probably the great majority of the british public had no idea of the extraordinary situation in the south and west of ireland during 1920, and most likely never will have. in the summer of that sinister year, when the sinn fein tyranny was at its height, an english newspaper sent a lady journalist over to this unfortunate country to find out what really was the matter with us, and, if possible, to give the world yet another solution of the irish question.
in her first letter, this lady, quite unnecessarily, told her millions of readers that she had never been in ireland before, proceeded to relate the peculiarities of the people of dublin and belfast, and finished with a vivid description of the peaceful and happy condition of the country, in spite of the interested rumours put about to the contrary.
at the time when this lady journalist was discovering peaceful and happy ireland, the power of sinn fein was rapidly passing from the hands of the hot-air merchants to the 80direct-action ruffians; in other words, arthur griffiths became a mere cipher, and michael collins the dictator of the south and west. and very soon collins had several imitators.
born in 1889 in the highlands of ballyrick, denis joyce, after working for a few years as gillie and general boy at a shooting-lodge near errinane, drifted to dublin as a labourer, and at once came under the influence of connolly, the prince of irish bolsheviks. taken prisoner during the easter rebellion of 1916, he was eventually released with other small fry, and in return devoted himself to the extermination of the british empire in general, and irish policemen in particular.
during the spring and summer of 1920, joyce and his numerous bodyguard, like an irish chieftain of old, lived like fighting-cocks. hailed as the conquerors of the british army (they had shot several unarmed soldiers) wherever they went, not only did they live free, gratis, and for nothing, but the country people literally fought for the honour of entertaining these heroes. a great pity that the lady journalist could not have been present at one of these banquets. what “copy” she could have sent to her editor, and the certified net sale would have soared to the skies.
but though joyce and his merry men had a great time, they did not neglect their duty; and on every occasion, when conditions were all in their favour, they shot down police patrols from behind walls, and murdered unfortunate 81policemen when visiting their wives and families.
however, every dog has his day, and in the autumn of 1920, when the british army and the auxiliary cadets started to take a hand in the game, joyce found himself changed from a popular hero into a hunted outlaw, with the usual result that, where formerly he had found an open door and a smiling welcome, he now was met by a closed door and a scowl; and when seeking board and lodging, it became necessary to persuade the unwilling hosts with a six-shooter.
the police and military now commenced paying calls at night; and a farmer, living in the depth of the country, hearing a knock at his door during the long winter’s nights, had always the pleasing excitement of not knowing if he was to have the honour of entertaining some badly-wanted gunmen, a patrol of the r.i.c., a party of auxiliary cadets, a military search-party, or merely a posse of local robbers, any of whom might take a sudden dislike to the unfortunate farmer, with unpleasant results.
in the winter of 1920, joyce, who would have made an excellent soldier, made the bad mistake of mixing up love with war; in other words, he became greatly enamoured of a girl living in the south, and in order to be within reach of her, confined his attentions to that district for a considerable time, instead of moving about the country with his usual rapidity; and the auxiliaries, getting an inkling 82of the situation from a former lover of the girl, made a great effort to surround and capture him.
though he received repeated warnings of the activity of the cadets, joyce put off his departure, until a day came when word was brought that the place was surrounded by forces of the crown, who would close in on the little town that evening.
joyce at once went to tell molly, whose father kept a small hotel in the town, and the girl’s quick wit soon thought out a plan of escape for her lover. five commercial travellers staying in the hotel, and at the time out touring neighbouring villages, had left their heavy cases of samples at the hotel, and their railway passes in the safe keeping of the hotel proprietor.
that afternoon the train to the west carried joyce and four of his bodyguard disguised as bagmen; the remainder were left to shift for themselves, and that evening, when the cadets searched the town from attic to cellar, they found that the principal bird had flown.
joyce knew that it would not be safe to travel by train as far as ballybor, and as soon as he thought that they had cleared the auxiliary cordon, determined to alight at the next stop and continue the journey by car. just as they were on the point of leaving the train, however, they noticed several cadets waiting by the station exit, so did not get out.
two stations farther on they left the train, and being now outside the net, quickly commandeered 83a ford from the local garage and set out for the ballyrick country, where joyce had decided to hide and rest for a while. keeping to byroads, they made their way westwards at a good rate until it was nearly daylight, when, after hiding the car in a wood, they proceeded to search for board and lodging.
shortly they came across a good farmhouse, and, after the usual display of pistols, were admitted reluctantly, made a hearty meal, and retired to bed after ordering their host to have five good bicycles and another meal ready for them as soon as it was dark.
it has been mentioned that joyce had worked as a boy at a shooting-lodge near errinane, and he now conceived the brilliant idea of taking a rest-cure there until such time as the police took less interest in him. this lodge, drumcar by name, belonged to a connaught squire who had married an englishwoman, and except for a short time in the summer was only occupied by a caretaker. situated in one of the wildest parts of the west, a mile from the road, hidden by woods of oak and birch, and overlooking the bay on which errinane stands, it was probably the last place in ireland where the police would think of looking for an active gunman, and the chances were that not a single auxiliary even knew that such a place existed.
the gunmen arrived at drumcar soon after dawn, and after rousing the terrified caretaker, who lived with his son and daughter in a cottage in the grounds, they settled down 84to a life of peace and comfort. the girl attended on them, while the old man brought food from errinane in a donkey cart, and a good supply of poteen from a mountain farm near the mouth of the bay.
the lodge was well supplied with turf, contained an excellent library of novels, and joyce and his men waxed fat with good living and soft lying; but it is a case of once on the run, always on the run, until the inevitable end comes, or the gunman is lucky enough to escape to the states.
now, it is a well-known truth in the west that a “mountainy” man will always, when sick unto death, home-sick, or in dire distress, make for his beloved mountains, no matter what far end of the world he may have drifted to; and when in due course blake learnt through official channels that joyce had escaped from the southern town, he at once began to keep a sharp look-out for him in the ballyrick country.
but when a fortnight passed and there was no sign of joyce, nor yet any report of his presence in that part of the country, blake turned up the man’s official record, from which he learnt two interesting facts: first, that joyce had worked at drumcar; and, secondly, that he had a married sister in bunrattey, a district on the southern border of blake’s country.
blake now turned his attention to the sister’s house, and when this proved a blank, he determined to try drumcar lodge as a last resource; 85but at the time of the landing of arms at errinane, every police barrack and coastguard station within a radius of many miles had been burnt, so that it was impossible to get any news of the place without going there, the nearest barrack in blake’s district being fifty miles away.
a “travelling circus” of auxiliaries happened to be passing through ballybor, and the leader undertook to investigate the lodge and let blake know if they found any trace of joyce. blake advised them to surround the lodge in the day-time, as, owing to the wild and mountainous nature of the country, a night attack would be impossible.
on the whole, the gunmen treated old faherty, the caretaker, and his children well, especially the son, patsy, in the hope that he would join them; but, luckily for himself, the lad had a wholesome dread of firearms. after he had been at the lodge some days, in spite of feeling quite secure, joyce, with the instinct of the hunted, began to look about for a bolt-hole in case of need; though in the midst of the wilds the lodge had serious drawbacks, being situated on the side of a slope, so that any one leaving the lodge would at once come under observation from several points, and, moreover, an arm of the sea cut off all escape to the north.
in fact, escape seemed very doubtful, until by chance patsy mentioned that in a boat-house, hidden by trees, on the shore of the bay, there was a large motor-launch, which 86he had learnt to drive the previous summer. the next time the old man went to errinane for provisions, he brought back with him twenty gallons of petrol (duly entered up in his absent master’s account), and joyce felt easier in his mind.
on a pouring wet afternoon the five gunmen were playing nap in front of a comfortable turf fire in the drawing-room, while old faherty’s daughter brewed poteen punch for them, and patsy was reading a novel in an arm-chair, when a long-haired boy dashed in with the news that a large party of auxiliary cadets had rushed through errinane, taken two countrymen they had met on the road as guides, and were surrounding the lodge from all sides except the sea. joyce had launched the motor-boat only the previous day, and within a few minutes they were under way, heading for the mouth of the bay with the throttle full open. seeing the launch in the bay below them as they reached the front of the lodge, the cadets opened fire, but before they could get on to their target the launch vanished in the thick mist of rain.
as pursuit was out of the question, the auxiliaries drove straight to errinane post office, only to find the wires cut. they then went on to the nearest town, and wired to the naval authorities at queenstown, hoping that they might be able to get in touch with a destroyer off the west coast by wireless, and so capture joyce at sea.
joyce knew that the hue-and-cry would be 87up, and that it would be fatal to land anywhere on the coast near errinane; and as the sea was calm, he made up his mind to cut across a big bay to the north and make for buntarriv, a narrow passage between an island and the mainland, which would lead them to trabawn bay, on the shores of which lay his own country.
the launch left the slip at drumcar at 1 p.m., and joyce made out that at eight miles an hour they ought to reach buntarriv sound at four o’clock and trabawn bay in another hour, which should give them plenty of time to land before darkness set in. unfortunately, when out in the open atlantic, the engine stopped, and patsy, who was thoroughly frightened by now, would only sit down and cry. two of the gunmen knew something of motors, and after nearly two hours discovered that the carburetter was choked with dirt, and it was nearly six o’clock before the sound was within sight: another quarter of an hour and they would have been too late. as it was, a destroyer opened fire on them just as they were entering the sound, and they were only saved by the failing light.
knowing that the destroyer could not follow them, and afraid of wrecking the launch in the dark, they anchored and waited for the moon to rise, and eventually landed on the shore of trabawn bay. joyce was at last in his own country, and before day broke the gunmen were safely lodged in different mountain farms close to joyce’s home, and the next 88day patsy was handed over to the local volunteers to be returned to drumcar. the following day they took the launch to a bay surrounded by high cliffs, where no human being except an odd herd ever went, and beached her at the height of the tide on the sandy shore, where they left her for future use.
after a few days at home joyce began to get restless, and resolved to visit his married sister in the bunrattey district; but the local volunteers could only supply them with two bicycles, and the distance was too far to walk—forty-two miles as the crow flies. however, he learnt from a postman that a police patrol visited ballyscaddan, a small village about sixteen miles east of ballyrick, daily, and were in the habit of leaving their bicycles outside a public-house which they frequented.
the gunmen spent the night in ballyscaddan, and about eleven o’clock a patrol of six r.i.c. arrived in the village, left their bicycles outside the public-house, and went inside to refresh themselves. the gunmen, who were waiting in the next house, quickly cut the tyres of one bicycle to ribbons, and rode off on the remaining five, leaving the unfortunate villagers to bear the brunt of the infuriated policemen’s wrath. that night joyce and his four men slept in his sister’s house in bunrattey.
besides his courage, the only redeeming feature about joyce appears to have been his love for this sister. as usual, she was delighted to see him, but by now the other 89inhabitants would have as soon welcomed the devil himself as joyce, knowing that his progress through the country was blazed by reprisals.
gone were the days when he used to hold audience daily in his sister’s house like a king, and men came many miles simply to see the famous denis joyce. now the country people would avoid him on the road, and not a single person came to see him.
his sister warned him repeatedly that it was dangerous to stay any length of time with her; but joyce seems to have lost heart, or perhaps his celtic soul had a premonition of coming disaster. at any rate he refused to go, and spent most of this time sitting by the kitchen fire brooding.
blake soon learnt of joyce’s escape by sea from drumcar, and feeling sure that sooner or later he would visit his sister before starting operations in the south again, concentrated his attention on that district. to this end, he kept his men well away, and at the same time asked for the help of the auxiliary “travelling circus,” among whom were three cadets who knew joyce well by sight.
one of these cadets, whose personal appearance favoured the disguise, was dressed up as a priest, and sent out on a bicycle to spy out the land. after two days he returned with the good news that he had passed the famous gunman on the road in bunrattey, and at once blake made preparations to surround the place that night.
90he knew that success entirely depended on maintaining complete secrecy until the house was surrounded, and that if even a whisper of what was in the air got abroad all chances of capturing joyce were gone. tired of seeing operations ruined by well-advertised crossleys, bristling with rifles, tearing along the main roads, he determined to try and catch his man by cunning.
directly he received the news that joyce was at bunrattey, he left ballybor barracks with four crossleys, two of r.i.c., and two of auxiliaries, in the opposite direction to which bunrattey lay, until they came to a small village about ten miles to the north, where there was a large flour-mill. surrounding the mill, the police carried out a perfunctory search and left just before dark, taking with them two of the miller’s lorries, one empty, and the other loaded with flour sacks and two large tarpaulins, cutting the wires as soon as they were clear of the village.
making their way eastwards until they reached a long stretch of desolate bog-road, they halted with one tender about a quarter of a mile behind and another the same distance ahead. they then proceeded to transfer half the flour sacks to the empty lorry, built them up with a hollow in the middle so that both lorries appeared to be fully loaded, filled the hollows with police, and then threw a tarpaulin over each.
the two lorries then set off to make a large detour in order to approach bunrattey from 91the south (the opposite direction to ballybor), and blake made out that they ought to arrive there about midnight. the four crossleys waited and followed at a time which should bring them to bunrattey a quarter of an hour after the arrival of the lorries.
joyce’s sister’s house stood back from the main road about eighty yards, was one-storied, very strongly built, and had a tremendous thatch of straw; to the front there were four small windows, heavily shuttered, and a stout oak door, and at the back only a door of the same kind. at a distance of about thirty yards from the house a low stone wall ran round the sides and back, enclosing a small cabbage garden and the haggard, which gave excellent cover for the police.
the lorries stopped within 400 yards of the house, and the police quickly and silently surrounded it without raising the alarm. they then waited for the arrival of the crossleys, when the auxiliaries and the remainder of the police formed a second cordon outside the first one.
the leading lorry was now brought into the lane which led up to the house, and left there with the acetylene lamps shining full on the front door and windows, and at the same time the lamps of the second lorry were taken to the back of the house and mounted on the wall, so that any one attempting to leave the house by the doors or windows would be in the full glare of the powerful lamps.
approaching the house from a gable-end, 92blake crawled along the front until he reached the door, on which he hammered with the butt of his revolver, and called on the inmates to surrender, telling them that they were surrounded and that resistance only meant death. receiving no answer, he called out that if they did not come out at once with their hands up, he would open fire on the house, and for reply there came a volley of bullets through the lower part of the door. he then crawled back to cover, and ordered his men to open fire on the front door with a machine-gun.
the concentrated fire of a machine-gun will cut a hole through a nine-inch brick wall in a very short time, and in a few minutes the oak door was in splinters. while the machine-gun kept up a continuous fire at the height of a man’s chest, four policemen endeavoured to get into the house by crawling up to the door, but when a few feet away two were shot, and the remaining two only escaped by rolling to one side.
all that the police had to do now, provided that joyce was in the house—and the resistance offered made this a certainty—was to wait until daylight, when the certain capture of the gunmen would only be a question of time. but by now blake was excited, and remembering how o’hara had slipped through his hands, he determined to burn the rats out and finish the show. after getting a tin of petrol from one of the cars, he again crawled up to the gable-end, set a light to the tin, and 93flung it on to the thatch, which at once took fire, burning fiercely.
only a few days previously this part of the thatch had been renewed, and as the weather had been fine it was bone-dry. but after a few minutes the fire reached the old and wet thatch, and as there was a gentle breeze blowing from the front, very soon the back of the house was completely hidden by a cloud of smoke.
realising the mistake he had made, blake ordered his men to keep up a continuous fire on the back door, and at the same time rushed the machine-gun round to that side; but so blinding was the smoke by now that it was impossible to know where the back door was.
hearing shouts from the front, on going there he found a young woman standing in the doorway with her hands up, who told him that all the men in the house were wounded and unable to move. on entering they found three of joyce’s bodyguard and his brother-in-law lying in pools of blood on the kitchen floor, but not a sign of joyce or the fourth man.
there was still a chance that the missing two might be found wounded outside the back door, which was ajar, but the smoke was still so dense that no one could approach. after a time the smoke abated, and they found the fourth man dead a few yards from the house, but not a sign of joyce.
again working on the theory that the gunman would make for his home in the ballyrick 94mountains, which lay to the westward at the back of the house, blake divided his forces into two, sending each out on a flank in order to get well ahead of the fugitive, and then form a fan-shaped net and beat backwards towards the house. four miles away to the west was the owenmore river, which ran northwards through ballybor, and across the river were two bridges, each about four miles from where they were.
the two forces crossed by different bridges, each dropping three men at the bridges, then went on about three miles, and at daybreak started to beat the country back to the bridges. here they arrived, worn out, at 10 a.m., and not a sign had any one seen or heard of joyce.
sure that joyce had crossed the river, the police started to beat back again over the ground they had just covered; but by 4 p.m. the men were done in, and blake had to call them off and return to ballybor.
that night he got out a large-scale ordnance map of the bunrattey district, put himself in joyce’s place, and tried to think out his line of escape, presuming that the fugitive had avoided the bridges and swum the river at the nearest point from his sister’s house. on crossing the river he would soon come to a thick wood on the slope of a hill, through which the railway line to ballybor ran, and here he decided that joyce must be hiding.
early the next morning blake set out with a strong force, and approaching derryallen 95wood from all four sides at once, spent the rest of the day beating the wood through and through, but without any result, and they came to the conclusion that by now joyce must have got clear.
a week afterwards, when blake was returning in the dusk from grouse lodge barracks, a man stopped the car on an open stretch of road about a mile outside ballybor. the man turned out to be the loyal guard of the goods train, and he told blake that for several days past he had seen the engine-driver drop a parcel as the train passed through derryallen wood, and always at the same place, into a patch of briers on the side of the line.
blake’s interest in joyce awoke afresh, but he felt sure that no living being had escaped them on the day when they searched the wood, and they had not been able to find any trace of a hiding-place. however, it would be interesting to know what the engine-driver dropped when passing through the wood, and by whom it was picked up.
the main road from ballybor to castleport ran parallel with the railway, skirting the east side of derryallen; and here, on a pitch-dark winter’s night, in torrents of rain, two crossleys stopped for a couple of minutes while blake and a party of r.i.c. and cadets dropped out, and then drove on again.
with great difficulty the party found their way in the dark to the railway line, where they remained hidden in some laurels until it began to grow light, when they were able to 96conceal themselves within easy reach of the patch of briers.
after hours of weary waiting the goods train passed down, and the engine-driver dropped the parcel into the briers. at once the police forgot hunger and cold in their eagerness to see who would pick up the parcel, but again they were doomed to hours of weary waiting.
at last, when the men had nearly reached the limit of their endurance and light was almost gone, they saw a most miserable-looking wild-eyed man crawling painfully towards the patch of briers. when he was within five yards of the parcel blake called on him to surrender, and every man covered him with his rifle.
game to the end, though unable to stand on account of a bullet-wound in one leg, joyce drew his pistol and glared defiance at the police; but as he raised himself to fire, a fifteen-stone cadet, who had crept up silently behind him, flung himself on the famous gunman’s back, and the long chase was over.
joyce refused to show blake his hiding-place, but afterwards they learnt from the owner of the wood that there was a cave in the middle of the wood which had been used by robbers over a hundred years ago, the entrance of which was completely covered by thick heather.
