THE HAND AND WORD. Porque ninguno De mi venganza tome En el ancho mar sepulchro. CALDERON'S El mayor Monstruo los Zelos. Vengeance is here the right of none- In the broad waves that heave and boom THE village of Kilkee, on the south-western coast of Ireland, has been for many years to the city of Limerick (on a small scale) that which Brighton is to London. At the time, however, when the events which form the subject of the following little history took place, it had not yet begun to take precedence of a watering-place somewhat farther to the north on the same coast, called Miltown Malbay, which had been for a long time, and still was, a favourite summer resort with the fashionables of the county, such as they were. The village itself consists merely of six or eight streets, or straggling rows of houses, scattered irregularly enough over those waste banks of sand in which the land terminates as it approaches the Atlantic. Those banks, or sandhills, as they are called, do not in this place slope gradually to the marge of the sea, but form a kind of abrupt barrier or natural terrace around the little bay, descending with such suddenness that the ledges on the extreme verge completely overhang the water, and with their snow-white fronts and neat green lattices, produce a sufficiently picturesque effect when the tide is at the full. The little inlet which has been dignified with the title of a bay, opens to the north-west by a narrow mouth, rendered yet narrower in appearance by the Duggara rocks, which stretch more than half-way across from the southern extremity. A bed of fine hard sand reaches as far as low-water mark, and when the retiring waves have left it visible, affords a pleasant promenade to the bathers. Winding on either side towards the opening of the bay and along the line of coast, are seen a number of broken cliffs, which, rising to a considerable height, form to the north a precipitous headland called Corballagh, and to the southward they stretch away behind Duggara in a thousand fantastic shapes. Close to the mouth or opening, on this side, is the Amphitheatre, which has been so named in later years, from the resemblance which instantly suggests itself to the beholder. Here the rocks lift themselves above the level of the sea in regular grades, bearing a kind of rude similitude to the benches of such a theatre as that above-named, to the height of two or three hundred feet. In the bathing season this place is seldom without a few groups or straggling figures, being turned to account in a great many different ways, whether as a resting-place to the wanderers on the cliffs, or a point of rendezvous to the numerous pic-nic parties who come here to enjoy a dinner al fresco, and luxuriate on the grand and boundless ocean-prospect which lies beneath and beyond them. A waggish host of the village with whom I had the honour to domiciliate during a brief sojourn in the place a few years since, informed me that a number of serious accidents had rendered the visitors to the Amphitheatre somewhat more cautious of suffering themselves to become entangled among the perils of the shelving and disjointed crags of which it was composed. Among many anecdotes of warning he mentioned one which occurred to a meditative guest of his own, for which I at first gave him credit for a poetical imagination, though I afterwards found he had spoken nothing more than a real fact. "To take out his book" (he said in answer to a question from me, as to the manner of the occurrence), "and to sit down as it might be this way on a shelving rock, and the sea to be roaring, and he to be thinking of nothing, only what he was reading, when a swell riz and took him out a distins, as it might be to give him a good sea-view of the cliffs and the place, and turning again the same way it came, laid him up on the same stone, where, I'll be your bail, he was mighty scarce in less than no time". Beyond the Amphitheatre, the cliff rises to a still greater height, forming an eminence called the Look-out. Shocking as the tale may appear to modern readers, it has been asserted, and but too many evidences remain to give weight and colour to the supposition, that in those barbarous (though not very distant) times, this place was employed as an observatory by the wild fishermen of the coast and neighbouring hamlets, the principal portion of whose livelihood was derived from the plunder of the unfortunate men who happened to be wrecked on this inhospitable shore; and it is even recorded, and generally believed, that fires were, on tempestuous nights, frequently lighted here, and in other dangerous parts of the coast, in order to allure the labouring vessel, already hardly set by the war of winds and waves, to a more certain and immediate destruction on the rocks and shoals beneath, a practice, it is said, which was often successful to a fearful extent. The most remarkable point of scenery about the place, and one with which we shall close our perhaps not unneedful sketch of the little district, is the Puffing-hole, a cavern near the base of the cliff last-mentioned, which vaults the enormous mass of crag to a considerable distance inland, where it has a narrow opening, appearing to the eyes of a stranger like a deep natural well. When the tremendous sea from abroad rolls into this cavern, the effect is precisely the same as if water were forced into an inverted funnel, its impetus of course increasing as it ascends through the narrow neck, until at length reaching the perpendicular opening, or Puffing-hole, it jets frequently to an immense height into the air, and falls in rain on the mossy fields behind. At a little distance from this singular phenomenon stood a rude cottage. It was tenanted by an aged woman of the place, the relict of one of the most daring plunderers of the coast, who was suspected to have been murdered by one of his own comrades a good many years before. The interior of the little building bore sufficient testimony to the unlawful habits of its former master. All, even the greater proportion of the domestic utensils, were formed of ship timbers: a rudder had been awkwardly hacked and hewed up into something bearing a resemblance to a table, which stood in the middle of the principal apartment; the rafters were made from the spars of boom, peek, and yard; a settle-bed at the further end had been constructed from the ruins of a gallant ship; and the little boarded parlour inside was furnished in part from the same materials. A number of planks, carelessly fastened together by way of a dresser, stood against the wall, shining forth in all the glory of burnished pewter, wooden-platter, and gaudily painted earthenware the heir-looms of the house of Moran. Terrified and shocked to the soul by the sudden fate of her late spouse, Mrs. Moran, the proprietress of the cottage, resolved that their boy, an only child, should not follow the dangerous courses of his father. In this she happened to be seconded by the youth's own disposition, which inclined to a quietude and gentleness of character. He was, at his sixteenth year, far beyond his compeers of the village in point of education, and not behind in beauty of person, and dexterity at all the manual exercises of goal, single-stick, etc., etc., accomplishments, however, which were doomed not to be wasted in the obscurity of his native wilderness, for before he had completed his seventeenth year, he was laid by the heels, one morning as he sat at breakfast, and pressed to sea. One day was allowed him to take leave of old friends, and prepare to bid a long adieu to his native home. This day was a painful one, for more reasons than one. Of course it is not to be supposed that so smart, handsome, clever, and well disposed a lad as Charlie Moran, should be unappreciated among the maidens of the district in which he vegetated. He had in short a lover; a fine flaxen-haired girl, with whom he had been intimate from infancy up to youth, when the wars (into the service of which he suspected he was betrayed by the agency of the girl's parent, a comfortable Palatine in the neighbourhood) called him away from his boyish sports to the exercise of a premature manhood. Their parting was by no means more agreeable to little Ellen Sparling than to himself, seeing that they were more fondly and deeply attached to one another, than is frequently the case with persons of their age and rank in life, and moreover that it would not have been the easiest matter possible to find a pair so well matched in temper and habits, as well as in personal loveliness (just then unfolding itself in each with a promise of perfect maturity) anywhere about the country-side. The father of the girl, however, who, to say the truth, was indeed the contriver of Moran's impressment, looked |