Priscilla's Spies
I might be labouring for peace, but everybody else will be making ready
for battle. Aunt Juliet will be out for blood the moment she catches
sight of the Prime Minister. Good night, Cousin Frank.”
CHAPTER XI
Rose, the under housemaid, with the recollection of the scientifically
Christian method of treating her toothache fresh in her mind and
therefore stimulated by a strong desire to annoy Miss Lentaigne, woke at
five a.m. At half past five she called Priscilla and knocked at Frank’s
door. Priscilla was fully dressed ten minutes later. Frank appeared in
the yard at five minutes to six. They started as the stable clock struck
six, Priscilla wheeling the bath-chair. Rose yawning widely, watched
them from the scullery window.
Priscilla had failed to seize the cold salmon the night before. Rose,
foraging early in the morning, with the fear of the cook before her
eyes, had secured nothing but half a loaf of bread and a square section
of honey. It was therefore something of a disappointment to find that
Brannigan’s shop was not open when they reached the quay. No biscuits or
tinned meats could be bought. Many adventurers would have been daunted
by the prospect of a long day’s work with such slender provision. It
is recorded, for instance, of Julius Caesar, surely the most eminent
adventurer of all history, that he hesitated to attempt an expedition
against one of the tribes of Gaul “propter inopiam pecuniae,” which may
very well be translated “on account of a shortage of provisions.”
But Julius Caesar, at the period of his greatest conquests, was a
middle-aged man. He had lost the first careless rapture of youth. Frank
and Priscilla, because their combined ages only amounted to thirty-two
years, were more daring than Caesar. With a fine faith in the providence
which feeds adventurers, they scorned the wisdom which looks dubiously
at bread and honey. They did not hesitate at all.
The tide was still rising when they embarked. At that hour in the
morning there was no wind and it was necessary to row the Tortoise out.
Priscilla took both oars herself, remembering the gyrations of the boat
the day before when Frank was helping her to row.
“There’ll be a breeze,” she said, “when the tide turns, but we can’t
afford to wait here for that. When we’re outside the stone perch we’ll
drop anchor. But the first thing is to set pursuit at defiance by
getting beyond the reach of the human voice. If we can’t hear whoever
happens to be calling us we can’t be expected to turn back and it won’t
be disobedience if we don’t.”
The tide, with an hour more of flow behind it, crept along the grey
quay wall, and eddied past the buoys. Two hookers lay moored, and faint
spirals of smoke rose from the stove chimneys of their forecastles. Thin
wreaths of grey mist hung here and there over the still surface of the
bay. Patches of purple slime lay unbroken on the unrippled surface.
Scraps of shrivelled rack, sucked off the shores of the nearer islands,
floated past the Tortoise. A cormorant, balanced on the top of one of
the perches outside Delginish, sat with wings outstretched and neck
craned forward, peering out to sea. A fleet of terns floated motionless
on the water beyond the island. Two gulls with lazy flappings of their
wings, flew westwards down the bay. Priscilla, rowing with short,
decisive strokes, drove the Tortoise forward.
“It’s going to be blazing hot,” she said, “and altogether splendidly
glorious. I feel rather like a dove that is covered with silver wings
and her feathers like gold. Don’t you?”
Frank did. Although he would not have expressed himself in the words of
the Psalmist, he recognised them. The most reliable tenor in the choir
at Haileybury is necessarily familiar with the Psalms.
They reached the stone perch and cast anchor. It was half past seven
o’clock. Priscilla got out the bread and honey.
“The proper thing to do,” she said, “would be to go on half rations at
once, and serve out the bread by ounces and the honey by teaspoonfuls,
but I think we won’t. I’m as hungry as any wolf.”
“Besides,” said Frank, “we haven’t got a teaspoon.”
“I hope your knife is to the fore. I’m not particular as a rule about
the way I eat things, but there’s no use beginning the day by making the
whole boat sticky. I loathe stickiness, especially when I happen to sit
on it, which is one of the reasons which makes me glad I wasn’t born a
bee. They have to, of course, poor things, even the queen, I believe. It
can’t be pleasant.”
The tug of the boat at her anchor rope slackened as the tide reached
its height. A light easterly wind came to them from the land. Priscilla
swallowed the last morsel of bread and honey as the Tortoise drifted
over her anchor and swung round.
“Perhaps,” she said, “you’d like to practise steering, Cousin Dick. If
so, creep aft and take the tiller. I’ll get the sail on her and haul up
the anchor.”
Frank, humbled by the experience of the day before, was doubtful.
Priscilla encouraged him. He took the tiller with nervous joy. Priscilla
hoisted the lug and then the foresail.
“Now,” she said, “I’ll get up the anchor and we’ll try to go off on the
starboard tack. If we don’t we’ll have to jibe immediately. With this
much wind it won’t matter, but you might not like the sensation.”
Frank did not want to enjoy any sensation of a sudden kind and jibing,
as he understood it, was always unexpected. He asked which way he ought
to push the tiller so as to make sure of reaching the starboard tack.
Priscilla stood beside the mast and delivered a long, very confusing
lecture on the effect of the rudder on the boat and the advantage of
hauling down one or other of the foresail sheets when getting under way
from anchor. Frank did not understand much of what she said, but was
ashamed to ask for more information. Priscilla, on her knees under the
foresail, tugged at the anchor rope. The Tortoise quivered slightly,
but did not move. Priscilla, leaning well back, tugged harder. The
Tortoise--it is impossible to speak of a boat except as a live thing
with a capricious will--shook herself irritably.
“She’s slap over the anchor,” said Priscilla. “I can’t think how she
gets there for there’s plenty of rope out; but there she is and I can’t
move the beastly thing. Perhaps you’ll try. You may be stronger than I
am. I expect it has got stuck somehow behind a rock.”
Frank felt confident that he was stronger in the arms than Priscilla. He
crept forward and put his whole strength into a pull on the anchor rope.
The Tortoise twisted herself broadside on to the breeze and then listed
over to windward. Priscilla looked round her in amazement. The breeze
was certainly very light, but it was contrary to her whole experience
that a boat with sails set should heel over towards the wind. She told
Frank to stop pulling. The Tortoise slowly righted herself and then
drifted back to her natural position, head to wind.
“The only thing I can think of,” said Priscilla, “is that the anchor
rope has got round the centreboard. It might. You never can tell exactly
what an anchor rope will do. However, if it has, we’ve nothing to do but
haul up the centreboard and clear it.”
She took the centreboard rope and pulled. Frank joined her and they both
pulled. The centreboard remained immovable. The Tortoise was entirely
unaffected by their pulling.
“Jammed,” said Priscilla. “I feel a jolly sight less like that dove
than I did. It looks rather as if we were going to spend the day here.
I don’t want to cut the rope and lose the anchor if I can possibly help
it, but of course it may come to that in the end, though even then I’m
not sure that we’ll get clear.”
“Can we do nothing?” said Frank.
“This,” said Priscilla, “is a case for prolonged and cool-headed
reasoning. You reason your best and I’ll bring all the resources of my
mind to bear on the problem!”
She sat down in the bottom of the boat and gazed thoughtfully at the
stone perch. Frank, to whom the nature of the problem was obscure, also
gazed at the stone perch, but without much hope of finding inspiration.
Priscilla looked round suddenly.
“We might try poking at it with the blade of an oar,” she said. “I don’t
think it will be much use, but there’s no harm trying.”
The poking was a total failure, and Priscilla, reaching far out to
thrust the oar well under the keel of the boat, very nearly fell
overboard. Frank caught her by the skirt at the last moment and hauled
her back.
“We’ll have to sit down and think again,” she said. “By the way, what
was that word which Euclid said when he suddenly found out how to
construct an isosceles triangle? He was in his bath at the time, as well
as I recollect.”
A man is not in the lower sixth at Haileybury without possessing a good
working knowledge of the chief events of classical antiquity. Frank rose
to his opportunity.
“Are you thinking of Archimedes?” he asked. “What he said was ‘Eureka’
and what he found out wasn’t anything about triangles but--”
“Thanks,” said Priscilla. “It doesn’t really matter whether it was
Euclid or not and it isn’t of the least importance what he found out.
It was the word I wanted. Let’s agree that whichever of us Eureka’s
it first stands up and shouts the word far across the sea. You’ve no
objection to that, I suppose. The idea may stimulate our imaginations.”
Frank had no objection. He felt tolerably certain that he would not
have to shout. Priscilla, frowning heavily, fixed her eyes on the stone
perch, A few minutes later she spoke again.
“Once,” she said, “I was riding my bicycle in father’s mackintosh, which
naturally was a little long for me. In process of time the tail of it
got wound round and round the back wheel and I was regularly stuck,
couldn’t move hand or foot and had to lie on my side with the bicycle
on top of me. That seems to me very much the way we are now with that
anchor rope and the centreboard.”
“How did you get out?” said Frank hopefully.
That Priscilla had got out was evident. If her position on the bicycle
was really analogous to that of the Tortoise the same plan of escape
might perhaps be tried.
“I lay there,” said Priscilla, “until Peter Walsh happened to come along
the road. He kind of unwound me.”
A boat, heavily laden, was rowing slowly towards them, making very
little way against the gathering strength of the ebb tide and the
easterly wind.
“Perhaps,” said Frank, “the people in that boat, if it ever gets here,
will unwind us.”
The boat drew nearer and Priscilla declared that it was Kinsella’s.
“It’s Joseph Antony himself rowing her,” she said. “He’d be getting on
faster if he had Jimmy along with him, but I suppose he’s off with the
sponge lady again.”
Kinsella reached the Tortoise and stopped rowing.
“You’re out for a sail again today, Miss?” he said. “Well, it’s fine
weather for the likes of you.”
“At the present moment,” said Priscilla, “we’re stuck and can’t get
out.”
“Do you tell me that now? And what’s the matter with you?”
“The anchor rope is foul of the centreboard and we can’t get either the
one or the other of them to move.”
“Begor!” said Joseph Antony.
“Do you know any way of getting it clear?”
“I do, of course.”
“Well, trot it out.”
“If you was to take the oars,” said Joseph Antony, “and was to row the
boat round the way she wasn’t going when she twisted the rope on you it
would come untwisted again.”
“It would, of course. Thank you very much. Rather stupid of us not to
have thought of that. It seems quite simple. But that’s always the way.
The simplest things are far the hardest to think of. Columbus and the
egg, for instance.”
She got out the oars as she spoke and began turning the Tortoise round.
“Begging your pardon, Miss,” said Joseph Antony, “but which way is the