Priscilla's Spies
his care. But his courtesy was put to no such extreme test. He made a
move at last which brought him within a few feet of the Tortoise. A mere
patch of sea-soaked mud remained uncovered. The water, advancing
from the far side of the bank, already lapped against the bows of the
Tortoise. Miss Rutherford woke up to the fact that the time for catching
sponges was past.
“I’m afraid,” she said, “that I ought to be getting home. I can’t tell
you how much obliged to you I am for feeding me. I believe I should have
fainted if it hadn’t been for that tongue.”
“It was a pleasure to us,” said Priscilla. “We’d eaten all we could
before you came.”
“I’m afraid,” said Frank politely, “that it wasn’t very nice. We ought
to have had knives and forks or at least a tumbler to drink out of. I
don’t know what you must think of us.”
“Think of you!” said Miss Rutherford. “I think you’re the two nicest
children I ever met.”
She stumped off and joined Jimmy Kinsella. Priscilla saw her putting on
her shoes and stockings as the boat rowed away. She shouted a farewell.
Miss Rutherford waved a stocking in reply.
“There,” said Priscilla, turning to Frank, “what do you think of that?
The two nicest children! I don’t mind of course; but I do call it rather
rough on you after talking so grand and having on your best first eleven
coat and all.”
CHAPTER IX
Frank learned several things while the sails were being hoisted. The
word halyard became familiar to him and connected itself definitely
with certain ropes. He discovered that a sheet is, oddly enough, not an
expanse of canvas, but another rope. He impressed carefully on his mind
the part of the boat in which he might, under favourable circumstances,
expect to find the centreboard tackle.
The wind, which had dropped completely at low water, sprang up again,
this time from the west, with the rising tide. This was pleasant and
promised a fair run home, but Priscilla eyed the sky suspiciously. She
was weather-wise.
“It’ll die clean away,” she said, “towards evening. It always does on
this kind of day when it has worked round with the sun. Curious things
winds are, Cousin Frank, aren’t they? Rather like ices in some ways, I
always think.”
Frank had considerable experience of ices, and had been obliged, while
playing various games, to take some notice of the wind from time to
time; but he missed the point of Priscilla’s comparison. She explained
herself.
“If you put in a good spoonful at once,” she said, “it gives you a pain
in some tooth or other and you don’t enjoy it. On the other hand, if you
put in a very little bit it gets melted away before you’re able to
taste it properly. That’s just the way the wind behaves when you’re out
sailing. Either it has you clinging on to the main sheet for all you’re
worth or else it dies away and leaves you flapping. It’s only about once
a month that you get just what you want.”
It seemed to Frank, when the boat got under way, that they had happened
on the one propitious day. The Tortoise slipped pleasantly along, her
sails well filled, the boom pressed forward against the shroud, the main
sheet an attenuated coil at Priscilla’s feet.
“I’m feeling a bit bothered,” said Priscilla.
“We ought to have been back for luncheon,” said Frank. “I know that.”
“It’s not luncheon that’s bothering me; although it’s quite likely that
we won’t be back for dinner either. What I can’t quite make up my mind
about is what we ought to do next about those spies.”
“Go after them again to-morrow.”
“That’s all well enough; but things are much more mixed up than that. In
some ways I rather wish we had Sylvia Courtney with us. She’s president
of our Browning Society and tremendously good at every kind of
complication. What I feel is that we’re rather like those boys in the
poem who went out to catch a hare and came on a lion unaware. I haven’t
got the passage quite right but you probably know it.”
Frank did. He could not, since English literature is still only fitfully
studied in public schools, have named the author. But he quoted the
lines with fluent confidence. It was by turning them into Greek Iambics
that he had won the head-master’s prize.
“That’s it,” said Priscilla. “And that’s more or less what has happened
to us. We went out to chase a simple, ordinary German spy and we have
come on two other mysteries of the most repulsively fascinating kind.
First there’s Miss Rutherford, if that’s her real name, who says she’s
fishing for sponges, which is certainly a lie.”
“I don’t know about it’s being a lie,” said Frank. “She explained it to
me after you’d gone.”
“Oh, that about zoophytes. You don’t believe that surely?”
“I do,” said Frank. “There are lots of queer things in the British
Museum. I was there once.”
“My own belief is,” said Priscilla, “that she simply trotted out those
zoophyte things and the British Museum when she found that we weren’t
inclined to swallow the ordinary sponge. At the same time I can’t
believe that she’s a criminal of any kind. She struck me as being an
uncommonly good sort. The wind’s dropping. I told you it would. Very
soon now we shall have to row. Can you row, Cousin Frank?”
Frank replied with cheerful confidence that he could. He had sat at
Priscilla’s feet all day and bowed to her superior knowledge of sailing.
When it came to rowing he was sure that he could hold his own. He
understood the phraseology of the art, had learned to take advantage of
sliding seats, could keep his back straight and had been praised by a
member of a University eight for his swing.
“The other mystery,” said Priscilla, “is Inishbawn. The Kinsellas won’t
let the spies land on the island. They won’t let Miss Rutherford. They
won’t let you, They tell every kind of ridiculous story to head people
off.”
The thought of his prowess as an oarsman had restored Frank’s
self-respect. He recollected the reason given by Jimmy Kinsella for not
allowing Miss Rutherford to land on Inishbawn.
“I don’t see anything ridiculous about it,” he said. “Young Kinsella
simply said that it wasn’t a suitable place for ladies. There are lots
of places we men go to where we wouldn’t take-------”
His sentence tailed away. Priscilla’s eyes expressed an amount of
amusement which made him feel singularly uncomfortable.
“That,” she said, “is the most utter rot I’ve ever heard in my life.
And in any case, even if it was true, it wouldn’t apply to us. Jimmy
Kinsella distinctly said that I might land on the island as much as I
like, but that he jolly well wouldn’t have you. We may just as well row
now as later on. The breeze is completely gone.”
She got out the oars and dropped the rowlocks into their holes. She
pulled stroke oar herself. Frank settled himself on the seat behind her.
He found himself in a position of extreme discomfort. The Tortoise
was designed and built to be a sailing boat. It was not originally
contemplated that she should be rowed far or rowed fast. When Frank
leaned back at the end of his stroke he bumped against the mast. When he
swung forward in the proper way he hit Priscilla between the shoulders
with his knuckles. When the boat shot forward the boom swung inboard. If
this happened at the end of a stroke Frank was hit on the shoulder. If
it happened at the beginning of a stroke the spar struck him on the ear.
However he shifted his position he was unable to avoid sitting on some
rope. The centreboard case was between his legs and when he tried to get
his injured foot against anything firm he found it entangled in ropes
which he could not kick away. Priscilla complained.
“Put a little more beef into it, Cousin Frank,” she said. “I’m pulling
her head round all the time.”
Frank put all the energy he could into a series of short jerky strokes,
using the muscles of his arms, failing altogether to get the weight of
his body on the oar. At the end of twenty minutes Priscilla gave him a
rest.
“There’s no use our killing ourselves,” she said. “The tide’s under us.
It’s a jolly lucky thing it is. If it was the other way we wouldn’t
get home to-night. I wonder now whether the Kinsellas think you’ve any
connection with the police. You don’t look it in the least, but you
never can tell what people will think. If they do mistake you for
anything of the sort it might account for their not wanting you to land
on Inishbawn.”
“Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know why exactly--not yet. But there often are things
knocking about which it wouldn’t at all do for the police to see. That
might happen anywhere. There’s an air of wind coming up behind us. Just
get in that oar of yours. We may as well take the good of what’s going.”
A faint ripple on the surface of the water approached the Tortoise.
Before it reached her the boom swung forward, lifting the dripping main
sheet from the water, and the boat slipped on.
“But of course,” said Priscilla, “that idea of your being a policeman
in disguise doesn’t account for their telling Miss Rutherford that there
was something on the island which it wouldn’t be nice for a lady to
see. And it doesn’t account for the swine-fever story that Joseph Antony
Kinsella told the spies.”
“What was that?”
“Oh, nothing much. Only that his wife and children had come out all over
in bright yellow spots.”
“But perhaps they have.”
“Not they. You might just as well believe in Peter Walsh’s rats. That
leaves us with three different mysteries on hand.” Priscilla hooked her
elbow over the tiller and ticked off the three mysteries on the fingers
of her right hand. “The sponge lady, whose name may be Miss Rutherford,
one. Inishbawn Island, that’s two. The original spies, which makes
three. I’m afraid we’ll have to row again. Do you think you can, Cousin
Frank?”
“Of course I can.”
“Don’t be offended. I only meant that you mightn’t be able to on account
of your ankle. How is your ankle?”
“It’s all right,” said Frank, “That is to say it’s just the same.”
No other favouring breeze rippled the surface of the bay. For rather
more than an hour, with occasional intervals for rest, Frank tugged at
his oar, bumped his back, and was struck on the side of the head by the
boom. He was very much exhausted when the Tortoise was at length brought
alongside the slip at the end of the quay. Priscilla still seemed fresh
and vigorous.
“I wonder,” said Frank, “if we could hire a boy.”
“Dozens,” said Priscilla, “if you want them... What for?”
“To wheel that bath-chair. I can’t walk, you know. And I don’t like to
think of your pushing me up the hill. You must be tired.”
“That,” said Priscilla, “is what I call real politeness. There are lots
of other kinds of politeness which aren’t worth tuppence. But that kind
is rather nice. It makes me feel quite grown up. All the same I’ll wheel
you home.”
She pushed the bath-chair up the hill from the village without any
obvious effort. At the gate of the avenue she stopped. Two small
children were playing just inside it. A rather larger child set on the
doorstep of the gate lodge with a baby on her knee.
“What time is it, Cousin Frank?” said Priscilla.
“It’s ten minutes past seven.”
“Susan Ann, where’s your mother?”
The girl with the baby on her knee struggled to her feet and answered:
“She’s up at the house beyond, Miss.”
“I just thought she must be,” said Priscilla, “when I saw William Thomas
and the other boy playing there, and you nursing the baby. If your
mother wasn’t up at the house you’d all be in your beds.”
She wheeled the bath-chair on until she turned the corner of the avenue
and was lost to the sight of the children who peered after her. Then she
paused.
“Cousin Frank,” she said, “it’s just as well for you to be prepared for
some kind of fuss when we get home.”
“We’re awfully late, I know.”