What I lacked in strength I made up for in quickness, and if Tim hit me hard I hit him often.
But it was a miserable business, and our hearts were sorer than our bodies.

For we loved one another as we loved our own lives.

And on a day like this, when mother lay dying at home, and father was out with the trawlers in the tempest, we lacked spirit to fight in earnest.

Only when Tim called me "Frenchman" it was not in me to stand meekly by.
I know that when it was over, and we parted sulky and bruised each his own way, I flung myself on my face at the edge of the cliff and wished I had never been born.
How long I lay I know not.
When I looked up the day was dark with tempest.

The whistle of the wind about my ears mingled with the hoarse thunder of the surf as it broke on the beach, four hundred feet below me, and swept round the point into the lough.