WE MISSED our connection in London, spent an un-comfortable night at Heathrow, and got a noon plane for Cork the following day, still talking only when absolutely necessary. As we came out of customs as Cork Airport, I was surprised to see Connie. She rushed up.
“Come on,” she said urgently, “My car’s outside.”
She hustled us to the car park. “What’s going on, Connie?” I asked, puzzled.
“I’m to get you down to the Royal Cork. Finbar’s waiting for you there.”
I was exhausted and annoyed. “What is going on?”
“I heard on the grapevine that Red O’Mahoney and some friends of his are planning to intercept Mark before he sails into the harbor,” she said. “I called Finbar, and he told me you were expected. I’ve met the last three planes. Finbar’s got a boat waiting at the club. He reckons we should try to head off Mark and divert him to England.”
“Swell,” I said and tried to nap on the short drive to the club.
Finbar was, indeed, waiting for us with a boat—a very nice, old pre-war, wooden cabin cruiser of about thirty-five feet that I knew belonged to a Cork dentist. Finbar had done a lot of work on it.
“Is Mark’s ETA the same?” Finbar asked as we came aboard.
“Yes. Today or tomorrow, he thought, depending on weather,” Annie replied.
“Well, Connie’s put some grub aboard. I reckon our best bet is to go out a few miles and try to raise him on the VHF.”
Once out of the river and into the harbor, Finbar put the throttles down, and we moved along at about fifteen knots. “Sweet, isn’t she?” Finbar said proudly.
We went out about six or seven miles and began patrolling up and down a five mile line at five knots. There wasn’t much sea, and we were comfortable enough, with Connie and Annie making coffee and sandwiches. We called Wave repeatedly, but got no response. Darkness came, and we continued.
“Finbar,” I said, about midnight, “maybe we should go in a bit closer to the harbor entrance. This far out, if he doesn’t have the VHF on, he might get past us. Closer in, we’ll be nearer the neck of the bottle.”
Finbar nodded and turned toward Roche’s Point Light, flashing in the distance. “We’ll be nearer Red O’Mahoney, too, but I reckon he won’t be expecting us, and anyway, we can outrun his trawler. He couldn’t get more than eight knots out of her.”
We resumed our patrolling closer in, calling Wave every ten minutes on channel 16 of the VHF. At nearly three in the morning, five ‘minutes after I had tried calling, the radio came alive.
“Cork Harbour Radio, Cork Harbour Radio, Cork Harbour Radio, this is the yacht, Wave, do you read me?”
I grabbed the microphone. “Wave, Wave, listen to me; switch to channel M, channel M.” Channel M in the British Isles is reserved for marina and yacht club use. I knew a fishing boat wouldn’t have the crystal in its VHF.
“Switching to channel M,” Mark’s voice came back.
“Mark, this is Will, do you read me?”
“Willie?” Mark came back, surprised. “Where are you?”
“I’m with Finbar on a cabin cruiser about two miles south southwest of Roche’s Point Light. Annie and Connie are with us. Where are you?”
“I estimate three, maybe three and a half miles south of the light. Wait a minute, I’ll fire a white flare.”
“No, No!” I shouted into the radio, but I was too late.
Finbar pointed across the water. “There! There he is!” He put the throttles down and turned toward the bright, white light.
A couple of minutes later the flare died, and Mark came on the radio again.
“Do you see me?”
I pressed the talk button. “Listen to me, Mark. Red O’Mahoney and his crowd are out here on a trawler somewhere looking for you. We saw you, and we’re coming, but Red may have seen you, too. Do you read that?”
“I read you. I’ll heave to so you can come alongside.”
Shortly, we saw a flashlight on Wave’s mainsail. “Douse the light, Mark!” I shouted into the radio. The flashlight went out. In another minute or two, we were alongside Wave. Mark already had fenders out to receive us. Annie tossed her gear to Mark and prepared to hop aboard the yacht, while Finbar cut his engines. As soon as he did, I heard another engine. “Down there!” I pointed off into the darkness. “I hear a boat!”
“Finbar, you keep Connie aboard and stand well off,” Mark said quietly.
“But I want to help,” Finbar came back.
“We’ll call you on channel M if we need help, now just start your engines, turn off your nav lights, and keep well off unless I call you.” Finbar did as he was told. Mark motioned Annie below, then followed and tossed up the Ithaca riot gun to me. “It’s loaded,” he said. “Twelve shells.” He came on deck with the Ingram machine pistol, slapping a clip into it and tossing two more onto a cockpit seat. “Let’s get sailing,” he said.
We quickly pointed the yacht southeast and got her going, but the wind was light, and she was only making four or five knots. The other boat’s engine grew steadily louder. I stood, looking over the water, trying to locate it. “Listen, Mark, let’s don’t start shooting, okay? That might be some perfectly ordinary fisherman, you know.” On the other hand, I knew, it might not be a fisherman, in which case they might start shooting.
“I’m not out to kill anybody, Willie, but I’m going to defend if I have to. You can put down the shotgun and go below if you want.”
“Well,” I said, my voice not very steady, “if they start shooting, I’ll shoot back.” I was feeling very weak in the bowels. The other boat was very near, now, and she wasn’t wearing navigation lights, or we’d have seen her sooner than we did.
“Good man,” Mark said.
His statement was suddenly punctuated by a roar and a flash from about thirty yards away. Simultaneously, there was a loud crack, and a large hole appeared in the mainsail, about two feet above my head.
“Shotgun!” Mark shouted, pulling me down into the cockpit. “Pump a couple over their heads, Willie! I don’t want to use the Ingram unless we have to!”
I took a deep breath, popped up from the cockpit and, blindly, but high, fired two quick shots. I ducked, then peeped over the cockpit coaming to see what was happening. The trawler was closer and broadside on to us, now, running a parallel course. I wished the wind would come up so we’d have more of a chance to outrun her. Then I saw a flame on her foredeck.
“Jesus!” shouted Mark. “Molotov cocktail!”
The flame arched high into the air toward us, and I reflexively did the only thing I’d ever really done with a shotgun. It was easier than shooting skeet, really, it seemed to come so slowly. I led it just a bit and fired. The bottle burst like a Roman candle, showering down burning gasoline, which hissed when it hit the water, short of Wave. I saw another flame on the foredeck and pumped the shotgun, ready to fire again, but Mark was ahead of me. He had unscrewed the silencer on the Ingram and was firing noisily at the trawler. I was relieved to see splashes along her waterline as the big 45 caliber bullets pounded into her hull. There was shouting from aboard her, and the flame fell to the foredeck. There was a splash of fire, and the whole forward end of the trawler seemed to burst into flames.
“Look at that!” Mark shouted gleefully. “I couldn’t have hit anybody, they must have just dropped the bloody cocktail!”
We watched, transfixed, as the trawler suddenly fell away from us, flaming like a giant torch in the night. Just for a moment, I thought I saw the outline of a woman against the flames, but then it was gone.
“I think she’s listing a bit,” Mark said as the trawler motored away from us. “The Ingram must have done some damage at the waterline.”
Annie stuck her head up from below. “Is it all right up here, now? Is anybody hurt?”
“We’ve got a nice hole in the mainsail, but that seems to be it,” Mark replied, looking around. “Well done, Willie, that was a nice shot!”
“Excuse me, I have to go below,” I said, and scrambled down the companionway ladder. Five minutes later, with a better grip on myself, I came back into the cockpit as Mark was heaving to. Finbar stood just off in the cruiser, shouting.
“Bloody marvelous, Mark!” he yelled, as he came alongside. “They’ve got their tails between their legs, now!” The trawler was now only a speck of flame in the distance.
“Willie, we’ll head for England, I think,” Mark said. “Want to come along?”
“I think I’ll go back with Finbar,” I replied, taking deep breaths. “But thanks for a lovely evening.”
“I don’t think there’ll be any more trouble with that lot,” Mark said, looking off toward the disappearing trawler, then turning to me. “Willie, I can’t thank you enough for coming out here and helping. You’ve saved my bacon again. She’d be on fire if it weren’t for you.” He stuck out his hand. “Better go quickly. The wind’s coming up, now. We’ll be out of here like a shot.”
I grabbed his hand and held it for a minute. “Well, anyway, you’re in good shape, now. The boat’s wonderful, the leg’s on the mend, and you’re qualified for the transatlantic.”
“We’ll see you in the spring, then.”
I avoided answering; instead, I clambered aboard the cruiser and shoved us off. I didn’t say goodbye to Annie. As Finbar pulled away from Wave and turned toward Cork, I saw Mark wear the boat around and start her sailing, then wave from the cockpit. Annie was nowhere in sight. I stumbled down into the cruiser’s saloon, ignoring an outstretched coffee cup from Connie, and threw myself onto a settee. I was asleep before we had gone another hundred yards.
Later, Finbar dropped me at the cottage. I said only a perfunctory goodbye to Connie. I didn’t want to think about women for a long time.
Finally, after dialing lots of digits and wading through two operators and a secretary, I heard his voice on the line, unchanged, dry, skeptical. “Yessss?”
“Dean Henry? This is Will Lee. How are you, sir?”
“I’m very well, thank you. To what do I owe the honor?”
“Sir, I’d like to come back to law school this fall.”
There was a short silence. “I assume you’ve done some thinking about this.”
“Yes, sir, I have; a lot of it. I know it’s what I want to do, now, and I know I can do it well.”
“Well… registration begins on the twenty-fifth of this month, you know. I suppose you can find your way here from wherever on earth you are?”
“Yes, sir!” I said. “I’ll be there with bells on!”
“A nontinkling presence will do nicely, Mr. Lee. Until registration day, then.”
I hung up, vastly relieved. Still bone-tired from the exploits of the previous wee hours, I stepped among the packed boxes of Mark’s and Annie’s things, gathered my remaining belongings, put the recharged battery back into my car, locked the cottage, and drove away. I left the key in Lord Coolmore’s mailbox, with a note saying that a removals company would pick up the Robinsons’ possessions, then drove to my grandfather’s. I had a glass of sherry with him, then said my goodbye and left my car with him to be sold. His groom drove me to Shannon airport to catch the Aer Lingus flight to New York, where I would change for Atlanta, there to be met by my parents. I would have some time with them before school started.
As the jet lifted over the green fields of County Limerick and turned toward the Atlantic, I thought about the callow youth who had landed here fifteen months before and what had happened to him since. In the washroom I splashed water on my face and looked into the mirror. The fellow who looked back at me was leaner, older, and quite definitely sadder than his predecessor. I wondered if he were wiser, too. More confident of himself he was, surely; more self-possessed, a better opinion of himself and what he was made of. But wiser? It would take some time to figure that one out.
I settled back into my seat with a groan and, gratefully, closed a chapter of my life in which women betrayed me and people shot at me. I didn’t know it then, but the place was well-marked; the book waited to be reopened.