Priscilla's Spies
for two gentlemen like yourselves to go in her.”
“Is there no other boat to be got?” said Lord Torrington.
“Launch Miss Priscilla’s at once,” said Sir Lucius.
“Sure the paint’s wet on the bottom of her.”
“Launch her,” said Sir Lucius, “paint or not paint.”
“I’ll launch her if your honour bids me,” said Peter Walsh. “But what
use will she be to you when she’s in the water? She’ll not work to
windward for you under the little lug that’s in her, and it’s from the
west the wind’s coming now.”
He looked round the sky as he spoke.
“Glory be to God!” he said. “Will you look at what’s coming. There’s
thunder in it and maybe worse.”
Sir Lucius took Lord Torrington by the arm and led him out of earshot of
the police sergeant and Peter Walsh.
“We’d better not go today, Torrington. There’s a thunder storm coming.
We’d simply get drenched.”
“I don’t care if I am drenched.”
“And besides we can’t go. There isn’t a boat. We couldn’t get anywhere
in that little thing of Priscilla’s. After all if she’s on an island
today she’ll be there tomorrow.”
“If that fool of a sergeant told us the truth this morning,” said Lord
Torrington, “and there’s some man with her I want to break every bone in
his body as soon as I can.”
“He’ll be there tomorrow,” said Sir Lucius, “and I’ll see that there’s a
boat here to take us out.”
CHAPTER XVIII
Priscilla and Frank left the quay at half past seven against a tide
which was still rising, but with a pleasant easterly breeze behind
them. Once past the stone perch Priscilla set the boat on her course for
Craggeen and gave the tiller to Frank. She herself pulled a spinnaker
from beneath the stern sheets and explained to Frank that when she had
hoisted it the boat’s speed would be considerably increased. Then she
made him uncomfortable by hitting him several times in different parts
of the body with a long spar which she called the spinnaker boom.
The setting of this sail struck Frank as an immensely complicated
business. He watched Priscilla working with a whole series of ropes and
admired her skill greatly, until it occurred to him that she was not
very sure of what she was doing. A rope, which she had made fast with
some care close beside him, had to be cast loose, carried forward,
passed outside a stay, and then made fast again. There appeared to be
three corners to the spinnaker, and all three were hooked turn about on
the end of the boom. Even when the third was unhooked again and the
one which had been tried first restored to its place Priscilla seemed
a little dissatisfied with the result. Another of the three corners was
caught and held by the clip-hooks on the end of the halliard. Priscilla
moused these carefully, explaining why she did so, and then found that
she had to cut the mousing and catch the remaining corner of the sail
with the hooks. When at last she triumphantly hoisted it the thing went
up in a kind of bundle. Its own sheet was wrapped round it twice, and
a jib sheet which had somehow wandered away from its proper place got
twined round and round the boom which remained immovable near the mast.
Priscilla surveyed the result of her work with a puzzled frown. Then she
lowered the sail and turned to Frank.
“I thoroughly understand spinnakers,” she said, “in theory. I don’t
suppose that there’s a single thing known about them that I don’t know.
But they’re beastly confusing things when you come to deal with them
in practical life. Lots of other things are like that. It’s exactly the
same with algebra. I expect I’ve told you that I simply loathe algebra.
Well, that’s the reason. I understand it all right, but when it comes
to doing it, it comes out just like that spinnaker. However it doesn’t
really matter. That’s the great comfort about most things. You get on
quite well enough without them, though of course you would get on better
with, if you could do them.”
The Tortoise did in fact slip along at a very satisfactory pace in spite
of the lightness of the wind. It was just half past eight when they
reached the mouth of the bay in which they had lunched the day before
with Miss Rutherford.
“I feel rather,” said Priscilla, “as if I could do with a little
breakfast There’s no use going on shore. Let’s anchor and eat what we
want in the boat.”
Frank who was very hungry agreed at once. He rounded the boat up into
the wind and Priscilla flung the anchor overboard. Then she picked her
parcels one by one from the folds of the spinnaker in which they had
wrapped themselves.
“It won’t do,” she said, “to eat everything today at the first go off
the way we did yesterday. Specially as we’ve promised to give Miss
Rutherford luncheon. The duck, for instance, had better be kept.”
She laid the duck down again and covered it, a little regretfully,
with the spinnaker. She took up the jampot which contained the caramel
pudding. Her face brightened as she looked at it.
“By the way, Cousin Frank,” she said. “That word is inviolable.”
“That word?”
“The sanctuary and secret word,” said Priscilla. “Don’t you remember I
couldn’t get it last night. But I did after I went to sleep which was
jolly lucky. I hopped up at once and wrote it down. Now we know what
Inishbawn will be for Lady Torrington’s poor daughter when we get her
there. All the same I don’t think we’d better eat the caramel pudding at
breakfast. It mightn’t be wholesome for you at this hour--on account of
your sprained ankle, I mean, and not being accustomed to puddings at
breakfast. Besides I expect Miss Rutherford would rather like it. What
do you say to starting with an artichoke each?”
Frank was ready to start with anything that was given him. He ate the
artichoke greedily and felt hardly less hungry when he had finished it.
Priscilla too seemed unsatisfied. She said that they had perhaps made a
mistake in beginning with the artichokes. But her sense of duty and
her instinct for hospitality triumphed over her appetite. Feeling that
temptation might prove overpowering, she put the slices of cold fish out
of sight under the spinnaker with the remark that they ought to be kept
for Miss Rutherford. She and Frank ate the herrings’ roes on toast, the
sweetbread and one of the four rolls. Then though Frank still looked
hungry, Priscilla hoisted the foresail and hauled up the anchor.
They reached the passage past Craggeen when the tide was at the full and
threaded their way among the rocks successfully. They passed into the
wide water of Finilaun roads. A long reach lay before them and the wind
had begun to die down as the tide turned. Priscilla, leaving Frank
to steer, settled herself comfortably on the weather side of the boat
between the centreboard case and the gunwale. Far down to leeward
another boat was slipping across the roads towards the south. She had an
old stained jib and an obtrusively new mainsail which shone dazzlingly
white in the sun. Priscilla watched her with idle interest for some
time. Then she announced that she was Flanagan’s new boat.
“He bought the calico for the sail at Brannigan’s,” she said, “and made
it himself. Peter Walsh told me that. I’m bound to say it doesn’t sit
badly; but of course you can’t really tell about the sit of a sail when
the boat’s off the wind. I’d like to see it when she’s close-hauled.
That’s the way with lots of other things besides sails. I dare say now
that Lord Torrington is quite an agreeable sort of man when his daughter
isn’t running away.”
“I’m sure he’s not,” said Frank.
“You can’t be sure,” said Priscilla. “Nobody could, except of course
Lady Torrington and she doesn’t seem to me the sort of person who’s much
cowed in her own house. I wish you’d heard her going for Aunt Juliet
last night, most politely, but every word she said had what’s called in
French a ‘double entendre’ wrapped up in it. That means----”
“I know what it means,” said Frank.
“That’s all right then. I thought perhaps you wouldn’t. I always heard
they rather despised French at boys’ schools, which is idiotic of course
and may not be true.”
Frank recollected a form master with whom, at one stage of his career at
school he used to study the adventures of the innocent Telemaque. This
gentleman refused to read aloud or allow his class to read aloud
the text of the book, alleging that no one who did not suffer from a
malformation of the mouth could pronounce French properly. Still even
this master must have attached some meaning to the phrase “double
entendre,” though he might not have used it in precisely Priscilla’s
sense.
“Flanagan has probably been over to Curraunbeg,” said Priscilla, “to see
how his old boat is looking. After what Jimmy Kinsella is sure to
have told him about the way they’re treating her he’s naturally a bit
anxious. I wonder will he have the nerve to charge them anything extra
at the end for dilapidations. It’s curious now that we don’t see the
tents on Curraunbeg. I saw them yesterday from Craggeen. Perhaps they’ve
moved round to the other side of the island.”
“There’s a boat coming out from behind the point now,” said Frank.
“Perhaps they’re moving again.”
Priscilla leaned over the gunwale and stared long at the boat which
Frank pointed out.
“There’s a man and a woman in her,” he said.
“It’s not Flanagan’s old boat though,” said Priscilla. “I rather think
it’s Jimmy Kinsella. I hope Miss Rutherford hasn’t been hunting them on
her own, under the impression that they’re German spies. We oughtn’t to
have told her that. She’s so frightfully impulsive you can’t tell what
she’d do.”
Jimmy Kinsella had recognised the Tortoise shortly after he rounded
the point of Curraunbeg. He dropped his lug sail and began to row up to
windward evidently meaning to get within speaking distance of Priscilla.
The boats approached each other at an angle. Miss Rutherford stood up
in the stern of hers, waved a pocket handkerchief and shouted. Priscilla
shouted in reply. Frank threw the Tortoise up into the wind and Jimmy
Kinsella pulled alongside.
“They’ve gone,” said Miss Rutherford. “They’ve escaped you again.”
“You’ve frightened them away,” said Priscilla. “I wish you wouldn’t.”
“No,” said Miss Rutherford, “I didn’t Honour bright! They’d gone before
I got there. The people on the island said they packed up early this
morning and when they saw Flanagan passing in his new boat they hailed
him and got him to take them off.”
“Wasn’t that the boat we saw just now?” said Frank.
“Yes,” said Priscilla. “Frightfully annoying, isn’t it?”
“Never mind,” said Miss Rutherford. “I know where they’re gone. The
people on the island told me. To Inishminna. Wasn’t Inishminna the name,
Jimmy?”
“It was, Miss.”
“Climb on board,” said Priscilla. “That is to say if you want to come.
We must be after them at once. We’ll follow Flanagan. Jimmy can row
through Craggeen passage and pick you up afterwards.”
Miss Rutherford tumbled from her own boat into the Tortoise.
“Thanks awfully,” she said. “I want to see you arrest those spies more
than anything.”
“They’re not spies,” said Priscilla.
“We never really thought they were,” said Frank.
“The truth is----” said Priscilla.
She stopped abruptly and looked round. Jimmy Kinsella was some distance
astern heading for Craggeen. He appeared to be quite out of earshot.
Nevertheless Priscilla lowered her voice to a whisper.
“We’re on an errand of mercy,” she said.
“Oh,” said Miss Rutherford, “not vengeance. I’m disappointed.”
“Mercy is a much nicer thing,” said Priscilla, “besides being more
Christian.”
“All the same,” said Miss Rutherford, “I’m disappointed. Vengeance is
far more exciting.”
“To a certain extent,” said Priscilla, “we’re taking vengeance too.
At least Frank is, on account of his ankle you know. So you needn’t be
disappointed.”