Priscilla's Spies
Knockilaun. Priscilla ran to the other tent.
“Lady Isabel,” she said, “if you want to see your father drowned you’d
better come out.”
Lady Isabel scrambled to the door of her tent and stood, her hair and
clothes blown violently, gazing wildly round her. Mr. Pennefather,
looking abjectly miserable, crawled after her and remained on his hands
and knees at her side.
“Where’s father?” she said.
“In that boat,” said Priscilla, “but he won’t be drowned. I only said he
would so as to get you out of your tent.”
The Tortoise stooped forwards and swept along, the water foaming at her
bow and leaping angrily at her weather quarter. A fiercer squall than
usual rushed at her from the western corner of Inishrua as she cleared
the island. She swerved to windward, her boom stretched far out to the
starboard side dipped suddenly and dragged through the water. She paid
off again before the wind in obedience to a strong pull on the tiller.
Priscilla grew excited in watching the progress of the boat.
“Barnabas,” she said, “give me your glasses, quick. I know you have a
pair, for I saw you watching us through them that day on Inishark.”
Mr. Pennefather had the glasses slung across his shoulder in the leather
case. He handed them to Priscilla. The squall increased in violence. The
whole sea grew white with foam. A sudden drift of fine spray, blown off
the face of the water, swept over Inishbawn, stinging and soaking the
watchers at the tents.
“Lord Torrington is on board all right,” said Priscilla, “but it’s not
father who’s steering. It’s Peter Walsh.”
The Tortoise flew forward, dipping her bow so that once or twice the
water lipped over it. She looked pitiful, like a frightened creature
from whose swift flight all joy had departed. She reached the narrow
passage between Ardilaun and Inishlean. Before her lay the broad water
of Inishbawn Roads, lashed into white fury. But the worst of the squall
was over. The showers of spray ceased for a moment. It was still blowing
strongly, but the fierceness had gone out of the wind.
“She’s all right now,” said Priscilla, “and anyway there are two life
buoys on board.”
Then Peter Walsh did an unexpected thing. He put the tiller down and
began to haul in his main-sheet. The boat rounded up into the wind,
headed straight northwards for the shore of Inishlean. She listed
heavily, lay over till it seemed as if the sail would touch the water.
For an instant she paused, half righted, moved sluggishly towards the
shore. Then, very slowly as it seemed, she leaned down again till her
sail lay flat in the water.
At the moment when she righted, before the final heel over, a man flung
himself across the gunwale into the sea. In his hands he grasped one of
the life buoys.
“It’s father,” shouted Lady Isabel. “Oh, save him!”
“If he’d stuck to the boat,” said Priscilla, “he’d have been all right.
She’s ashore this minute on the point of Inishlean. Unless Peter Walsh
has gone suddenly mad I can’t imagine why he tried to round up the boat
there and why he hauled in the main-sheet. He was absolutely bound to go
over.”
“Perhaps he wanted to land there,” said Frank.
“Well,” said Priscilla, “he has landed, but he’s upset the boat. I never
thought before that Peter Walsh could be such an absolute idiot.”
The condemnation was entirely unjust. Peter Walsh had, in fact,
performed the neatest feat of seamanship of his whole life. Never in
the course of forty years and more spent in or about small boats had he
handled one with such supreme skill and accuracy. Driven desperately
by a squally and uncertain southeast wind, with a welter of short waves
knocking his boat’s head about in the most incalculable way, he had
succeeded in upsetting her about six yards from the shore of an island
on to the point of which she was certain to drift, with no more than
four feet of water under her at the critical moment. The Tortoise, having
no ballast in her and depending entirely for stability on her fin-like
centreboard was not, as Peter Walsh knew very well, in the smallest
danger of sinking. He climbed quietly on her gunwale as she finally lay
down and sat there, stride-legs, not even wet below the waist, until
she grounded on the curved point of the island. The performance was a
triumphant demonstration of Peter Walsh’s unmatched skill.
In one matter only did he miscalculate. Lord Torrington knew something
about boats, possessed that little knowledge which is in all great arts,
theology, medicine and boat-sailing, a dangerous thing. He knew, after
the first immersion of the gunwale, when the water flowed in, that the
boat was sure to upset. He knew that the greatest risk on such occasions
lies in being entangled in some rope and perhaps pinned under the sail.
He seized the moment when the Tortoise righted after her first plunge,
grasped a life buoy and flung himself overboard. He was just too soon.
A moment later and he would have drifted ashore as the boat did on the
point of Inishlean. If he had let go his life buoy and struck out at
once he might have reached it. But the sudden immersion in cold water
bewildered him. He clung to the life buoy and was drifted past the
point.
Then he regained his self-possession and looked round him. As a young
man he had been a fine swimmer and even at the age of fifty-five, with
the cares of an imperial War Office weighing heavily on him, he had
enough presence of mind to realise his situation. A few desperate
strokes convinced him of the impossibility of swimming back to Inishlean
against the wind and tide. In front of him lay a quarter of a mile of
broken water. Beyond that was Inishbawn. It was a long swim, too long
for a fully dressed man with no support. But Lord Torrington had a life
buoy, guaranteed by its maker to keep two men safely afloat. He had a
strong wind behind him and a tide drifting him down towards the island.
The water was not cold. He realised that all that was absolutely
necessary was to cling to the life buoy, but that he might, if he liked,
slightly accelerate his progress by kicking. He kicked hard.
Joseph Antony Kinsella wanted no more visitors on Inishbawn. Least
of all did he want one whom he knew to be a “high-up gentleman” and
suspected of being a government official of the most dangerous and
venomous kind, but Joseph Antony Kinsella was not the man to see a
fellow creature drift across Inishbawn Roads without making an effort
to help him ashore. With the aid of Jimmy he launched the stout,
broad-beamed boat from which Miss Rutherford had fished for sponges.
Priscilla raced down from the tents and sprang on board just as Jimmy,
knee deep in foaming water, was pushing off. She shipped the rudder.
Joseph Antony and Jimmy pulled hard. They forced their way to windward
through clouds of spray and before Lord Torrington was half way across
the bay Joseph Antony hauled him dripping into the boat.
Peter Walsh, standing in the water beside the stranded Tortoise, saw
with blank amazement that Kinsella turned the boat’s head and rowed back
again to Inishbawn.
“Bedamn,” he said, “but if I’d known that was to be the way it was to
be I might as well have put him ashore there myself and not have wetted
him.”
On the beach at Inishbawn when the boat grounded, were Lady Isabel, Mrs.
Kinsella with her baby, the three small Kinsella boys, Frank Mannix,
who, to the further injury of his ankle, had hobbled down the hill, and
in the far background, the Reverend Barnabas Pennefather.
Lady Isabel rushed upon her father, flung her arms round his neck and
kissed him passionately with tears in her eyes. Lord Torrington did not
seem particularly pleased to see her.
“Hang it all, Isabel,” he said, “I’m surely wet enough. Don’t make
me worse by slobbering over me. There’s nothing to cry about and no
necessity for kissing.”
“Mrs. Kinsella,” said Priscilla, “go you straight up to the house and
get out your husband’s Sunday clothes. If he hasn’t any Sunday clothes,
get blankets and throw a couple of sods of turf on the fire.”
“Glory be to God!” said Mrs. Kinsella.
Priscilla took Joseph Antony by the arm and led him a little apart from
the group on the beach.
“Get some whisky,” she said, “as quick as you can.”
“Whisky!” said Kinsella blankly.
“Yes, whisky. Bring it in a tin can or anything else that comes handy.”
“Is it a tin can full of whisky? Sure, where could I get the like? Or
for the matter of that where would I get a thimble full? Is it likely
now that there’d be a tin can full of whisky on Inishbawn?”
Priscilla stamped her foot.
“You’ve got quarts,” she said, “and gallons.”
“Arrah, talk sense,” said Kinsella.
“Very well,” said Priscilla. “I don’t want to give you away, but rather
than see Lord Torrington sink into his grave with rheumatic fever for
want of a drop of whisky I’ll expose you publicly. Cousin Frank, come
here.”
“Whist, Miss, whist! Sure if I had the whisky I’d give it to you.”
Lord Torrington, with Lady Isabel weeping beside him, was on his way
up to the Kinsellas’ cottage. Frank was speaking earnestly to Mr.
Pennefather, who seemed disinclined to follow his father-in-law. When he
heard Priscilla calling to him he hobbled towards her.
“Cousin Frank,” she said, “here’s a man who grudges poor Lord Torrington
a drop of whisky to save his life, although for weeks past he has
been--what is it you do when you make whisky? I forget the word. It
isn’t brew.”
Frank, vaguely recollecting the advertisements which appear in our
papers, suggested that the word was required “pot”.
Priscilla pointed an accusing finger at Kinsella.
“Here’s a man,” she said, “who for the last fortnight has been potting
whisky--what a fool you are, Cousin Frank! Distil is the word. Joseph
Antony Kinsella has been distilling whisky on this island for the last
month as hard as ever he could. He’s been shipping barrels full of
it underneath loads of gravel into Rosnacree, and now he’s trying to
pretend he hasn’t got any. Did you ever hear such utter rot in your
life? I’m not telling Lord Torrington yet, Joseph Antony; but in a
minute or two I will unless you go and get a good can full.”
“For the love of God, Miss,” said Kinsella, “say no more. I’ll try if I
can find a sup somewhere for the gentleman. But as for what you’re after
saying about distilling----”
“Hurry up,” said Priscilla threateningly.
Kinsella went off at a sharp trot towards the south end of the island.
“Of course,” said Priscilla in a calmer tone, “he really may not have
any more. That might have been the last barrel which I saw under the
gravel the day before yesterday when our anchor rope got foul of the
centreboard. I don’t expect it was quite the last, but it may have been.
It’s very hard to be sure about things like that. However, if it was the
last he’ll just have to turn to and distil some more. I don’t suppose
it takes very long, and there was a fire burning on the south end of the
island this morning. I saw it.”
Half an hour later Lord Torrington, wrapped in two blankets and a
patchwork quilt, clothing which he had chosen in preference to Joseph
Antony’s Sunday suit, was sitting in front of a blazing fire in the
Kinsellas’ kitchen. He held in his hand a mug full of raw spirit and hot
water, mixed in equal proportions. Each time he sipped at it he coughed.
Priscilla sat beside him with a bottle from which she offered to
replenish the mug after each sip. Lady Isabel, looking frightened but
obstinate, stood opposite him, holding the Reverend Barnabas Pennefather
by the hand.
CHAPTER XXII
“To Miss Martha Rutherford, Sponge Department, British Museum, London.
“My dear Miss Rutherford--Having promised to write you the dénouement,
I do, of course; though the delay is longer than I expected when