Phelim O'Toole

“ We are few, but in that lies our one hope. They will never look for four men, but for many. Four men travelling to the shrine of Loretto with the Pope's passport may well stay at Innspruck and escape a close attention."
"I am ready," O'Toole repeated.
"But we shall not start to-night. There's the passport to be got, a plan to be arranged."
"Oh, there's a plan," said O'Toole. "To be sure, there's always a plan." And he sat down again heavily, as though he put no faith in plans.
Misset and Gaydon drew their chairs closer to Wogan's and instinctively lowered their voices to the tone of a whisper. ”

“ But O’Toole didn’t laugh. He appeared thoughtful for some moments, and then said, with great earnestness: “Maybe I am, Mr. Gore, but is it right for th’ owld man to say it? Is it right for a man who’s had a good income and a handsome wife t’ blackguard a poor divil av a mate because he can’t have either, and say that it is his own fault? No, Mr. Gore, I spake for th’ whole crowd av poor divils, like us, what no dacent woman’ll{94} take up with. You may not be a bright man, Mr. Gore, savin’ your prisence, but, by th’ Prophet, I give ye th’ credit av being a just one. ”

“ A man was sent below and presently he came back with a bag of ship’s biscuit which he tossed over the side into the boat. O’Toole’s lashings were cast adrift as he stood in the mizzen channels, and he was shoved into her. A man let go the painter, forward, and, before the second mate could turn around, he was adrift and going slowly astern. ”

“ He was the wisest of the bunch on the cattle business. So I stowed away my consolation, and made out to forget comparing Colorado with God's country.
About three times a week this Irishman I told you of—name O'Toole—comes bulgin' in. When he was sober he talked minin' high, wide, and handsome. When he was drunk he pounded both fists on the bar and yelled for action, tryin' to get Dutchy on the peck.
“God bless the Irish and let the Dutch rustle!” he yells about six times “Say, do you hear?”
“Sure,” says Dutchy, calm as a milk cow, “sure, I hears ye!” ”

“ Ah! if you were one of the decent Danes, instead of being what you are, a low, mean, nasty, dirty O’Donnell, that is not the way in which you would be conducting yourself.’
“‘Phew! it is worse and worse she is getting every instant,’ thought Phelim to himself. ‘Ah! that I may never kill a giant, but if she was fifty times as rich as she was bragging the other morning, I wouldn’t submit to her abusing the O’Donnells. I say, Miss Aileen Olliffe,’ continued Phelim, as he took off his yellow velvet cap with the black plumes. ”

“ Of the Mike O’Toole Ataociation
At Kelly’s Casino, Whitestone, L. I.
But though Mr. Henry Hightower was the only one who could see, every one could hear. For a moment there was intense silence. A quiver like an electric shock ran through the throng. Then Dan Murphy leaped to his feet and started for the door.
“It’s O’Toole!” he shouted. “Come on, boys!”
Immediately the hall was in an uproar. The door was jammed by the sudden onslaught of struggling, pushing humanity. James, on the edge of the platform, was shouting something that nobody heard. ”

“ From this date forward until the accession of Owen Roe O'Neil to the command, the northern war assumed a ferocity of character foreign to the nature of O'Moore, O'Reilly and Magennis. That Sir Phelim permitted, if he did not sometimes in his gusts of stormy passion instigate, those acts of cruelty, which have stained his otherwise honourable conduct, is too true; but he stood alone among his confederates in that crime, and that crime stands alone in his character. Brave to rashness and disinterested to excess, few rebel chiefs ever made a more heroic end out of a more deplorable beginning. ”

“ O'Hara, “certainly to call him to each: it will give the business a turn for which he is not prepared. He will stand exposed, moreover, before the congregation, and that will be some punishment to him.”
“I don't know as to the punishment,” replied the curate. “If ever a human being was free from shame, Phelim is. ”

“ He saw the march and countermarch of events in the lives of the people tramping on the sidewalks below his office window, saw in his mind the miners of the Pennsylvania village coming down from the hills to disappear below the ground, looked at the girls hurrying through the swinging doors of department stores in the early morning, wondering which of them would presently sit idling with toothpicks in O'Toole's and waited for the word or the stir on the surface of that sea of humanity that would be a sign to him. ”

“ With the exception of the big-shouldered German sailor in my watch, the men had offered no resistance whatever. This one man had made some show of resistance when cornered under the t’gallant fo’castle, but he was quickly overpowered.
O’Toole and myself were strong men, but what did that count for in such a crowd. Crojack and Brown had defended the quarter-deck until they were shot down and overpowered. They were but two against fifty.
I knew that every man of our crew who would not join would walk the plank long before daylight. ”

“ Poor Larry O'Toole! We met, years afterwards, in a remote mining-camp. He ventured into the Low Country beyond the Murchison Range at the wrong season, and contracted fever. In the delirium which supervened he blew his brains out. Larry had a brother, Edmund, who had been a sailor, and who joined Butler's Horse in the Zulu War. He gained the Victoria Cross the day before Ulundi. Together with the late Lord William Beresford ("Bill," as he liked to be called, alliteratively ) he saved a wounded man from the spears of the enemy. ”

“ Ye spoke a while ago about my doing you a civil turn—let this poor fellow free, and I’ll do ye twenty more, if you’ll only put me in the way. But if ye’re baste enough to murder him—mona bin diaoul!—the next time you’re in a skrimmage, and tumble over an ould tree, may the divil pick ye up for Mark Antony O’Toole. ”

“ O’Toole’s step sounded loudly on the deck overhead, and the creaking of a brace sheave, when the slight swell made the ship roll, sounded loud and distinct.
It was four bells in the midwatch when I heard an exclamation from the second mate. At first I thought he was talking to the men in his watch, who usually lay, or{173} rather sat, in a group abaft the deck-house during the calm weather. With one on the t’gallant fo’castle as lookout and another at the wheel, there were ten men left with nothing to do but keep awake. ”

“ O’Toole I was not so certain about, but I made up my mind to try him. So I went with him up the dirty street to Garnett’s favourite haunts in the neighbourhood of the Battery.
As we walked along the old sailor told how he had been overpowered along with the rest of the crew and guard on the Countess of Warwick, and how the convicts had taken to the boats after setting fire to the ship and leaving the whole ship’s company to burn.
One man had finally burned himself clear, and while badly injured had managed to clear one of his comrades. ”

“ As the weather had been clear and wind light enough for skysails, I took no precautions to fix myself firmly in my bunk. I was, therefore, astonished to awake suddenly just in time to prevent myself from falling to the deck as the ship gave a sharp lurch and brought up with a jerk. Four bells struck, and I found I had only slept two hours, so, jamming myself in firmly with a blanket, I tried to sleep again.
I heard O’Toole’s footsteps on the deck overhead, and now and then an oath when he halted at the break of the poop. ”

“ O'Toole was the first to break the silence.
"It is a strange thing that there never was a father since Adam who was not absolutely sure in his heart that his first-born must be a boy. When you come to think philosophically about it, you'll see that if fathers had their way the world would [pg 122] be peopled with sons with never a bit of a lass in any corner to marry them."
O'Toole's reflection, if not a reason for laughter, made a pretext for it, at which all—even Misset, who was a trifle ashamed of his display of feeling—eagerly caught. Wogan held his hand out and clasped Misset's. ”

“ Nangle, my suffragan,’ says Archbishop Browne, ‘showed the King’s broad seal for justifying of his authority, MacWilliam little esteemed it, but threw it away and vilipended the same.’ The plan was that O’Toole, to whom Gerald promised to restore Powerscourt, should harass the Pale from the south, while James Fitzjohn of Desmond, with some Scotch mercenaries, attacked it from the west and O’Neill from the north. ”

“ There was a grain of truth in the lawyer’s story. He had called Phelim from his bed between two and three o’clock that morning, but it was by an arrangement entered into the previous evening, during a private interview held shortly after O’Rourke’s return from the depot; and without waiting to light a fire at all the Irishman had set out on his evil errand. ”

“ Not even a skysail halyard had been touched for a week, so O’Toole lounged carelessly fore and aft on the quarter-deck, stopping at every turn when he reached the skipper to see if he had anything to say.
In good weather Captain Green’s discipline was not too strict, and he would often talk to the officer on watch. “I was thinking,” said he, without taking his eyes from the horizon-line, “about this transportation or emigration of souls you hear so much about nowadays. You know what I mean,—one person’s soul getting the weather-gauge of another’s ”

“ Having accommodated the we a sufficient number of times to satisfy us that he had the whole city nicely tucked away in the pocket of his shabby coat, he turned round to introduce Alderman Barney O'Toole, who, as a man and a gentleman, could do more off hand fighting than any other man in the board, and was the fourth of the flabby men. ”

“ I, with equal politeness, recurred to the Irish great world: we fastened together upon Lord O’Toole, who took us to Dublin Castle; and I began to express my regret that I had not yet been at the Irish court, and that I had not earlier in life made myself of political consequence.
“Ambition,” said I, “might help to keep a man awake and alive; all common pleasures have long since ceased to interest me—they really cannot make me stir.” ”

“ O’Toole bawled for all hands, and, as I turned, he and a dozen men sprang into the main rigging and up they went to secure the maintopsail.
Young Brown kept with the men on deck and helped wherever he could lend a hand, for, as he was stout and active, his weight on a down-haul or clewline was equal to any. ”

“ When things are at the worst they must mend. So it is with everybody, and so it was with Phelim O’Neal O’Donnell; for at that instant, when he thought that the pleasures of life had for ever departed from him, he heard, and his heart jumped for joy at the sound, the voice of his beloved Aileen calling all the barn-door fowl around her. ”

“ Wicklow County and Shropshire, England. A slender plot, telling of the abortive attempt of a younger twin to oust the rightful heir from title and property, ending with a lawsuit in which some well known lawyers are introduced under slightly disguised names. Father O’Toole is a very pleasant character study. The famous “J.K.L.” Dr. Doyle, Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, figures in the story. The standpoint is that of an Irish Conservative, without religious bias, and sympathizing with certain Irish grievances. Humour, pathos, and brogue are absent. ”

“ Blake grinned. "Call Harror every name you ever heard of, but remember there are women in the car. We're going to get dragged out of here and have a talk with that freak."
O'Toole nodded.
"Okay!" he said. "I get the idea. If we can be bad boys, maybe Harror will spank us himself."
"He'll try," Blake answered quietly. "From then on it will depend on us who does the punishing."
Blake turned to the door and ignoring Dauna, started to pound on it with all his strength, O'Toole added his weight to Blake's and they started to shout loudly.
"We want to sock that big goon, Harror," O'Toole howled. ”

“ Harror isn't the real boss here."
Blake was half way into a uniform of the Silver Masks. He finished his job before answering. Then he spoke.
"I know you and Ferrell hate Wade's guts," he said slowly, "but...."
"It's not me so much," O'Toole protested. "Ferrell said long ago that Wade was in this mess. He didn't seem to get any action on the case. Now with the guy Slater saying Harror isn't the boss, there isn't any other answer."
"Sorry, O'Toole," Blake said. "I should be willing to admit that Wade's our man. I don't know why I can't. It's just that blood is pretty thick stuff, I guess. ”

“ Phelim O’Rourke was at that moment in his cell, listening as intently as they to the ominous sounds—listening with paling cheek and dilated eyes, while standing at the grated window, vainly striving to get a view of what was going on far down the street.
He, too, recognized the hoarse cries of men with passions roused to a frenzy of rage and hate. Were they coming to lynch him? No; that shot fired a moment ago must have been intended for another than himself; some one of his confederates, in all probability. ”

“ But during that week Gard had not expected to become a customs expert. His plan for getting results was founded on a different idea. He had been hunting for a man who suited the purpose of his plan, and had found him. This man was an Irishman by the name of O'Toole, who was one of the weighers at a certain dock [Pg 160] in Brooklyn. He had in the back of his head all the facts that the special agent lacked. If he could be induced to cooperate, the case might be worked out.
O'Toole was a man of fifty, and had been a weigher for eleven years. Gard had learned many things about him. ”