ed significant to Shane....
Back, back the city faded.... If the wind lasted, and Shane thought it
would last, by to-morrow they would have left the Plate and be in the
open sea. Back, back the city dropped.... It couldn't drop too fast....
It was like a prison from which he was escaping, fleeing.... A great
yearning come on him to have it out of sight ... definitely, forever.
Once it was gone, he would know for a certain thing, he was free....

He was surprised to be free. As surprised as an all but beaten wrestler
is when his opponent's lock weakens unexpectedly, and dazedly he knows
he can get up again and spar. A fog had lifted suddenly, as at sea. And
he had thought the mist of the Valley of the Black Pig could never lift,
would remain, dank and cold and hollow, covering all things like a
cerecloth, binding all as chains bind ... and that he must remain with
the weeping population, until the Boar without Bristles came ... forever
and forever and forever....

But the nearest and dearest had died gallantly, and somehow the fog had
lifted. And then he was dazed and weak, but free. Where was he going?
What to do? He didn't know, but hope, life itself had come again, like a
long awaited moon.

Buenos Aires faded.... Faded the Valley of the Black Pig.... Buenos
Aires its symbol ... Buenos Aires with bleak squares, its hovels, its
painted trees--_timbo_ and _tipa_ and _palo barracho_....

He stood aft of the steersman, and suddenly raised his head.

_Mo mhallacht go deo leat, a bhaile nan gcrann!
'S mo shlan do gach baile raibh me riamh ann._

"My curse forever on you, O town of the trees," an old song came to him,
"and my farewell to every town I was ever in--"

A great nostalgia for Ulster, for the whins and heather, choked him:

"_S iomaidh bealach fliuch salach agas boithrin cam_--

"There's many a wet muddy highways and crooked half-road, _eader mise_,
between _me_, _eader mise_, _eader mise_--" He had forgotten.

"Between me and the townland that my desire is in," the Oran steersman
prompted. "_Eader mise agas an baile bhfuil mo dhuil ann!_"

"Mind your bloody wheel," Shane warned. "This is a ship, not a poetry
society. Look at the way you're letting her come up, you Highland
bastard. Keep her off--and lam her!"

"Lam her it is, sir," the steersman grinned....

PART SIX

THE BOLD FENIAN MEN

Section 1

The worst of it all, Campbell smiled, was this: that life was so
immensely healthy