Priscilla's Spies
He was, in fact, entirely ignorant of the art of boat sailing. But the
men who sat on the window sills of Brannigan’s shop, battered sea dogs
every one of them, had their eyes fixed on him. It would be deeply
humiliating to have to own up before them that he knew nothing about
boats. Sir Lucius’s order applied, very properly, to Priscilla who was
a child. Peter Walsh looked as if he thought that Frank also ought to be
treated as a child. This was intolerable. The day seemed very calm. It
was difficult to think that there could be any real risk in going out
in the __Tortoise__. Priscilla nudged him sharply with her elbow. Frank
yielded to temptation.
“Miss Lentaigne,” he said, “will be quite safe with me.”
He spoke with lordly self-confidence, calculated, he thought, to impress
the impudent loafers on the window sills and to reduce Peter Walsh
to prompt submission. Having spoken he felt unreasonably angry with
Priscilla who was grinning.
Peter Walsh ambled down to the quay. He climbed over the dredger, which
was lying alongside, and dropped from her into a small water-logged
punt. In this he ferried himself out to the Tortoise. Priscilla bounded
into Brannigan’s shop. The sea dogs on the window sills eyed Frank and
shook their heads. It was painfully evident that his self-confident tone
had not imposed on them.
“There’s not much wind any way,” said one of them, “and what there is
will be dropping with the ebb.”
“It’ll work round to the west with the flood,” said another. “With the
weather we’re having now it’ll follow the sun.”
Priscilla came out of the shop laden with parcels which she placed one
by one on Frank’s lap.
“Beer and lemonade,” she said. “The beast was out of lemon flavoured
soda, so I had to get lemonade instead, but your lager’s all right. You
don’t mind drinking out of the bottle, do you, Cousin Frank? You can
have the bailing tin of course, if you like, but it’s rather salty.
Macaroons and cocoanut creams. They turned out to be the same price,
so I thought I might as well get a mixture. The cocoanut creams are
lighter, so one gets more of them for the money. Tongue. I told him
not to put paper on the tongue. I always think brown paper is rather a
nuisance in a boat. It gets so soppy when it’s the least wet. There’s
no use having more of it than we can help. Peaches. He hadn’t any of the
small one and sixpenny tins, so I had to spend your other shilling to
make up the half-crown for the big one. I hope you don’t mind. We shall
be able to finish it all right I expect. Oh, bother! I forgot that the
peaches require a tin-opener. Have you a knife? If you have we may be
able to manage by hammering it along through the lid of the tin with a
rowlock.”
Frank had a knife, but he set some value on it He did not want to have
it reduced to the condition of a coarse toothed saw by being hammered
through a tin with a rowlock. He hesitated.
“All right,” said Priscilla, “if you’d rather not have it used I’ll go
and try to stick Brannigan for the loan of a tin-opener. He may not care
for lending it, because things like tin-openers generally drop overboard
and then of course he wouldn’t get it back. But he’ll hardly be able to
refuse it I offer to deposit the safety pin in my tie as a hostage. It
looks exactly as if it is gold, and, if it was, would be worth far more
than any tin-opener.”
She went into the shop again. It was nearly ten minutes before she
came out. Frank was seriously annoyed by a number of small children who
crowded round the bath-chair and made remarks about his appearance. He
tried to buy them off with macaroons, but the plan failed, as a similar
one did in the case of the Anglo-Saxon king and the Danes. The children,
like the Norse pirates, returned almost immediately in increased
numbers. Then Priscilla appeared.
“I thought I should have had a frightful rag with Brannigan over the
tin-opener,” she said, “but he was quite nice about it. He said he’d
lend it with pleasure and didn’t care whether I left him the safety pin
or not. The only trouble was that he couldn’t find one. He said that he
had a gross of them somewhere, but he didn’t know where they’d been put.
In the end it was Mrs. Brannigan who found them in an old biscuit tin
under some oilskins. That’s what delayed me.”
Peter Walsh was hoisting a sail, a gunter lug, on the Tortoise. He
paused in his work now and then to cast a glance ashore at Frank.
Priscilla wheeled the bath-chair down to the slip and hailed Peter.
“Hurry up now,” she said, “and get the foresail on her. Don’t keep us
here all day.”
Peter pulled on the foresail halyards with some appearance of vigour. He
slipped the mooring rope and ran the Tortoise alongside the slip, towing
the water logged punt behind her.
“Joseph Antony Kinsella,” said Peter, “was in this morning on the flood
tide and he was telling me he came across that young fellow again near
Illaunglos.”
“Was he talking to him?” said Priscilla.
“He was not beyond passing the time of day or the like of that for
Joseph Antony had a load of gravel and he couldn’t be wasting his
time. But the young fellow was in Flanagan’s old boat and it was Joseph
Antony’s opinion that he was trying to learn himself how to row her.”
“He’d need to. But if that’s all that passed between them I don’t see
that we’re much further on towards knowing what that man is doing here.”
“Joseph Antony did say,” said Peter, “that the young gentleman was as
simple and innocent as a child and one that wouldn’t be likely to be
doing any harm.”
“You can’t be sure of that.”
“You cannot, Miss. There’s a terrible lot of fellows going round the
country these times, sent out by the government that would be glad
enough to be interfering with the people and maybe taking the land away
from them. You’d never know who might be at such work and who mightn’t,
but Joseph Antony did say that the fellow in Flanagan’s old boat hadn’t
the look of it. He’s too innocent like.”
“Hop you out now, Peter,” said Priscilla, “and help Mr. Mannix down into
the boat. He has a sprained ankle and can’t walk by himself. Be careful
of him!”
The task of getting Frank into the Tortoise was not an easy one for the
slip was nearly as slimy as when Priscilla fell on it the day before.
Peter, with his arm round Frank’s waist, proceeded very cautiously.
“Settle him down on the starboard side of the centre-board case,” said
Priscilla. “We’ll carry the boom to port on the run out.”
“You will,” said Peter, “for the wind’s in the east, but you’ll have to
jibe her at the stone perch if you’re going down the channel.”
“I’m not going down the channel. I mean to stand across to Rossmore and
then go into the bay beyond.” Priscilla stepped into the boat and took
the tiller.
“Did I hear you say, Miss, that you’re thinking of going on to
Inishbawn?”
“You did not hear me say anything about Inishbawn; but I may go there
all the same if I’ve time. I want to see the Kinsellas’ new baby.”
“If you’ll take my advice, Miss,” said Peter, “you’ll not go next nor
nigh Inishbawn.”
“And why not?”
“Joseph Antony Kinsella was telling me this morning that it’s alive with
rats, such rats nobody ever seen. They have the island pretty near eat
away.”
“Talk sense,” said Priscilla.
“They came out on the tide swimming,” said Peter, “like as it might be
a shoal of mackerel, and you think there’d be no end to them climbing up
over the stones and eating all before them.”
“Shove her bow round, Peter; and keep that rat story of yours for the
young man in Flanagan’s boat. He’ll believe it if he’s as innocent as
you say.”
Peter shoved out the Tortoise. The wind caught the sail. Priscilla paid
out the main sheet and let the boom swing forward. Peter shouted a last
warning from the slip.
“Joseph Antony was telling me,” he said, “that they’re terrible fierce,
worser than any rats ever he seen.”
The Tortoise slipped along and was soon beyond the reach of his voice.
She passed the heavy hookers at the quay side, left buoy after buoy
behind her, bobbed cheerfully through a tide race at the stone perch,
and stood out, the wind right behind her, for Rossmore Head.
CHAPTER VI
Rosnacree Bay is a broad stretch of water, but those who go down to
it in boats are singularly at the mercy of the tides. Save for certain
channels the water everywhere is shallow. At some remote period, it
seems, the ocean broke in and submerged a tract of low land between the
mountains which bound the north and south shores of the bay. What once
were round hillocks rising from boggy pasture land are now islands,
sloping eastwards to the water as they once sloped eastwards to green
fields, but torn and chafed into steep bluffs where the sea beats on
their western sides.
But the ocean’s conquest is incomplete. Its empire is disputed still.
The very violence of the assault has checked its advance by piling up
a mighty breakwater of boulders right across the mouth of the bay.
Gathered upon sullenly firm based rocks these great round stones roll
and roar and crash when the full force of the Atlantic billows comes
foaming against them. They save the islands east of them. There are gaps
in the breakwater, and the sea rushes through these, but it is tamed of
its ferocity, humiliated from the grandeur of its strength so that it
wanders, puzzled, bewildered, through the waterways among the islands.
The land asserts itself. Things which belong to the land approach with
contemptuous familiarity the very verges of their mighty foe. On the
edges of the water the islanders build their hayricks, redolent of rural
life, and set up their stacks of brown turf. Geese and ducks, whose
natural play places are muddy pools and inland streams, swim through the
salt water in the sheltered bays below the cottages. Pigs, driven down
to the shore to root among the rotting seaweed, splash knee deep in
the sea. At the time of high spring tides, in March and at the end of
September, the water flows in oily curves or splashes muddily against
the very thresholds of the cottages. It penetrates the brine-soaked soil
and wells turn brackish. It wanders far inland through winding straits.
The wayfarer, stepping across what seems to be a ditch at the end of
a field far from the sea wonders to hear brown wrack crackle under his
feet.
A few hours later the land asserts itself again. The sea draws back
sullenly at first. Soon its retreat becomes a very flight. The narrow
ways between the islands, calm an hour before, are like swift rivers.
Through the cleft gaps in the breakwater of boulders the sea goes back
from its adventurous wanderings to the ocean outside; but not as in
other places, where a deep felt homing impulse draws tired water to the
voluminous mother bosom of the Atlantic. Here, even on the calmest days,
steep wavelets curl and break over each other, like fugitives driven
to desperate flight by some maddening fear, prepared, so great is the
terror behind them, to trample on their own comrades in the race for
security. One after another all over the bay the wrack-clad backs of
rocks appear. Long swathes of brown slimy weed, tugging at submerged
roots, lie writhing on the surface of the ebbing streams. The islands
grow larger. Confused heaps of round boulders appear under their western
bluffs. Cormorants perch in flocks on shining stones, stretching out
their narrow wings, peering through tiny black eyes at the withdrawal
of the sea. On the eastern shores of every island, stretches of
pebble-strewn mud widen rapidly. The boats below the cottages lie
dejected, mutely re-reproachful of the anchors which have held them back
from following the departed waters. Soft green banks appear here and
there, broaden, join one another, until whole stretches of the bay,