una St. Clair,belonged to a different race--came of her mother's people. She wassmall, brown-skinned, brown-eyed, dark-haired. She grew as the yearswent on more and more like what her mother had been. Lord Dunseveric,watching his daughter pass from childhood to womanhood, saw in her thevery image of Marie Dillon, the French-Irish girl who had won his hearta quarter of a century before in Paris.

  "Take the guns, Neal. Here, Brown-Eyes, give me the rods and the basket.There's no need for you to break your little back carrying them."

  "Why should I when I've two big men to carry them for me? Indeed, I'mnot sure but one of you ought to carry me, too. You're big enough andstrong enough."

  She smiled gaily at Neal as he shouldered the guns. They had built sandcastles together when they were little children, and tempted the wavesto chase them up the sand, flying barefoot from the pursuing lip offoam. They had climbed and fallen, explored rocky bays, penetrated tothe depths of caves as they grew older. Always Una St. Clair had queenedit over the boys, teased them, petted them, scolded them. Now, grown towomanhood, she discovered new powers in herself which made Neal at leastmore than ever her slave.

  They reached the little bay where the boat lay pulled up among therocks. Maurice and Neal lifted her stern on to a roller and dragged hertowards the sea. Una, running before them, laid other rollers on thepathway of slippery rock till the boat floated. Then she climbed thegunwale and settled herself on the stern seat among the rods and guns.The two young men shoved off into deep water, springing into the boatwith dripping feet as she slid out clear of the shore. They placed theheavy oars between the wooden thole pins and steadied the boat whileUna shipped the rudder. The wind was off shore and the sea, save for thelong heave of the Atlantic, was still. The brown sail was hoisted andstretched with the sprit. Then, sailing and rowing, they swept pastCarrighdubh, the Black Rock, which guarded the entrance of the littlebay, and passed into the shadow of the mighty cliffs.

  A silence fell on them. The laughter and gay talk ceased. The senseof holiday joyfulness was overwhelmed by a vague awe of the ocean'sgreatness, the oppression of its strength, and the black towering rockswhich hung over the boat, casting a gloom across the sea. The feeling ofthis solemnity abides through life with the men and women who have beenbred as children on this north Antrim coast. If they live their livesout among its rugged harbours and stern ways they become, as thefishermen are, people of slow thoughts, long memories, and simpleoutlook upon life. The fear of the Lord is over their lives. If theywander elsewhere, making homes for themselves among the southern orwestern Irish, or, further still, to England or America, they maylearn to be in appearance as other men are--may lose the harsh northernintonation from their talk, but down in the bottom of their hearts willbe an awful affection for their sea, which is like no other sea, and thedark overwhelming cliffs whose shadow never wholly leaves their souls.In times of stress and hours of bitterness they will fall back upon thestark, rigid strength of those who, seeing the mightiest of His works,have learned to fear the Lord.

  The boat lay off the entrance of the Pigeon Cave. The sportsman's senseawoke in Maurice. He gave a brief order to Neal, laid his oar acrossthe boat, stood up and took in the sprit, letting the sail hang in loosefolds. He unstepped the mast and sat down again.

  "You may unship the rudder, Brown-Eyes, You had better leave the boat toNeal and me to bring up to the cave. Pass the gun forward to me and thepowder horn."

  He loaded, ramming the charge down and pressing down the wad. Neal andthe girl sat silent. The solemn enchantment of the scene was on themstill. Then the two men took the oars again. Very cautiously they rowedalong the narrow channel which led to the opening of the cave. The rockslay low at first on each side of them; brown tangles of weed swayedslowly to and fro with the onward sweep and eddy of the ocean swell.Then, as the boat advanced, the rocks rose higher on each side, sheershining walls, whose reflection made the clear water almost black.The huge arch of the cave's entrance faced them. Behind was thedark channel, and beyond it the sunlight on the sea, before them theimpenetrable gloom of the cave. The noise of the water dropping from itsroof into the sea beneath struck their ears sharply. The hollow roarof the sea far off in the utmost recesses of the cave came to them. Thegirl leaned forward from her seat and laid her hand on Neal's arm. Helooked at her. Her eyes, the homes of laughter and quick inconsequences,were wide with dread. Neal knew what she felt. It was not fear of anydefinite danger or any evil actually threatening.

  It was awe, the feeling of mariners of other days who penetrated tounknown seas, of men in primitive times who knew that fairy powers dweltin dark lakes and precipitous mountain sides.

  The bow of the boat touched the huge boulders which formed a bar acrossthe mouth of the cave. Maurice leaped out, gun in hand, and stood kneedeep in the water, feeling with his feet for a secure resting-place.

  "Keep the boat off, Neal, and take your shot if you get a chance."

  He shouted--"Hello-lo-oh."

  The rocky sides and roof of the cave echoed back his cry a hundredtimes. Again he shouted, and again, until shouts and echoes meetingclashed with each other, and it seemed as if the tremendous laughter ofgleeful giants mocked the solemn booming of the sea. There was a rushof many wings, and a flock of terrified rock pigeons flew from the cave.Maurice fired one barrel after another in quick succession, and twobirds dropped dead into the water. Neal, shaking the girl's hand fromhis arm, fired, too. From his seat in the swaying boat it was difficultto aim well. He missed once, but killed with his second shot. The boatwas borne forward and bumped sharply on the boulders at the cave'smouth. The laughter of the echo died away. Instead of it came, likeangry threats, the repetition of their four shots, multiplied to afusilade of loud explosions.

  "Come back, Maurice," cried Una. "Come back and let us get out of this.I'm frightened. I cannot bear it any longer."

  "You shall have all the four wings of my birds to trim your hats with,Brown-Eyes," said Maurice, as he clambered dripping into the boat. "Nealwill stuff his bird for you and perch him on a stone. You shall have himto set on the top of your new bureau, the one Aunt Estelle sent you whenshe escaped from Paris without having her head chopped off."

  They pushed the boat cautiously back along the channel, travelling sternfirst, for there was little room to turn, and even in calm weather mendo not willingly lay a boat across
the sea in such a place.

  "Now for Rackle Roy and a basketful of glashins and lithe," saidMaurice.

  East a little and out seawards from the mouth of the cave lies a long,flat rock, dry at low water, and even at flood tide in calm weather,swept with desolating surf when the Atlantic swell rolls in or the windlashes the nearer sea to fury. Right out of the centre of the rock thewaves have fashioned a deep bay, curved like a horse-shoe. This is afamous fishing-place. As the tide rises, lithe and glashin, brazers,gurnet, rock codling, and crowds of cuddings come here to feed, and thefisherman, on those rare days, when he can land at all, may count onbringing home with him great bunches of fish strung through the gills.

  The rock lay far enough from the cliff to be clear of the shadow. Thesun shone on its brown weed-clad sides, glistened on black clusters ofmussels, glowed on the red seams of the rock where the iron croppedout, and baked the black basalt of the upper surface. The spirits of theparty revived when they landed. Una's gaiety returned to her.

  "Have you forgotten the bait, Maurice? I'm sure you have. It would belike you to come for a day's fishing without bait."

  "No, then, I haven't. There are three large crabs in the boat, and evenif there wasn't one at all we could do nicely with limpets. There'sworse bait than a good limpet."

  "Well, and if you have the crabs I expect you've forgotten the sheep'swool. What do you think, Neal? Yesterday we were fishing cuddings offthe Black Rock and Maurice ran out of wool. The fish simply sucked thebait off our hooks and laughed at us. What did Maurice do but take myhairs. He pulled them out one by one as he wanted them, and wrapped thebait on with them."

  "Your wool, Brown-Eyes, doesn't come up to that of the sheep. It's notsoft enough. But I shan't want it to-day. I've got my pockets half fullof the proper sort."

  Neal laughed, but he felt that to use Una's hair as a wrap for the redpulp of a crab's back or the soft, black belly of a limpet was a kindof profanation. He was a keen fisherman, but he would rather have missedthe chance of catching the largest lithe that ever swam than lure itwith a bait fastened with Una's glossy hair.

  They fished till noon, and the tide rose slowly round their rock. ThenUna's luncheon basket was fetched from the boat, the mooring ropewas made secure above high water mark, and the three sat down on thesun-baked rock and ate with keen appetites. Maurice stared seawards.

  "That brig," he said, "is lying very close inshore. Look at her, Neal."

  "I saw her pass the point of the Skerries an hour ago." said Neal. "Shemust have hauled her wind since then to fetch in so close with the tiderunning against her."

  "I wonder why she's doing it," said Maurice. "She'll have to run offagain to clear Benmore."

  "She looks a big ship," said Una.

  "Maybe she's 250 tons," said Neal. "She's about the size of the brigthat sailed from Portrush for Boston last summer year with two hundredemigrants in her."

  "She's fetching closer in yet," said Maurice. "See, she's hoisted someflag or other, two flags, no, three, from the peak of her spanker. It'sa signal. I wonder what they want. Now they've laid her to. She mustwant a boat out from the shore. Come on, Neal, come on, Brown-Eyes.We'll go out to her. We'll be first. There's no other boat nearer thanthose at the Port, and we've got a long start of them. Never mind thefish. Or wait. Fling them in. I dare say the men on the brig will beglad of them. She must be an American."

  In a few minutes the boat was pulled clear of the little bay and out ofthe shelter of Rackle Roy. The mast was stepped and the sail set.The sheet was slacked out and the boat sped seawards before the wind.Maurice was all impatience. He got out his oar.

  "It's no use," said Neal, "the breeze has freshened since morning.She'll sail quicker than we could row."

  The brig lay little more than a mile from the shore. The boat soonreached her.

  "Boat, ahoy," yelled a voice from the deck. "Lower your sail, and comeup under my lee."

  Maurice and Neal obeyed. The sea was rougher than it had been nearthe shore. The boat, when Maurice had made fast the rope flung to him,plunged up and down beside the brig, and needed careful handling toprevent her being damaged.

  The crew looked over the side with eager curiosity.

  "Say, boys," said the captain, "what will you take for your fish? I'lltrade with you."

  "I don't want to sell them," said Maurice. "I'll give them to you."

  His voice and accent, his refusal to barter, betrayed the fact that hewas a gentleman.

  "I guess," said the captain, "that you're an aristocrat, a Britisharistocrat, too proud to take the money of the men who whipped you inthe States. That's so."

  "I'm an Irish gentleman," said Maurice.

  "Well, Mr. Irish Gentleman, if you're too darned aristocratic to trade,I'll give you a present of a case of good Virginia, and you may giveme a present of your fish. I'd call it a swap, but if that turnsyour stomach I'll let you call it a mutual present, an expression ofinternational goodwill."

  "Fling him up the fish, Neal," said Maurice.

  Then another man appeared beside the captain on the quarter-deck. He wasnot a seafaring man. He was lean and yellow, and had keen grey eyes. Hisface seemed in some way familiar to Neal, though he could not recollecthaving ever seen the man before.

  "Yon are the Causeway cliffs," he said, "and yon's Pleaskin Head, andthe islands we passed are the Skerries?"

  "You know this coast," said Neal.

  "I knew this coast, young man, before your mother had the dandling ofyou. I know it now, though it's five and twenty years since I set footon it. But that's not the question. What I want to know is this. Can youput me ashore? I could do well if you land me at the Causeway. I'd makeshift with my bag if you put me out at Port Ballin-trae. I don't want tobe going on to Glasgow just for the pleasure of coming back again."

  "I'll land you at the Black Rock under Run-kerry," said Maurice, "ifyou can pull an oar. The wind's rising, and I've no mind to carry idlepassengers."

  "I can pull an oar," said the stranger.

  "I guess he can pull enough to break your back, young man," said thecaptain. "He's an American citizen, and he's been engaged in whippingyour British army. I guess an American citizen can lick a darnedaristocrat at pulling an oar same as he did at shooting off guns."

  "Shut your damned mouth," said Maurice, suddenly angry, "or I'll leaveyou to land your passenger yourself and see how you like beating thebottom out of your brig against our rocks. You'll find an Irish rockharder than your Yankee wood."

  The passenger fetched a small hand-bag and lowered it into the boat.Under a shower of jibes from the captain, Maurice and Neal pushed offand started for the row home against the wind.