"Do you speak with them and find their business, for it seems to me that all is not as it should be, and they would likely know me too well." Brian nodded, and when the galley had come under their lee he saw that she was well laden, and had for crew a dozen rough-looking men. One of these replied to his hail. "We are come from Galway, lord, with a gift of stores and wines from O'Donnell Dubh to certain friends of his whom we came to meet. Are you those friends, as we think?" Brian started in surprise, but needed no word from Nuala. He saw that the Dark Master must have sent this galley out to meet the Millhaven men, and that the crew had taken the two caracks for those pirate ships. "We are the O'Donnells from Millhaven," he shouted, and ordered the seaman to cast down ropes to the galley. Her master, a stout man with bushy black beard, waved a hand in reply, and after another moment the two craft ground together. The master of the galley got aboard over the low waist of the carack, and Brian ordered a dozen of his own green-faced men down into the smaller ship. At this the galley's master stared somewhat, but came up to the poop. "Lord, O'Donnell sends you these stores with a message. I am Con Teague of Galway." "Let us have it," ordered Brian, liking the looks of the man not at all. "He bade us say that he was leaving Galway to-morrow at dawn with a force of men, and that you should meet him at Bertragh Castle and fall on that place to take it." "That is good," laughed Brian. "Now learn that you have found the wrong ships, my man. We are not the Millhaven pirates, but I am Brian Buidh, who holds Bertragh; and here is the Lady Nuala, for whom I hold it." At that Nuala came forward, and Teague looked greatly astonished, as well he might, and all the Bird Daughter's men fell roaring with laughter. But he could make no resistance, and stood chapfallen while Brian talked with Nuala. "I must back to the Castle," he said, "and see if this news be true. Do you go on to Gorumna with my men, and I will let loose a pigeon to you. If the Dark Master is indeed on the way, then come with all the men you can spare, and it will go hard if we do not best his royalists, and the pirates later when the latter come." This was clearly the best plan, so Brian sent Teague down into the galley and followed him, as the light ship was faster than the caracks. Replacing half of Teague's men with O'Malleys, he had the ropes cast off, waved his hand at Nuala, and they drove to the eastward and Bertragh Castle. Teague made so much moan over losing his ship that Brian promised it back to him when they had reached the castle; the stores and wine, however, he accounted good spoils of war. This put the seaman in better mood, and by noon the fast galley had covered the twenty miles to Bertragh, and cast down her anchor in the little bay beyond the castle, that same bay where Brian had come to grief through O'Donnell's sorcery.