Further Experiences of an Irish R.M.

by E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

  PART II

  A fortnight afterwards--to be precise, it was the 10th of October--Isaw the white hounds in the field. I had gone through the drearyroutine of the cub-hunter. The alarm clock had shrilled its exultingand age-long summons in the pitchy dark. I had burnt my fingers withthe spirit-lamp, and my mouth with hot cocoa; I had accomplished mybathless toilet, I had groped my way through the puddles in the stableyard, and got on to my horse by the light of a lantern, and at 5.30A.M. I was over the worst, and had met Flurry and the hounds, withMichael and Dr. Jerome Hickey, at the appointed cross-roads. The meetwas nine miles away, in a comparatively unknown land, to which Flurryhad been summoned by tales of what appeared to be an absolute epidemicof foxes, accompanied by bills for poultry and threats of poison. Itwas still an hour before sunrise, but a pallor was in the sky, and thehounds, that had at first been like a gliding shoal of fish round thehorses' feet, began to take on their own shapes and colours.

  The white Irish hounds were the first to disclose themselves, eachcoupled up with a tried old stager. I had been away from home for thepast ten days, and knew nothing of their conduct in their new quarters,and finding Flurry uncommunicative, I fell back presently to talk aboutthem to Michael.

  "Is it settling down they are?" said Michael derisively. "That's thefine settling down! Roaring and screeching every minute since theycame into the place! And as for fighting! They weren't in the kennelthree days before they had Rampant ate, and nothing only his paws leftbefore me in the morning! I didn't give one night in my bed since,with running down to them. The like o' them trash isn't fit for agentleman's kennels. Them O'Reillys had them rared very pettish; it'dbe as good for me to be trying to turn curlews as them!"

  The indictment of "The Whiteboys" (a title sarcastically bestowed byDr. Hickey), their sheep-killing, their dog-hunting, with the settingforth of Michael's trials, talents, and unrequited virtues, lasted,like an Arabian night's tale, till the rising of the sun, and alsountil our arrival at the place we were first to draw. This was a longand deep ravine, red with bracken, bushy with hazel and alders; a blackstream raced downwards through it, spreading at the lower end into bog,green, undefined, entirely treacherous; a place that instantly assuresthe rider that if hounds get away on its farther side he will not bewith them.

  A couple of men were waiting for us at the lower end of the ravine.

  "They're in it surely!" they said, shoving down a stone gap for ourbenefit; "there isn't a morning but we'll see the owld fellow and hispups funning away for themselves down by the river. My little fellows,when they does be going to school in the morning, couldn't hardly passhis nest for the fume that'd be from it."

  The first ten minutes proved that the foxes were certainly there, andduring the following half-hour pandemonium itself raged in the ravine.There were, I believe, a brace and a-half of cubs on foot; they were tome invisible, but they were viewed about twice in every minute byFlurry and his subordinates, and continuously by a few early risingcountrymen, who had posted themselves along the edges of the ravine.The yells of the latter went up like steam whistles, and the hounds,among whom were five couple of newly entered puppies, were wilder thanI had ever known them. They burst through the bracken and strove inthe furze, in incessant full cry, and still the cubs doubled anddodged, and made detours round the valley, and Flurry and Michaelroared themselves inside out, without producing the smallest effectupon anything save their own larynxes. No less than three times a foxwas frantically holloaed away, and when, by incredible exertions on allour parts, the hounds, or a fair proportion of them, had been gottogether on to the line, a fresh outburst of yells announced that,having run a ring, he had returned to the covert.

  Each of these excursions involved--

  1. Scrambling at best speed down a rocky hill side.

  2. Coercing a diffident horse across a noisy stream, masked by briars,out of bog, on to rock.

  3. Reverse of the first proceedings.

  4. Arrival, blown and heated, at the boggy end of the valley, to findthe original conditions prevailing as before.

  I should, perhaps, have already mentioned that I was riding a younghorse, to whom I was showing hounds for the first time. My idea hadbeen to permit him, strictly as an onlooker, to gather some idea of therudiments of the game. He was a good young horse, with the largegravity of demeanour that is often the result of a domestic bringing upin the family of a small farmer; and when the moment came, and I wasinexorably hustled into acting as Third Whip, he followed in the wakeof Dr. Hickey with an anxious goodwill that made even his awkwardnessattractive.

  Throughout these excursions I noticed, as far as I was able to noticeanything, the independent methods of the O'Reilly draft. They ignoredthe horn, eluded Michael, and laughed at Hickey and me; they huntedwith bloodthirsty intentness and entirely after their own devices.Their first achievement was to run the earth-stopper's dog, and havingkilled him, to eat him. This horrid feat they accomplished, securefrom interruption, in the briary depths of the ravine, and while themain body of the pack were industriously tow-rowing up and down thestream after their lawful fox, a couple of goats were only saved from"The Whiteboys" by miracles of agility and courage on the part of thecountrymen. The best that could be said for them was that, "linkingone virtue to a thousand crimes," whenever the hounds got fairly out ofcovert, the Whiteboys were together, and were in front.

  It was about eight o'clock, and the fierce red and grey sunrise hadbeen over-ridden by a regiment of stormy clouds, when one of the foxesmet his fate, amid ear-piercing whoops, and ecstatic comments from theonlookers, who had descended from the hill-tops with the speed of_ski_-runners.

  "Aha! that's the lad had many a fat duck under his rib!"

  "He had, faith! I'll go bail 'twas him that picked me wife'sfashionable cocks!"

  "I'LL GO BAIL 'TWAS HIM THAT PICKED ME WIFE'SFASHIONABLE COCKS"]

  "Well, I'm told that if ye'll see a fox taking a hen or a goose, andye'll call to him in Irish, that he'll drop it," remarked an older manto me, as we waited while Flurry and Hickey, in their capacity ofbutler and footman to the hounds' repast, snatched the few remainingmorsels from the elder revellers and endeavoured to force them upon thedeeply-reluctant young entry, who, having hunted with the innocententhusiasm of the _debutante_, thought as little of the ensuing meal asthe _debutante_ thinks of supper at her first ball.

  "I wonder why the deuce Michael can't get those Irish hounds," saidFlurry, catching at the word and looking round. "I only have Lilyhere."

  (Lily, I should say, was the romantic name of one of the Whiteboys.)

  "I believe I seen a two-three of the white dogs running east awhileago," said the elderly farmer, "and they yowling!"

  "They're likely killing a sheep now," murmured Hickey to me.

  At the same moment I chanced to look up towards the western end of theravine, and saw what seemed to be five seagulls gliding up a rift ofgrass that showed green between rocks and heather.

  "There are your white hounds, Flurry," I called out, "and they'rehunting."

  "Well, well," said the farmer, "they're afther wheeling round thelength of the valley in the minute! They're nearly able to fly!"

  A distant holloa from Michael, whose head alone was visible above aforest of furze, rose like a rocket at the end of the sentence, andevery hound sprang to attention.

  Once more we traversed the valley at full speed, and tackled the ladderof mud that formed the cattle track up the ravine; slough up to thehorses' knees, furze bushes and briars meeting over their heads andours, hounds and country boys jostling to get forward, with pistolshots behind from Hickey's thong, and the insistent doubling ofFlurry's horn in front. Up that green rift I went on foot, and, as itwere, hand in hand with my admirable young horse. The rift, on closeracquaintance, proved to be green with the deceitful verdure of swampygrass; (in Ireland, it may be noted, water runs up hill, and thesubtlest bog holes lie in wait for their prey on the mountain tops).As we ascended, the
wind that had risen with the sun, fought us everyinch of the way, and by the time I had won to level ground, I wasspeechless, and blowing like the bellows of a forge. A country boy,whose grinning purple face remains a fond and imperishable memory,caught me by the leg and rammed me into my saddle; just in front of meFlurry, also speechless, with his foot not as yet in his off stirrup,was getting up to his hounds. These were casting themselvesuncertainly over a sedgy and heathery slope, on which, in this wind,the hottest scent would soon be chilled to its marrow. Of Michael andthe Whiteboys nothing was to be seen.

  At a little distance a young man was grasping by the ears and nose adonkey with a back-load of bracken, and a misplaced ardour for thechase.

  "Did ye see the fox?" bellowed Flurry.

  "I did! I did!"

  "Which way did he go?"

  "Yerrah! aren't yer dogs after ateing him below!" shouted the youngman, waltzing strenuously with the donkey.

  "Well, there's a pair of you!" replied Flurry, cracking his whipviciously at the donkey's tail, and thereby much stimulating the dance,"and if I was given my choice of ye it's the ass I'd take! Here, comeon out of this, Hickey!" He shoved ahead. "Put those hounds on to me,can't you!"

  During this interchange of amenities Lily had wandered aside, and now,far to the left of the rest of the pack, was thoughtfully nosing alongthrough tufts of rushes; she worked her way down to a fence, and then,mute as a wraith, slid over it and slipped away across a grass field,still in jealous silence.

  "Hark forrad to Lily, hounds!" roared Flurry, with electricalsuddenness. "Put them on to her, Jerome!"

  "Well, those white hounds are the divil!" said Dr. Hickey, with a breakof admiration in his voice, as the hounds, suddenly driving ahead,proclaimed to heaven that they had got the line. They were running upa fierce north-westerly wind, and their cry came brokenly back to usthrough it like the fragments of the chimes through the turmoil ofTschaikowsky's "1812" symphony. The young horse began to realise thatthere was something in it, and, with a monster and frog-like leap, flewover the ensuing heathery bank, landing, shatteringly, on all fours.We were travelling down hill, a fact that involved heavy drops, butinvolved also the privilege, rare for me, of seeing the houndscomfortably. Lily, leading the rest by half a field, was going greatguns, so were Flurry and Hickey, so, I may say with all modesty, werethe young horse and I. After an eventful and entirely satisfactory tenminutes of racing over the class of country that has, on a low average,seventeen jumps to the mile, we skated down a greasy path, and foundourselves in a deep lane, with the hounds at fault, casting themselveseagerly right and left. It was here that we came upon Michael, adolorous spectacle, leading his mare towards us. She was dead lame.

  "What happened her?" shouted Flurry through the rioting wind.

  "The foot's dropping off her, sir," replied Michael, with his usualoptimism.

  "Well, get away home with her as quick as you can," interrupted Flurry,accepting the diagnosis with the usual discount of 90 per cent. "Whatway did those white hounds go?"

  "The last I seen o' them they were heading west over the hill beyondfor Drummig. It might be he was making for an old fort that's back inthe land there behind Donovan's farm. There was a fellow driving abread van above in the road there that told me if the hounds got insidein the fort we'd never see them again. He said there were holes downin it that'd go from here to the sea."

  "What the devil good were you that you didn't stop those hounds?" saidFlurry, cutting short this harangue with a countenance as black as theweather. "Here, come on!" he called to Hickey and me, "the road'll bethe quickest for us."

  It was about a mile by the road to Donovan's farm, and as Hickey and Ipounded along in the rear of the disgusted hounds, big pellets of rainwere flung in our faces, and I began to realise, not for the firsttime, that to turn up the collar of one's coat is more of a protestthan a protection.

  The farmhouse of Donovan of Drummig was connected with the high road bythe usual narrow and stony lane; as we neared the entrance of the lanewe saw through the swirls of rain a baker's van bumping down it. Therewere two men on the van, and in the shafts was a raking young brownhorse, who, having espied the approach of the hounds, was honouringthem with what is politically known as a demonstration. One of the menheld up his hand, and called out a request to "hold on awhile till theywere out on to the road."

  "Did you see any hounds?" shouted Flurry, holding back the hounds, asthe van bounded round the corner and into the main road, with anactivity rare in its species.

  "We did, sir," returned the men in chorus, clinging to the rail oftheir knifeboard seat, like the crew of a racing yacht, "they have himback in the fort above this minute! Ye can take your time, faith!"

  The van horse reared and backed, and Flurry turned in his saddle to eyehim as he ramped ahead in response to a slash from the driver; so didDr. Hickey, and so also did Lily, who, with her white nose in the air,snuffed inquisitively in the wake of the departing van.

  "You'd say she knew a good one when she saw him," said Hickey as weturned the hounds into the lane.

  "Or a good loaf of bread," I suggested.

  "It's little bread that lad carries!" answered Hickey, thonging thereluctant Lily on; "I'll go bail, there's as much bottled porter asbread in that van! He supplies half the shebeens in the country."

  As we splashed into the farmyard a young man threw open a gate at itsfarther side, shouting to Flurry to hurry on. He waved us on across awide field, towards a low hill or mound, red with wet withered bracken,and crested by a group of lean fir trees, flinging their arms about inthe wild gusts of wind and rain.

  "The fox wasn't the length of himself in front of them!" shouted theyoung man, running beside us, "and he as big as a donkey! The wholekit of them is inside in the fort together!"

  Flurry turned his horse suddenly.

  "Two and a half couple underground is enough for one while," he said,riding back into the farmyard. "Have you any place I could shove thesehounds into?"

  The door of a cow-house was open, and as if in anticipation of hiswishes, the hounds jostled emulously into the darkness within. Again,guided by the young man, we faced the storm and rain. What Flurry'sintentions were we neither knew nor dared to ask, and, as we followedhim over the soaked fields, a back more expressive of profound andwrathful gloom it has never been my lot to contemplate.

  The place in which the fox and the Irish hounds had entombedthemselves, was one of the prehistoric earthen fortresses that aboundin the south-west of Ireland. The fort at Drummig was like a giantflat-topped molehill; the spade work of a forgotten race had turned itinto a place of defence, and, like moles, they had burrowed into itsdepths. The tongue of the young man who guided us did not weary in therecital of the ways, and the passages, and the little rooms that waswithin in it. He said that a calf belonging to himself was back in itfor a week, and she came out three times fatter than the day she wentin. He also, but with a certain diffidence, mentioned fairies.

  Round and about this place of mystery went Flurry, blowing long anddreary blasts at the mouths of its many holes, uttering "Gone-away"screeches, of a gaiety deplorably at variance with his furiouscountenance. A more pessimistic priest never trumpeted round the wallsof a more impracticable Jericho.

  Hickey led the dripping horses to and fro in the lee of the fort, and Iwas deputed to listen at a rabbit hole from which the calf was said tohave emerged. After a period of time which I was too much deadened bymisery to compute, Flurry appeared, and told me that he was going home.Judging from his appearance, he had himself been to ground; what hesaid about the white hounds and the weather was very suitable, butwould not read as well as it sounded.

  We returned to the farmyard with the wind and rain chivying us frombehind.

  "I asked a man, one time," said Dr. Hickey, as side by side, and at awell-maintained distance, we followed our leader across the field, "whyhis father had committed suicide, and he said, 'well, your honour, hewas a little
annoyed.' I'm thinking, Major, it'd be no harm for us tokeep an eye on Flurry."

  I stooped my head to let the water flow out of the brim of my hat.

  "You needn't neglect me either," I said.

  While Hickey was getting the hounds out of the cow-house, my younghorse shivered with cold, and gave an ominous cough. I reflected uponthe twelve long miles that lay between him and home, and asked oursaturated guide if I could get a warm drink for him. There was nodifficulty about that; to be sure I could and welcome. I abandoned mycomrades; regret, if it were felt, was not expressed by Flurry. Whenthe hounds had paddled forth from the cow-house I put my horse into it,and before they had accomplished half a mile of their direful progress,I was standing with my back to a glowing turf fire, with my coathanging on a chair, and a cup of scalding tea irradiating the inmostrecesses of my person.

  My hostess, Mrs. Jeremiah Donovan, was a handsome young woman, tall,fair, and flushed, agonised with hospitality, shy to ferocity. Thefamily dog was lifted from the hearth with a side kick worthy of anInternational football match; her offspring, clustered, staring, in thechimney-corner, were dispersed with a scorching whisper, of which thewords, "ye brazen tinkers," gave some clue to its general trend.Having immured them in an inner room she withdrew, muttering somethingabout another "goleen o' turf," and I was left alone with an excellentcake of soda-bread and two boiled eggs.

  Presently a slight and mouse-like rattle made me aware that one of theoffspring, aged about five, had escaped from captivity, and wassecretly drawing my whip to him along the floor by the thong.

  "What have ye the whip for?" said the offspring, undaunted by discovery.

  "To bate the dogs with," I replied, attuning my speech to his as best Icould.

  "Is it the big white dogs?" pursued the offspring.

  I paused midway in a mouthful of soda-bread.

  "Did you see the white dogs?" I asked very gently.

  "God knows I did!" said the offspring, warming to his work, "an' theysnapped the bit o' bread out of Joola's hand within in the cow-house!And Joola said they were a fright!"

  I sat still and waited while one might count five, fearful of scaringthe bird that had perched so near me.

  "Are the white dogs here now?" I ventured, wooingly.

  "They are not."

  The crook of my crop was beginning to prove dangerously engrossing, andthe time was short.

  "Where did they go?" I persevered.

  "Jimmy Mahony and me uncle Lukey took them away in the van," said theoffspring with clearness and simplicity, slashing with my whip at amember of the guild of Brazen Tinkers whom I assumed to be the alreadyinjured Julia.

  * * * * *

  As I bestowed at parting a benefaction upon Jeremiah Donovan, I saidthat I hoped he would let Mr. Knox know if any of the white hounds cameout of the fort. He assured me that he would do so. He was, like hiswife, a thoroughly good fellow, and he had wisped the young horse untilone would have said he had never been out of the stable.

  The storm had blown itself away, and the rain was nearly over. I rodehome quietly, and in peace and goodwill towards all men; after all,there was no hurry. This was a thing that was going to last me for therest of my life, and Flurry's.

  I overtook Michael on the way home. Michael said that sure he knew allthrough it was a drag, and if Mr. Flurry had been said by him, he'dhave had neither cut, shuffle, nor deal with them O'Reillys. In thecourse of his life Michael had never been known to be in the wrong.

  Dr. Hickey told me (but this was some time afterwards) that often hehad to get out of his bed to laugh, when he thought of Flurry gettingJeremiah Donovan to screech in Irish down the holes in the fort, forfear old O'Reilly's hounds had no English. It is hardly necessary tosay that Dr. Hickey also had been convinced by the way the hounds ranthat it was a drag, but had omitted to mention the fact at the time.

  Flurry was lost to home and country for three days. It was darkly saidthat he had gone to Fahoura to break every bone in young O'Reilly'sbody, and, incidentally, to bring back the white hounds. At the end ofthe three days he telegraphed for a man and a saddle to meet theafternoon train. There was nothing in the telegram about hounds. Nextday I met him riding a young brown horse, with a wildish eye, and anasty rub from a misfitting collar.

  "I got him in a sort of a swap," said Flurry tranquilly.

  "I suppose he got that rub in the bread-van?" I remarked drawing a bowat a venture.

  "Well, that might be, too," assented Flurry, regarding me with an eyethat was like a stone wall with broken glass on the top.

  THE END

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