“Empty!” he said, as he cleared the drum from its moorings and they lifted it into the boat.
“It’ll be full next time,” I couldn’t help saying.
Everybody looked at me with one accord as if I had done it. I started to depart, and the good example set the soldiers scrambling into the lorry, the policemen stalking off on their beat, and the crowd drifting on its way.
Such adventures as this might be met with at any street corner.
Everywhere there were signs of the times. All day long the military lorries rumbled about the city--great brutal concerns crowded with armed soldiers in tin hats, so that they looked like mouths bristling with teeth. And faster than they rolled the armoured cars like little forts on wheels. And faster still and more furious, lighter lorries choked with Auxiliary police and Black-and-Tans.
At any hour of the day one might walk on top of a raid, though night was the more chosen time for such things. There was generally a small crowd of errand boys, beggars, and telegraph boys, and other people with nothing important on hand, kept at rifle’s length by a line of Tommies drawn across the streets; and a hundred yards beyond was the fatal house with lorries like empty mouths before it--the teeth having got out and gone inside. These raids had a fascination for the passerby, although, nine cases out of ten, nothing was to be seen, and the tenth time there was a chance of being shot, as some one would try and escape, or something would happen inside the house.
There would be days of special military activity, when the bridges over the canals were held up, and motorists had their cars searched for arms and documents, and drivers their carts. At nights, when dark fell and the cold crept through the city, there came occasional cracking shots, which were more frequent as the weeks went on.
Every morning a flaring poster of the _Freeman’s Journal_, the most violent organ of the National Press, shouted out some fresh Government atrocity. Yes, signs of the times everywhere, and most eloquent where least was said, as in the public places where never a word of politics was spoken.
But for a day the humblest person could get out of it all. On Howth Head he could wander in solitude. Up Killiney Hill he could climb and feast his eyes on peace.