_ CHAPTER XIII
Beyond the rock-strewn passage of Craggeen lies the wide roadstead of Finilaun. Here the water is deep, and the shelter, from every quarter, almost complete. Across the western end of it stretches like a bent bow, the long island of Finilaun. On the south, reaching almost to the point of Finilaun, is Craggeen, and between the two is a shallow strait. On the east is the mainland, broken and bitten into with long creeks and bays. On the north lies a chain of islands, Ilaunure, Curraunbeg and Curraunmor, separated from each other by narrow channels, through which the tide runs strongly in and out of the roadstead.
Across the open roadstead Flanagan's old boat crept under her patched lug sail. Priscilla, standing on the shore of Craggeen, watched eagerly. At first she could see the occupants of the boat quite plainly, a man at the tiller, a woman sitting forward near the mast. She had no difficulty in recognising them. The man wore the white sweater which had attracted her attention when she first saw him, a garment most unusual among boatmen in Rosnacree Bay. The woman was the same who had mopped her dripping companion with a pocket handkerchief on Inishark. They talked eagerly together. Now and then the man turned and looked back at Craggeen. The woman pointed something out to him. Priscilla understood.
They could see the patch of the
Tortoise's sail above the rocks which blocked the entrance of the passage. They were no doubt wondering anxiously whether they were still pursued. Flanagan's old boat, her sail bellied pleasantly by the following wind, drew further and further away. Priscilla could no longer distinguish the figures of the man and woman. She watched the sail. It was evident that the boat was making for one of the three northern islands. Soon it was clear that her destination was the eastern end of Curraunbeg. Either she meant to run through the passage between that island and Curraunmor, or the spies would land on Curraunbeg. The day was clear and bright. Priscilla's eyes were good. She saw on the eastern shore of Curraunbeg a white patch, distinguishable against the green background of the field. It could be nothing else but the tents of the spies' encampment. Flanagan's old boat slipped round the corner of the island and disappeared. Priscilla was satisfied. She knew where the spies had settled down.
She returned to the
Tortoise. Frank had left the boat and was sitting on the shore. Miss Rutherford, with the recovered rudder on her knees, sat beside him. Jimmy Kinsella was standing in front of them apparently delivering a speech. The two boats lay side by side close to the shore.
"What's Jimmy jawing about?" said Priscilla.
"I'm after telling the lady," said Jimmy, "that you'll sail no more today."
"Will I not? And why?"
"You will not," said Jimmy, "because the rudder iron is broke on you."
"That's the worst of these boats," said Priscilla. "The rudder sticks down six inches below the bottom of them and if there happens to be a rock anywhere in the neighborhood it's the rudder that it's sure to hit."
"You'll excuse me saying so, Miss, but you'd no right to be trying to get through Craggeen at this time of the tide. It couldn't be done."
"It could," said Priscilla, "and, what's more, it would, only for that old rudder."
"Any way," said Jimmy; "you'll sail no more today, and it'll be lucky if you sail tomorrow for you'll have to give that rudder to Patsy, the smith, to put a new iron on it and that same Patsy isn't one that likes doing anything in a hurry."
"I'm going on to Curraunbeg," said Priscilla, "I'll steer with an oar."
"Is it steer with an oar, Miss?"
"Haven't you often done it yourself, Jimmy?"
"Not that one," said Jimmy, pointing to the
Tortoise.
"Sure my da's said to me many's the time how that one is pretty near as giddy as yourself."
"Your da talks too much," said Priscilla. "Come on, Cousin Frank. What about you, Miss Rutherford? Are you coming?"
"You'll not go," said Jimmy, "or if you do, you'll walk."
Priscilla looked out at the sea. The tide was falling rapidly. Through the opening of the passage which led into Finilaun roadstead there was no more than a trickle of water running like a brook over the stony bottom.
"It'll be as much as you'll do this minute," said Jimmy, "to get back the way you came, and you'll only do that same by taking the sails off of her and poling her along with an oar."
Priscilla surrendered. It is, after all, impossible to sail a boat without water. The
Tortoise lay afloat in a pool, but the Finilaun end of the passage was hardly better than a lane-way of wet stones. At the other end there was still high water, but very little of it Priscilla acted promptly in the emergency. She had no desire to lie imprisoned for hours on Craggeen, she had lain the day before on the bank off Inishark. She took the sails off the
Tortoise and, standing on the thwart amidships, began poling the boat back into the open water at the south-eastern end of the passage. Jimmy, also poling, followed in his boat.
Miss Rutherford, the broken rudder still on her knees, and Frank, were left on shore.
"Do you think," she said, "that Priscilla intends to maroon us here? She's gone without us."
"I'm awfully sorry," said Franks "It's not my fault. I couldn't stop her."
"She's got all the food there is, even the peppermint creams. I wish I'd thought of snatching that parcel from the boat before she started. She'd have come back when she found out they were gone. I wonder whether Jimmy finished the soup? I wonder what he's done with the Primus stove. It wasn't mine, and I know Professor Wilder sets a value on it. Perhaps they'll pick it up on their way and return it. If they do I shan't so much mind what happens to us."
"I don't think they'll really leave us here," said Frank. "Even Priscilla wouldn't do that. I wish I could walk down to the corner of the island and see where they've gone."
Jimmy Kinsella appeared, strolling quietly along the shore.
"The young lady says, Miss," he said "that if you wouldn't mind walking down to the far side of the gravel spit, which is where she has the boats, she'd be glad, for she wouldn't like to be eating what's in the boat without you'd be there to have some yourself."
"Priscilla is perfectly splendid," said Miss Rutherford, "and we're not going to be marooned after all, Come along, Frank."
"The young lady says, Miss," said Jimmy, "that if you'd go to her the best way you can by yourself that I'd give my arm to the gentleman and get him along over the stones so as not to hurt his leg and that same won't be easy for the shore's mortal rough."
Miss Rutherford refused to desert Frank. She recognised that the shore was all that Jimmy said it was. Large slippery boulders were strewed about it for fifty yards or so between the place where she stood and the gravel spit. She insisted on helping Jimmy to transport Frank. In the end they descended upon Priscilla, all three abreast. Frank, with one arm round Jimmy's neck and one round Miss Rutherford's, hobbled bravely.
"I don't know," said Priscilla, "that this is exactly an ideal place for luncheon, but we can have it here if you like, and in some ways I'm rather inclined to. You never know what may happen if you put things off. Last time the but was snatched out of our mouths by a callous destiny just as it was beginning to smell really good. By the way, Jimmy, what did you do with the soup?"
"It's there beyond, Miss, where you left it."
"I expect it's all boiled away by this time," said Priscilla, "but of course the Primus stove may have gone out You never know beforehand how those patent machines will act. If it has gone out the soup will be all right, though coldish. Perhaps we'd better go back there."
"Which would you like to do yourself, Priscilla," said Miss Rutherford.
"Now that those spies have escaped us again," said Priscilla, "it doesn't matter to me in the least where we go. But this place is a bit stony for sitting in for long. I'm beginning to feel already rather as if a plougher had ploughed upon my back and made large furrows; but of course I'm thinking principally of Frank on account of his sprained ankle. A grassy couch would be much pleasanter for him, and there is grass where we left the Primus stove. We can row; back. It isn't a very long pull."
"The wind's dropped, Miss, with the fall of the tide," said Jimmy, "and what's left of it has gone round to the southward."
"That settles it," said Priscilla. "Frank, you and Miss Rutherford, go in the
Tortoise. Jimmy and I will row the other boat and tow you."
"I can row all right," said Frank.
To be treated as incapable by Priscilla when they were alone together was unpleasant but tolerable. To be held up as an object of scorn to Miss Rutherford was not tolerable. He had already exposed himself to her contempt by running her down. He was anxious to show her that he was not altogether a fool in a boat.
"You can't, much," said Priscilla. "At least you didn't seem as if you could yesterday; but if you like you can try. We'll take the oars out of the
Tortoise into your boat, Jimmy, and pull four."
"I don't see how that could be, Miss, for there's only three seats in my boat along with the one in the stern and you couldn't row from that."
"Don't be a fool, Jimmy. I'll pull two oars in the middle. Frank will take one in the bow, and you'll pull stroke. Miss Rutherford will have the
Tortoise all to herself."
Frank found it comparatively easy to row in Jimmy Kinsella's boat. The oar was short and stumpy with a very narrow blade. It was worked between two thole pins of which one was cracked and required tender treatment. It was impossible to pull comfortably while sitting in the middle of the seat; he still hit Priscilla in the back when he swung forward; but there was no boom to hit him and there was no mast behind him to bump his own back against Priscilla was too fully occupied managing her own two oars to pay much attention to him. Jimmy Kinsella pulled away with dogged indifference to what any one else was doing. Miss Rutherford sat in the stern of the
Tortoise and shouted encouraging remarks from time to time. She had, apparently, boated on the Thames at some time in her life, for she was mistress of a good deal of rowing slang which she used with vigour and effect. It cheered Frank greatly to hear the more or less familiar words, for he realised almost at once that neither Priscilla nor Jimmy Kinsella understood them. He felt a warm affection for Miss Rutherford rise in his heart when she told Jimmy, who sat humped up over his oar, to keep his back flat. Jimmy merely smiled in reply. He had known since he was two years old that the flatness or roundness of the rower's back has nothing whatever to do with the progress of a boat in Rosnacree Bay. A few minutes later she accused Priscilla of "bucketing," and Frank loved her for the word. Priscilla replied indignantly with an obvious misapprehension of Miss Rutherford's meaning. Frank, who was rowing in his best style, smiled and was pleased to catch sight of an answering smile on Miss Rutherford's lips. He had established an understanding with her. She and he, as representatives of the rowing of a higher civilisation, could afford to smile together over the barbarous methods of Priscilla and Jimmy Kinsella.
The tide was still against them, though the full strength of the ebb was past. The stream which ran through the narrow water-way had to be reckoned with.
The
Tortoise, when being towed, behaved after the manner of her kind. She hung heavily on the tow rope for a minute; then rushed forward as if she wished to bump the stern of Jimmy's boat At the last moment she used to change her mind and swoop off to the right or left, only to be brought up short by the rope at which she tugged with angry jerks until, finding that it really could not be broken, she dropped sulkily astern. These manoeuvres, though repeated with every possible variation, left Priscilla and Jimmy Kinsella entirely unmoved. They pulled with the same stolid indifference whatever pranks the
Tortoise played. They annoyed Frank. Sometimes when the tow rope hung slack in the water, he pulled through his stroke with ease and comfort Sometimes when the
Tortoise hung back heavily he seemed to be pulling against an impossible dead weight But his worst experience came when the
Tortoise altered her tactics in the middle of one of his strokes. Then, if it happened that she sulked suddenly, he was brought up short with a jerk that jarred his spine. If, on the other; hand, she chose to rush forward when he had his weight well on the end of his oar, he ran a serious risk of falling backwards after the manner of beginners who catch crabs. The side swoops of the
Tortoise were equally trying. They seemed to Frank to disturb hopelessly the whole rhythm of the rowing. Nothing but the encouragement which came to him from Miss Rutherford's esoteric slang kept him from losing his temper. He could not have been greatly blamed if he had lost it. It was after three o'clock. He had breakfasted, meagrely, on bread and honey, at half past seven. He had spent the intervening seven and a half hours on the sea, eating nothing but the one peppermit cream which Miss Rutherford pressed on him while he held the
Tortoise at Craggeen. Priscilla had eaten a great many peppermint cream and was besides more inured to starvation on the water of the bay than Frank was. But even Priscilla, when the excitement of getting away from Craggeen had passed, seemed slightly depressed. She scarcely spoke at all, and when she replied to Miss Rutherford's accusation of "bucketing" did so incisively.
The boats turned into the bay from which Miss Rutherford had first hailed the
Tortoise. They were safely beached. Priscilla ran up to the nook under the hill where the Primus stove was left Miss Rutherford and Jimmy stayed to help Frank.
"It's all right," shouted Priscilla. "A good deal has boiled away, but the Primus stove evidently went out in time to prevent the bottom being boiled out of the pot. Want of paraffin, I expect."
"Never mind," said Miss Rutherford, "I have some more in a bottle. We can boil it up again."
"It's hardly worth while," said Priscilla. "I expect it would be quite good cold, what's left of it. Thickish of course, but nourishing."
"We'll make a second brew," said Miss Rutherford. "I have another package. Jimmy, do you know if there's any water in this neighbourhood?"
"There's a well beyond," said Jimmy, "at the end of the field across the hill, but I don't would the likes of yez drink the water that does be in it."
"Saltish?" said Priscilla.
"It is not then. But the cattle does be drinking out of it and I wouldn't say it was too clean."
"If we boil it," said Frank, "that won't matter."
He had read, as most of us did at the time, accounts of the precautions taken by the Japanese doctors during the war with Russia to save the soldiers under their care from enteric fever. He believed that boiling removed dirt from water.
"There's worms in it," said Jimmy. "It's hardly ever you take a cupful out of it without you'd feel the worms on your tongue and you drinking it."
Miss Rutherford looked at Priscilla, who appeared undismayed at the prospect of swallowing worms. Then she looked at Frank. He was evidently doubtful. His faith in boiling did not save him from a certain shrinking from wormy soup.
"Once we were out for a picnic," said Priscilla, "and when we'd finished tea we found a frog, dead, of course, in the bottom of the kettle. It hadn't flavoured the tea in the least In fact we didn't know it was there till afterwards."
She poured out the cold soup into the two cups and the enamelled mug as she spoke. Then she handed the pot to Jimmy.
"Run now," she said, "and fill that up with your dirty water. We'll have the stove lit and the other packet of soup ready by the time you're back."
The soup which had not boiled away was very thick indeed. It turned out to be impossible to drink it But Priscilla discovered that it could be poured out slowly, like clotted cream on pieces of bread held ready for it under the rims of the cups. It remained, spreading gradually, on top of the bread long enough to allow a prompt eater to get the whole thing into his mouth without allowing any of the soup to be wasted by dripping on to the ground. The flavour: was excellent.
Jimmy returned with the water. Miss Rutherford put the pot on the stove at once. It was better, she said, to boil it without looking at it.
"The directions for use," said Priscilla, "say that the water should be brought to the boil before the soup is put in. But that, of course, is ridiculous. We'll put the dry soup in at once and let it simmer. I expect the flavour will come out all right if we leave it till it does boil."
"In the meanwhile," said Miss Rutherford, "we'll attack the Californian peaches."
They ate them, as they had eaten the others the day before, in their fingers, straight out of the tin with greedy rapture. Five half peaches, nearly all the juice, and a large chunk of bread, were given to Jimmy Kinsella, who carried them off and devoured them in privacy behind his boat.
"Tomorrow," said Priscilla, "we'll have another go at the spies. They're desperately afraid of us. I could see that when they were escaping across Finilaun harbour."
"By the expression of their faces?" said Miss Rutherford.
"Not exactly. It was more the way they were going on. Sylvia Courtney was once learning off a poem called 'The Ancient Mariner.' That was when she was going in for the prize in English literature. She and I sleep in the same room and she used to say a few verses of it every night while we were doing our hairs. I never thought any of it would come in useful to me, but it has; which just shows that one never ought to waste anything. The bit I mean was about a man who walked along a road at night in fear and dread. He used to look round and then turn no more his head, because he knew a frightful fiend did close behind him tread. That's exactly what those two spies did today when they were sailing across Finilaun; so you see poetry is some use after all. I used to think it wasn't; but it is. It's frightfully silly to make up your mind that anything in the world is no use. You never can tell until you've tried and that may not be for years."
"The spies," said Miss Rutherford, "are, I suppose, encamped somewhere on the far side of Finilaun harbour."
"On Curraunbeg," said Prisdlla. "I saw the tents."
"I may be going in that direction myself tomorrow," said Miss Rutherford.
Priscilla got up and stepped across to the place where Frank was sitting. She stooped down and whispered to him. Then she returned to her own seat and winked at him, keeping her left eye closed for nearly half a minute, and screwing up the corresponding corner of her mouth.
"We hope," said Frank, "that you'll join us at luncheon tomorrow wherever we may meet. It's our turn to bring the grub."
"With the greatest pleasure," said Miss Rutherford. "Shall I bring the stove?"
"I didn't like to invite you," said Priscilla, "until I found out whether Frank had any money to buy things with. As it turns out he has lots. I haven't. That's the reason I whispered to him, although I know it's rude to whisper when there's any one else there. Of course, I may be able to collar a few things out of the house; but I may not. With that Secretary of War staying in the house there is bound to be a lot of food lying about which nobody would notice much if it was gone. But then it's not easy to get it unless you happen not to be allowed in to dinner, which may be the case. If I'm not--Frank, I'm afraid, is sure to be on account of his having a dress coat--but if I'm not, which is what may happen if Aunt Juliet thinks it would score off me not to, then I can get lots of things without difficulty because the cook can't possibly tell whether they've been finished up in the dining-room or not."
"We'll hope for the best," said Miss Rutherford. "A jelly now or a few meringues would certainly be a pleasant variety after the tinned and dried provisions of the last two days."
The peppermint creams were finished before the second brew of soup came to the boil on the Primus stove. Priscilla poured it out It was hot, of about the consistency usual in soup, and it smelt savoury. Nevertheless Miss Rutherford, after watching for an opportunity to do so unseen, poured hers out on the ground. Frank fingered his mug irresolutely and once took a sip. Priscilla, after looking at her share intently, carried it off and gave it to Jimmy Kinsella.
"It's curious," she said when she came back, "but I don't feel nearly so keen on soup as I did. I daresay it's the peaches and the peppermint creams. I used to think it was rather rot putting off the sweets at dinner until after the meaty things. Now, I know it isn't. Sometimes there's really a lot of sense in an arrangement which seems silly at first, which is one of the things which always makes me say that grownup people aren't such fools as you might suppose if you didn't really know."
"We'll remember that at lunch tomorrow," said Miss Rutherford.
No one mentioned worms.
For the second time the weather, generally malign and irresponsible, favoured Priscilla. With the rising tide a light westerly breeze sprang up. She hoisted the sails and sat in the stern of the boat with an oar. She tucked the middle of it under her armpit, pressed her side tight against the gunwale, and with the blade trailing in the water steadied the
Tortoise on her course. There is a short cut back to Rosnacree quay from the bay in which Miss Rutherford was left. It winds among a perfect maze of rocks, half covered or bare at low water, gradually becoming invisible as the tide rises. Priscilla, whose self-confidence was unshaken by her disaster in Craggeen passage, took this short cut in spite of a half-hearted protest from Frank. "I don't exactly know the way," she said, "but now that we've lost the rudder there's nothing very much can happen to us. We can keep the centreboard up as we're running, and if we do go on a rock, the tide will lift us off again. It's rising now. Besides, it saves us miles to go this way, and it really won't do for you to be late for dinner." _