Priscilla's Spies
rope twisted round the plate? If you row her round the wrong way you’ll
twist it worse than ever.”
But luck favored Priscilla. When the Tortoise had made one circle the
rope shook itself clear. Joseph Antony, dipping his oars gently in the
water, drew close alongside.
“I’d be sorry now,” he said, “if it was to Inishbawn you were thinking
of going. Herself and the children is away off. I’d have been afraid to
leave them there with myself up at the quay with a load of gravel.”
Priscilla looked at him with a smile of complete scepticism.
“It’s not gravel you have there,” she said.
“It’s a curious thing,” said Joseph Antony in an offended tone, “for you
to be saying the like of that and the boat up to the seats with gravel
before your eyes.”
“I don’t deny there’s gravel on top,” said Priscilla, “but there’s
something else underneath.”
Joseph Antony urged his boat further from the Tortoise.
“What do you mean, at all?” he said.
“I don’t know what you’ve got,” said Priscilla, “but I saw the rim of
some sort of a wooden tub sticking out of the gravel in the fore part of
the boat.”
Joseph Antony began to row vigorously towards the quay. Priscilla hailed
him.
“Tell me this now,” she said, “Why did you take Mrs. Kinsella and the
children off their island? Was it for fear of the rats?”
Joseph Antony lay on his oars.
“It was not rats,” he said. “Why would it?”
“Was it for change of air after the fever?”
“Fever! What fever?”
“Was it because there was something on the island that it wouldn’t be
nice for Mrs. Kinsella or any other woman to see?”
“It was because of a young heifer,” said Joseph Antony, “that I was
after buying at the fair of Rosnacree ere yesterday, the wickedest one
I ever seen. She had her horn druv through Jimmy’s leg and pretty nearly
trampled the life out of the baby before she was an hour on the island.
If so be that you want to be scattered about, an arm here and a leg
there, as soon as you set foot on the shore you can go to Inishbawn,
you and the young gentleman along with you. But if it’s pleasure you’re
looking for it would be better for you to go somewhere else for it, the
two of yez.”
He spoke truculently. It was evident that Priscilla’s questioning had
seriously annoyed him. He began to row again while he was speaking and
was out of earshot before Priscilla could reply. She waved her hand to
him gaily.
The trouble with the anchor rope had delayed the start of the Tortoise.
It was eleven o’clock before she got under way. Frank had the tiller.
Priscilla, seated in the fore part of the boat, gave him instruction in
the art of steering. Running before a light breeze makes no high demand
upon the helmsman’s skill. Frank learned to keep the boat’s head steady
on her course and realised how small a motion of his hand produced a
considerable effect. The time came when the course had to be altered.
Priscilla, bent above all on discovering the new camping-ground of the
spies, kept in the main channel. There comes a place where this turns
northwards. Frank had to push down the tiller in order to bring the boat
on her new course. He began to understand the meaning of what he did.
The island of Inishrua lay under his lee. Priscilla scanned its slope
for the sight of a tent. Frank, now beginning to enjoy his position
thoroughly, let the boat away, eased off his sheet and ran down
the passage between Inishrua and Knockilaun, the next island to the
northward. Cattle browsed peacefully in the fields. A dog rushed from a
cottage door and barked. Two children came down to the shore and gazed
at the boat curiously. There was no encampment on either island.
Frank pressed down the tiller and hauled in his sheet. Priscilla
insisted on his working the main sheet himself. He did it awkwardly and
slowly, having only one hand and some fingers of the other, which held
the tiller. Then he had his first experience of the joy of beating a
small boat against the wind. The passage between the islands is narrow
and the tacks were necessarily very short. Frank made all the mistakes
common to beginners, sailing at one moment many points off the wind,
at the next trying to sail with the luff of his lug and perhaps his
foresail flapping piteously. But he learned how to stay the boat and
became fascinated in guessing the point on the land which he might hope
to reach at the end of each tack. Priscilla kept him from becoming over
proud. She showed him, each time the boat went about, the spot which
with reasonably good steering he ought to have reached. It was always
many yards to windward.
At the end of the passage the boat stood on the starboard tack towards a
small round island which lay to the east of Inishrua.
“That’s Inishgorm,” said Priscilla. “I don’t see how they can possibly
be there, for there’s not a place on it to pitch a tent except the
extreme top of the island. But we may as well have a look at it.”
Inishgorm ends on the west in a rocky promontory. The Tortoise passed
it and then Frank stayed her again. The next tack brought them into a
little bay with deep, clear water. They stood right on until they were
within a few yards of the land. Terns, anxious for the safety of
their chicks, rose with shrill cries, circled round the boat, swooping
sometimes within a few feet of the sail and then soaring again. Their
excitement died away and their cries got fewer when the boat went about
and stood away from the island. Priscilla pointed out a long low reef
which lay under their lee. Round-backed rocks stood clear of the water
at intervals. Elsewhere brown sea wrack was plainly visible just awash.
On one of the rocks two seals lay basking in the sun. At the point of
the reef a curious patch of sharply rippled water marked where two tides
met. A long tack brought the Tortoise clear of the windward end of the
reef. Frank paid out the main sheet and let the boat away for another
run down a passage between the reef and a series of small flat islands.
“This,” said Priscilla, “is the likeliest place we’ve been today. I
shouldn’t wonder a bit if we came on them here.”
The navigation seemed to Frank bewilderingly intricate. Small bays
opened among the islands. Rocks obtruded themselves in unexpected
places. It was never possible to keep a straight course for more than a
couple of minutes at a time. Priscilla gave order in quick succession,
“Luff her a little,” “Let her away now,” “Hold on as you’re going,”
“Steady,” “Don’t let her away any more.” Now and then she threatened him
with the possibility of a jibe. Frank, becoming accustomed to everything
else, still dreaded that manoeuvre.
A loud hail reached them from the narrow mouth of a bay to windward
of them. Priscilla looked round. The hail was repeated. Far up on the
northern shore of the bay lay a boat, half in, half out of the water.
Beyond her stern, knee deep in the water, with kilted skirts, stood a
woman shouting wildly and waving a pocket handkerchief.
“It’s the sponge lady,” said Priscilla. “Luff, luff her all you can.
We’ll go in there and see what she wants.”
The Tortoise slanted up into the wind. Her sails flapped and filled
again. Frank pulled manfully on the sheet. There were two short tacks,
swift changes of position, slacking and hauling in of sheets. Then Frank
found himself, once more on the starboard tack, standing straight for
the lady who waved and shouted to them.
“It’s a gravelly shore,” said Priscilla. “We’ll beach her. Sail her easy
now, Cousin Frank, and slack away your main sheet if you find there’s
too much way on her. We don’t want to knock a hole in her bottom. Keep
her just to windward of Jimmy Kinsella’s boat.”
The orders were too numerous and too complicated. Frank could keep his
head on the football field while hostile forwards charged down on him,
could run, kick or pass at such a crisis without setting his nerves
a-quiver. He lost all power of reasoning when the Tortoise sprang
towards Jimmy Kinsella’s boat and the gravelly shore. He had judged with
absolute accuracy the flight of the ball which the Uppingham captain
drove hard and high into the long field. As it left the bat he had
started to run, had calculated the curve of its fall, had gauged the
pace of his own running, had arrived to receive it in his outstretched
hands. He failed altogether in calculating the speed of the Tortoise.
He suddenly forgot which way to push the tiller in order to attain the
result he desired. A wild cry from Priscilla confused him more than
ever. He was dimly aware of a sudden check in the motion of the boat.
He saw Priscilla start up, and then the lady, who a moment before was
standing in the sea, precipitated herself head first over the bow.
At the same moment the Tortoise grounded on the gravel with a sharp
grinding sound. Frank looked about him amazed. Jimmy Kinsella, standing
on the shore with his hands in his pockets, spoke slowly.
“Bedamn,” he said, “but I never seen the like. With the whole of the
wide sea for you to choose out of was there no place that would do you
except just the one place where the lady happened to be standing?”
CHAPTER XII
Priscilla’s reproaches were sharper and less broadly philosophic in
tone.
“Why didn’t you luff when I told you?” she said. “Didn’t I say you were
to keep up to windward of Jimmy Kinsella’s boat? If you couldn’t do that
why hadn’t you the sense to let out the main sheet? If we hadn’t run
into the sponge lady we’d have stripped the copper band off our keel.
As it is, I expect she’s dead. She hit her head a most frightful crack
against the mast.”
Miss Rutherford was lying on her stomach across the fore part of the
gunwale of the Tortoise. Her head was close to the mast. She was groping
about with her hands in the bottom of the boat. The lower part of her
body, which was temporarily, owing to her position, the upper part, was
outside the boat. Her feet beat the air with futile vigour. She wriggled
convulsively and after a time her legs followed her head and shoulders
into the boat. She rose on her knees, very red in the face, a good deal
dishevelled, but laughing heartily.
“I’m not a bit dead,” she said, “but I expect my hair’s coming down.”
“It is,” said Priscilla. “I don’t believe you have a hairpin left unless
one or two have been driven into your skull. Are you much hurt?”
“Not at all,” said Miss Rutherford. “Is your mast all right? I hit it
rather hard.”
Priscilla looked at the mast critically and stroked the part hit by Miss
Rutherford’s head to find out if it was bruised or cracked.
“I’m most awfully sorry,” said Frank. “I don’t know how I came to be
such a fool. I lost my head completely. I put the tiller the wrong way.
I can’t imagine how it all happened.”
“I don’t think,” said Miss Rutherford, “that I ever had an invitation to
luncheon accepted quite so heartily before. You actually rushed into my
arms.”
“Were you inviting us to lunch?” said Priscilla.
“I’ve been inviting you at the top of my voice,” said Miss Rutherford,
“for nearly a quarter of an hour. I’m so glad you’ve come in the end.”
“We couldn’t hear what you were saying,” said Priscilla. “All we
knew was that you were shouting at us. If we’d known it was an
invitation----”
“You couldn’t have come any quicker if you’d heard every word,” said
Miss Rutherford.
“I’m frightfully sorry,” said Frank again. “I can’t tell you----”
“If I’d known it was luncheon,” said Priscilla, “I’d have steered myself
and run no risks. We haven’t a thing to eat in our boat and I’m getting
weak with hunger.”
Miss Rutherford stepped overboard again.
“Come on,” she said, “we’re going to have the grandest picnic ever was,
I went down to the village yesterday evening after I got home and bought
another tin of Californian peaches.”