ho,
according to Hugh Martin, appears to have exercised as much control over
the men as the "Captain" himself.

His influence seems to have been on the whole for good, for the account
describes him as hearing the men's confessions and insisting that the
fifteen to twenty young colleens who were one of the most curious
features of the local rising, marching beside the men and doing all
their cooking, should be separately accommodated in the castle at night.

Some isolated R.I.C. men who happened to fall into their hands were
treated as prisoners, but when on the Thursday afternoon the police from
Athenry made an attack, they were chased with motor-cars for a distance
of about four miles back to Athenry, where the forces of the Crown only
just managed to get into their barracks in the nick of time.

The next day--Friday--saw the positions reversed, and news reached the
rebels that troops and artillery were on their way from Loughrea, some
six miles' distance, and it was the rebels' turn to turn tail,
scattering as they went to right and left, in spite of every effort of
"Captain" Mellows to encourage them with stories of the coming invasion
by Germany.

Some made for the hills, others tried to get back to their homes, but
most were seized by the Belfast police, in cars driven by Ulster
Volunteers, and those who did get back had to face not only the taunt of
ignominious defeat but the anger of the Redmondites, who now foresaw the
possibilities of a retribution quite out of all proportion to the
chances they had ever had of success.

Indeed, that seems to have been the general result of the collapse of
the rebellion all over Ireland; and though at first it apparently tended
to weaken the hands of the Irish Constitutional leader--who, when the
news came to him, must have felt as he had on that famous occasion when,
as a young man, five minutes before having to make a great speech near
Manchester, he was handed the news of the Phoenix Park murders--on the
whole it really considerably strengthened his position, much in the same
way as the revolt of De Wet brought out the loyalty of General Botha.

Botha, indeed, was one of the very first to see the similarity of the
two cases, and wired at once to Redmond, though it can of course only be
taken as a very superficial verdict of the South African Premier on the
real grievances underlying the movement, since he could hardly be
expected to understand Sinn Fein, much less thos