outlandish sailor men--crouched under the windward rail. The
skipper sat with a companion on a coil of rope on the dry side of the
skylight, and at the moment at which our story opens was oblivious
alike of the weather and his difficulties. He sat with his eyes fixed
on his neighbour, and in those eyes a wondering, fatuous admiration. So
might a mortal look if some strange hap brought him face to face with a
centaur.

"Never?" he murmured respectfully.

"Never," his companion answered.

"My faith!" Captain Augustin rejoined. He was a cross between a
Frenchman and an Irishman. For twenty years he had carried wine to
Ireland, and returned laden with wool to Bordeaux or Cadiz. He knew
every inlet between Achill Sound and the Head of Kinsale, and was so
far a Jacobite that he scorned to pay duty to King George. "Never? My
faith!" he repeated, staring, if possible, harder than ever.

"No," said the Colonel. "Under no provocation, thank God!"

"But it's _drole_," Captain Augustin rejoined. "It would bother me
sorely to know what you do."

"What we all should do," his passenger answered gently. "Our duty,
Captain Augustin. Our duty! Doing which we are men indeed. Doing which,
we have no more to do, no more to fear, no more to question." And
Colonel John Sullivan threw out both his hands, as if to illustrate the
freedom from care which followed. "See! it is done!"

"But west of Shannon, where there is no law?" Augustin answered. "Eh,
Colonel? And in Kerry, where we'll be, the saints helping, before
noon--which is all one with Connaught? No, in Kerry, what with
Sullivans, and Mahonies, and O'Beirnes, that wear coats only for a
gentleman to tread upon, and would sooner shoot a friend before
breakfast than spend the day idle, _par ma foi_, I'm not seeing what
you'll be doing there, Colonel."

"A man may protect himself from violence," the Colonel answered
soberly, "and yet do his duty. What he may not do--is this. He may not
go out to kill another in cold blood, for a point of honour, or for
revenge, or to sustain what he has already done amiss! No, nor for
vanity, or for the hundred trifles for which men risk their lives and
seek the lives of others. I hope I make myself clear, Captain
Augustin?" he added courteously.

He asked because the skipper's face of wonderment was not to be
misread. And the skipper answered, "Quite clear!" meaning the reverse.
Clear, indeed? Yonder were the hills and bogs of Kerry--lawless,
i