The mountain was behind me, dark against the sky, a piece of the sea was on my right. Under my black cloak was my sword. My hand on the hilt, the sword half-drawn.
I waited for them there, and hoped they would be strong.
Chapter 10
A rough-looking man now stood in front of the cottage. He looked both at me and the men coming toward me. He called out something over his shoulder. Two other men came from the house.
Across the road near the shore, a man was mending a net. As Owain passed, going to the boat, he spoke. Then the man left his net, holding a long pole.
The riders were coming nearer. Several other people appeared and stood, watching.
The riders drew up, facing me, some thirty feet off. One of them was Robert Malmayne!
"So? We meet again!"
"There is a sadness on me," I said, cheerfully, "for we meet only to part."
"Not this time, I think. You are my prisoner, Sackett."
"You say that to me when you have only three men behind you? And what men they are! I think they have no stomach for steel, or you, either."
My sword slid easily from the scabbard, the point lifting-there was a whispering of sandalled feet upon the shell road, a whispering around me. "Go!" A voice spoke in my ear. "The wind does not wait!"
"And leave these gentlemen?" I said.
There must have been fifty people around us now, both men and women, with a few children. They were saying nothing, but crowding closer and closer. Some had spears, others had poles or sticks. Some had nothing. One at least held a scythe and there were several with wood-axes.
"Back up there!" Malmayne shouted. He waved at them.
"You are in Wales, Malmayne. They do not speak English."
"Tell them to get back."
"I don't speak Welsh, and what are they doing? You are strangers, and they are merely curious."
"By heaven, I'll teach them who is strange!"
He started for his sword but found a large hand already on the hilt. He looked down into a smiling, bearded face. Malmayne cursed, but the hand on the sword hilt would not be moved.
"Careful, Malmayne!" I warned, smiling. "These are good folk, but somewhat rough when stirred."
Now they were crowded tightly around all four horsemen, so close the horses could not move. One fellow had a hold on a rider's leg. He was smiling, just holding the leg, but the implication was clear-one heave and the rider would be sprawling in the road.
"Come!" Owain shouted. "The wind is for the sail! Come quickly!"
Backing away, I sheathed my sword, then ran lightly to the shore. Lila was with me. I caught the gunwhale of the boat and we leaped aboard. We shoved off. The wind took the sail and it bellied out.
"I shall see you die by fire!" Malmayne shouted. "I shall have a warship after you!"
With Holyhead behind us, we held a course to the southwest for Wicklow Point, far and away across the Irish Sea.
"What will they do?" I asked, gesturing behind us.
"They? Nothing. After a bit they will drift back to their work and your Malmayne can do as he feels, which will not be much on Anglesey. He'll get no boat there, nor for miles away, and by that time we shall be along the Irish coast, which none knows better than I."
We had a strong wind, a following wind, and the sea went well before us. After a bit I went below and lay down on some mats and sails and slept. When I awoke, our vessel was south of Wicklow Head and off the Horse Shoe Bank which we kept inland of us.
"When you sleep, you sleep!" Owain declared. He pointed ahead and to starboard.
" 'Tis an easy coast here, if one be watchful. Yon lies a rock ... Wolf Rock, 'tis called, and she bares her teeth when the wind blows. There are banks along the coast, no place for a ship to be caught, so a man must hold well out upon the sea. Most of the dangers lie four to six miles out, along here."
We stood together, watching the sea ahead. "Landsmen!" he said. "Such fools, they are! Why, a month ago in Dublin town I heard one talk in a tavern, a wise man, they said he was, and he was saying how ancient seafaring men were afeard to venture to sea, that they always held close along the coast for safety. I laughed at him, and he became angered."
"Did you tell him?"
"I did, but what good to tell fools? I told him the dangers of the deep ocean were one in ten to the risks along an unknown coast, or even a known one. He looked at me with pity for my ignorance, he who had never set a sail nor held a hand to the tiller. Look you! Ahead of us lie the Arklow Bank, the Glassgorman, Blackwater and Dogger, and any one a death trap-be you not knowing them. Yet the sea looks innocent enough to a landsman."
"The Icelander you spoke of. Where will he be?"
Owain considered that. "He may have moved, yet I think in Castlehaven or Glandore. He does not like busy places, that one."
Green lay the coast and gray the sea, and the wind whipped whitecaps from the wave crests and stung our faces widi blown spray. Our craft lay over on its side and cut the waves handily as if playing with the sea, like a porpoise. We saw only a few fishing boats closer in, and one square-rigged ship, afar off.
From time to time I took the tiller.
It was Glandore Bay to which we came at last, rounding Galley Head and Foilsnashark Head and keeping Adam Island well off our port beam. The Bay was small, but it penetrated well into the land and was thus well-protected from all winds.
There were two castles in view. This was, or had been, a seat of the O'Donovans.
The gray walls of Castle Donovan arose on our port side.
We dropped anchor there, close in, and the ship we looked for was there, the Icelander standing by the rail watching us as we steered into the harbor.
"Hoy, Thorvald!" Owain called. "I have two for your ship!"
"Ve sail for Newfoundland!" Thorvald called back. "Ve sail at first light!"
"It is my sister who goes, and an Englisher. We have followed you from Anglesey!"
A skiff was lowered and Lila climbed down, then I. Owain rowed us over, and we climbed aboard.
"A woman aboard my ship? I would do it only for you, Owain!"
Thorvald was broad and thick, heavy-boned and blond. He looked at me with piercing blue eyes. "You are a sailor, yes?"
"I am."
"Vhere is it you go?"
"To Virginia, but Newfoundland is a step upon the way. We thank you."
"Somevon looks for you?"
"Aye, mayhap a Queen's ship, but if you do not wish to risk it, we will find another way, or buy our own boat and sail it together."
Thorvald chuckled. "You'll find that hard, very hard! And cold, too." He smiled wryly. "If a Queen's ship will follow vhere ve go, she may have you, und velcome."
The hills were green and lovely around the Bay of Glandore, and the crumbling ruin of Castle Donovan looked wild and strange among the thick-standing trees above the bay. We went ashore in the skiff, and at a place to which Owain took us, I bought some provisions.
Curiously, I glanced around the old building. It was a combination warehouse and shop, a place I suspected where a goodly portion of the merchandise had been smuggled. We bought what we needed, including some additional stores for the ship, and then returned to our boat.
It was no great craft, at all, but built somewhat on the lines of a Norwegian bojort with a square topsail above the spritsail, a lateen mizzen and a small spritsail under the bowsprit. It was called the Snarri, and I liked the look and the feel of her. She was steered with a whipstaff, which gave the man at the helm a chance to observe the sails.
There was a small cabin aft and a section was curtained off for Lila.
The sky was gray when we left the emerald-green harbor of Glandore behind and sailed past the islands into open sea. Standing amidships I looked back at Ireland. Would I ever again see the isles of Britain?