BOOK Morty's body was carried to Cork. His head mouldered upon a spike over the gate of the south 1754 gaol. The rest of him was buried in the Battery. The prisoners can be traced to the gaol; there is no mention that either of them were hanged, but of their further fate the records are silent. So ended one of the last heroes of Irish imagination, on whose character the historian, who considers that he and such as he were the natural outgrowth of the legislation to which it was thought wise and just to submit his country, will not comment uncharitably. He had qualities which, had Ireland been nobly governed, might perhaps have reconciled him to its rulers, and opened for him an honourable and illustrious career. At worst he might have continued to serve with his sword a Catholic sovereign, and might have carved his way with it to rank and distinction. He was tempted home by the opportunities of anarchy and the hopes of revenge. In his own adventurous way he levied war to the last against the men and the system under which Ireland was oppressed. When he fell, he fell with a courage which made his crimes forgotten, and the ghost of his name still hovers about the wild shores of the Kenmare river, of which he was so long the terror and the pride. 1 1 For the account of the death of Morty Oge O'Sullivan see an extract from the Cork Remembrancer, May 9, 1754, quoted by Crofton Croker in the Keen of the South of Ireland; a Letter of the Captain of H.M.S. Garland, March, 1754;' and the 'Letter of Henry Fitzsimon to the Revenue Commissioners, May 7, 1754.' MSS. Dublin Castle. SECTION III. I HAVE told the story of one distinguished Sullivan. I have now to tell the story of a second, himself also a representative Irishman, though of a less worthy type. Sylvester O'Sullivan, a near kinsman of Morty, perhaps his uncle, for he was of the highest blood of the clan, bred like him on Kilmakilloge harbour, but given rather to books than to the adventurous habits. of his relations, had, about the year 1718, been the master of a Catholic school in Dublin. He might have taught Virgil and Ovid to lads of his own creed, even under the shadow of the Parliament, without danger of the law interfering with him ; but he had the misfortune, or the rashness, to pervert two scholars of Trinity College, whom the High Church fellows had already led to the edge of the Catholic faith. For this exploit he was tried under the penal statute, and required to transport himself abroad. He went to Paris: but the Continent disagreed with him; he began to pine for home, and, after a few years, presented himself to Horace Walpole. who was then English ambassador at the French Court, expressed contrition for his sins, and professed a desire to do some service to the English Crown which might entitle him to pardon. Horace Walpole enquiring what the service was to be, O'Sullivan produced a sketch in writing of the enterprise which he contemplated. It was nothing less than to take advantage of the connexion of his family with the Cork and Kerry smugglers, and of his own reputation CHAP. II. 1727 BOOK III. 1727 as having been persecuted for his religion, to wind himself into their secrets, spy out their hiding-places, discover and report on the persons of rank and position whom he could find to be in correspondence with them, procure, in fact, such information as would enable the Government to break up the traffic. If a man volunteered a disgraceful but useful occupation it was not Walpole's business to discourage him. He gave O'Sullivan a letter of credit should he be arrested on returning to Ireland. Thus provided he went down to Nantes, fell in there with the master of a Kingsale brig, which was taking in her contraband cargo-brandy, linen, and tea; and giving his name, which seemed a guarantee for his honesty, was admitted as passenger to Valencia, for which the brig was bound. It was midwinter, when the cruisers were off their stations, and the coast was clear. The main channel into the roadstead of Valencia opens to the north, with a passage practicable in all weathers. Immediately within is a large, roomy, and perfectly safe harbour, where at this time a king's ship was usually stationed. From the main harbour to the south-western entrance, where the telegraph wire now plunges into the Atlantic, runs a strip of quiet water ten miles long, which divides the island from the main land. Here, sheltered behind the mountains, through a rift in which the channel opens to the ocean, lies the small basin of Port Maghee. The approach on this side is supremely dangerous; the enormous seas which have broken on the Irish shore for hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of years, have eaten their way through the rocks, destroying the more yielding portions, and leaving the harder nodules rising from the bottom in treacherous ridges or invisible needle points, over which the rollers pour in roaring cataracts of foam. A sailing vessel attempting to enter with anything but a leading breeze, if caught in the narrow outlet in heavy weather by an eddy of wind among the hills, would be broken against the crags like an egg. A stranger shuns the place as the ancient mariners shunned the fatal cliffs of Scylla; and, for the same reason, it was the chosen resort of the local smuggler. Here, three days after Christmas, in the year 1727, the Nantes brig made the Irish coast, and passing boldly in with a west wind between the breakers, was soon at anchor in the quiet cove, which was called after the family of the Maghees, to whom the land belonged. At this time the ruling potentate was a widow, the widow Maghee she was called, once Bridget Crosby, sister or cousin of Sir Maurice Crosby, of Ardfert, the member for the county. The new comer had a warm welcome. Smuggler was to smuggler a friend that sate closer than a brother. No informer as yet had ventured into Kerry. The widow's own sloop was lying at the pier taking in a cargo of wool. Boats and lighters came off in the daylight to carry in and dispose of the Nantes brandy kegs. In the middle of their operations a man-of-war's gig came down from the guardship at Valencia, with an order for the brig to move up to the main harbour: not, however, for any vexatious enquiries into her contents, which were perfectly notorious, but only because the captain and officers expected a percentage of the spoil. The watch-dog was to share the carcase with the wolf, and preferred to keep his eyes on the division. The brig ran up as she was ordered, anchored within a cable's length of the ship, and went on with her BOOK 1728 business. The country people came on board in hundreds. A brandy auction was held on deck, and a hundred and twenty ankers were disposed of as fast as the boats could take them away, besides what the captain, and officers, and crew of the man-of-war received for their own perquisites. He was All this pretty scene Sylvester O'Sullivan was noting down at his leisure, when by accident, in drawing out his handkerchief, he dropped Horace Walpole's letter on the brig's deck. Some one picked it up, opened and read its contents. It was merely a pass or protection, but it proved that the pretended sufferer for conscience had closer relations with the British Government than he had allowed to appear. Fierce faces scowled at him. It was proposed to send him on shore among the Rapparees of the Reeks, where his shrift would be a short one. attacked at last, and would have been killed, had he not snatched a brace of pistols and kept his assailants at bay, till a party of Sullivans, his own clansmen, who knew him, and stood by him for his birth's sake, interposed and carried him away. The Sullivans, he says, would not allow him to be hurt; but in their eyes, as well as in every man's, his coming to Kerry under false colours was painfully questionable. They put him on the road to Dublin, to which he professed to be going, restored to him his doubtful credentials, and left him to find his own way. At Killarney he informs us that he injured a leg, and was unable to proceed. To lose no time, and to keep his word with Walpole, he wrote an account of what he had seen at Valencia and Port Maghee, addressed it to the Castle Secretary, and not liking to trust a packet of such dangerous import to the |