Land

by Liam O'Flaherty

  “Yes,” he said. “She’s tied down at the pier.”

  “Get her ready,” Michael said, breaking an egg. “We’re going to Clash in her, as soon as I finish supper.”

  “To Clash, did you say?” Lynch said in astonishment.

  “That’s what I said,” Michael answered.

  “It might take us half the night to get there in my pucaun,” Lynch said. “It’s nearly dead calm.”

  “Get her ready,” Michael said.

  “It would take us longer still to get back,” Lynch said. “What wind there is would be against us. If we made any delay at all in Clash, we might miss the meeting.”

  “Do what I said,” Michael ordered angrily.

  Lynch turned on his heel at once. On his way to the door, he called to another man over his shoulder.

  “Come on, Joe,” he said.

  Joe Deering, who was sitting on the floor with his back to the wall, got to his feet slowly. He was very tall and so young that the down of adolescence still grew on his unshaven cheeks. He followed Lynch out of the room, moving his hips lazily.

  “Come here, William,” Michael said.

  William Flatley came over to the table. He was a man of great size, with a barrel-shaped chest and a completely bald head. He was noted for his strength and endurance, even though he was now well over forty years old. He had come from America with Michael. He bent over the table and listened intently to some whispered commands. Then he went out without saying a word.

  After a little while, Tim Brady rose from his seat in the hearth corner and approached the table. He was Mag Jordan’s brother, a solemn faced man of fifty-four, with a lame leg. They called him “the soldier” in the village, because he had served in the American Civil War. He and his sister were agents for a Dublin firm of fish-buyers.

  “If you want to go to Clash,” he said quietly, “why don’t you go by road? Then you’d surely be back in time for the meeting. By road, it’s only a few miles. By sea, it’s three times the distance and always an uncertain journey.”

  “I have my reasons for not going by road,” Michael said angrily.

  “Then, in God’s name, don’t go at all,” Brady said. “Tomorrow is a big day for the people of Manister. The whole parish will be gathered in the chapel yard, after eleven o’clock Mass, to elect a Committee and make plans for fighting the landlords. For nearly a month now, Michael, you have been working tooth and nail to organise this meeting. You had a hard struggle, with the parish priest against you. It would be a terrible thing if you were absent when the big moment came.”

  He paused, waiting for Michael to reply.

  “Nobody is going to get me into a trap,” Michael said suddenly. Then he continued to eat rapidly.

  “The Archbishop has put out a pastoral letter,” Brady continued, “condemning the land agitation and the Fenians. Father Costigan is going to read that letter from the altar. He’ll make a big effort to turn the people against the idea of electing a Committee. If you should be absent …”

  “I’m not going to put my head in a halter for any man,” Michael said.

  “The people might never forgive you,” Brady said, “if you failed them at this moment.”

  Michael drank the remainder of the tea in his cup and jumped to his feet.

  “You’ve said enough,” he cried.

  “Then, let me tell you this,” Brady shouted. “There is nothing more criminal than to rouse innocent people, only to desert them.”

  “You’ve said enough,” Michael repeated.

  He walked to the door, after beckoning to a young man that sat expectantly on a form by the wall. The young man jumped to his feet and bolted out of the house after his leader. He was called Coleman Kelly, a lad of about Deering’s age. They climbed down to the pier by a rough stairway that was cut into the granite rock. Lynch and Deering had already hoisted the sail on the pucaun.

  “In God’s name,” Lynch said to Michael as the latter jumped on board, “won’t you change your mind and go by road?”

  “Silence,” Michael said.

  Flatley came trotting down the pier with a small sack under his arm. He untied the mooring rope and jumped on board. Deering pushed against the pier wall with a pole. The pucaun veered away suddenly and then halted. Its keel made a rasping sound as it grated against a rock. The tide was so low that even such a shallow craft had difficulty in getting under way. Thick masses of yellow weeds lay on the surface like floating tresses of long hair. They made a moaning sound as they brushed against the boat’s sides. Kelly took another pole and helped Deering push. The pucaun suddenly frolicked like a duck as it found clear water. Lynch put his back to the tiller and began to steer, hauling on the sail ropes. Deering and Kelly, having dropped their poles, each put a foot against the mast and heaved the sail to its full height. The ropes creaked musically as they ran through the blocks. The sail flapped several times. Then it filled with wind and became taut.

  Flatley sat by the foot of the mast and opened the sack he had brought. It contained revolvers, a box of cartridges and a whip called the “cat-o’-nine-tails,” because of its nine thongs. He passed around the weapons and the ammunition. He put the whip under the front of his jersey.

  “Does the ‘cat’ mean we’re going after an informer?” Lynch said.

  “It might,” said Michael.

  “Is that all you want to say?” Lynch said.

  Michael stripped off all his clothes, throwing them on the ballast stones at the bottom of the hold. Then he jumped into the sea and began to swim away from the boat with powerful strokes. Deering and Kelly looked at one another, smiled and did likewise. The two lads gasped as they began to swim, feeling the coldness of the night water against their white skins.

  “Why don’t you try and persuade him to turn back?” Lynch said to Flatley. “What the hell ails him, in any case?”

  Flatley shrugged his shoulders and took a pipe from his pocket.

  “He thinks there has been a trap laid for him,” he muttered.

  “A fine story,” Lynch said. “If a man gets into such a state of nerves that he’s afraid of his own shadow …”

  “None of that now,” Flatley said. “If I were you, I’d forget about it.”

  He lit the pipe, smoked a little and added:

  “Just obey orders. He can be a dangerous man, when he’s in a mood like this.”

  “Blood in ounce!” Lynch said. “It’s hard to put up with him at times.”

  “Sure,” Flatley said. “It’s better to keep your mouth shut just the same.”

  He handed Lynch the pipe after a while, adding:

  “I’ve seen him do a lot more queer things than this. I’d go to hell for him just the same. He’s that sort of a leader.”

  “I suppose he is,” Lynch said, drawing on the pipe. “Sure. I’d follow him to hell if he asked me. At the same time …”

  Deering and Kelly came back to the boat after a while. They rubbed themselves dry with their trousers. They were shivering even after they had put on their clothes. The pucaun had passed the headland and turned north before Michael came on board. He had been swimming for nearly an hour. Yet he showed no sign of cold or weariness. He put on his clothes without drying his skin. Then he took the tiller from Lynch. The two lads began to sing, as they stood by the bowsprit, clinging to the sail ropes.

  It was long after midnight when they reached Clash Harbour. They moored the pucaun to a deserted wharf and marched through the silent streets to Sabina Hart’s eating-house. It was a two-storied building, standing at the corner of a narrow cobbled lane. There was a light in the ground-floor window. Michael left Lynch, Deering and Kelly on guard outside. He and Flatley went to the door.

  A man put his head out of a second-floor window after Flatley had knocked.

  “Who’s there?” the man said.

  “I’m looking for Liverpool Joe,” Michael said.

  “I’m your man,” said the other. “Give a foot to the door. I’ll be down
as soon as I get dressed.”

  Flatley pushed open the door and entered the house, followed by Michael.

  “God save all here,” Michael said.

  There was an old woman crouched on a stool in a corner of the hearth. She picked up a pair of tongs from a heap of yellow ashes that surrounded the embers of a spent fire.

  “Get out of here,” she shouted, brandishing the tongs.

  “Keep quiet,” Michael said. “We have business with a man upstairs.”

  “Oho!” said the old woman, quickly becoming friendly. “So it’s the Fenians that’s in it. ’Faith, you’re welcome, Michael O’Dwyer. Come on over and I’ll give you a sup of ale out of the jug.”

  There were several eating tables in the large room. One table was covered with a cloth, on which lay the remains of a meal. A stairway led to the upper story from the far corner.

  “He’s afraid of me,” the old woman said in disgust, as Michael made no move to accept her invitation. “Ah! Woe! There was a day when young men weren’t frightened of me.”

  She took a jug of ale from the hob, spat into the fire and drank. Her grey hair hung in disorder about her face and her enormous breasts lay exposed through her torn shift. Her naked feet were speckled with yellow ashes. She wore her skirt rolled up to the waist, showing a number of fine lace petticoats.

  “I get frightened myself,” she said, “when anybody comes in late at night, ever since Sarah Burke and her brother attacked me last winter. They put a table over my belly and then they danced on the table. They stole two shawls that were never used twice, twenty-four bundles of flannel and it thickened, six score of eggs and five yards of calico. The police said it was delirium tremens I had, when I reported the outrage. The devils! They have it in for me, because I smuggle arms for the Fenians.”

  There was a patter of feet on the stairs. Then an agile little man came into the room.

  “I’m Joe Crimmins,” he said, walking rapidly across the floor to Michael. “Liverpool Joe they call me. I’m easy to recognise.”

  He pointed towards the empty socket of his left eye. The other eye was small and very intense, like the eye of a bird. He was about sixty, a withered little man with a sharply tapering skull. He wore a blue suit and he had a yellow muffler twisted round his neck.

  “Did you bring the money?” he said to Michael.

  “What information have you got, Crimmins?” Michael said.

  Crimmins rubbed his thumb rapidly against the tips of his fingers.

  “I asked you a question,” Michael continued in an even tone. “I only talk when I see the colour of a customer’s money,” Crimmins said.

  “Oho!” said the old woman. “Joe is a clever fox. He’s been smuggling guns to me now for twenty years, but I never yet got the better of him.”

  “A man has to be clever in my business, Sabina,” Crimmins said in a conceited tone. “I’ve smuggled more guns into Ireland than any other man in the business. I’ve smuggled them into England, too, from the Continent. I’ve sold guns to the Fenians, to the Chartists and to whoever cared to buy them. Yet I’ve never been caught.”

  “Show him the ‘cat,’” Michael said to Flatley. “Maybe that will make him talk.”

  Flatley pulled the whip from under his jersey and flicked it before the little man’s face.

  “Jesus!” Crimmins said in an awed whisper.

  “May the cholera not go past the two of ye,” the old woman said. “Is it going to kill poor little Joe ye are?”

  She got to her feet with surprising agility and rushed at Flatley with a short club that had lain concealed beneath her petticoats. She lost her balance after a few steps and fell to the floor, where she lay motionless on her stomach.

  “Give him a little touch across the legs,” Michael said to Flatley.

  Crimmins seemed to be hypnotised by the whip. His solitary eye was distended and his right shoulder was raised high up in a grotesque attitude. He broke from his trance when he saw Flatley raise the whip. He threw himself on his knees at Michael’s feet.

  “I have a weak heart,” he said. “The least touch of the ‘cat’ would kill me. You can have the envelope for nothing.”

  “On your feet, then,” Michael said. “Hand it over.”

  Crimmins got to his feet and took a large envelope from his breast pocket. Michael took it and walked over to a lighted paraffin lamp that hung on a nail in the wall.

  “You coward!” screamed the old woman as she struggled to her knees.

  “I have to be careful, Sabina,” Crimmins whined.

  “You’ll have to be careful of me, then, you rat,” the old woman said as she stood erect.

  She spat on her club and added:

  “Now, then, Liverpool Joe, where’s my share of the necessary?”

  “Don’t let her come near me,” Crimmins said to Flatley.

  “Butcher paid you, but he didn’t pay me,” the old woman cried. “The extra five sovereigns were to be my share. Where are they?”

  “Shut your mouth,” Crimmins hissed as he edged towards the stairway.

  Flatley ran over to Michael and said in a tense whisper:

  “Did you hear what she said about Butcher?”

  Michael nodded as he continued to read the documents he had taken from the envelope.

  “Don’t let her come near me,” Crimmins screamed as he ran up the stairs.

  Cursing under her breath, the old woman trudged up the stairs after him.

  “Will I stop her?” Flatley said to Michael.

  Michael shook his head without taking his eyes from the documents.

  “For the love of God, save me,” Crimmins shouted from above.

  He became silent. The old woman reached the top of the stairs. She paused there for a little while. There was dead silence in the house. Then they heard the thumping of her club as she moved across the floor. Suddenly there was a wild shriek, followed by a dull thud. Then again there was silence.

  “Let’s go,” Michael said.

  Chapter XII

  On the following morning, Julia McNamara announced to her parents at breakfast that she was ready to marry the man they had chosen for her.

  “You can have your wish now,” she said bitterly. “I’ll marry Jim Clancy any day you want. From now on, it doesn’t matter to me what I do.”

  Having made this statement, she sat bolt upright in her chair and stared fixedly at a point on the wall like a demented person. Her mother hurried round the table and embraced her with cries of woe.

  “God have mercy on us, daughter,” the mother said. “Don’t frighten me by staring like that.”

  Julia made no response to her mother’s words.

  “Now, isn’t that a proper caution?” the father said. “They pretend that something terrible has happened and they blame me for it. It’s enough to drive a man crazy.”

  He peered over the rims of his spectacles across the table at his wife and daughter.

  “It’s always like this,” he moaned. “It’s been like this all my life. Anything I want badly turns out to have a bitter taste when I get it. For more than a year, Julia, I’ve been praying to the Blessed Virgin for you, asking her to put sense into your foolish head. Now when you seem to have been given a little sense by those above, you behave in a way that makes me feel a criminal.”

  He jumped to his feet, struck the table and shouted:

  “Sit down, Sarah, and stop spoiling that ungrateful daughter of yours. If I had taken a rod to her, same as I should have done, she wouldn’t now be giving me sleepless nights. Bad cess to you, Julia, in any case. For the past six months you have made your mother and me a pair of show-boards in this parish and you running after Michael O’Dwyer with no more modesty than if you were belly naked. Michael O’Dwyer, indeed, a man that wouldn’t give you so much as the heat of his breath on a frosty morning. Signs on, when he began to court that French girl over at the Lodge, he avoided you just as if he owed you money. By the Book! I’m a friend of the Fenia
ns and as staunch a patriot as you would find in the country. That’s a far cry, though, from wanting to have an outlaw for a son-in-law. There is a limit to everything. That young man will likely swing at the end of a rope like his father before him. It’s not respectable marriage he wants, but blood and woe. Broken-hearted about that madman, is it? Sure, he hasn’t let you come within an ass’s roar of him since he got a whiff of the French girl’s perfume. Stop looking at that wall now. If you don’t quit staring like that, I’ll …”

  He picked up the bread-knife and advanced on his daughter in a threatening fashion.

  “Be careful now, Bartly,” his wife said gently. “You might hurt yourself again with that knife.”

  Several years previously, he had picked up a similar knife during an argument with his wife. He had hurled it to the floor in order to stress a point. His foot got in the way and he wounded himself quite seriously. Now he felt deeply mortified, on being reminded of this incident by Sarah.

  “You always take her part,” he said sulkily, laying the knife gently on the table. “Am I always in the wrong, then? God help me! My only son became a priest on a foreign mission. He is now lost to me forever, out preaching to the bloody negroes of Central Africa, where he’ll most likely die of fever unless he’s trodden under foot by wild elephants. My four daughters are all in America. It’s hardly likely that I’ll clap eyes on any of them, either. Is it too much to ask that my remaining child should do my bidding? And all I’m asking of her is to marry Jim Clancy, a fine young man that has the best people in the parish for relatives, together with three houses in this village, two farms and …”

  “Shut up, father,” Julia said rudely as she got to her feet. “Why can’t you ever keep your mouth closed?”

  “God forgive you, child,” Bartly said timidly to her.