I walked away, and next approached the barracks from another side. Here
I found that between the street and the main wall was a low outer wall
about my own height. When I reached the spot where I thought the
magazine ought to be, I took my handkerchief and let it
blow--accidentally, of course--over this outer wall. A passing boy
gallantly offered to get it for me. Being a woman and naturally curious,
I found it necessary to pull myself up on tiptoe to watch him as he
climbed over the wall. The ground between the two walls had not been
paved, but was of soft earth. I had seen enough. Thanking the boy, I put
my handkerchief carefully into my pocket so as not to trouble any one
else by making them climb about on Dublin walls, and went on my way.
Upon my return to Leinster Road, I gave the distances and heights I had
taken to Madam, describing the way a hole could be dug, under cover of a
dark night, between the two walls close to where the magazine stood. A
quantity of explosive could be placed in this hole, a long wire could be
attached to a detonator and laid along the outer wall for some distance,
and then, without being noticed, some one could touch the end of the
wire with the battery from a pocket flashlamp. The explosion that
followed, I felt sure, would blow up not only the inner wall, but the
wall of the magazine and set off the powder stored therein. Madam asked
me to write this all down. Later she showed what I had written to the
man who was to be Commander-in-chief of the Republican army in Dublin,
James Connolly. He knew Beggar's Bush barracks well enough to see that
my map was correct and believed the plan practicable enough to carry out
in case conscription should become a fact in Ireland despite all
promises to the contrary.
But the test I had been put to was, it seemed, not merely a test of my
ability to draw maps and figure distances. From that day I was taken
into the confidence of the leaders of the movement for making Ireland a
republic.
The situation, I learned from Mr. Connolly, was very hopeful, because
for the first time in hundreds of years those who were planning a
revolution to free Ireland had organized bodies of Irishmen who not only
were well trained in the use of firearms, but so full of the spirit of
the undertaking that they were ready at a moment's notice to mobilize.
There was the Irish Citizen Army which Mr. Connolly had organized after
the Transport Workers' strike to defend working-men from onslaughts by
the police. I do not believe any one who has not seen what we call a
"baton charge" of the Dublin police can quite comprehend the motives
which make for such ruthless methods.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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