Priscilla's Spies
“That cheers me up a little,” said Miss Rutherford, “but do explain.”
“It’s quite simple really,” said Priscilla. “Though it may seem a little
complicated. You explain, Cousin Frank, and be sure to begin at the
beginning or she won’t understand.”
“Lord Torrington,” said Frank, “is Secretary of State for War, and his
daughter, Lady Isabel--but perhaps I’d better tell you first that as I
was coming over to Ireland I met----”
“‘Now who be ye would cross Lochgyle,” said Priscilla, waving her hands
towards the sea, “‘this dark and stormy water?’”
“‘Oh I’m the chief of Ulva’s Isle, and this Lord Ullin’s daughter.’ You
know that poem, I suppose.”
“I’ve known it for years,” said Miss Rutherford.
“Well, thats it,” said Priscilla. “You have the whole thing now.”
“I see,” said Miss Rutherford, “I see it all now, or almost all. This is
far better than spies. How did you ever think of it?”
“It’s true,” said Priscilla.
“Lord Torrington,” said Frank, “is over here stopping with my uncle, and
he came specially to find his daughter who’s run away.”
“‘One lovely hand stretched out for aid,’” said Priscilla, “‘and one was
round her lover.’ That’s what we want to avoid if we can. I call that an
errand of mercy. Don’t you?”
“It’s far and away the most merciful errand I ever heard of,” said Miss
Rutherford. “But why don’t you hurry? At any moment now her father’s men
may reach the shore.”
“We can’t,” said Priscilla, “hurry any more than we are. The wind’s
dropping every minute. Luff her a little bit, Frank, or she won’t clear
the point. The tide’s taking us down, and that point runs out a terrific
distance.”
“The only thing I don’t quite see yet,” said Miss Rutherford, “is where
the vengeance comes in.”
“That’s to be taken on her father,” said Priscilla.
“Quite right,” said Miss Rutherford, “as a matter of abstract justice;
but I rather gathered from the way you spoke, Priscilla, that Frank had
some kind of private feud with the old gentleman.”
“He shoved me off the end of the steamer’s gangway,” said Frank, “and
sprained my ankle. He has never so much as said he was sorry.”
“Good,” said Miss Rutherford. “Now our consciences are absolutely clear.
What we are going to do is to carry off the blushing bride to some
distant island.”
“Inishbawn,” said Priscilla.
The Tortoise had slipped through the passage at the south end of
Finislaun. She was moving very slowly across another stretch of open
water. On her lee bow lay Inishbawn. The island differs from most others
in the bay in being twin. Instead of one there are two green mounds
linked together by a long ridge of grey boulders. Tides sweep furiously
round the two horns of it, but the water inside is calm and sheltered
from any wind except one from the south east. On the slope of the
northern hill stands the Kinsellas’ cottage, with certain patches of
cultivated land around it. The southern hill is bare pasture land roamed
over by bullocks and a few sheep which in stormy weather or night cross
the stony isthmus to seek companionship and shelter near the cottage.
“Isn’t that Inishbawn?” said Miss Rutherford. “Jimmy Kinsella told me it
was the day I first met you.”
“That’s it,” said Priscilla, “that’s where we mean to put her.”
“It’s not half far enough away,” said Miss Rutherford. “Lord Ullin or
Torrington or whatever lord it is will quite easily follow her there.
We must go much further, right out into the west to High Brasail, where
lovers are ever young and angry fathers do not come.”
“Inishbawn will do all right,” said Priscilla.
“Priscilla says,” said Frank, “that the people won’t let Lord Torrington
land on Inishbawn.”
“They certainly seemed to have some objection to letting any one land,”
said Miss Rutherford. “Every time I suggested going there Jimmy has
headed me off with one excuse or another.”
“They have very good reasons,” said Priscilla. “I have more or less idea
what they are; but of course I can’t tell you. It’s never right to tell
other people’s secrets unless you’re perfectly sure that you know them
yourself, and I’m not sure. You hardly ever can be unless you happen to
be one of the people that has the secret and in this case I’m not.”
“I don’t want to ask embarrassing questions,” said Miss Rutherford,
“though I’m almost consumed with curiosity about the secret. But are you
quite sure that it’s of a kind that will really prevent Lord Torrington
landing there?”
“Quite absolutely, dead, cock sure,” said Priscilla. “If I’m right about
the secret and I think I am, though of course it’s quite possible that I
may not be, but if I am there isn’t a man about the bay who wouldn’t
die a thousand miserable deaths rather than let Lord Torrington and the
police sergeant land on that island.”
“Then all we’ve got to do,” said Miss Rutherford, “is to get her there
and she’s safe.”
Priscilla hurriedly turned over the corner of the spinnaker and got out
the jam pot. She glanced at its paper cover.
“Inishbawn is an inviolable sanctuary,” she said. “What a mercy it is
that I wrote down that word last night. I had forgotten it again. It’s a
desperately hard word to remember.”
“It’s a very good word,” said Miss Rutherford.
“It’s useful anyhow,” said Priscilla. “In fact, considering what we’re
going to do I don’t see how we could very well get on without it. I
suppose it’s rather too early to have luncheon.”
“It’s only half past eleven,” said Frank, “but----”
“I breakfasted early,” said Miss Rutherford.
“We scarcely breakfasted at all,” said Frank.
“All right,” said Priscilla, “the wind’s gone hopelessly. It’s much too
hot to row, so I suppose we may as well have luncheon though it’s not
the proper time.”
“Let us shake ourselves free of the wretched conventions of ordinary
civilisation,” said Miss Rutherford. “Let us eat when we are hungry
without regard to the clock. Let us gorge ourselves with California
peach juice. Let us suck the burning peppermint--”
“We haven’t any today,” said Priscilla. “Brannigan’s wasn’t open when we
started.”
“The principle is just the same,” said Miss Rutherford. “Whatever food
you have is sure to be refreshingly unusual.”
CHAPTER XIX
The Tortoise lay absolutely becalmed. The ebbing tide carried her
slowly past Inishbawn towards the deep passage between the end of the
breakwater of boulders and the point on which the lighthouse stands.
The air was extraordinarily close and oppressive. Even Priscilla seemed
affected by it. She lay against the side of the boat with her hands
trailing idly in the water. Frank sat with the useless tiller in his
hand and watched the boom swing slowly across as the boat swayed this
way or that with the current. Miss Rutherford, her face glistening with
heat, had gone to sleep in a most uncomfortable attitude soon after
luncheon. Her head nodded backwards from time to time and whenever it
did so she opened her eyes, smiled at Frank, rearranged herself a little
and then went to sleep again.
The cattle on Inishbawn had forsaken their scanty pasture and stood
knee-deep in the sea. Not even the wild new heifer, which had gored
Jimmy Kinsella, if such a creature existed at all, would have had energy
to do much. A dog, which ought perhaps to have been barking at the
cattle, lay prostrate under the shadow afforded by a grassy bank. A
flock of white terns floated motionless a few yards from the Tortoise,
looking like a miniature fleet of graceful, white-sailed pleasure boats.
They had no heart to go circling and swooping for fish.
Perhaps it would have been useless if they had. The fish themselves may
well have been lying, in search of coolness among the weedy stones at
the bottom of the sea. Of all living creatures the jelly fish alone
seemed to retain any spirit. Immense crowds of them drifted past the
Tortoise, swelling out and closing again their concave bodies, revolving
slowly round, dragging long purple tendrils deliriously through the warm
water. They swept past Priscilla’s drooping hands, touching them with
their yielding bodies and brushing them softly with their tendrils. Now
and then she lifted one from the water, watched it lie flaccid on the
palm of her hand and then dropped it into the sea again.
A faint air of wind stole across from Inishbawn. The Tortoise, utterly
without steerage way, felt it and turned slowly towards it. It was as if
she stretched her head out for another such gentle kiss as the wind gave
her. Priscilla felt it, and with returning animation made a plunge for
an unusually large jelly fish, captured it and held it up triumphantly.
“It’s a pity you’re not out after jelly fish, Miss Rutherford,” she
said, “instead of sponges. There are thousands and thousands of them. We
could fill the boat with them in half an hour.”
Miss Rutherford made no reply. She had succeeded in wriggling herself
into such a position that her head rested on the thwart of the boat. Her
face was extremely red, and, owing perhaps to the twisted position of
her neck, she was snoring. Priscilla looked at Frank and smiled.
“I wonder,” she said, “if we ought to wake her up. She won’t like it,
of course, but it may be the kindest thing to do. It wouldn’t be at all
nice for her if she smothered in her sleep.”
Frank blinked lazily. He was very nearly asleep.
“You’re a nice pair,” said Priscilla. “What on earth is the point of
dropping off like that in the middle of the day? Ghastly laziness I call
it.”
Another puff of wind and then another came from the west. The Tortoise
began to move through the water. Frank woke up and paid serious
attention to his steering. Priscilla looked round the sea and then the
sky. The thunder storm was breaking over Rosnacree, five miles to the
east, and a heavy bank of dark clouds was piled up across the sky.
“It looks uncommonly queer,” said Priscilla, “rather magnificent in
some ways, but I wish I knew exactly what it’s going to do. I don’t
understand this breeze coming in from the west. It’s freshening too.”
A long deep growl reached them from the east.
“Thunder,” said Frank.
“Must be,” said Priscilla. “The clouds are coming up against the wind.
Only thunder does that--and liberty. At least Wordsworth says liberty
does. I never saw it myself. I told you we were doing ‘The Excursion’
last term. It’s in that somewhere. I say, this breeze is freshening.
Keep her just as she’s going, Cousin Frank. We’ll be able to let her go
in a minute. Oh, do look at the water!”
The sea had turned a deep purple colour. In spite of the ripples which
the westerly breeze raised on its surface it had a curious look of sulky
menace.
“Miss Rutherford,” said Priscilla, “wake up, we’re going to have a
thunder storm.”
Miss Rutherford sat up with a start
“A storm!” she said. “How splendid! Any chance of being wrecked?”
“Not at present,” said Priscilla, “but you never know what may happen.
If you feel at all nervous I’ll steer myself.”
“Nervous!” said Miss Rutherford. “I’m delighted. There’s nothing I
should like more than to be wrecked on a desert island with you two.
It would just complete the most glorious series of adventures I’ve ever
had. Do try and get wrecked.”
“Hadn’t we better go in to Inishbawn and wait till it’s over?” said
Frank.
“Nonsense,” said Priscilla. “Wetting won’t hurt us, and anyway we’ll be
at Inishminna in half an hour with this breeze.”
The Tortoise was racing through the dark water. She was listed over so
that her lee gunwale seemed likely to dip under. Miss Rutherford, in
spite of her wish for shipwreck, scrambled up to windward. They reached
the point of Ardilaun and fled, bending and staggering, down the narrow
passage between it and Inishlean. Priscilla took the mainsheet in her
hand and ordered Frank to luff a little. There was another period of