I could understand it if you were ... National School boys.

Now, Dillon, I advise you strongly, get at your work or..."


This rebuke during the sober hours of school paled much of the

glory of the Wild West for me and the confused puffy face of Leo

Dillon awakened one of my consciences. But when the restraining

influence of the school was at a distance I began to hunger again

for wild sensations, for the escape which those chronicles of

disorder alone seemed to offer me. The mimic warfare of the

evening became at last as wearisome to me as the routine of school

in the morning because I wanted real adventures to happen to

myself. But real adventures, I reflected, do not happen to people

who remain at home: they must be sought abroad.


The summer holidays were near at hand when I made up my mind

to break out of the weariness of schoollife for one day at least.

With Leo Dillon and a boy named Mahony I planned a day's

miching. Each of us saved up sixpence. We were to meet at ten in

the morning on the Canal Bridge. Mahony's big sister was to write

an excuse for him and Leo Dillon was to tell his brother to say he

was sick. We arranged to go along the Wharf Road until we came

to the ships, then to cross in the ferryboat and walk out to see the

Pigeon House. Leo Dillon was afraid we might meet Father Butler

or someone out of the college; but Mahony asked, very sensibly,

what would Father Butler be doing out at the Pigeon House. We

were reassured: and I brought the first stage of the plot to an end

by collecting sixpence from the other two, at the same time

showing them my own sixpence. When we were making the last

arrangements on the eve we were all vaguely excited. We shook

hands, laughing, and Mahony said:


"Till tomorrow, mates!"


That night I slept badly. In the morning I was firstcomer to the

bridge as I lived nearest. I hid my books in the long grass near the

ashpit at the end of the garden where nobody ever came and

hurried along the canal bank. It was a mild sunny morning in the

first week of June. I sat up on the coping of the bridge admiring

my frail canvas shoes which I had diligently pipeclayed overnight

and watching the docile horses pulling a tramload of business

people up the hill. All the branches of the tall trees which lined the

mall were gay with little light green leaves and the sunlight slanted

through them on to the water. The granite stone of the bridge was

beginning to be warm and I began to pat it with my hands in time

to an air in my head. I was very happy.


When I had been sitting there for five or ten minutes I saw

Mahony's grey suit approaching. He came up the hill, smiling, and

clambered up beside me on the bridge. While we were waiting he

brought out the catapult which bulged from his inner pocket and

explained some improvements which he had made in it. I asked

him why he had brought it and he told me he had brought it to

have some gas with the birds. Mahony used slang freely, and spoke

of Father Butler as Old Bunser. We waited on for a quarter of an

hour more but still there was no sign of Leo Dillon. Mahony, at

last, jumped down and said:


"Come along. I knew Fatty'd funk it."


"And his sixpence...?" I said.


"That's forfeit," said Mahony. "And so much the better for us--a

bob and a tanner instead of a bob."


We walked along the North Strand Road till we came to the Vitriol

Works and then turned to the right along the Wharf Road. Mahony

began to play the Indian as soon as we were out of public sight. He

chased a crowd of ragged girls, brandishing his unloaded catapult

and, when two ragged boys began, out of chivalry, to fling stones

at us, he proposed that we should charge them.