Ireland -- History -- 1910-1921; Ireland. Royal Irish Constabulary
The yacht settled down for the night, but soon after midnight a powerful
searchlight was flashed on to her, and again the bluejackets came aboard
and searched the yacht from top to bottom. Eventually they left, the
searchlight was turned off, and the destroyer could be heard putting out
to sea.
Larry’s original plan had been to land the arms on the north side of the
bay, and to hide them in some caves in the mountains, where French arms
had been hidden during the rebellion of 1798, then to await a favourable
opportunity to remove them to Ballybor. However, the night the destroyer
left the local fishermen filled their boats with herrings, which Larry
found had all been bought by the big shopkeeper in Errinane, who
intended sending them to Ballybor Station the next morning in his three
Ford trucks. Not daring to land the arms during the day, Larry
commandeered the lorries, and as soon as it was dark landed the arms
openly at Errinane quay, packed them in the largest fish-boxes he could
find, and loaded the boxes on to the lorries, putting boxes of herrings
on top. The arms once landed, he restored Micky to his parents on the
yacht, and within half an hour the reunited Fee family were on their way
back to America.
Not long after the yacht had started, the lorries left Errinane on the
long run through the mountains to Ballybor. When about fifteen miles
from Errinane, Larry halted his convoy in a mountain pass, in order to
let one of the drivers repair a tyre.
Hardly had they stopped when the lights of two cars were seen behind
them, descending the road into the pass from the direction of Errinane.
Larry knew at once that they could only be police cars, and must have
been sent to Errinane on the suspicion that arms had been landed from
the yacht.
He at once got his lorries on the move, going in the last one himself,
and in a few minutes could hear the hoot of the oncoming cars close
behind. Ahead of them lay miles of narrow bog road, and as long as he
kept the rear lorry in the middle of the road, the police cars would not
be able to stop them.
Soon he could hear shouts of halt, followed shortly afterwards by a
volley of rifle bullets, but Larry and the driver were well protected by
the boxes on the lorry. So they continued for about two miles, the
police firing volley after volley at the lorry.
So far so good; but though Larry knew he could keep the police from
overhauling them for several miles, yet he knew that in the end the
police must defeat him, unless he could find some means of stopping
them, and the only way to do this was by sacrificing the rear lorry.
This he made up his mind to do, as the lorry only carried the bombs; but
the difficulty was to stop the police altogether.
The idea which saved them came from the driver, who knew every yard of
the road, and reminded Larry that half a mile ahead of them there was an
arched bridge over a mountain river, the very place to block the road.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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