to find a middle course, and suggested the impossibility of leaving the country while even a vague report confirmed the belief that some at least of its people were prepared to vindicate her liberty, or die nobly in its assertion.  They acquiesced, and the vessel was allowed to sail.  I insisted, however, that after nightfall I should leave the house and take up my quarters in some obscure lodging house.  Meantime it was arranged that if the next mail confirmed the accounts from Tipperary, I should be provided with a horse and car, and be able to leave Cork as I entered it.  When night came, the lady of the house sternly and resolutely opposed my leaving it.  She would not consent to free herself from a risk she took so much honest pleasure in encountering.  Another day and night left us in the same uncertainty.  The reports were still more unsatisfactory and contradictory.  But that there should be reports at all, satisfied my mind, and I finally prepared to start for Tipperary on the morning of the 29th of September.

Information at length reached me that the party under O’Mahony were dispersed and himself fled.  The difficulty of my position, with respect to my protectors, left me no alternative.  Any chance that presented itself should be embraced.  The Bristol boat was in the river, panting to escape her anchorage; and following the horse, which was to bear me to Tipperary, to the quay, I walked on board the Juverna, just as she was loosing her cables.  My baggage, made up in a small box, was put on board as a parcel addressed to a young friend of mine in London.  The few moments that intervened were fraught with most intense suspense.  I stood on the fore deck among cattle, covered with rags and dirt, my eyes fixed on two detectives who stood at the cabin entrance, scrutinising narrowly the figure and features of every cabin passenger.  The bell rang, the detectives stepped on shore, one of my friends who watched my movements from a distance, waved a kind adieu, the Juverna slipped her cables, and by one bound was out in the river.  The first motion of her paddles sounded to me like the assurance of fate, and I looked on the curling foam with measureless exultation.  The Juverna made a momentary halt at Passage, and then glanced gaily through Cove harbour out into the sea.  As she cleared the road I turned back to look for the last time upon my fatherland.  Her prospects, her promise, her strength, her hopes, her failure and her fall rushed in burning memory through my brain.  I endeavoured to embody in the following verses the feelings that agitated and almost paralysed my every faculty of body and mind.  I wrote them on a piece of paper that had been wrapped round some cheese:—­

    Away, away, the good ship swings;
      One heave, one bound, and off she’s dashing,
    Expanding wide her snowy wings,
      The white foam round her paddles flashing. 
    Away, away, the land recedes,