At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [216]
“What republic?” said Mr. Mack.
“Get down off that cart,” said the gunman.
They took the cart. They turned it endways up with the bedsteads and mattresses. The woman was explaining to Mr. Mack, as a man of some authority in a bowler hat, that it was the bed her mother had left her, her poor mother, God rest her soul, she died in that bed.
The carter’s cob whisked its tail. The carter looked round the circle of people. “Ye saw that. Ye won’t deny it. He had a gun on me.”
“Daylight robbery,” said a man at the door of his shop.
“Ye’ll back me up. He had a gun.”
Suddenly, down the street, came the sound of gunfire. Holy Mother of God! Screaming and shoving, the people scattered, Mr. Mack with them, dodging into doorways. Mr. Mack peeked out: nothing in the road save three girls who stood in a row with their aprons hitched up at their mouths, gaping, and a curious weazen man who hopped about—he had lost a boot—hopped about, bleeding from the glass and dodging bullets the same time. Making an extraordinary stookawn of himself for there were no bullets to dodge. Nothing at all was happening, and gingerly following the lead of the bolder class of urchin, Mr. Mack came out in the street again. Another crackle of musketry and they were all scarpering anew, but the fire was sustained now, and clearly from down by the river; way down by the Four Courts, Mr. Mack heard. He had received a fierce dig in the ribs and he was looking about for the culprit, saying “Now now” with his finger raised, when a cry went up. Lancers! The Lancers! The Lancers is coming! Some dashed ahead only to hurry back, rejoining the mass that generally surged forward, sweeping Mr. Mack along. “Now we’ll see the fun,” said a man in his ear. “The Lancers is the boyos will sort them blackguards.”
But that musketry came from no Lancer’s carbine. Mr. Mack recognized that barking discharge, inconceivable though it was in the streets of Dublin. Mausers without a doubt, great blunderbussy yokes of things the Boers had always favored. But what would the Boers be doing in Dublin? A hurry of hooves ahead; a screaming avenue formed in the crowd; terror big in its eyes, a riderless horse bolted through.
Up side streets surged the crowd, searching, anywhere, to center its alarm. Dumbly Mr. Mack was carried along. His head he found was somewhat obfusticated in drink: he could form no very clear understanding of what was happening and the natural malignity of streets worked on him so that he had no notion at all where he was in this maze of back alleys and cuts. Horse-clops echoed everywhere, many many horse, or a few gone galloping wild. The Boer War Mausers growled still, and it would scarce surprise him now if de Wet himself appeared at the head of a commando—wasn’t it always whispered de Wet was none but Parnell returned?
But who came in the end was only two bewildered troopers. They hunched over their mounts, evidently lost, and the mounts, their reins trailing, snorted and blew. Someone shouted the rebels were at the barricade. And yes, it did look like a barricade, now Mr. Mack came to regard it. The Lancers fired quick cracks off their carbines. “There’s a child down!” someone shouted. Mother of God, we’ll all be slaughtered. The barricade returned a broken blustering volley. Chunks of masonry showered off the walls. The crowd had scattered, losing Mr. Mack his hat. The two horses bucked and tossed, going at a strange diagonal gait, sparks firing off the cobbles, till they reared wildly, bucketed up another side street. “A child is down!” the call kept going round. Mr. Mack darted out to retrieve his hat. And the crowd, that stupid poking gawping mass, heaved behind him again, pushed him down once more to the barricade, breached the rickety thing and flooded through, tumbling it down behind them. Mr. Mack glimpsed a face bloodied below, not a child’s thank God, trampled over.
A group of men from the barricade—some had green sort of uniforms on them—were advancing with rifles up the farther street.