" Then the wind
with its sharp voice began to rise, and there was a noise like the
tramping of feet in the sea, and it rose up into great mountains hard to
climb, and there was great fear on Tadg's people, for they had never
seen the like. But he began to stir them up and to rouse them, and he
bade them to meet the sea like men. "Do bravery," he said, "young men of
Munster, and fight for your lives against the waves that are rising up
and coming at the sides of the curragh." Tadg took one side of the
curragh then and his men took the other side, and he was able to pull it
round against the whole twenty-nine of them, and to bale it out and keep
it dry along with that. And after a while they got a fair wind and put
up their sail, the way less water came into the curragh, and then the
sea went down and lay flat and calm, and there were strange birds of
many shapes singing around them in every part. They saw land before them
then, with a good coast, and with that courage and gladness came on
them.
And when they came nearer to the land they found a beautiful inver, a
river's mouth, with green hills about it, and the bottom of it sandy and
as bright as silver, and red-speckled salmon in it, and pleasant woods
with purple tree-tops edging the stream. "It is a beautiful country
this is," said Tadg, "and it would be happy for him that would be always
in it; and let you pull up the ship now," he said, "and dry it out."
A score of them went forward then into the country, and a score stopped
to mind the curragh.
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