To the summit of the hill climbed up men, women and children. The men grimy and toil-worn; a look of hopelessness in their eyes: the sob of misery in their voices. Dragging themselves up after them came the women—some pressing babies to their breasts, others leading little children by the hand. The men had begged them to stay at home. There might be bad work that day, but the women had answered:
"If WE go they won't hurt YOU!" and they pressed on after the leaders.
At three o'clock O'Connell ascended the hill and stood alone on the great mount.
A cry of greeting went up.
He raised his hand in acknowledgment.
It was strange indeed for him to stand there looking down at the people he had known since childhood. A thousand conflicting emotions swept through him as he looked at the men and women whom, only a little while ago, it seemed, he had known as children. THEN he bent to their will. The son of a peasant, he was amongst the poorest of the poor. Now he came amongst them to try and lift them from the depths he had risen from himself.
"It is Frankie O'Connell himself," cried a voice.
"Him we knew as a baby," said another.
"Fightin' O'Connell! Hooray for him!" shouted a third.
"Mary's own child standin' up there tall and straight to get us freedom and comfort," crooned an old white-haired woman.
"And broken heads," said another old woman.
"And lyin' in the county-jail himself, mebbe, this night," said a third.
"The Lord be with him," cried a fourth.
"Amen to that," and they reverently crossed themselves.
Again O'Connell raised his hand, this time to command silence.
All the murmurs died away.
O'Connell began—his rich, melodious voice ringing far beyond the farthest limits of the crowd—the music of his Irish brogue making cadences of entreaty and again lashing the people into fury at the memory of Ireland's wrongs.
"Irish men and women, we are met here to-day in the sight of God and in defiance of the English government," (groans and hisses), "to clasp hands, to unite our thoughts and to nerve our bodies to the supreme effort of bringing hope to despair, freedom to slavery, prosperity to the land and happiness to our homes." (Loud applause.) "Too long have our forefathers lived under the yoke of the oppressor. Too long have our old been buried in paupers' graves afther lives of misery no other counthry in the wurrld can equal. Why should it be the lot of our people—men and women born to a birthright of freedom? Why? Are ye men of Ireland so craven that aliens can rule ye as they once ruled the negro?" ("No, no!") "The African slave has been emancipated and his emancipation was through the blood and tears of the people who wronged him. Let OUR emancipation, then, be through the blood and tears of our oppressors. In other nations it is the Irishman who rules. It is only in his own counthry that he is ruled. And the debt of hathred and misery and blasted lives and dead hopes is at our door today. Shall that debt be unpaid?" ("No, no!") "Look around you. Look at the faces of yer brothers and sisthers, worn and starved. Look at yer women-kind, old before they've been young. Look at the babies at their mothers' breasts, first looking out on a wurrld in which they will never know a happy thought, never feel a joyous impulse, never laugh with the honest laughther of a free and contented and God-and-government-protected people. Are yez satisfied with this?" (Angry cries of "No, no!")
"Think of yer hovels—scorched with the heat, blisthered with the wind and drenched with the rain, to live in which you toil that their owners may enjoy the fruits of yer slavery—IN OTHER COUNTHRIES. Think of yer sons and daughthers lavin' this once fair land in hundhreds of thousands to become wage-earners across the seas, with their hearts aching for their homes and their loved ones. The fault is at our own door. The solution is in our own hands. Isn't it betther to die, pike in hand, fightin' as our forefathers did, than to rot in filth, and die, lavin' a legacy of disease and pestilence and weak brains and famished bodies?" His voice cracked and broke into a high-pitched hysterical cry as he finished the peroration.
A flame leaped through the mob. The men muttered imprecations as a new light flashed from their eyes. All their misery fell from them as a shroud. They only thought of vengeance. They were men again. Their hearts beat as their progenitors' hearts must have beaten at the Boyne.
The great upheaval that flashed star-like through Ireland from epoch to epoch, burned like vitriol in their veins.
The women forgot their crying babies as they pressed forward, screaming their paean of vengeance against their oppressors.
The crowd seemed to throb as some great engine of humanity. It seemed to think with one brain, beat with one heart and call with one voice.
The cry grew into an angry roar.
Suddenly Father Cahill appeared amongst them. "Go back to your homes," he commanded, breathlessly.
"Stay where you are," shouted O'Connell.
"In the name of the Catholic Church, go!" said the priest.
"In the name of our down-trodden and suffering people, stay!" thundered O'Connell.
"Don't listen to him. Listen to the voice of God!"
"God's help comes to those who help themselves," answered the agitator.
Father Cahill made his last and strongest appeal:
"My poor children, the constabulary are coming to break up the meetin' and to arrest HIM."
"Let them come," cried O'Connell. "Show them that the spirit of Irish manhood is not dead. Show them that we still have the power and the courage to defy them. Tell them we'll meet when and where we think fit. That we'll not silence our voices while there's breath in our bodies. That we'll resist their tyranny while we've strength to shouldher a gun or handle a pike. I appeal to you, O Irishmen, in the name of yer broken homes; in the name of all that makes life glorious and death divine! In the name of yer maimed and yer dead! Of yer brothers in prison and in exile! By the listenin' earth and the watching sky I appeal to ye to make yer stand to-day. I implore ye to join yer hearts and yer lives with mine. Lift yer voices with me: stretch forth yer hands with mine and by yer hopes of happiness here and peace hereafter give an oath to heaven never to cease fightin' until freedom and light come to this unhappy land!"
"Swear by all ye hold most dear: by the God who gave ye life: by the memory of all ye hold most sacred: by the sorrow for yer women and children who have died of hunger and heart-break: stretch forth yer hands and swear to give yer lives so that the generations to come may know happiness and peace and freedom. Swear!"
He stopped at the end of the adjuration, his right hand held high above his head, his left—palm upward, stretched forward in an attitude of entreaty.
It seemed as though the SOUL of the man was pleading with them to take the oath that would bind THEIR souls to the "Cause."
Crowding around him, eyes blazing, breasts heaving, as if impelled by one common thought, the men and women clamoured with outstretched hands:
"We swear!"
In that moment of exaltation it seemed as if the old Saint-Martyrs' halo glowed over each, as they took the oath that pledged them to the "CAUSE,"—the Cause that meant the lifting of oppression and tyranny: immunity from "buckshot" and the prison-cell: from famine and murder and coercion—all the component parts of Ireland's torture in her struggle for her right to self-government.
A moment later the crowd was hushed. A tremour ran through it. The sounds of marching troops: the unintelligible words of command, broke in on them.
Father Cahill plunged in amongst them. "The constabulary," he cried. "Back to your homes."
"Stay where you are," shouted O'Connell.
"I beg you, my children! I command you! I entreat you! Don't have bloodshed here to-day!" Father Cahill turned distractedly to O'Connell, crying out to him:
"Tell them to go back! My poor people! Tell them to go back to their homes while there's time."
Turning his back on the priest, O'Connell faced the crowd:
"You have taken your oath. Would you perjure yourselves at this old man's bidding? See where the soldiers come. Look—and look well at them. Their uniforms stand for the badge of tyranny. The glint of their muskets is the message from their illustrious sovereign of her feeling to this part of her kingdom. We ask for JUSTICE and they send us BULLETS. We cry for 'LIBERTY' and the answer is 'DEATH' at the hands of her soldiers. We accept the challenge. Put yer women and childhren behind you. Let no man move."
The men hurriedly placed the women and children so that they were protected from the first onslaught of the soldiery.
Then the men of St. Kernan's Hill, armed with huge stones and sticks, turned to meet the troops.
Mr. Roche, the resident-magistrate, rode at their head.
"Arrest that man," he cried, pointing to O'Connell.
An angry growl went up from the mob.
Father Cahill hurried to him:
"Don't interfere with them, Mr. Roche. For the love of heaven, don't. There'll be murder here to-day if ye do."
"I have my instructions, Father Cahill, and it's sorry I am to have to act under them to-day."
"It isn't the people's fault," pleaded the priest; "indeed it isn't."
"We don't wish to hurt them. We want that man O'Connell."
"They'll never give him up. Wait till to-night and take him quietly."
"No, we'll take him here. He's given the police the slip in many parts of the country. He won't to-day." The magistrate pushed forward on his horse through the fringe on the front part of the crowd and reined up at the foot of the mount.
"Frank Owen O'Connell, I arrest you in the Queen's name for inciting peaceable citizens to violence," he called up to the agitator.
"Arrest me yerself, Mr. Magistrate Roche," replied O'Connell.
Turning to an officer Roche motioned him to seize O'Connell.
As the officer pressed forward he was felled by a blow from a heavy stick.
In a second the fight was on.
The magistrate read the riot-act.
He, together with Father Cahill, called to the mob to stop. They shouted to O'Connell to surrender and disperse the people.
Too late.
The soldiers formed into open formation and marched on the mob.
Maddened and reeling, with no order, no discipline, with only blind fury and the rushing, pulsing blood—that has won many a battle for England against a common foe—the men of Ireland hurled themselves upon the soldiers. They threw their missiles: they struck them with their gnarled sticks: they beat them with their clenched fists.
The order to "Fire" was given as the soldiers fell back from the onslaught.
When the smoke cleared away the ranks of the mob were broken. Some lay dead on the turf; some groaned in the agony of shattered limbs. The women threw themselves moaning on the bodies. Silence fell like a pall over the mob. Out of the silence a low angry growl went up. O'Connell had fallen too.
The soldiers surrounded his prostrate body.
The mob made a rush forward to rescue him. O'Connell stopped them with a cry:
"Enough for to-day, my men." He pointed to the wounded and dying: "Live to avenge them. Wait until 'The Day'!" His voice failed. He fell back unconscious.
Into the midst of the crowd and through the ranks of the soldiers suddenly rode a young girl, barely twenty years old. Beside her was a terrified groom. She guided her horse straight to the magistrate. He raised his hat and muttered a greeting, with a glance of recognition.
"Have him taken to 'The Gap,'" she said imperatively, pointing to the motionless body of O'Connell.
"He is under arrest," replied the magistrate.
"Do you want another death on your hands? Haven't you done enough in killing and maiming those unfortunate people?" She looked with pity on the moaning women: and then with contempt on the officer who gave the order to fire.
"You ought to be proud of your work to-day!" she said.
"I only carried out my orders," replied the man humbly.
"Have that man taken to my brother's house. He will surrender him or go bail for him until he has been attended to. First let us SAVE him." The girl dismounted and made a litter of some fallen branches, assisted by the groom.
"Order some of your men to carry him."
There was a note of command in her tone that awed both the officer and the magistrate.
Four men were detailed to carry the body on the litter. The girl remounted. Turning to the magistrate, she said:
"Tell your government, Mr. Roche, that their soldiers shot down these unarmed people." Then she wheeled round to the mob:
"Go back to your homes." She pointed to the dead and wounded: "THEY have died or been maimed for their Cause. Do as HE said," pointing to the unconscious O'Connell, "LIVE for it!"
She started down through the valley, followed by the litter-bearers and the magistrate.
The officer gave the word of command, and, with some of the ringleaders in their midst, the soldiers marched away.
Left alone with their dying and their dead, all the ferocity left the poor, crushed peasants.
They knelt down sobbing over the motionless bodies. For the time being the Law and its officers were triumphant.
This was the act of the representatives of the English government in the year of civilisation 18—, and in the reign of her late Gracious Majesty, Queen Victoria, by the grace of God, Empress of India.
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