Priscilla's Spies
secret ciphers sewn into their stays and other things of that kind.”
“I don’t believe they’re spies at all,” said Frank, who was feeling
dishevelled and uncomfortable after his struggle with the sail.
“Anyhow they seem pretty keen on getting away from Inishark. Just look
at them.”
There was no doubt that the people on the island were doing their
best to strike their camp as quickly as possible. In their hurry they
stumbled over guy ropes, got the fly sheet of one of their tents badly
tangled round a packing case, and made the matter worse by trying to
free it without proper consideration.
“Let them fuss,” said Priscilla. “We can’t help it if they do get away.
If your ankle isn’t too bad we might as well have lunch. You grub out
the food when I get off my shoes and stockings, I’m a bit damp about the
legs.”
Frank felt under the thwart through which the mast was stepped and drew
out one by one the parcel of macaroons, the tongue, the tin of peaches
and the bottles. Priscilla wrung out her stockings over the stern of the
boat and then hung them on the gunwale to dry. She propped her shoes up
against the stern where they would get as much breeze as possible.
“I wish,” said Frank, “that we’d thought of getting some bread.”
“Why? Don’t you like macaroons?”
“I like them all right, but they don’t go very well with tongue.”
“We’ll begin with the tongue, then, and keep the macaroons till
afterwards. Hand it over.”
She took a rowlock and shattered the jar which held the tongue. She
succeeded in throwing some of the broken glass overboard. A good deal
more of it stuck in the tongue.
“What I generally do,” she said, “when I’m out in the Blue Wanderer
by myself and happen to have a tongue, which isn’t often on account of
their being so beastly expensive--but whenever I have I simply bite bits
off it as I happen to want them. But I know that’s not polite. If you
prefer it, Cousin Frank, you can gouge out a chunk or two with your
knife before I gnaw it.”
This seemed to Frank a good suggestion. He got out his knife.
“Sylvia Courtney is always frightfully polite,” said Priscilla.
Frank hesitated. The recollection of Sylvia Courtney’s appreciation of
Wordsworth’s “Ode to Duty” and her fondness for “Gray’s Elegy” for the
sake of its calm came to him. He would not be classed with her. He put
his knife back into his pocket and bit a small bit off the tongue. Then
he leaned over the side of the boat and spat out a good deal of broken
glass. He also spat out some blood.
“That seems to be rather a glassy bit you’ve got,” said Priscilla. “Are
you cut?”
“A little,” said Frank, “but it doesn’t matter.”
Priscilla bit off a large mouthful and handed the tongue back to Frank.
Her cheeks bulged a good deal, but she chewed without any appearance
of discomfort. Frank had read in books about “the call of the wild.”
He now, for the first time, felt the lust for savage life. He took the
tongue, tore off a fragment with his teeth, and discovered as he ate it,
that he was exceedingly hungry.
“Your lemonade bottle,” he said, a few minutes later, “has one of those
glass stoppers in it instead of a cork. How shall I open it?”
“Shank of a rowlock,” said Priscilla. “Those spies on the island have
got their tents down at last. They’re packing up now.”
Frank opened the lemonade bottle and then glanced at the island. The
female spy was packing a holdall. Her companion was staggering down the
beach towards the place where Flanagan’s old boat lay high and dry
on her side. He carried the packing case on his shoulder. Priscilla,
tilting her head back, drank the lemonade from its bottle in large
gulps. Then she opened the parcel of biscuits and munched a macaroon
contentedly.
“It’s dashed annoying,” said Frank, “having to sit here and watch them
escape, just as we had them cornered too.”
The inside of his lip hurt him a good deal while he ate. He wanted
to grumble about something; but the fear of being compared to Sylvia
Courtney kept him silent about the broken glass. Priscilla took another
macaroon.
“We were doing Wordsworth’s ‘Excursion’ last term,” she said, “in
English literature, and there’s a long tract of it called ‘Despondency
Corrected.’ I wish I had it here now. It’s just what would do you good.”
Frank nibbled a biscuit with his eyes on the island. The man was
carrying down a bundle of rugs to the boat. The woman followed him with
one of the tents. Then they went back together to their camping ground
and collected a number of small objects which were scattered about.
Frank became desperate.
“Priscilla,” he said, “don’t you think you could wade across to that
island. There’s only about an inch and a half of water round the boat
now. I’d do it myself if it wasn’t for this infernal ankle. I simply
can’t walk.”
“I could,” said Priscilla, “and what’s more, I would, only that there’s
a deep channel between us and them. If I’d jibed that time instead of
trying to stay her I should have kept in the channel and not run on to
this bank. I knew it was here all right, but I forgot it just at the
moment. That’s the worst of moments. They simply make one forget things,
however hard one tries not to. I daresay you’ve noticed that.”
Frank had as a matter of fact noticed this peculiarity of moments very
often. It had turned up in the course of his experience both on cricket
and football fields. But it seemed to him that the consequences of being
entrapped by it were much more serious in sailing boats than elsewhere.
He was so far from blaming Priscilla for the plight of the Tortoise that
he felt very grateful to her for not blaming him. His moment had come
when she gave him the order about the centreboard. Then not only memory,
but all power of coherent thought had deserted him.
“Let’s have at the Californian peaches,” said Priscilla. “But we’d
better eat a bit slower now that the first pangs of hunger are allayed.
If we hurry up too much we’ll have no food left soon and we have
absolutely nothing else to do except to eat until five o’clock this
afternoon. We can’t expect to get off before that.”
The spies packed their belongings into Flanagan’s old boat and then set
to work to push her down to the sea. Frank, with the point of the opener
driven through the top of the peach tin, paused to watch them. They
shoved and pulled vainly. The boat remained where she was. Frank began
to hope that they, too, might have to wait for the rising tide. They sat
down on a large stone and consulted together. Then they took everything
out of the boat and tried pushing and pulling her again. Her weight was
still too great for them. They moved her forward in short jerks, but
each time they moved her the keel at her stern buried itself deeper
in the soft mud. They sat down, evidently somewhat exhausted, and had
another consultation. Then the man got the oars and laid them out as
rollers. He lifted the boat’s stern on to the first of them.
“I thought,” said Priscilla, “that they’d hit on that dodge sooner or
later. Now they’ll get on a bit. Go on scalping the peach tin, Cousin
Frank.”
The peaches had been cut in half by the kindly Californian who preserved
them and a half peach fits, with a little squeezing, into any mouth of
ordinary size. Priscilla and Frank fished them out with their fingers
and ate them. Some juice, but considering the circumstances very little,
dripped down the front of Frank’s white flannel coat, the glorious
crimson bound coat of the first eleven. He did not care in the least. He
had lapsed hopelessly. No urchin in the lower school, brewing cocoa
over a form room fire, ladling out condensed milk with the blade of a
penknife, would have been more dead to the decencies of life than this
degenerate hero of the lower sixth.
“They’re getting the boat down,” said Priscilla, swallowing a lump of
peach. “Do you think that you could throw stones far enough to hit them
when they get out into the channel? I’d grub up the stones for you. We
might frighten them back that way.”
Frank had won second prize in the sports at the end of the Easter term
for throwing the cricket ball. He looked across the stretch of water and
judged the distance carefully.
“No,” he said, regretfully, “I couldn’t.”
“That’s a pity,” said Priscilla, “for I can’t, either. I never could shy
worth tuppence. Curious, isn’t it? Hardly any girls can.”
The spies had got old Flanagan’s boat down to the water’s edge.
They went back to the place where she had lain first. By a series of
laborious portages they got all their goods down to the beach and packed
them into the boat.
“They’re off now,” said Frank, regretfully.
“I wouldn’t be too sure,” said Priscilla. “That fellow’s an
extraordinary ass with a boat.”
Her optimism was well founded. By shoving hard the spies ran their
boat into the water. The lady spy stopped at the brink. The man, with
reckless indifference to wet feet, followed the boat, still shoving.
It happens that the shore of the north side of Inishark shelves very
rapidly into the deep channel. The boat floated suddenly, and urged by
the violence of the last shove, slid rapidly from the shore. The man
grasped at her. His fingers slid along the gunwale. He plunged forward
knee-deep, snatched at the retreating bow, missed it, stumbled and
fell headlong into the water. The boat floated free and swung into the
channel on the tide.
Priscilla leaped up excitedly.
“Now they’re done,” she said. “They’re far worse stuck than we are.”
“Oh, do look at him,” said Frank, “Did you ever see anything so funny?”
The man staggered to his feet and floundered towards the shore,
squeezing the salt water from his eyes with his knuckles.
“Of course, I’m sorry for the poor beast in a way,” said Priscilla, “but
I can’t help feeling that it jolly well serves him right. Oh, look at
them now!”
She laughed convulsively. The scene was sufficiently ridiculous. The spy
stood dripping forlornly, on the shore. The lady dabbed at various parts
of his clothing with her pocket-handkerchief. Flanagan’s old boat, now
fairly in mid-channel, bobbed cheerfully along on the ebbing tide.
“I’d give a lot this minute,” said Priscilla, “for a pair of glasses. I
can’t think why I was such a fool as not to take father’s when we were
starting.”
“I can see well enough,” said Frank. “What I’d like would be to be able
to hear what he’s saying.”
“I don’t take any interest in bad language, and in any case I don’t
believe he’s capable of it. He looked to me like the kind of man who
wouldn’t say anything much worse than ‘Dear me.’”
“Wouldn’t he? Look at him now. If he isn’t cursing I’ll eat my hat.”
The spy had shaken himself free of his companion’s pocket handkerchief.
He was waving his arms violently and shouting so loudly that his voice
reached the Tortoise against the wind.
“I suppose,” said Priscilla, “that that’s his way of trying to get dry
without catching a chill. Horrid ass, isn’t he? It’d be far better for
him to run. What’s the good of yelling? I expect in reality it’s simply
temper.”
But Priscilla underestimated the intelligence of the spy. It appeared
very soon that he was not merely giving expression to emotion, but had a
purpose in his performance. The lady, too, began to shout, shrilly. She
waved her damp pocket handkerchief round and round her head. Priscilla
and Frank turned and saw that another boat, a small black boat, with
a very dilapidated lug sail, had appeared round the corner of the next
island, and was making towards Inishark.
“Bother,” said Priscilla, “that man, whoever he is, will bring them back
their boat.”
The steersman in the lug-sailed boat altered his course slightly and
reached down towards the derelict. As he neared her he dropped his sail
and got out oars.