Some men of Ross, Ireland, had killed their king, despite his successful wars against his rival monarchs, some of whose kingdoms were as large as a township. For this offense the heir to the throne, or his advisers, decreed that sixty couples should be set adrift on the ocean, to meet what fate they might. A guard was put along the shore to keep them from landing again, and an easterly gale blew them quickly out of sight of their relatives and friends. For years none dared to seek for them. Conall Ua Corra, of Connaught, had prayed in vain to the Lord for children, so in anger he prayed to the devil, and three boys were born to his wife. The neighbors jeered at them as the fiend's offspring, and harassed them and made them bitter. They said, one to the other, "If we are really sons of Satan we will justify these taunts," and collecting all the vicious boys of their village they robbed farmers, ruined churches, killed men who resisted plunder, and were about to murder their father when they were warned in a vision of the eternal punishment they would endure in blazing sulphur pits if they did not repent. Their father had long regretted his hasty prayer to the evil one, and had tried to regain the good-will of heaven by industry, and by giving freely of his substance to the sick and pauperized. By advice of St. Finnen, to whom they confessed, the boys repaired the churches they had injured and mourned the victims of their brutality; yet, as the people doubted their conversion, they resolved to leave the country and go to some land where they would not be constantly exposed to the danger of breaking their good resolves by reproaches and attacks. Where to go? It was suggested by some designing neighbor that if they were to search for the one hundred and twenty exiles they would be doing a service to heaven and the world. This suggestion was promptly acted on. In a frail coracle they swept the sea, discovering strange lands, in one of which the half-forgotten people of Ross were found, living so contentedly that few of them cared to go back. The most exciting incidents of the voyage were the three meetings with the Island of Satan's Hand, a lone rock in icy waters, where fogs always brooded. At the will of a malignant demon it changed its place from time to time, and it was the hand of this monster, a vast, rude shape looming out of the mist, which endangered all the ships that passed, for it struck at them,--as it did at the coracle of these three voyagers,--injuring hulls, tearing sails, or knocking the crews overboard, when it did not send them to the bottom. If the blow fell short it made the sea boil and sent billows rolling for a mile. Some of the shore folk said it was icebergs that the shipmen saw; but icebergs never sailed so far from the pole, they answered. Despite its wandering habit, the map-makers eventually agreed on a site for this rock of the smiting hand, calling it Satanaxio. It can be seen on charts of the eighteenth century.