That night, while I was on watch, I heard the soft splash of oars, and presently out of the darkness there came the hail of a sailor from the bow of _The Winged Horse_, as she rounded the point and slipped into the creek where we lay.
Something in the tone of the sailor’s voice, more perhaps in the slow drooping of the oars, at once aroused my attention. Without words I knew that all was not well. Where was the chief? There could but be one reason why there was no sign of Owen O’Malley himself. Either he was grievously wounded or he was dead. Hastily I swung myself into the boat of my galley, and made for _The Winged Horse_, which was now riding at anchor about a bow shot away.
Tibbot, the best of pilots and steersmen in Ireland, met me as I clambered up on to the deck.
“Whist!” he entreated, as I was beginning to open my mouth in eager questionings.
“What has happened?” I asked in a whisper.
“The chief has been badly hurt,” he replied. “He lies in the poop cabin, bleeding, I fear, to death.”
“What!” I exclaimed; “bleeding to death?”
“I must see him at once,” I said, and I made my way to the poop, where, stretched on a couch of skins, lay my friend and master. As I bent over him he opened his eyes, and though the cabin was but dimly lighted, I thought he smiled. I took his hand and knelt beside him. My anguish was so keen that I could not speak.
“Ruari,” said he, and that great full voice of his had been changed into that of a babe; “is it you Ruari?”
“Yes; it is I,” replied I, finding nothing else to say, for words failed me.
“Ruari, I am dying,” said he simply, as one who knew the state in which he was, and feared not. “I have received the message of death, and soon must my name be blotted out from among the living.”
As he was speaking there was a rustling in the waist of the ship, and Grace O’Malley stood beside us.
“Father, father,” she cried, and taking his head and shoulders on her breast, she crooned over him and kissed him, murmuring words of passionate mourning, more like a mother than a daughter.
“Grace,” said he, and his voice was so small that my breathing, by contrast, seemed loud and obtrusive. “I am far spent, and the end of all things is come for me. Listen, then, to my last words.”