Priscilla's Spies
best way you can by yourself that I’d give my arm to the gentleman and
get him along over the stones so as not to hurt his leg and that same
won’t be easy for the shore’s mortal rough.”
Miss Rutherford refused to desert Frank. She recognised that the shore
was all that Jimmy said it was. Large slippery boulders were strewed
about it for fifty yards or so between the place where she stood and the
gravel spit. She insisted on helping Jimmy to transport Frank. In the
end they descended upon Priscilla, all three abreast. Frank, with one
arm round Jimmy’s neck and one round Miss Rutherford’s, hobbled bravely.
“I don’t know,” said Priscilla, “that this is exactly an ideal place
for luncheon, but we can have it here if you like, and in some ways I’m
rather inclined to. You never know what may happen if you put things
off. Last time the but was snatched out of our mouths by a callous
destiny just as it was beginning to smell really good. By the way,
Jimmy, what did you do with the soup?”
“It’s there beyond, Miss, where you left it.”
“I expect it’s all boiled away by this time,” said Priscilla, “but of
course the Primus stove may have gone out. You never know beforehand how
those patent machines will act. If it has gone out the soup will be all
right, though coldish. Perhaps we’d better go back there.”
“Which would you like to do yourself, Priscilla,” said Miss Rutherford.
“Now that those spies have escaped us again,” said Priscilla, “it
doesn’t matter to me in the least where we go. But this place is a bit
stony for sitting in for long. I’m beginning to feel already rather as
if a plougher had ploughed upon my back and made large furrows; but
of course I’m thinking principally of Frank on account of his sprained
ankle. A grassy couch would be much pleasanter for him, and there is
grass where we left the Primus stove. We can row back. It isn’t a very
long pull.”
“The wind’s dropped, Miss, with the fall of the tide,” said Jimmy, “and
what’s left of it has gone round to the southward.”
“That settles it,” said Priscilla. “Frank, you and Miss Rutherford, go
in the Tortoise. Jimmy and I will row the other boat and tow you.”
“I can row all right,” said Frank.
To be treated as incapable by Priscilla when they were alone together
was unpleasant but tolerable. To be held up as an object of scorn to
Miss Rutherford was not tolerable. He had already exposed himself to her
contempt by running her down. He was anxious to show her that he was not
altogether a fool in a boat.
“You can’t, much,” said Priscilla. “At least you didn’t seem as if you
could yesterday; but if you like you can try. We’ll take the oars out of
the Tortoise into your boat, Jimmy, and pull four.”
“I don’t see how that could be, Miss, for there’s only three seats in my
boat along with the one in the stern and you couldn’t row from that.”
“Don’t be a fool, Jimmy. I’ll pull two oars in the middle. Frank will
take one in the bow, and you’ll pull stroke. Miss Rutherford will have
the Tortoise all to herself.”
Frank found it comparatively easy to row in Jimmy Kinsella’s boat. The
oar was short and stumpy with a very narrow blade. It was worked between
two thole pins of which one was cracked and required tender treatment.
It was impossible to pull comfortably while sitting in the middle of
the seat; he still hit Priscilla in the back when he swung forward; but
there was no boom to hit him and there was no mast behind him to bump
his own back against. Priscilla was too fully occupied managing her own
two oars to pay much attention to him. Jimmy Kinsella pulled away with
dogged indifference to what any one else was doing. Miss Rutherford sat
in the stern of the Tortoise and shouted encouraging remarks from time
to time. She had, apparently, boated on the Thames at some time in her
life, for she was mistress of a good deal of rowing slang which she used
with vigour and effect. It cheered Frank greatly to hear the more
or less familiar words, for he realised almost at once that neither
Priscilla nor Jimmy Kinsella understood them. He felt a warm affection
for Miss Rutherford rise in his heart when she told Jimmy, who sat
humped up over his oar, to keep his back flat. Jimmy merely smiled in
reply. He had known since he was two years old that the flatness or
roundness of the rower’s back has nothing whatever to do with the
progress of a boat in Rosnacree Bay. A few minutes later she accused
Priscilla of “bucketing,” and Frank loved her for the word. Priscilla
replied indignantly with an obvious misapprehension of Miss Rutherford’s
meaning. Frank, who was rowing in his best style, smiled and was pleased
to catch sight of an answering smile on Miss Rutherford’s lips. He had
established an understanding with her. She and he, as representatives of
the rowing of a higher civilisation, could afford to smile together over
the barbarous methods of Priscilla and Jimmy Kinsella.
The tide was still against them, though the full strength of the ebb
was past. The stream which ran through the narrow water-way had to be
reckoned with.
The Tortoise, when being towed, behaved after the manner of her kind.
She hung heavily on the tow rope for a minute; then rushed forward as if
she wished to bump the stern of Jimmy’s boat At the last moment she
used to change her mind and swoop off to the right or left, only to be
brought up short by the rope at which she tugged with angry jerks until,
finding that it really could not be broken, she dropped sulkily astern.
These manoeuvres, though repeated with every possible variation, left
Priscilla and Jimmy Kinsella entirely unmoved. They pulled with the same
stolid indifference whatever pranks the Tortoise played. They annoyed
Frank. Sometimes when the tow rope hung slack in the water, he pulled
through his stroke with ease and comfort. Sometimes when the Tortoise
hung back heavily he seemed to be pulling against an impossible dead
weight. But his worst experience came when the Tortoise altered her
tactics in the middle of one of his strokes. Then, if it happened that
she sulked suddenly, he was brought up short with a jerk that jarred his
spine. If, on the other; hand, she chose to rush forward when he had
his weight well on the end of his oar, he ran a serious risk of falling
backwards after the manner of beginners who catch crabs. The side swoops
of the Tortoise were equally trying. They seemed to Frank to disturb
hopelessly the whole rhythm of the rowing. Nothing but the encouragement
which came to him from Miss Rutherford’s esoteric slang kept him from
losing his temper. He could not have been greatly blamed if he had lost
it. It was after three o’clock. He had breakfasted, meagrely, on bread
and honey, at half past seven. He had spent the intervening seven and a
half hours on the sea, eating nothing but the one peppermit cream which
Miss Rutherford pressed on him while he held the Tortoise at Craggeen.
Priscilla had eaten a great many peppermint cream and was besides more
inured to starvation on the water of the bay than Frank was. But even
Priscilla, when the excitement of getting away from Craggeen had passed,
seemed slightly depressed. She scarcely spoke at all, and when
she replied to Miss Rutherford’s accusation of “bucketing” did so
incisively.
The boats turned into the bay from which Miss Rutherford had first
hailed the Tortoise. They were safely beached. Priscilla ran up to the
nook under the hill where the Primus stove was left. Miss Rutherford and
Jimmy stayed to help Frank.
“It’s all right,” shouted Priscilla. “A good deal has boiled away, but
the Primus stove evidently went out in time to prevent the bottom being
boiled out of the pot. Want of paraffin, I expect.”
“Never mind,” said Miss Rutherford, “I have some more in a bottle. We
can boil it up again.”
“It’s hardly worth while,” said Priscilla. “I expect it would be quite
good cold, what’s left of it. Thickish of course, but nourishing.”
“We’ll make a second brew,” said Miss Rutherford. “I have another
package. Jimmy, do you know if there’s any water in this neighbourhood?”
“There’s a well beyond,” said Jimmy, “at the end of the field across the
hill, but I don’t would the likes of yez drink the water that does be
in it.”
“Saltish?” said Priscilla.
“It is not then. But the cattle does be drinking out of it and I
wouldn’t say it was too clean.”
“If we boil it,” said Frank, “that won’t matter.”
He had read, as most of us did at the time, accounts of the precautions
taken by the Japanese doctors during the war with Russia to save the
soldiers under their care from enteric fever. He believed that boiling
removed dirt from water.
“There’s worms in it,” said Jimmy. “It’s hardly ever you take a cupful
out of it without you’d feel the worms on your tongue and you drinking
it.”
Miss Rutherford looked at Priscilla, who appeared undismayed at the
prospect of swallowing worms. Then she looked at Frank. He was evidently
doubtful. His faith in boiling did not save him from a certain shrinking
from wormy soup.
“Once we were out for a picnic,” said Priscilla, “and when we’d finished
tea we found a frog, dead, of course, in the bottom of the kettle. It
hadn’t flavoured the tea in the least. In fact we didn’t know it was
there till afterwards.”
She poured out the cold soup into the two cups and the enamelled mug as
she spoke. Then she handed the pot to Jimmy.
“Run now,” she said, “and fill that up with your dirty water. We’ll
have the stove lit and the other packet of soup ready by the time you’re
back.”
The soup which had not boiled away was very thick indeed. It turned out
to be impossible to drink it, but Priscilla discovered that it could be
poured out slowly, like clotted cream, on pieces of bread held ready for
it under the rims of the cups. It remained, spreading gradually, on top
of the bread long enough to allow a prompt eater to get the whole thing
into his mouth without allowing any of the soup to be wasted by dripping
on to the ground. The flavour was excellent.
Jimmy returned with the water. Miss Rutherford put the pot on the stove
at once. It was better, she said, to boil it without looking at it.
“The directions for use,” said Priscilla, “say that the water should be
brought to the boil before the soup is put in. But that, of course,
is ridiculous. We’ll put the dry soup in at once and let it simmer. I
expect the flavour will come out all right if we leave it till it does
boil.”
“In the meanwhile,” said Miss Rutherford, “we’ll attack the Californian
peaches.”
They ate them, as they had eaten the others the day before, in their
fingers, straight out of the tin with greedy rapture. Five half peaches,
nearly all the juice, and a large chunk of bread, were given to Jimmy
Kinsella, who carried them off and devoured them in privacy behind his
boat.
“Tomorrow,” said Priscilla, “we’ll have another go at the spies. They’re
desperately afraid of us. I could see that when they were escaping
across Finilaun harbour.”
“By the expression of their faces?” said Miss Rutherford.
“Not exactly. It was more the way they were going on. Sylvia Courtney
was once learning off a poem called ‘The Ancient Mariner.’ That was when
she was going in for the prize in English literature. She and I sleep in
the same room and she used to say a few verses of it every night while
we were doing our hairs. I never thought any of it would come in useful
to me, but it has; which just shows that one never ought to waste
anything. The bit I mean was about a man who walked along a road at
night in fear and dread. He used to look round and then turn no more
his head, because he knew a frightful fiend did close behind him tread.
That’s exactly what those two spies did today when they were sailing