?" said Fionn in a voice that rumbled and vibrated like
thunder.

"It is the Carl," said the watcher, "and the dust behind him is Cael of
the Iron trying to catch him up."

Then the Fianna gave a roar of exultation, and each man seized his
neighbour and kissed him on both cheeks; and they gripped hands about
Fionn, and they danced round and round in a great circle, roaring with
laughter and relief, in the ecstasy which only comes where grisly fear
has been and whence that bony jowl has taken itself away.

CHAPTER VIII

The Carl of the Drab Coat came bumping and stumping and clumping into
the camp, and was surrounded by a multitude that adored him and hailed
him with tears.

"Meal!" he bawled, "meal for the love of the stars!"

And he bawled, "Meal, meal!" until he bawled everybody into silence.

Fionn addressed him.

"What for the meal, dear heart?"

"For the inside of my mouth," said the Carl, "for the recesses and
crannies and deep-down profundities of my stomach. Meal, meal!" he
lamented.

Meal was brought.

The Carl put his coat on the ground, opened it carefully, and revealed
a store of blackberries, squashed, crushed, mangled, democratic,
ill-looking.

"The meal!" he groaned, "the meal!"

It was given to him.

"What of the race, my pulse?" said Fionn.

"Wait, wait," cried the Carl. "I die, I die for meal and blackberries."

Into the centre of the mess of blackberries he discharged a barrel of
meal, and be mixed the two up and through, and round and down, until
the pile of white-black, red-brown slibber-slobber reached up to his
shoulders. Then he commenced to paw and impel and project and cram the
mixture into his mouth, and between each mouthful he sighed a contented
sigh, and during every mouthful he gurgled an oozy gurgle.

But while Fionn and the Fianna stared like lost minds upon the Carl,
there came a sound of buzzing, as if a hornet or a queen of the wasps or
a savage, steep-winged griffin was hovering about them, and looking away
they saw Cael of the Iron charging on them with a monstrous extension
and scurry of his legs. He had a sword in his hand, and there was
nothing in his face but redness and ferocity.

Fear fell llke night around the Fianna, and they stood with slack knees
and hanging hands waiting for death. But the Carl lifted a pawful of his
oozy slop and discharged this at Cael with such a smash that the man's
head spun off his shoulders and hopped along the ground. T