_ 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 Rosna-cree 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 Inish-bawn, 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?" _