Part 4

Ivan Petrokoffsky, of the 21st Division Of the Army of the Danube, is not easy in his mind, For within the deep recesses of his heart is a suspicion He has wept farewell forever to the loved ones left behind. In cruel dreams he sees himself, a shapeless mass and gory, By the rolling Danube lying, with his purple life-stream spent, And he has not such a keen appreciation of the glory Of dying for his country to be happy or content. He has seen his comrades falling round, all mangled, torn, and bleeding, And their cries were not of triumph, but of homes and kindred far, While little recked the vultures, on the gray-robed bodies feeding, Of “the glory of the Empire or the honor of the Czar!”

THE EMPEROR’S RING.

The stillness of death broods o’er valley and mountain, The snow lies below like a funeral shroud; The clutch of the ice chokes the song of the fountain; Starry eyes from the skies dimly gleam through each cloud; When, hark! on the hard, frozen earth strikes the thunder Of fast-falling hoof-beats with sonorous sound, Scared villagers waken in somnolent wonder, The sentinel checks his monotonous round. Ho! Governor, let not thy dreamings encumber With pause the swift flight of yon messenger’s wing, For fatal the stay thou wouldst cause by thy slumber, The horseman who rides with the Emperor’s ring.

Fresh horse and new pistols--some phrases of warning, Few and brief, to the chief, and the fort is behind, And away in the gray of the slow-dawning morning Flies his steed with the speed of the fierce northern wind. Out, out through the forests--on, on o’er the meadows, While castle and cabin and hamlet and town Rise and fall, come and go, past his vision like shadows. With white snowy robes over bosoms of brown, The woodcutter leaps from his path with a shiver; To their babes, in mute terror, the pale mothers cling; And the gray-coated hero salutes with a quiver The ominous flash of the Emperor’s ring.

Some guess, but none question, the message he carries, All divine by the sign ’tis of life or of death; And woe to the wretch through whose folly he tarries; Better Fate, with grim hate, strangled out his first breath, For earth has no cavern to shield and defend him, Nor ocean a sheltering island so far As to hide from the scourge that will torture and rend him, Whose blunder or crime has enraged the White Czar. So serf and proud baron, so moujik and banker Keep aside, unless aid to his mission you bring. Speed him on, and rejoice when you earn not the rancor Of one who bears with him the Emperor’s ring.

We Russians are brave, but we only are human; We cower at a power it is death to offend, Even Ivan, the bear-killer, shrinks like a woman From frown of a clown with Alexis as friend. The wolves on our steppes are a thousand times bolder; Peer and peasant alike for their banquets they claim; The blood in yon courtier’s veins may be colder Than the serfs, but ’twill serve for their feast all the same. Out there in the solitude, silent and lonely, These prowlers of night know but Hunger as king. And the Cossacks may find of that messenger only A few whitened bones and the Emperor’s ring.

BLACK LORIS.

Spurs jingle and lances shine; A hundred brave horsemen in line; Gay voices ring as they merrily sing, For why should true hearts repine? The pathway is level and balmy the air, Their bosoms unruffled by shadow of care; The sun has but reached its meridian height, “Twenty versts farther on we shall slumber to-night.” When, crash! from the thickets that border the way, Bursts a hail-storm of bullets in death-dealing spray; In front a wall rises of turban-crowned foes, And half of the sotnia fall ’neath their blows. But still with teeth set, and a joyous hurrah, With lances at rest and a cheer for the Czar, Charge fifty brave horsemen in line!

Oh, fatal the rifle’s crack! Ten heroes fight back to back, And each lance-thrust brings down in the dust A wolf from the howling pack. How the yelping curs in myriads swarm! Ten new foes rise from each prostrate form, They drop from the trees, they spring from the ground, Till a blaze of scimetars flashes around. The ten are scattered; they seem to be Like derelict spars in an angry sea. But never a Cossack was known to yield While his arm a lance or sabre could wield. Oh, weep their valor by distant Don, The waves are engulphing them one by one! But two remain back to back!

His comrade sinks down with a groan-- Black Loris is fighting alone, His eyeballs glazed and his senses dazed, And his arms as heavy as stone. “Surrender!” a hundred harsh voices demand, For answer he sabres the chief of the band. But his arm is shivered in twain--he feels The earth swim round him--he gasps, he reels, And gleam on his vision old scenes afar, As he gasps in a dream a last cheer for the Czar-- Was it echo, that sonorous answering peal? No, no! there’s a rattle of hoof and of steel! Black Loris is not alone!

No tears for the ninety-nine, The nation’s heart is their shrine; But glory’s bays and the Emperor’s praise For the one man left of the line! The Don’s deep waters will long be dried, And stemmed the flow of the Ural’s tide, The strength and glory of Russia depart, And the Cossack know cowardice reign in his heart, Ere the Muscovite legions shall cease to tell Of dashing Loris who fought so well, Whose comrades tore him from out the grave, Whose medal the Emperor’s own hands gave. And for years to come, when trotting along Ural and Don, men will sing this song-- “The One and the Ninety-Nine!”

WHO SHOT PHLYNN’S HAT?

I.

Mr. Phineas Phlynn, J. P., was a few years ago the agent upon the Irish estates of that erratic and eccentric, but excitable and energetic nobleman, Lord Oglemore. If Mr. Phlynn no longer performs the onerous functions of that office, it is because he has taken to a far-off and less humid sphere his various and variegated vices, and has probably by his importation into a remarkably torrid zone added another to the abundant torments of Pandemonium. In 1879, however, Mr. Phlynn, much to his own satisfaction, but a great deal more to the misery of his neighbors, was still in the flesh. Mr. Phlynn was by no means a happy man. His commission for collecting the rents of his absentee master was only a paltry shilling in the pound, and as Lord Oglemore’s landed property amounted to but a few thousand acres, and Mr. Phlynn’s habits included an addiction to French wines and Irish whiskey, a decided inclination to woo Dame Fortune by speculations on the turf and ventures at the roulette table, and an amorous disposition which plunged him into frequent financial scrapes, he felt that he must wring a bigger percentage out of his employer and increase his emoluments.

But how was it to be done?

He couldn’t raise the rents. They were so high already that the tenantry had some difficulty in reaching them, and were beginning to indulge in mutinous murmurs about abatements and reductions and re-adjustments, and the other pestilential, communistic, and diabolical ideas of the Land League. Phineas had been complaining for months to his noble master about the danger and difficulties of his post, surrounded, as he described himself, by hosts of murderous assassins who thirsted for his gore and wanted to perforate his magisterial hide with surreptitious bullets; and Phineas had strongly hinted that his accumulated risks deserved a commensurate reward in the shape of an additional income. But the only consolation Lord Oglemore vouchsafed was an assurance to Mr. Phlynn that if those “demmed Irish rascals” should make his carcass a repository for any appreciable quantity of lead, the beggars should have their rents raised fifty per cent. all around. This didn’t console Phineas worth a cent, for he felt that if he were laid to rest with his fathers with a few pounds of scrap iron in his manly bosom, he couldn’t enjoy the extra commission on the fifty per cent. rise in any exuberant degree. Besides, the levity of his lordship’s remarks induced the agent to guess that that rather wide-awake peer doubted his dismal forebodings. So Phineas resolved that he would bring matters to a crisis. There should be an outrage--a sanguinary, blood-curdling outrage, that would prove to the unbelieving Oglemore that his agent carried his life in his hand, and was certainly entitled to at least eighteen pence in each pound of the revenue he gathered in perpetual peril.

II.

There was an outrage. As none of the tenantry had the most remote notion of shooting Mr. Phlynn, Mr. Phlynn shot himself--at least, he shot his own hat. There were many obvious advantages in Phineas taking this horrible task upon himself. Of course, the chief of these was the fact that if any desperate tenant had sought to make a target of Mr. Phlynn’s hat, he wouldn’t have paused to ascertain whether Mr. Phlynn’s head was in it or not--really, he might have preferred that the hat should be so tenanted. A circumstance of that sort would have been decidedly inconvenient. With Mr. Phlynn as the assailant of his own hat, no such objectionable mistake was possible. Mr. Phlynn carefully placed the hat on the roadside between his own residence and the nearest police barrack, and fired at it twice. One ball ripped the front rim off and the other tore a hole in the crown. Then carefully replacing his dilapidated head-gear upon his undisturbed cranium, he flung his revolver into the adjacent ditch and rushed breathless into the presence of the sub-inspector in the police barrack aforementioned, and poured into the astonished ears of that horrified luminary a ghastly story of his terrible encounter with a band of four masked miscreants, who had fired at least a dozen times at him, two balls actually grazing his head, in proof of which, behold the battered hat!

III.

The excitement in connection with the matter was intense. The country was scoured for miles around, and thirty or forty arrests made. The revolver, of course, was found, and strengthened Phlynn’s terrible tale. The London papers teemed with denunciations of the weakness of the government which permitted such a state of affairs in a civilized community. Illustrations of the historic hat graced the pictorial pages of English journals. A reward of £500 was offered for any information that would lead to the conviction of anybody. Lord Oglemore made such an exciting speech on the matter in the House of Peers that he positively kept those hereditary legislators awake for twenty minutes--a feat unparalleled in the history of that chamber. There was not so much stir and fuss in that assembly since the day it was rumored that John Brown had been offered a peerage under the title of Earl of Glenlivet. For nearly half of the twenty minutes that the noble senators kept awake it was soul-stirring. Then they fell asleep again, overpowered by their emotions.

All except Lord Oglemore. He was so elated by the temporary prominence given to him as the employer of an Irish agent who had been fired at, that he resolved to perpetuate his celebrity. Why, if he could manage to get some of his tenants hanged or transported for the affair, he would become quite a lion in London society. With this laudable ambition permeating his soul, he drove, immediately after he had concluded his outburst of enthralling eloquence, to the headquarters of the London detective force in Scotland Yard, and, by munificent promises in the event of success, secured the services of that eminent thief-catcher, Inspector Spriggins, to unravel the mystery. The following day, Spriggins, got up as an English horse dealer seeking for Irish equine bargains, left London for Leitrim.

In the mean time the Irish government, who did not feel satisfied with the conduct of the local constabulary, had deputed Sergeant Crawley of the G division, Dublin metropolitan force, to proceed to the same neighborhood, to search for the destroyers of Phineas Phlynn’s hat.

IV.

In the last week in October, Spriggins got on the scent. From all he could hear, see, and judge, he concluded that the outrage was the work of strangers. He had already spotted a suspicious stranger.

About the same time Sergeant Crawley struck the trail. It was evident that the deed had been committed by some one from a distance, because every man, woman, and child within a radius of twenty miles had been arrested, and established their innocence. The foreigner who had failed would be likely to renew the attempt. Were there any non-residents loafing around? Yes! Crawley had fixed his man.

It was certainly peculiar that, while Spriggins was firmly convinced that Crawley had made ribbons of Phlynn’s hat, Crawley was taking measures to arrest Spriggins for attempted murder, and Sub-Inspector Blake of the local police had written to Dublin for a warrant to arrest both Spriggins and Crawley, who were passing under the respective names of Jones and Brennan.

V.

Spriggins, on the first day of November, called upon Phlynn.

“Mr. Phlynn,” said he, “I have got the leader of the gang who fired at you.”

“The devil you have,” said Phlynn. You see Phlynn had very strong reasons for doubting the accuracy of the information.

“Yes,” replied Spriggins; “I have him, no mistake.”

“Where is he?” queried Phineas.

“Here.”

“What!” shouted the agent, as agonizing visions of penal servitude for revolver practice on his own hat made his heart jump. “Who, what, where, when, why, how--”

“Oh,” responded Scotland Yard, “I forgot. Let me introduce myself. I am Inspector Spriggins, of the London detective police. I have been commissioned by Lord Oglemore to fish up this business. I’ve fished. I may say I have landed my salmon. I just want you to fill me up a warrant for the arrest of James Brennan, 5 feet 10 inches, brown hair and whiskers, hazel eyes, a wart on his nose, no particular occupation, and at present sojourning at the Railway Hotel, Mohill. I’ll get the police there to give a hand. No excuses, please. I’ve hooked my trout, I’ve trapped my rabbit, I’ve bagged my fox, I’ve snared my hare--I have him, I tell you. Fill up the warrant.”

Mr. Phineas Phlynn filled up the warrant, and the sagacious Spriggins departed on his mission of legal retribution on the body of the unconscious Crawley.

VI.

“Send down three men from the G division in plain clothes with a warrant for the arrest of John Jones, for the attempted murder of Phineas Phlynn, Lord Oglemore’s agent, on the 3d of October, 1879. Lose no time.” This was the purport of a telegraphic dispatch from Sergeant Crawley to Thomas Henry Burke, Under Secretary for Ireland, in accordance with which three big “G’s” made their first appearance in Mohill on the memorable 1st of November.

VII.

Sub-Inspector Blake told off ten men for special duty on Nov. 1, and about noon arrived with them on three outside cars in the little town of Mohill. “Now, boys,” was his parting advice, “this fellow Jones is a tough-looking customer, and will probably show fight. Brennan’s a rowdy, too. When I whistle, rush in and baton both of ’em if they show fight. If any of the hangers-on in the hotel seem ugly, give them the bayonet.”

“Two men with myself will be enough,” finally remarked Spriggins to Head Constable Walsh, of Mohill. “Our bird’s in the commercial room of the Railway Hotel just now. Perhaps ’twould be better, to avoid suspicion, if your men didn’t come in uniform, and they might wait outside till I whistled for them.”

It was so arranged.

Sergeant Crawley sat in the commercial room of the little hotel, describing the personal peculiarities of the fore-doomed Jones to three official Goliaths who had joined him from Dublin, when the door opened and the redoubtable Jones entered himself. Seeing his prey in deep consultation with three sturdy farmers, Jones muttered softly to himself, “By Jingo, I’ve got the whole crowd!” and instantly sounding the signal, sprang upon Crawley with a drawn pistol in his right hand and the warrant fluttering in his left.

“Holy Moses!” gasped Crawley; “they mean to murder us too,” and he ducked under the table, where Spriggins let go three or four shots at him, while two G men rushed at Spriggins and two local constables grappled with the two G men, and the remaining Dublin detective began a racket on his own account by firing round promiscuously, taking a chip off Spriggins’ ear, slicing a cutlet off Crawley’s cheek, and depositing one of the Mohill men on the half-shell, as it were, by a shot in the abdomen. At this moment Sub-Inspector Blake, his soul afire with war’s dread echoes, leaped into the apartment just in time to receive on his sconce the full weight of a brass spittoon fired by Sergeant Crawley, who, from his intrenchment under the table, was carrying on a destructive artillery bombardment of similar bombshells and grenades. Of course Blake sounded the alarm, and his followers charged with fixed bayonets into the room. They skivered Spriggins, they splintered Crawley, they committed multifarious ravages upon the sacred skins of the Dublin detectives, and in the joyous exhilaration of the hour they skewered each other up against the wainscoating, and pinned each other against the table, and prodded each other through the arms and legs of chairs and couches, and shed each other’s blood for their Queen and Constitution in the most liberal and disinterested manner. Finally, when there wasn’t a square three-inch patch of whole skin among the combined forces, the chambermaids and waiters came in and took the entire lot prisoners. Then followed mutual explanations, a reciprocal production of warrants, general expressions of regret, and a mournfully unanimous feeling that amongst the dark, unsolved problems of agrarian crimes would ever remain the awful mystery of who shot Phineas Phlynn’s hat.

THE RED-HEART DAISY.

A RUSSIAN ALLEGORY.

The clouds of battle-tempest had blown over; The storm of wrath Had swept through fields of ripening corn and clover, And in its path Had left the human cyclone’s awful traces In quivering bodies and distorted faces.

Among the bloody drift of dead and dying That strewed the ground, A Prince and Serf, in Death’s communion lying, The searchers found. Earth drank both life-streams; as their current ended, Blue blood and peasant’s in one tide had blended.

Some essence from the forms interred together Enriched the clay, And toned with deeper tints the patch of heather ’Neath which they lay-- Rough hide and dainty skin--deep brain and hollow-- Silver and iron--Vulcan and Apollo.

And when the Spring returned, and daisies spangled The mountain’s crest, Clusters with hearts of crimson were entangled Among the rest, Upon the spot where baron’s dream of glory Had mingled with the toiler’s duller story.

* * * * *

Those who would make our land a frame of metal, With jewelled heart, Would have us view the daisy’s centre petal As thing apart From its white fringe; and, bringing death to both, Would mar the flow’ret’s, like the nation’s, growth.

THE TIDE IS TURNING.

So, masters who have ruled so long With cruel rods of iron, Who sought with gyves and fetters strong Our freedom to environ, In plenitude of sullen power Our tearful pleadings spurning: Prepare ye for your fated hour, Beware--the tide is turning! Yes! yes! at last we fling the past With all its woes behind us, And stand to-day in firm array Against the bonds that bind us.

With brutal grip of tyrant hand Ye choked our aspirations, And made our fertile motherland The Niobe of nations; To feed the vices of your lords, Ye stole the people’s earning, And held the theft with hireling swords-- But now the tide is turning! Yes! yes! to-day your hated sway Is tottering to ruin, The Irish race a future face That will not harbor you in!

Ye kept us chained to ignorance, In fear that education Might teach our brains the wisest chance To liberate the nation. But, spite of all your guile and thrall, Our people still are learning What most will tend your yoke to rend, And so the tide is turning. Yes! yes! the cause, despite your laws, Each rusty chain is breaking; The portents smile upon our isle, For Ireland is awaking.

From meadows rich of smooth Kildare To frowning crags of Kerry, From ocean-girdled shores of Clare To busy marts of Derry, In our opprest, north, south, east, west, A newer spirit’s burning-- The conquering fire of brave desire, That tells the tide is turning. Yes! yes! we mark through centuries dark The light at last is blazing, Till on our brow no serf-brand now Can chill a friendly gazing.

OUR OWN AGAIN.

The voice of freedom’s sounding From farthest shore to shore; And Erin’s pulse is bounding With manhood’s blood once more; Our sluggard trance is broken, We stand erect as men, Our stern demand is spoken, We’ll have our own again!

No futile bribes can stay us, No traitor chiefs control, No wheedling tones delay us, No terrors blanch our soul. The gloomy hour has vanished And gone forever when We could be crushed or banished-- We’ll have our own again!

The bluster of the Tories, And Whigdom’s tempting lies, Are vain and foolish stories We spurn and we despise. We’ve torn the landlord foeman From out his reeking den, And now we’ll halt for no man-- We’ll have our own again!

Our eyes are lifted sunward, No power can bar our course, Our march must still be onward, Spite either guile or force; And be it by the sabre, The voice, the vote, or pen, Or steadfast, patient labor-- We’ll have our own again!

THE TALE OF A TAIL.

There’s a place in fiery Ulster we may christen Macaroon, Where they won’t believe in Parnell or the Land League very soon; Where to call a priest “his rev’rence” treads upon their pious corns, For they think a priest hoof-shodden, and believe the Pope wears horns; ’Tis there that yells and shouting on the twelfth day of July Make the populace so thirsty they could drink the Shannon dry; And ’tis there, where papal bulls could never make a sinner quail, That a Papist cow has trampled on their feelings with her tail.

Pat Duggan, finding Clifford Lloyd too much for him in Clare, Thought he’d try his fate in Ulster, so he took a holding there, And of all the spots of Orange North, that most unlucky coon Had the evil chance to squat in “no surrender” Macaroon. And in his blissful ignorance, unmitigated ass, He trudged a half-a-dozen miles each Sunday morn to mass, Till his very Christian neighbors, his convictions to assail, Began to whisper fell designs upon his heifer’s tail.