_ CHAPTER XXI
The
Blue Wanderer, with her little lug, sailed slowly even when there was a fresh wind right behind her. It was half-past ten when Priscilla and Frank ran her aground on Inishbawn. Joseph Antony Kinsella had seen them coming and was standing on the shore ready to greet them.
"You're too venturesome, Miss, to be coming out all this way in that little boat," he said.
"We came safe enough," said Priscilla, "didn't ship a drop the whole way out."
"You came safe," said Kinsella, "but will you tell me how you're going to get home again? The wind's freshening and what's more it's drawing round to the southeast."
"Let it. If we can't get home, we can't, that's all, I suppose Mrs. Kinsella will bake us a loaf of bread for breakfast tomorrow. Cousin Frank, you'll have to make Barnabas take you into his tent. He can't very well refuse on account of being a clergyman and so more or less pledged to deeds of charity. I'll curl up in a corner of Lady Isabel's pavilion. By the way, Joseph Antony, how are the young people getting on?"
"I had my own trouble with them after you left," said Kinsella.
"I'm sorry to hear that and I wouldn't have thought it. Barnabas seemed to me a nice peaceable kind of curate. Why didn't you hit him on the head with an oar? That would have quieted him."
"I might, of course; and I would; but it was the lady that was giving me the trouble more than him. Nothing would do her right or wrong but she'd have her tent set up on the south end of the island; and that's what wouldn't suit me at all."
Priscilla glanced at the smaller of the two hills which make up the island of Inishbawn. It stood remote from the Kinsellas' homestead and the patches of cultivated land, separated from them by a rough causeway of grey boulders. From a hollow in it a thin column of smoke arose, and was blown in torn wreaths along the slope.
"It would not suit you a bit," said Priscilla.
"What made her want to go there?" said Frank.
The bare southern hill of Inishbawn seemed to him a singularly unattractive camping ground. It was a windswept, desolate spot.
"She took a notion into her head," said Kinsella, "that his Reverence might catch the fever if he stopped on this end of the island."
"Good gracious!" said Frank, "how can any one catch fever here?"
"On account of Mrs. Kinsella and the children having come out all over large yellow spots," said Priscilla. "I hope that will be a lesson to you, Joseph Antony."
"What I said was for the best," said Kinsella.
"How was I to know she'd be here at the latter end?"
"You couldn't know, of course. Nobody ever can; which is one of the reasons why it's just as well to tell the truth at the start whenever possible. If you make things up you generally forget afterwards what they are, and then there's trouble. Besides the things you make up very often turn against you in ways you'd never expect. It was just the same with a mouse-trap that Sylvia Courtney once bought, when she thought there was a mouse in our room, though there wasn't really and it wouldn't have done her any harm if there had been. No matter how careful she was about tying the string down it used to bound up again and nip her fingers. But Sylvia Courtney never was any good at things like mouse-traps. What she likes is English Literature."
"How did you stop her going to the far end of the island?" said Frank, "if she thought there was an infectious fever for Mr. Pennefather to catch----"
"I dare say you mentioned the wild heifer," said Priscilla.
"I did not then. What I said was rats."
"Rather mean of you that," said Priscilla. "The rats were Peter Walsh's originally. You shouldn't have taken them. That's what's called--What is it called, Cousin Frank? Something to do with plagues, I know. Is there such a word as plague-ism? Anyhow it's what poets do when they lift other poets' rhymes and it's considered mean."
"It was me told Peter Walsh about the rats," said Kinsella, repelling an unjust accusation. "The way they came swimming in on the tide would surprise you, and the gulls picking the eyes out of the biggest of them as they came swimming along. But that wouldn't stop them."
"I'll just run up and have a word with Barnabas," said Priscilla. "It'll be as well for him to know that father and Lord Torrington are out after him today in the
Tortoise."
"Do you tell me that?" said Kinsella.
"It'll be all right," said Priscilla. "They'll never get here. But of course Barnabas may want to make his will in case of accidents. Just you help the young gentleman ashore, Kinsella. He can't get along very well by himself on account of the way Lord Torrington treated him. Then you'd better haul the boat up a bit. It's rather beginning to blow and I see the wind really has got round to the southeast I hardly thought it would, but it has. Winds so seldom do what everybody says they're going to. I'm sure you've noticed that."
She walked up the rough stony beach. A fierce gust, spray-laden and eloquent with promise of rain, swept past her.
"If I'd known," said Kinsella sulkily, "that half the country would be out after them ones, I'd have drownded them in the sea and their tents along with them before I let them set foot on Inishbawn."
"Lord Torrington won't do you any harm," said Frank. "He's only trying to get back his daughter."
"I don't know," said Kinsella, still in a very bad temper, "what anybody'd want with the likes of that girl. You'd think a man would be glad to get rid of her and thankful to anybody that was fool enough to take her off his hands. She's no sense. Miss Priscilla has little enough, but she's young and it'll maybe come to her later. But that other one--The Lord saves us."
He helped Frank on shore as he talked. Then he called Jimmy from the cottage. Between them they hauled the
Blue Wanderer above high-tide mark.
"There she'll stay," said Kinsella vindictively, "for the next twenty-four hours anyway. Do you feel that now?"
Frank felt a sudden gust of wind and a heavy splash of rain. The sky looked singularly dark and heavy over the southeastern shore of the bay. Ragged scuds of clouds, low flying, were tearing across overhead. The sea was almost black and very angry; short waves were getting up, curling rapidly over and breaking in yellow foam. With the aid of Jimmy Kinsella's arm Frank climbed the beach, passed the Kinsella's cottage and made his way to the place where the two tents were pitched. Priscilla was sitting on a camp stool at the entrance of Lady Isabel's tent. The Reverend Barnabas Pennefather, looking cold and miserable, was crouching at her feet in a waterproof coat. Lady Isabel was going round the tents with a hammer in her hand driving the pegs deeper into the ground.
"I'm just explaining to Barnabas," said Priscilla, "that he's pretty safe here so far as Lord Torrington is concerned. He doesn't seem as pleased as I should have expected."
"It's blowing very hard," said Mr. Pennefather, "and it's beginning to rain. I'm sure our tents will come down and we shall get very wet Won't you sit down, Mr.--Mr----?"
"Mannix," said Priscilla. "I thought you were introduced yesterday. Hullo! What's that?"
She was gazing across the sea when she spoke. She rose from her camp stool and pointed eastwards with her finger. A small triangular patch of white was visible far off between Inishrua and Knockilaun. Frank and Mr. Pennefather stared at it eagerly.
"It looks to me," said Priscilla, "very like the
Tortoise. There isn't another boat in the bay with a sail that peaks up like that. If I'm right, Barnabas--But I can't believe that Peter Walsh and Patsy the smith and all the rest of them would have been such fools as to let them start."
A rain squall blotted the sail from view.
"Perhaps they couldn't help it," said Frank. "Perhaps Uncle Lucius----"
"Lady Isabel," shouted Priscilla, "come here at once. She won't come," she said to Frank, "if she can possibly help it, because she's furiously angry with me for asking her why on earth she married Barnabas. Rather a natural question, I thought Barnabas, go and get her."
Mr. Pennefather, who seemed cowed into a state of profound submissiveness, huddled his waterproof round him and went to Lady Isabel. She was hammering an extra peg through the loop of one of the guy lines of the further tent.
"Why do you suppose she did it?" said Priscilla. "I couldn't find that out. It's very hard to imagine why anybody marries anybody else. I often sit and wonder for hours. But it's totally impossible in this case----"
"Perhaps he preaches very well," said Frank. "That might have attracted her."
"Couldn't possibly," said Priscilla. "No girl--at the same time, of course, she has, which shows there must have been some reason. I say, Cousin Frank, she must be absolutely mad with me. She's dragged Barnabas into the other tent. Rather a poor lookout for me, considering that I shall have to sleep with her. There's the
Tortoise again. It is the
Tortoise. There's no mistake about it this time."
The rain squall had blown over. The
Tortoise, now plainly visible, was tearing across the foam-flecked stretch of water between Inishrua and 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. _