Sailors and police now held their fire, and waited for the exciting moment when the Volunteers would be forced by the flames to bolt. A quarter of an hour, half an hour passed, but not a Volunteer bolted from the now fiercely burning house. At last the roof fell in with a crash and shower of sparks, and every man gripped his rifle, thinking that at last the rebels would be smoked out; but nothing happened. They had either vanished into thin air or were roasted alive. Still the sailors and police waited on, thinking that in the end somebody must come out. Without any warning one gable-end of the house suddenly fell outwards, and simultaneously firing broke out from the east channel of the river, about five hundred yards away. The spell was now broken, and every man dashed in the direction of the firing. When they reached high ground they could see many of the Volunteers swimming across the channel, while those who could not swim were running towards the north side of the island. The half-platoon of the Blankshires, with Sergeant O’Bryan as a guide, had taken up their position in the sand-hills on the mainland commanding the passage across the east channel, and had only been interested spectators of parts of the battle up to the time the gable fell, when, to their astonishment, they suddenly saw the Volunteers streaming out of the sand-hills and dashing into the river in front of them. Foremost among the swimmers Sergeant O’Bryan saw, to his great joy, the heads of Walsh and Lynch, their foot-long hair floating like manes behind them, and knew that his enemies had been delivered into his hands. By the time the swimmers reached the mainland, and found themselves covered by the rifles and Lewis gun of the soldiers, they had had enough, and put up their hands of their own accord. The sailors and police now beat the island towards the west end, and after a hard scramble over the sand-hills captured the remaining Volunteers. A careful search of the place where the Volunteers had suddenly appeared out of the ground showed that there was an underground passage running from the house to within a short distance of the shore, probably used in former days for smuggling purposes. A further search explained the reason of the Volunteers’ Sunday visits to the island. In a valley of the sand-hills they found an up-to-date rifle-range, and afterwards learnt that it had been built during the early part of the war, and frequently used for firing musketry courses by units of the New Armies training in Ireland. XIV. A FAMILY AFFAIR. The mac Nessa, Prince of Murrisk, claimed descent from one of the Nine Hostages; and though proud of his lineage, he was still prouder of the boast that, up to comparatively recent times, not one of his ancestors had died in his bed. A violent death in some form or other, chiefly the “middoge,” accounting for one and all.