The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-05-09 00:00:00

AN ADVENTURE WITH CAPTAIN ROCK.

(From the Dublin University Magazine.)
Lord Bantry returned from a fruitless search after
Rockite brigands, through the villages alonc, the lake of
Ichageela. He found every house deserted,' and water
thrown on every hearth, and it was high time to, turn
homewards, disappointed and weary. with horses blown
and jaded, and many lame from want of shoes. They
entered slowly in long and loose array, the eastern [north-
ern ?] opening of the defile. Captain Rock, with head
and neck protruded from behind the shelter of a cliff, and
still protected from observation by an old yew, that waved
its palmated foliage around him, hung in deep suspense,
watching the entrance of the last Bantry man into the
pass. He seemed to fear lest he should lose one of
them ; he counted them as a rat-catcher would count the
vermin that he was enticing into his cage ; and now he
crossed himself; he heard the beatings of his own heart
like the tick of a death-watch, as fie counted the seconds,
expecting every moment to hear Starlight's horn announc-
ing that the rock was uprooted.
The Bantry men had about a mile to pass on before
they came to the point over which the loosening rock im-
pended. At the rate they were proceeding about ten mi-
nutes would have brought them to it. Rock's hopes, or
dashed or realised, hung in suspense these ten minutes ;
and still onward the horsemen wound their toilsome march
through the silence of the defile. At this instant an old
man of the Mahoneys looked down from his covert, and
saw Lord Bantry and his brother just passing under him.
The poor fellow had once two sons, the pride of his name
and the consolation of his descending years—active, hon-
est, industrious ; but, alas ! seduced into the Rock system,
their house near Gougane Barra was searched under the
provisions of the Insurrection Act, and arms and ammu-
nition being found concealed, they were tried at Bantry,
and sentenced to be transported, which sentence was in-
stantly put into execution, and their aged parents were
left desolate and destitute ; the mother wept her life away,
and her grey heirs descended in sorrow to the grave; and
the old man joined the rising, and cared not how he died.
This bereaved old man saw now, as he thought, the very
man in his power who robbed him of all the props of his
existence, and in an agony of passion that brooked no re-
straint, he started upon the grey rock that hitherto con-
cealed him, and holding high in his withered arms a pon-
drous stone,
His loose coat floated on the wind;
His hoary hair
Streamed like a meteor in the troubled air ;'
and muttering the curse of him that was made childless,
he cast the stone with wonderful energy down 'on Lord
Bantry. The stone missed his lordship, but wounded se,.
verely his horse, and immediately Captain White drew
forth his pistol, and with accurate aim, fired at the old
assailant, who stood overhead, still foaming forth wrath
and curses. The bullet, true to its mark, passed through
the streaming hair of the poor impassioned wretch, and
clesed for ever his sorrows and sufferings. Down he
came, tumbling from rock to rock, until he lay along tne
road a mortal ruin, gray, and blasted, and bloody. The
sight was too much for 'lrishmen to bear; all the pruden-
tial commands of Captain Rock were forgotten; and set-
ting up one universal yell, each man started from behind
his rock, and the whole glen bristled with pikes and mus-
kets. " Move—march—away," cried Captain White ; "a
gallop or a grave, Lord Bantry, keep a-head ; I will bring
up the rear. Spur, spur for your lives ; keep moving, and
they cannot mark us." Never was advice better given, or
more carefully taken. Lame and jaded, the spur's rowel
and the sword's point goad the horses on, and forward the
whole party rushed ; and just as Lieutenant Starlight had
loosened his rock—just as it was tottering to its fall—just
as the horn sounded, the last loyalist parsed beneath it
and turned the point ; and then down it came, a smoking
ruin, closing up the pass effectually, too late to bar retreat,
but just in time to preclude the enemy's pursuit.
Thus, the whole well-contrived military speculation of
young Rock was defeated. The destinies of Providence
dashed his enterprise, and dissolved it like a mist upon the
mountain. The Bantry men soon got through the defile;
they joined a detachment of the King's troops at the glen's
mouth, and they all retreated unmolested to Bantry.
Some time after a large hody of troops surrounded and
scoured the mountains, but no Captain Rock ; he had re-
treated in hopelessness into the fastnesses of Slievelogher ;
and it cost the sappers and miners of the King's army
many a blast, and many a pound of powder, before they
broke up the rock with which Lieutenant Starlight, a
minute too late, closed up the pass of Cooleagh.