CHAPTER XI

Rose, the under housemaid, with the recollection of the scientifically

Christian method of treating her toothache fresh in her mind and

therefore stimulated by a strong desire to annoy Miss Lentaigne, woke at

five a.m. At half past five she called Priscilla and knocked at Frank’s

door. Priscilla was fully dressed ten minutes later. Frank appeared in

the yard at five minutes to six. They started as the stable clock struck

six, Priscilla wheeling the bath-chair. Rose yawning widely, watched

them from the scullery window.

Priscilla had failed to seize the cold salmon the night before. Rose,

foraging early in the morning, with the fear of the cook before her

eyes, had secured nothing but half a loaf of bread and a square section

of honey. It was therefore something of a disappointment to find that

Brannigan’s shop was not open when they reached the quay. No biscuits or

tinned meats could be bought. Many adventurers would have been daunted

by the prospect of a long day’s work with such slender provision. It

is recorded, for instance, of Julius Caesar, surely the most eminent

adventurer of all history, that he hesitated to attempt an expedition

against one of the tribes of Gaul “propter inopiam pecuniae,” which may

very well be translated “on account of a shortage of provisions.”

But Julius Caesar, at the period of his greatest conquests, was a

middle-aged man. He had lost the first careless rapture of youth. Frank

and Priscilla, because their combined ages only amounted to thirty-two

years, were more daring than Caesar. With a fine faith in the providence

which feeds adventurers, they scorned the wisdom which looks dubiously

at bread and honey. They did not hesitate at all.

The tide was still rising when they embarked. At that hour in the

morning there was no wind and it was necessary to row the Tortoise out.

Priscilla took both oars herself, remembering the gyrations of the boat

the day before when Frank was helping her to row.

“There’ll be a breeze,” she said, “when the tide turns, but we can’t

afford to wait here for that. When we’re outside the stone perch we’ll

drop anchor. But the first thing is to set pursuit at defiance by

getting beyond the reach of the human voice. If we can’t hear whoever

happens to be calling us we can’t be expected to turn back and it won’t

be disobedience if we don’t.”

The tide, with an hour more of flow behind it, crept along the grey

quay wall, and eddied past the buoys. Two hookers lay moored, and faint

spirals of smoke rose from the stove chimneys of their forecastles. Thin

wreaths of grey mist hung here and there over the still surface of the

bay. Patches of purple slime lay unbroken on the unrippled surface.

Scraps of shrivelled rack, sucked off the shores of the nearer islands,

floated past the Tortoise. A cormorant, balanced on the top of one of

the perches outside Delginish, sat with wings outstretched and neck

craned forward, peering out to sea. A fleet of terns floated motionless

on the water beyond the island. Two gulls with lazy flappings of their

wings, flew westwards down the bay. Priscilla, rowing with short,

decisive strokes, drove the Tortoise forward.

“It’s going to be blazing hot,” she said, “and altogether splendidly

glorious. I feel rather like a dove that is covered with silver wings

and her feathers like gold. Don’t you?”

Frank did. Although he would not have expressed himself in the words of

the Psalmist, he recognised them. The most reliable tenor in the choir

at Haileybury is necessarily familiar with the Psalms.

They reached the stone perch and cast anchor. It was half past seven

o’clock. Priscilla got out the bread and honey.

“The proper thing to do,” she said, “would be to go on half rations at

once, and serve out the bread by ounces and the honey by teaspoonfuls,

but I think we won’t. I’m as hungry as any wolf.”

“Besides,” said Frank, “we haven’t got a teaspoon.”

“I hope your knife is to the fore. I’m not particular as a rule about

the way I eat things, but there’s no use beginning the day by making the

whole boat sticky. I loathe stickiness, especially when I happen to sit

on it, which is one of the reasons which makes me glad I wasn’t born a

bee. They have to, of course, poor things, even the queen, I believe. It

can’t be pleasant.”

The tug of the boat at her anchor rope slackened as the tide reached

its height. A light easterly wind came to them from the land. Priscilla

swallowed the last morsel of bread and honey as the Tortoise drifted

over her anchor and swung round.

“Perhaps,” she said, “you’d like to practise steering, Cousin Dick. If

so, creep aft and take the tiller. I’ll get the sail on her and haul up

the anchor.”

Frank, humbled by the experience of the day before, was doubtful.

Priscilla encouraged him. He took the tiller with nervous joy. Priscilla

hoisted the lug and then the foresail.

“Now,” she said, “I’ll get up the anchor and we’ll try to go off on the

starboard tack. If we don’t we’ll have to jibe immediately. With this

much wind it won’t matter, but you might not like the sensation.”

Frank did not want to enjoy any sensation of a sudden kind and jibing,

as he understood it, was always unexpected. He asked which way he ought

to push the tiller so as to make sure of reaching the starboard tack.

Priscilla stood beside the mast and delivered a long, very confusing

lecture on the effect of the rudder on the boat and the advantage of

hauling down one or other of the foresail sheets when getting under way

from anchor. Frank did not understand much of what she said, but was

ashamed to ask for more information. Priscilla, on her knees under the

foresail, tugged at the anchor rope. The Tortoise quivered slightly,

but did not move. Priscilla, leaning well back, tugged harder. The

Tortoise--it is impossible to speak of a boat except as a live thing

with a capricious will--shook herself irritably.

“She’s slap over the anchor,” said Priscilla. “I can’t think how she

gets there for there’s plenty of rope out; but there she is and I can’t

move the beastly thing. Perhaps you’ll try. You may be stronger than I

am. I expect it has got stuck somehow behind a rock.”

Frank felt confident that he was stronger in the arms than Priscilla. He

crept forward and put his whole strength into a pull on the anchor rope.

The Tortoise twisted herself broadside on to the breeze and then listed

over to windward. Priscilla looked round her in amazement. The breeze

was certainly very light, but it was contrary to her whole experience

that a boat with sails set should heel over towards the wind. She told

Frank to stop pulling. The Tortoise slowly righted herself and then

drifted back to her natural position, head to wind.

“The only thing I can think of,” said Priscilla, “is that the anchor

rope has got round the centreboard. It might. You never can tell exactly

what an anchor rope will do. However, if it has, we’ve nothing to do but

haul up the centreboard and clear it.”

She took the centreboard rope and pulled. Frank joined her and they both

pulled. The centreboard remained immovable. The Tortoise was entirely

unaffected by their pulling.

“Jammed,” said Priscilla. “I feel a jolly sight less like that dove

than I did. It looks rather as if we were going to spend the day here.

I don’t want to cut the rope and lose the anchor if I can possibly help

it, but of course it may come to that in the end, though even then I’m

not sure that we’ll get clear.”

“Can we do nothing?” said Frank.

“This,” said Priscilla, “is a case for prolonged and cool-headed

reasoning. You reason your best and I’ll bring all the resources of my

mind to bear on the problem!”

She sat down in the bottom of the boat and gazed thoughtfully at the

stone perch. Frank, to whom the nature of the problem was obscure, also

gazed at the stone perch, but without much hope of finding inspiration.

Priscilla looked round suddenly.

“We might try poking at it with the blade of an oar,” she said. “I don’t

think it will be much use, but there’s no harm trying.”

The poking was a total failure, and Priscilla, reaching far out to

thrust the oar well under the keel of the boat, very nearly fell

overboard. Frank caught her by the skirt at the last moment and hauled

her back.

“We’ll have to sit down and think again,” she said. “By the way, what

was that word which Euclid said when he suddenly found out how to

construct an isosceles triangle? He was in his bath at the time, as well

as I recollect.”

A man is not in the lower sixth at Haileybury without possessing a good

working knowledge of the chief events of classical antiquity. Frank rose

to his opportunity.

“Are you thinking of Archimedes?” he asked. “What he said was ‘Eureka’

and what he found out wasn’t anything about triangles but--”

“Thanks,” said Priscilla. “It doesn’t really matter whether it was

Euclid or not and it isn’t of the least importance what he found out.

It was the word I wanted. Let’s agree that whichever of us Eureka’s

it first stands up and shouts the word far across the sea. You’ve no

objection to that, I suppose. The idea may stimulate our imaginations.”

Frank had no objection. He felt tolerably certain that he would not

have to shout. Priscilla, frowning heavily, fixed her eyes on the stone

perch, A few minutes later she spoke again.

“Once,” she said, “I was riding my bicycle in father’s mackintosh, which

naturally was a little long for me. In process of time the tail of it

got wound round and round the back wheel and I was regularly stuck,

couldn’t move hand or foot and had to lie on my side with the bicycle

on top of me. That seems to me very much the way we are now with that

anchor rope and the centreboard.”

“How did you get out?” said Frank hopefully.

That Priscilla had got out was evident. If her position on the bicycle

was really analogous to that of the Tortoise the same plan of escape

might perhaps be tried.

“I lay there,” said Priscilla, “until Peter Walsh happened to come along

the road. He kind of unwound me.”

A boat, heavily laden, was rowing slowly towards them, making very

little way against the gathering strength of the ebb tide and the

easterly wind.

“Perhaps,” said Frank, “the people in that boat, if it ever gets here,

will unwind us.”

The boat drew nearer and Priscilla declared that it was Kinsella’s.

“It’s Joseph Antony himself rowing her,” she said. “He’d be getting on

faster if he had Jimmy along with him, but I suppose he’s off with the

sponge lady again.”

Kinsella reached the Tortoise and stopped rowing.

“You’re out for a sail again today, Miss?” he said. “Well, it’s fine

weather for the likes of you.”

“At the present moment,” said Priscilla, “we’re stuck and can’t get

out.”

“Do you tell me that now? And what’s the matter with you?”

“The anchor rope is foul of the centreboard and we can’t get either the

one or the other of them to move.”

“Begor!” said Joseph Antony.

“Do you know any way of getting it clear?”

“I do, of course.”

“Well, trot it out.”

“If you was to take the oars,” said Joseph Antony, “and was to row the

boat round the way she wasn’t going when she twisted the rope on you it

would come untwisted again.”

“It would, of course. Thank you very much. Rather stupid of us not to

have thought of that. It seems quite simple. But that’s always the way.

The simplest things are far the hardest to think of. Columbus and the

egg, for instance.”

She got out the oars as she spoke and began turning the Tortoise round.

“Begging your pardon, Miss,” said Joseph Antony, “but which way is the

rope twisted round the plate? If you row her round the wrong way you’ll

twist it worse than ever.”

But luck favored Priscilla. When the Tortoise had made one circle the

rope shook itself clear. Joseph Antony, dipping his oars gently in the

water, drew close alongside.

“I’d be sorry now,” he said, “if it was to Inishbawn you were thinking

of going. Herself and the children is away off. I’d have been afraid to

leave them there with myself up at the quay with a load of gravel.”

Priscilla looked at him with a smile of complete scepticism.

“It’s not gravel you have there,” she said.

“It’s a curious thing,” said Joseph Antony in an offended tone, “for you

to be saying the like of that and the boat up to the seats with gravel

before your eyes.”

“I don’t deny there’s gravel on top,” said Priscilla, “but there’s

something else underneath.”

Joseph Antony urged his boat further from the Tortoise.

“What do you mean, at all?” he said.

“I don’t know what you’ve got,” said Priscilla, “but I saw the rim of

some sort of a wooden tub sticking out of the gravel in the fore part of

the boat.”

Joseph Antony began to row vigorously towards the quay. Priscilla hailed

him.

“Tell me this now,” she said, “Why did you take Mrs. Kinsella and the

children off their island? Was it for fear of the rats?”

Joseph Antony lay on his oars.

“It was not rats,” he said. “Why would it?”

“Was it for change of air after the fever?”

“Fever! What fever?”

“Was it because there was something on the island that it wouldn’t be

nice for Mrs. Kinsella or any other woman to see?”

“It was because of a young heifer,” said Joseph Antony, “that I was

after buying at the fair of Rosnacree ere yesterday, the wickedest one

I ever seen. She had her horn druv through Jimmy’s leg and pretty nearly

trampled the life out of the baby before she was an hour on the island.

If so be that you want to be scattered about, an arm here and a leg

there, as soon as you set foot on the shore you can go to Inishbawn,

you and the young gentleman along with you. But if it’s pleasure you’re

looking for it would be better for you to go somewhere else for it, the

two of yez.”

He spoke truculently. It was evident that Priscilla’s questioning had

seriously annoyed him. He began to row again while he was speaking and

was out of earshot before Priscilla could reply. She waved her hand to

him gaily.

The trouble with the anchor rope had delayed the start of the Tortoise.

It was eleven o’clock before she got under way. Frank had the tiller.

Priscilla, seated in the fore part of the boat, gave him instruction in

the art of steering. Running before a light breeze makes no high demand

upon the helmsman’s skill. Frank learned to keep the boat’s head steady

on her course and realised how small a motion of his hand produced a

considerable effect. The time came when the course had to be altered.

Priscilla, bent above all on discovering the new camping-ground of the

spies, kept in the main channel. There comes a place where this turns

northwards. Frank had to push down the tiller in order to bring the boat

on her new course. He began to understand the meaning of what he did.

The island of Inishrua lay under his lee. Priscilla scanned its slope

for the sight of a tent. Frank, now beginning to enjoy his position

thoroughly, let the boat away, eased off his sheet and ran down

the passage between Inishrua and Knockilaun, the next island to the

northward. Cattle browsed peacefully in the fields. A dog rushed from a

cottage door and barked. Two children came down to the shore and gazed

at the boat curiously. There was no encampment on either island.

Frank pressed down the tiller and hauled in his sheet. Priscilla

insisted on his working the main sheet himself. He did it awkwardly and

slowly, having only one hand and some fingers of the other, which held

the tiller. Then he had his first experience of the joy of beating a

small boat against the wind. The passage between the islands is narrow

and the tacks were necessarily very short. Frank made all the mistakes

common to beginners, sailing at one moment many points off the wind,

at the next trying to sail with the luff of his lug and perhaps his

foresail flapping piteously. But he learned how to stay the boat and

became fascinated in guessing the point on the land which he might hope

to reach at the end of each tack. Priscilla kept him from becoming over

proud. She showed him, each time the boat went about, the spot which

with reasonably good steering he ought to have reached. It was always

many yards to windward.

At the end of the passage the boat stood on the starboard tack towards a

small round island which lay to the east of Inishrua.

“That’s Inishgorm,” said Priscilla. “I don’t see how they can possibly

be there, for there’s not a place on it to pitch a tent except the

extreme top of the island. But we may as well have a look at it.”

Inishgorm ends on the west in a rocky promontory. The Tortoise passed

it and then Frank stayed her again. The next tack brought them into a

little bay with deep, clear water. They stood right on until they were

within a few yards of the land. Terns, anxious for the safety of

their chicks, rose with shrill cries, circled round the boat, swooping

sometimes within a few feet of the sail and then soaring again. Their

excitement died away and their cries got fewer when the boat went about

and stood away from the island. Priscilla pointed out a long low reef

which lay under their lee. Round-backed rocks stood clear of the water

at intervals. Elsewhere brown sea wrack was plainly visible just awash.

On one of the rocks two seals lay basking in the sun. At the point of

the reef a curious patch of sharply rippled water marked where two tides

met. A long tack brought the Tortoise clear of the windward end of the

reef. Frank paid out the main sheet and let the boat away for another

run down a passage between the reef and a series of small flat islands.

“This,” said Priscilla, “is the likeliest place we’ve been today. I

shouldn’t wonder a bit if we came on them here.”

The navigation seemed to Frank bewilderingly intricate. Small bays

opened among the islands. Rocks obtruded themselves in unexpected

places. It was never possible to keep a straight course for more than a

couple of minutes at a time. Priscilla gave order in quick succession,

“Luff her a little,” “Let her away now,” “Hold on as you’re going,”

“Steady,” “Don’t let her away any more.” Now and then she threatened him

with the possibility of a jibe. Frank, becoming accustomed to everything

else, still dreaded that manoeuvre.

A loud hail reached them from the narrow mouth of a bay to windward

of them. Priscilla looked round. The hail was repeated. Far up on the

northern shore of the bay lay a boat, half in, half out of the water.

Beyond her stern, knee deep in the water, with kilted skirts, stood a

woman shouting wildly and waving a pocket handkerchief.

“It’s the sponge lady,” said Priscilla. “Luff, luff her all you can.

We’ll go in there and see what she wants.”

The Tortoise slanted up into the wind. Her sails flapped and filled

again. Frank pulled manfully on the sheet. There were two short tacks,

swift changes of position, slacking and hauling in of sheets. Then Frank

found himself, once more on the starboard tack, standing straight for

the lady who waved and shouted to them.

“It’s a gravelly shore,” said Priscilla. “We’ll beach her. Sail her easy

now, Cousin Frank, and slack away your main sheet if you find there’s

too much way on her. We don’t want to knock a hole in her bottom. Keep

her just to windward of Jimmy Kinsella’s boat.”

The orders were too numerous and too complicated. Frank could keep his

head on the football field while hostile forwards charged down on him,

could run, kick or pass at such a crisis without setting his nerves

a-quiver. He lost all power of reasoning when the Tortoise sprang

towards Jimmy Kinsella’s boat and the gravelly shore. He had judged with

absolute accuracy the flight of the ball which the Uppingham captain

drove hard and high into the long field. As it left the bat he had

started to run, had calculated the curve of its fall, had gauged the

pace of his own running, had arrived to receive it in his outstretched

hands. He failed altogether in calculating the speed of the Tortoise.

He suddenly forgot which way to push the tiller in order to attain the

result he desired. A wild cry from Priscilla confused him more than

ever. He was dimly aware of a sudden check in the motion of the boat.

He saw Priscilla start up, and then the lady, who a moment before was

standing in the sea, precipitated herself head first over the bow.

At the same moment the Tortoise grounded on the gravel with a sharp

grinding sound. Frank looked about him amazed. Jimmy Kinsella, standing

on the shore with his hands in his pockets, spoke slowly.

“Bedamn,” he said, “but I never seen the like. With the whole of the

wide sea for you to choose out of was there no place that would do you

except just the one place where the lady happened to be standing?”