Priscilla's Spies
lordship wouldn’t be put off, and you’re to hire another boat.”
“What boat?”
“It was Joseph Antony Kinsella’s he mentioned,” said the sergeant, “when
I told him it was likely he’d be in with another load of gravel. But
sure one boat’s as good as another so long as it is a boat. His lordship
wouldn’t be turned aside from going.”
“Them ones,” said Peter Walsh, “must have their own way whatever
happens. It’s pleasure sailing they’re for, I’m thinking, among the
islands?”
“It might be,” said the sergeant “I didn’t ask.”
“You could guess though.”
“And if I could, do you think I’d tell you? It’s too fond of asking
questions you are, Peter Walsh, about what doesn’t concern you.”
The sergeant turned his back and walked away. Peter Walsh watched him
enter the barrack. Then he himself went back to Sweeny’s shop.
“They’re wanting a boat,” he said. “Joseph Antony Kinsella’s or
another.”
“And what for?”
“Unless it’s to go out to Inishbawn,” said Peter, “I don’t know what
for.”
“Bedamn then,” said Sweeny, “there’s no boat for them.”
“I was thinking that myself.”
“I wouldn’t wonder,” said Sweeney, “but something might stop Joseph
Antony Kinsella from coming in today after all, thought he’s due with
another load of gravel.”
“He mightn’t come,” said Patsy the smith. “There’s many a thing could
happen to prevent him.”
“What time were they thinking of starting?” said Sweeny.
“Twelve o’clock,” said Peter Walsh.
“Patsy,” said Sweeny, “let you take Brannigan’s old punt and go down as
far as the stone perch to try can you see Joseph Antony Kinsella coming
in.”
Patsy the smith was in a condition of great physical misery; but the
occasion demanded energy and self-sacrifice. He staggered down to the
slip, loosed the mooring rope of Brannigan’s dilapidated punt and drove
her slowly down the harbour, waggling one oar over her stern.
“Let you go round the town,” said Sweeny to Peter Walsh, “and find out
where the fellows is that came in with the boats that’s at the quay this
minute. It’s time they were off out of this.”
Peter Walsh left the shop. In a minute or two he came back again.
“There’s Miss Priscilla’s boat,” he said, “the Blue Wanderer. You’re
forgetting her.”
“They’d never venture as far as Inishbawn in her,” said Sweeny.
“They might then. The wind’s east and she’d run out easy enough under
the little lug.”
“They’d have to row back.”
“The likes of them ones,” said Peter Walsh, “wouldn’t think about how
they’d get back till the time came. I’m uneasy about that boat, so I
am.”
“Tell me this now,” said Sweeny, after a moment’s consideration. “Did
the young lady say e’er a word to you about giving the boat a fresh lick
of paint?”
“She did not. Why would she? Amn’t I just after painting the boat?”
“Are you sure now she didn’t say she’d be the better of another coat?”
“She might then, some time that I wouldn’t be paying much attention to
what she said. I’m a terrible one to disremember things anyway.”
“You’d better do it then,” said Sweeny. “There’s plenty of the same
paint you had before in Brannigan’s, and it will do the boat no harm to
get a lick with it.”
Peter Walsh left the shop again and walked in a careless way down the
street. Sweeny followed him at a little distance and spoke to the men
who were sitting on Brannigan’s window sills. They rose at once and
walked down to the slip. In a few minutes the Blue Wanderer was dragged
from her moorings and carried up to a glassy patch of waste land at
the end of the quay. Her floor boards were taken out of her, her oars,
rudder and mast were laid on the grass. The boat herself was turned
bottom upwards.
In the course of the next half hour the owners of the boats which lay
alongside the quay sauntered down one by one. Brown lugsails were run up
on the smaller boats. The mainsail of the hooker was slowly hoisted. At
half past eleven there was not a single boat of any kind left afloat in
the harbour. Peter Walsh, his coat off and his sleeves rolled up, was
laying long stripes of green paint on the already shining bottom of the
Blue Wanderer. He worked with the greatest zeal and earnestness. Timothy
Sweeny looked at the empty harbour with satisfaction. Then he went back
to the shop and dosed comfortably behind his bar.
Patsy the smith stood in the stern of the punt and waggled his oar with
force and skill. He disliked taking this kind of exercise very much
indeed. His nature craved for copious, cooling drafts of porter, drawn
straight from the cask and served in large thick tumblers. He had
intended to spend the morning in taking this kind of refreshment. The
day was exceedingly hot. When he reached the end of the quay his mouth
was quite dry inside and his legs were shaking under him. He looked
round with eyes which were strikingly bloodshot. There was no sign of
Joseph Antony Kinsella’s boat on the long stretch of water between him
and the stone perch. If he could have articulated at all he would have
sworn. Being unable to swear he groaned deeply and took his oar again.
The punt wobbled forward very much as a fat duck walks.
When he reached Delgipish he looked round again. A mile out beyond the
stone perch he saw a boat moving slowly towards him. His eyes served him
badly and although he could see the splash of the oars in the water
he could not make out who the rower was. A man of weaker character,
suffering the same physical torture, would have allowed himself to drift
on the shore of Delginish and there would have awaited the coming of the
boat he had seen. But Patsy the smith was brave. He was also nerved by
the extreme importance of his mission. It was absolutely necessary that
something should happen to prevent Joseph Antony bringing his boat to
Rosnacree harbour. The sight of one brown sail and then another stealing
round the end of the quay gave him fresh courage. Timothy Sweeny and
Peter Walsh had done their work on shore. He was determined not to fail
in carrying through his part of a masterly scheme.
For twenty minutes Patsy the smith sculled on. It seemed to him
sometimes as if each sway of his body, each tug of his tired arms must
be the last possible. Yet he succeeded in going on. He dared not look
round lest the boat he had seen should prove after all not to be the one
he sought. Such a disappointment would, he knew, be more than he could
bear. At last the splash of oars reached his ears and he heard himself
hailed by name. The voice was Kinsella’s. The relief was too much for
Patsy. He sat down on the thwart behind him and was violently sick.
Kinsella laid his boat alongside the punt and looked calmly at his
friend. Not until the worst spasms were over did he speak.
“Faith, Patsy,” he said, “it must have been a terrible drenching you
gave yourself last night, and the stuff was good too, as good as ever I
seen. What has you in the state you’re in at all?”
The sickness had to some extent revived Patsy the smith. He was able to
speak, though with difficulty.
“Go back out of that,” he said.
“And why would I go back?”
“Timothy Sweeny says you’re to go back, for if you come in to the quay
today there’ll be the devil and all if not worse.”
“If that’s the way of it I will go back; but I’d be glad, so I would, if
I knew what Sweeny means by it. It’s a poor thing to be breaking my back
rowing a boatload of gravel all the way from Inishbawn and then to be
told to turn round and go back; and just now too, when the wind has
dropped and it’s beginning to look mighty black over to the eastward.”
“You’re to go back,” said Patsy, “because the strange gentleman that’s
up at the big house is wanting your boat.”
“Let him want!”
“He’ll get it, if so be that you go in to the quay, and when he has it
the first thing he’ll do is to go out to Inishbawn. It’s there he wants
to be and it’s yourself knows best what he’d find if he got there. Go
back, I tell you.”
“If you’ll take my advice,” said Kinsella, “you will go back yourself.
There’s thunder beyond there coming up, and there’ll be a breeze setting
towards it from the west before another ten minutes is over our heads.
I don’t know will you care for that in the state you’re in this minute,
with that old punt and only one oar. The tide’ll be running strong
against the breeze and there’ll be a kick-up at the stone perch.”
Patsy the smith saw the wisdom of this advice. Tired as he was he seized
his one oar and began sculling home. Kinsella watched him go and then
did a peculiar thing. He took the shovel which lay amidships in his
boat and began to heave his cargo of gravel into the sea. As he worked
a faint breeze from the west rose, fanned him and died away. Another
succeeded it and then another. Kinsella looked round him. The four boats
which had drifted out from the quay before the easterly breeze of the
morning, had hauled in their sheets. They were awaiting a wind from
the west. The heavy purple thunder cloud was rapidly climbing the sky.
Kinsella shovelled hard at his gravel. His boat, lightened of her load,
rose in the water, showing inch by inch more free board. A steady breeze
from the west succeeded the light occasional puffs. It increased in
strength. The four boats inside him stooped to it. They sped across
and across the channel towards the stone perch in short tacks. Kinsella
hoisted his sail and took the tiller. The boat swung up into the wind
and coursed away to the south west, close hauled to a stiff west wind.
The thunder cloud burst over Rosnacree.
Sir Lucius and Lord Torrington drove into the town and pulled up in
front of Brannigan’s shop at a quarter to twelve. They looked round the
empty harbour in some surprise. Sir Lucius went at once into the shop.
Lord Torrington, being an Englishman with a proper belief in the
forces of law and order, walked a few yards back and entered the police
barracks.
“Brannigan,” said Sir Lucius, “where’s my boat? and where’s that ruffian
Peter Walsh?”
“Your boat, is it?” said Brannigan.
“I sent down word to Peter Walsh to have her ready for me at twelve, or,
if my daughter had taken her out----”
“It would be better,” said Brannigan, “if you were to see Peter Walsh
yourself. Sure I don’t know what’s happened to your boat.”
“Where’s Peter Walsh?”
“He’s down at the end of the quay putting an extra coat of paint on Miss
Priscilla’s boat. I don’t know what sense there is in doing the like,
but of course he wouldn’t care to go contrary to what the young lady
might say.”
Sir Lucius left the shop abruptly. At the door he ran into Lord
Torrington and the police sergeant.
“Damn it all, Lentaigne,” said Lord Torrington, “how are we going to get
out?”
“There was boats in it,” said the police sergeant, “plenty of them, when
I gave your lordship’s message to Peter Walsh.”
“Where are they now?” said Lord Torrington. “What’s the good of telling
me they were here when they’re not?”
The police sergeant looked cautiously round.
“I wouldn’t say,” he said at last, “but they’re gone out of it, every
one of the whole lot of them.”
Peter Walsh, his paint brush in his hand, and an expression of
respectful regret, on his face, came up to Sir Lucius and touched his
hat.
“What’s the meaning of this?” said Sir Lucius. “Didn’t I send you word
to have a boat, either my own or some other, ready for me at twelve?”
“The message the sergeant gave me,” said Peter Walsh, “was to engage
Joseph Antony Kinsella’s boat for your honour if so be that Miss
Priscilla had your own took out.”
“And why the devil didn’t you?” said Lord Torrington.
“Because she’s not in it, your honour; nor hasn’t been this day. I was
waiting for her and the minute she came to the quay I’d have been in
her, helping Joseph Antony to shovel out the gravel the way she’d be fit