Priscilla's Spies
remains inviolable and I shall be satisfied.”
“Right,” said Priscilla. “Goodbye. We needn’t actually kiss each other,
need we? Of course, if you want to frightfully you can; but I think
kissing’s rather piffle.”
Miss Rutherford contented herself with wringing Priscilla’s hand. Then
she and Priscilla helped Frank out of Jimmy Kinsella’s boat and into the
Tortoise.
The wind was due east and was blowing a good deal harder than it was
when they ran down to Inishbawn. The Tortoise had a long beat before
her, the kind of beat which means that a small boat will take in a good
deal of water. Priscilla passed an oilskin coat to Frank. Having been
wet through by the thunderstorm and having got dry, Frank had no wish
to get wet again. He struggled into the coat, pushing his arms through
sleeves which stuck together and buttoned it round him. The Tortoise
settled down to her work in earnest She listed over until the foaming
dark water rushed along her gunwale. She pounded into the short seas,
lifted her bow clear of them, pounded down again, breasted them, took
them fair on the curve of her bow, deluged herself, Frank’s oilskin and
even the greater part of her sails with showers of spray. The breeze
freshened and at the end of each tack the boat swung round so fast
that Frank, with his maimed ankle, had hard work to scramble over the
centreboard case to the weather side. He slipped and slithered on the
wet floor boards. There was a wash of water on the lee side which caught
and soaked whichever leg he left behind him. He discovered that an
oilskin coat is a miserably inefficient protection in a small boat. Not
that the seas came through it. That does not happen. But while he made
a grab at the flying foresail sheet a green blob of a wave would rush up
his sleeve and soak him elbow high. Or, when he had turned his back
to the wind and settled down comfortably, an insidious shower of spray
found means to get between his coat and his neck, and trickled swiftly
down, saturating his innermost garments to his very waist. Also it is
necessary sometimes to squat with knees bent chinward, and then there
are bulging spaces between the buttons of the coat. Seas, leaping
joyfully clear of the weather bow, came plump into his lap. It became
a subject of interesting speculation whether there was a square inch of
his body left dry anywhere.
Priscilla, who had no oilskin, got wet quicker but was no wetter in the
end. Her cotton frock clung to her. Water oozed out of the tops of
her shoes as she pressed her feet against the lee side of the boat to
maintain her position on the slippery floor boards. She had crammed her
hat under the stern thwart. Her hair, glistening with salt water, blew
in tangles round her head. Her face glowed with excitement. She was
enjoying herself to the utmost.
Tack after tack brought them further up the bay. The wind was still
freshening, but the sea, as they got nearer the eastern shore, became
calmer. The Tortoise raced through it. Sharp squalls struck her
occasionally. She dipped her lee gunwale and took a lump of solid water
on board. Priscilla luffed her and let the main sheet run through her
fingers. The Tortoise bounced up on even keel and shook her sails in an
ill-tempered way. Priscilla, with a pull at the tiller, set her on
her course again. A few minutes later the sea whitened and frothed to
windward and the same process was gone through again. The stone perch
was passed. The tacks became shorter, and the squalls, as the wind
descended from the hills, were more frequent.
But the sail ended triumphantly. Never before had Priscilla rounded up
the Tortoise to her mooring buoy with such absolute precision. Never
before had she so large an audience to witness her skill. Peter Walsh
was waiting for her at the buoy in Bran-nigan’s punt. Patsy the smith,
quite sober but still yellow in the face, was standing on the slip. On
the edge of the quay, having torn themselves from their favourite seat,
were all the loafers who usually occupied Brannigan’s window sills.
Timothy Sweeny had come down from his shop and stood in the background,
a paunchy, flabby figure of a man, with keen beady eyes.
“The weather’s broke, Miss,” said Peter Walsh, as he rowed them ashore.
“The wind will work round to the southeast and your sailing’s done for
this turn.”
“It may not,” said Priscilla, stepping from the punt to the slip, “you
can’t be sure about the wind.”
“But it will, Miss,” said one of the loafers, leaning over to speak to
her.
Another and then another of them took up the words. With absolute
unanimity they assured her that sailing next day would be totally
impossible.
“Unless you’re wanting to drown yourselves,” said Patsy the smith
sullenly.
“The glass has gone down,” said Timothy Sweeny, coming forward.
“Help the gentleman ashore,” said Priscilla, “and don’t croak about the
weather.”
“The master was saying today,” said Peter Walsh, “that he’d take the
Tortoise out tomorrow, and the gentleman that’s up at the house along
with him. I’d be glad now, Miss, if you’d tell him it’ll be no use him
wasting his time coming down to the quay on account of the weather being
broke and the wind going round to the southeast.”
“And the glass going down,” said Sweeny.
“It’ll be better for him to amuse himself some other way tomorrow,” said
Patsy the smith.
“I’ll tell him,” said Priscilla.
“And if the young gentleman that’s with you,” said Peter Walsh, “would
say the same I’d be glad. We wouldn’t like anything would happen to the
master, for he’s well liked.”
“It would be a disgrace to the whole of us,” said Patsy the smith, “if
the strange gentleman was to be drownded.”
“They’d have it on the papers if anything happened him,” said Sweeny,
“and the place would be getting a bad name, which is what I wouldn’t
like on account of being a magistrate.”
Priscilla began to wheel the bath-chair away from the quay. Having gone
a few steps she turned and winked impressively at Peter Walsh. Then she
went on. The party on the quay watched her out of sight.
“Now what,” said Sweeny, “might she mean by that kind of behaviour?”
“It’s as much as to say,” said Peter Walsh, “that she knows damn well
where it is the master and the other gentleman will be wanting to go.”
“She’s mighty cute,” said Sweeny.
“And what’s more,” said Peter Walsh, “she’ll stop him if she’s able. For
she doesn’t want them out on Inishbawn, no more than we do.”
“Are you sure now that she meant that?” said Sweeny.
“I’m as sure as if she said it, and surer.”
“She’s a fine girl, so she is,” said Patsy the smith.
“Devil the finer you’d see,” said one of the loafers, “if you was to
search from this to America.”
This, though a spacious, was a thin compliment.
There are never, even at the height of the transatlantic tourist season,
very many girls between Rosnacree and America.
“Anyway,” said Sweeny hopefully, “it could be that the wind will go
round to the southeast before morning. The glass didn’t rise any since
the thunder.”
“It might,” said Peter Walsh.
A southeast wind is dreaded, with good reason, in Rosnacree Bay. It
descends from the mountains in vicious squalls. It catches rushing tides
at baffling angles and lashes them into white-lipped fury. Sturdy island
boats of the larger size, boats with bluff bows and bulging sides, brave
it under their smallest lugs. But lesser boats, and especially light
pleasure crafts like the Tortoise do well to lie snug at their moorings
till the southeasterly wind has spent its strength.
CHAPTER XX
Timothy Sweeny, J. P., as suited a man of portly figure and civic
dignity, was accustomed to lie long in his bed of a morning. On weekdays
he rose, in a bad temper, at nine o’clock. On Sundays, when he washed
and shaved, he was half an hour later and his temper was worse. An
apprentice took down the shutters of the shop on weekdays at half past
nine. By that time Sweeny, having breakfasted, sworn at his wife and
abused his children, was ready to enter upon the duties of his calling.
On the morning after the thunderstorm he was wakened at the outrageous
hour of half past seven by the rattle of a shower of pebbles against his
window. The room he slept in looked out on the back-yard through which
his Sunday customers were accustomed to make their way to the bar.
Sweeny turned over in his bed and cursed. The window panes rattled
again under another shower of gravel. Sweeny shook his wife into
consciousness. He bade her get up and see who was in the back-yard.
Mrs. Sweeny, a lean harassed woman with grey hair, fastened a dingy pink
nightdress round her throat with a pin and obeyed her master.
“It’s Peter Walsh,” she said, after peering out of the window.
“Tell him to go to hell out of that,” said Sweeny.
Mrs. Sweeny wrapped a shawl round her shoulders, opened the bottom of
the window and translated her husband’s message.
“Himself’s asleep in his bed,” she said, “but if you’ll step into the
shop at ten o’clock he’ll be glad to see you.”
“I’ll be obliged to you, ma’am,” said Peter Walsh, “if you’ll wake him,
for what I’m wanting to say to him is particular and he’ll be sorry
after if there’s any delay about hearing it.”
“Will you shut that window and have done talking,” said Sweeny from
the bed. “There’s a draught coming in this minute that would lift the
feathers from a goose.”
Mrs. Sweeny, though an oppressed woman, was not wanting in spirit. She
gave Peter Walsh’s message in a way calculated to rouse and irritate her
husband.
“He says that if you don’t get up out of that mighty quick there’ll be
them here that will make you.”
“Hell to your soul!” said Sweeny, “what way’s that of talking? Ask him
now is the wind in the southeast or is it not?”
“I can tell you that myself,” said Mrs. Sweeny. “It is not; for if
it was it would be in on this window and my hair would be blew off my
head.”
“Ask him,” said Sweeny, “what boats is in the harbor, and then shut down
the window.”
Mrs. Sweeny put her head and shoulders out of the window.
“Himself wants to know,” she said, “what boats is at the quay. You
needn’t be looking at me like that, Peter Walsh. He’s sober enough. Hard
for him to be anything else for he’s been in his bed the whole of the
night.”
“Will you tell him, ma’am,” said Peter Walsh, “that there’s no boats in
it only the Tortoise, and that one itself won’t be there for long for
the wind’s easterly and it’s a fair run out to Inishbawn.”
Mrs. Sweeny repeated this message. Sweeny, roused to activity at last,
flung off the bedclothes.
“Get out of the room with you,” he said to his wife, “and shut the door.
It’s down to the kitchen you’ll go and let me hear you doing it.”
Mrs. Sweeny was too wise to disobey or argue. She snatched a petticoat
from a chair near the door and left the room hurriedly. Sweeny went to
the window.
“What the hell work’s this, Peter Walsh?” he said. “Can’t you let me
sleep quiet in my bed without raising the devil’s own delight in my
back-yard. If I did right I’d set the police at you.”
“I’ll not be the only one the police will be at,” said Peter, “if that’s
the way of it. So there you have it plain and straight.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I mean is this. The young lady is off in her own boat. She and the
young fellow with the sore leg along with her, and she says the master
and the strange gentleman will be down for the Tortoise as soon, as ever
they have their breakfast ate. That’s what I mean and I hope it’s to
your liking.”
“Can you not go out and knock a hole in the bottom of the damned boat?”
said Sweeny, “or run the blade of a knife through the halyards, or smash
the rudder iron with the wipe of a stone? What good are you if you can’t