Changing Winds Part 111

4

As the mail-boat steamed out of the harbour, he climbed to the top deck and stood there gazing back at the sh.o.r.e. Exquisitely beautiful, Ireland looked in the evening glow. Up the river, in an opal mist, he could see Dublin, still sore from her latest wounds, and here close at hand, he saw the waves of mountains reaching far inland, each mountain s.h.i.+ning in the light with a great mingling of colours. Beautiful, but more than beautiful! Other lands had beauty, too, more beauty, perhaps, than Ireland, but if he were leaving them as he was now leaving Ireland, he should not feel the grief that he now felt. This was his land ... his own country ... and the elements which had been mingled to make it, had been mingled also to make him, and he and it were one. It was strange that he should carry so heavy a heart to Boveyhayne, when he should have gone there gladly ... but it was not of Mary or his marriage that he was then thinking. It was of the farewell he was making to this old city which had known much grief and many troubles. When he returned to Ireland he would go straight to Ballymartin, by Belfast, from England.

He would not see Dublin again. Firmly fixed in his mind, was that belief. He would serve ... and he would die. Foolish, he told himself, to think like that, but, even while he was rebuking himself, the thought thrust itself into his mind again....

5

The boat was almost out of sight of land. He had stood at the end of the deck, gazing back at Ireland until only the clouded head of a mountain could be seen, and then that too had been hidden. He turned and looked forward, and as he did so, he saw in the distance, low in the sea, the hulls of three s.h.i.+ps of war. The mail-boat slowed down, as they approached, to let them pa.s.s. Naked and lithe, they looked, as they thrust their bodies through the sea, sending the water up from their bows in s.h.i.+ning arches. He could see the men standing about the decks, looking steadily ahead ... and then the war-s.h.i.+ps pa.s.sed on to their work, and the mail-boat gathered up speed and plunged on towards Wales.

Over there, he thought, somewhere in that haze, is England, and beyond England, France and Flanders and the fields of blood and pain....