The World Peril of 1910 | Page 2

the perfection of
physical and mental health, and had married the grey-eyed,
dark-browed girl, who had seemed to him during his long hours of
sickness the guardian angel who had brought him back across the line
which marks the frontier between life and death, he developed an
extraordinary talent in boat-building, which was the real origin of the
wonderful sea-worthiness of small craft which to this day brave, almost
with impunity, the terrible seas which, after an unbroken run of almost
two thousand miles, burst upon the rockbound, island-fenced coast of
Connemara.
The man at the table was the descendant in the sixth generation of the
unknown Spanish Hidalgo, who nearly four hundred years before had
said in reply to a question as to what his name was:
"Juan de Castillano."
As the generations had passed, the name, as usual, had got modified,
and this man's name was John Castellan.
"I think that will about do for the present," he said, getting up from the
table and throwing his pencil down. "I've got it almost perfect now;"
and then as he bent down again over the table, and looked over every
line of his drawings, "Yes, it's about all there. I wonder what my Lords
of the British Admiralty would give to know what that means. Well,
God save Ireland, they shall some day!"
He unpinned the paper from the board, rolled it up, and put it into the
top drawer of an old oak cabinet, which one would hardly have
expected to find in such a room as that, and locked the drawer with a
key on his key-chain. Then he took his cap from a peg on the door, and
his gun from the corner beside it, and went out.

There are three ways out of Clifden to the west, one to the southward
takes you over the old bridge, which arches the narrow rock-walled
gorge, which gathers up the waters of the river after they have had their
frolic over the rocks above. The other is a continuation of the main
street, and this, as it approaches the harbour, where you may now see
boats built on the pattern which John Castellan's ancestor had designed,
divides into two roads, one leading along the shore of the bay, and the
other, rough, stony, and ill-kept, takes you above the coast-guard
station, and leads to nowhere but the Atlantic Ocean.
Between these two roads lies in what was once a park, but which is
now a wilderness, Clifden Castle. Castle in Irish means country house,
and all over the south and west of Ireland you may find such houses as
this with doors screwed up, windows covered with planks, roofs and
eaves stripped of the lead and slates which once protected them from
the storms which rise up from the Atlantic, and burst in wind and rain,
snow and sleet over Connemara, long ago taken away to sell by the
bankrupt heirs of those who ruined themselves, mortgaged and sold
every acre of ground and every stick and stone they owned to maintain
what they called the dignity of their families at the Vice-Regal Court in
Dublin.
John Castellan took the lower road, looking for duck. The old house
had been the home of his grandfather, but he had never lived in it. The
ruin had come in his father's time, before he had learned to walk. He
looked at it as he passed, and his teeth clenched and his brows came
together in a straight line.
Almost at the same moment that he left his house an Englishman came
out of the Railway Hotel. He also had a gun over his shoulder, and he
took the upper road. These two men, who were to meet for the first
time that day, were destined to decide the fate of the world between
them.
As John Castellan walked past the ruined distillery, which overlooks
the beach on which the fishing boats are drawn up, he saw a couple of
duck flying seaward. He quickened his pace, and walked on until he
turned the bend of the road, at which on the right-hand side a path leads

up to a gate in the old wall, which still guards the ragged domains of
Clifden Castle. A few hundred yards away there is a little peninsula, on
which stands a house built somewhat in bungalow fashion. The curve
of the peninsula turns to the eastward, and makes a tiny bay of almost
crescent shape. In this the pair of duck settled.
John Castellan picked up a stone from the road, and threw it into the
water. As the birds rose his gun went up. His right barrel banged and
the duck fell. The drake flew landward: he fired his left barrel and
missed.
Then came