The Insurrection in Dublin | Page 5

I heard him begging the occupants to pardon
him, and directing them to dismount. A man and woman got down.
They were again saluted and requested to go to the sidewalk. They did
so.
NOTE--As I pen these words rifle shot is cracking from three different
directions and continually. Three minutes ago there was two discharges
from heavy guns. These are the first heavy guns used in the
Insurrection, 25th April.

The man crossed and stood by me. He was very tall and thin,
middle-aged, with a shaven, wasted face. "I want to get down to
Armagh to-day," he said to no one in particular. The loose bluish skin
under his eyes was twitching. The Volunteers directed the chauffeur to
drive to the barricade and lodge his car in a particular position there. He
did it awkwardly, and after three attempts he succeeded in pleasing
them. He was a big, brown-faced man, whose knees were rather high
for the seat he was in, and they jerked with the speed and persistence of
something moved with a powerful spring. His face was composed and
fully under command, although his legs were not. He locked the car
into the barricade, and then, being a man accustomed to be commanded,
he awaited an order to descend. When the order came he walked
directly to his master, still preserving all the solemnity of his features.
These two men did not address a word to each other, but their drilled
and expressionless eyes were loud with surprise and fear and rage.
They went into the Hotel.
I spoke to the man with the revolver. He was no more than a boy, not
more certainly than twenty years of age, short in stature, with close
curling red hair and blue eyes--a kindly-looking lad. The strap of his
sombrero had torn loose on one side, and except while he held it in his
teeth it flapped about his chin. His face was sunburnt and grimy with
dust and sweat.
This young man did not appear to me to be acting from his reason. He
was doing his work from a determination implanted previously, days,
weeks perhaps, on his imagination. His mind was--where? It was not
with his body. And continually his eyes went searching widely, looking
for spaces, scanning hastily the clouds, the vistas of the streets, looking
for something that did not hinder him, looking away for a moment from
the immediacies and rigours which were impressed where his mind had
been.
When I spoke he looked at me, and I know that for some seconds he
did not see me. I said:--
"What is the meaning of all this? What has happened?"

He replied collectedly enough in speech, but with that ramble and
errancy clouding his eyes.
"We have taken the City. We are expecting an attack from the military
at any moment, and those people," he indicated knots of men, women
and children clustered towards the end of the Green, "won't go home
for me. We have the Post Office, and the Railways, and the Castle. We
have all the City. We have everything."
(Some men and two women drew behind me to listen).
"This morning," said he, "the police rushed us. One ran at me to take
my revolver. I fired but I missed him, and I hit a--"
"You have far too much talk," said a voice to the young man.
I turned a few steps away, and glancing back saw that he was staring
after me, but I know that he did not see me--he was looking at turmoil,
and blood, and at figures that ran towards him and ran away--a world in
motion and he in the centre of it astonished.
The men with him did not utter a sound. They were both older. One,
indeed, a short, sturdy man, had a heavy white moustache. He was
quite collected, and took no notice of the skies, or the spaces. He saw a
man in rubbers placing his hand on a motor bicycle in the barricade,
and called to him instantly: "Let that alone."
The motorist did not at once remove his hand, whereupon the
white-moustached man gripped his gun in both hands and ran violently
towards him. He ran directly to him, body to body, and, as he was short
and the motorist was very tall, stared fixedly up in his face. He roared
up at his face in a mighty voice.
"Are you deaf? Are you deaf? Move back!"
The motorist moved away, pursued by an eye as steady and savage as
the point of the bayonet that was level with it.

Another motor car came round the Ely Place corner of the Green and
wobbled at the sight of the barricade. The three men who had returned
to the gates roared