designed her. He was a man of some property
near Limerick; and he and my son were involved in some of the
Irish troubles between 1881 and 1884. It was said they had joined
one of the brotherhoods, and betrayed their oaths. This I am sure
was not true. But it is certain we had to run for fear of
assassination. After a year in Liverpool we were forced to fly
south to Port William, where we brought the yacht and lived for
some time in quiet, under our own names. But we knew this could
not last, and had taken measures to escape when need arose.
My husband had chanced, while at Liverpool, upon an old yacht,
dismantled and rotting in the Mersey--but of about the same size as
his own and still, of course, upon the register. He bought her
of her owner--a Mr. Carlingford, and a stranger--for a very few
pounds, and with her--what he valued far more--her papers; but he
never completed the transfer at the Custom House. His plan was, if
pressed, to escape abroad, and pass his yacht off as the _Wasp_, and
himself as Mr. Carlingford. All the while we lived at Port William
the _Queen of Sheba_ was kept amply provisioned for a voyage of at
least three weeks, when the necessity overtook us, quite suddenly--
the name of a man, MacGuire, in the Visitors' Book of a small inn at
Penleven. We left Penleven at dusk that evening, and held steadily
up the coast until darkness. Then we turned the yacht's head, and
ran straight across for Morlaix; but the weather continuing fine for
a good fortnight (our first night at sea was the roughest in all
this time), we changed our minds, cleared Ushant, and held right
across for Vigo; thence, after re-victualling, we cruised slowly
down the coast and through the Straits, finally reaching Malaga.
There we stayed and had the yacht lengthened. My husband had sold
his small property before ever we came to Port William, and had
managed to invest the whole under the name of Carlingford.
There was no difficulty about letters of credit. At each port on the
way we had shown the Wasp's papers, and used the name of
Carlingford; and at Lisbon we read in an English newspaper about the
supposed capsizing of the _Queen of Sheba_. Still, we had not only
to persuade the officials at the various ports that our boat was the
_Wasp_. We knew that our enemies were harder to delu