_ 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, miles of it, show this pale sea grass instead of water. Only the few deep channels remain, with their foolish stranded buoys and their high useless perches, to witness to the fact that at evening time the sea will claim its own again.
Very wonderful are the changes of the bay. The southwest wind sweeps rain over it in slanting drifts. The islands show dimly grey amid a welter of grey water, breaking angrily in short, petulant seas, which buffet boats confusedly and put the helmsmen's skill to a high test. Or chilly, curling mists wrap islands and promontories from sight. Terns, circling somewhere up above, cry to each other shrilly. Gulls flit suddenly into sight and out of sight again, uttering sorrowful wails. Now and again cormorants, low flying with a rushing noise, break the oily surface of the water with every swift downward flapping of their wings. Then the boatman needs something more than skill, must rely upon an inborn instinct for locality if he is not to find himself embayed and aground in some strange land-locked corner far from his home. Or, in the splendid summer days the islands seem poised a foot or two above the glistening water. The white terns hover and plunge, re-emerge amid the joyful callings of their fellows, each with some tiny silver fish to feed to the yellow chicks which gape to them from the short, coarse grass among the rocks. Curlews call to each other from island to island, and high answering calls come from the sea-saturated fields of the mainland. Small broad billed guillemots and puffins float at ease upon the water, swelling with obvious pride as they display the flocks of little ones which swim with infantile solemnity around them. Gulls cluster and splash noisily over shoals of fry. Then boats drift lazily along; piled high perhaps with brown turf, store of winter fuel for some home; or bearing stolid cattle from the cropped pasturage of one island to the untouched grass of another; or, paddled, noisily, carry a crowd of boys and girls home from school, mightily enriched no doubt with knowledge only to be obtained when the water is calm enough for children's sea-going in the summer days.
On such days all the drama of the flowing and ebbing tides may be watched with ever increasing wonder and delight The sea is caught by the islands and goes whirling down the channels. It is turned backwards by some stray spit of land and set beating against some other current of the same tide which has taken a different way and reached the same point in strong opposite flow. The little glistening wavelets leap to meet each other, like lovers reunited whose mouths are hungry for the pressure of glad greetings. There are places where the water eddies round and round, where smooth eager lips, rising from the whirlpools, seem as if they reached up for something to kiss, and are sucked down again into the depths with voiceless passion. Foot by foot the water gains on the rocks beside the channels, on the fringes of the boulders, on the stony shores, and covers the stretches of mud:
The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pale ablution round earth's human shore. But they do not escape without defilement On the surface of the tide, when it ebbs from the mudbanks, there gathers an iridescent slime. Tiny particles of floating sand catch and reflect the light Fragments of dead weed, black or brown, are borne along. The tide has stolen across the beaches below the cottages and carried away the garbage cast there. It has passed where a little while before the cattle strayed, and passing has been stained. Here is no breaking of clear green waves against black defiant rocks, no tumultuous pitched battle between the ocean, inspired by the supreme passion of the tide, and the sullen resistance of unyielding cliffs. Instead a dubious sea wanders in and out amid scenes which the experience of many centuries has not made familiar to it.
It was into this shining bay that the
Tortoise sped, her white sails bellied with the pleasant wind. Priscilla exulted, with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes.
Frank, yielding a little to the fascination of the sailing, was yet ill at ease. His conscience troubled him, the acutely sensitive conscience of a prefect who had been responsible for the tone of Edmondstone House. He feared that he had done wrong in going with Priscilla in the
Tortoise, wrong of a particularly flagrant kind. He thought of himself as a man of responsibility placed in the position of trust. Had he been guilty of a breach of trust? It seemed remotely unlikely, so cheerful and sparkling was the sea, that any accident could possibly occur. But with what feelings could he face a broken and reproachful father should anything happen and Priscilla be drowned? The blame would justly rest on him. The fault would be entirely his.
"Priscilla," he said, "I wish we hadn't come. I ought not to have come when Uncle Lucius has forbidden you to use this boat."
"Oh," said Priscilla, "don't you fret Father doesn't really mind a bit. He only pretends to, has to, you know, on account of Aunt Juliet He knows jolly well that I can sail the
Tortoise, any one could."
Frank could not; but Priscilla's tone comforted him a little. Yet his conscience was ill at ease.
"But Miss Lentaigne," he said, "your Aunt Juliet----"
"She'll object, all right, of course," said Priscilla. "If she knew where we are this minute she'd be dead, cock sure that we'd be drowned. She'd probably spend the afternoon planning out nice warm ways of wrapping up our clammy corpses when she got them back. But she doesn't know, so that's all right."
"She will know, this evening. We shall have to tell her."
On one point Frank was entirely decided. Priscilla should neither lure nor drive him into any kind of deceit about the expedition. But Priscilla had no such intention.
"We'll tell her right enough," she said, "when we get home. She'll be pretty mad, of course, inwardly; but she can't
say much on account of her principles."
"I don't see what her principles have to do with it."
"Don't you? Then you must be rather stupid. Can't you see that if you haven't really got a sprained ankle, but only believe you have, and wouldn't have it if you believed you hadn't, then we shouldn't really be drowned, supposing we were drowned, I mean, which, of course, we're not going to be--if we believed we weren't drowned? And Aunt Juliet, with her principles, would be bound to believe we weren't, even if we were. We've only got to put it to her that way and she won't have a ghost of a grievance left. It's the simplest form of Christian Science. But in any case, whatever silliness Aunt Juliet may indulge in, we were simply bound to have the
Tortoise today. It's a matter of duty. I don't see how you can get around that, Cousin Frank, no matter how you argue."
Frank did not want to get behind his duty. He had been brought up with a very high regard for the word, If it had been clearly shown him that it was his duty to take an ocean voyage in the
Tortoise, with Priscilla as leader of the expedition, he would have bidden a long farewell to his friends and gone forth cheerfully. But he did not see that this particular sail, which seemed, indeed, little better than a humiliating, though agreeable, act of truancy, could possibly be sheltered under the name of duty. Priscilla enlightened him.
"I daresay you don't know," she said, "that there is a German spy at the present moment making a chart of this bay. We are hunting him."
There is something intensely stimulating to every healthy mind in the idea of hunting a spy. No prefect in the world, no master even, not Mr. Dupre himself, not the remote divine head-master in the calm Elysium of his garden, could have escaped a thrill at the mention of such a sport. Frank was conscious of a sudden relapse from the serenity of the grown man's common sense. For an instant he became a normal schoolboy.
"Rot!" he said. "What spy?"
"It's not rot," said Priscilla. "You've read 'The Riddle of the Sands,' I suppose. You must have. Well, that's exactly what he's at, mapping out mud-banks and things so as to be able to run a masked flotilla of torpedo boats in and out when the time comes. There was one of the same lot caught the other day sketching a fortification in Lough Swilly. Father read it to me out of a newspaper."
Frank had seen a report of that capture. German spies have of late, been appearing with disquieting frequency. They are met with in the most unlikely places. Frank was a little shaken in his scepticism.
"What makes you say there's a German spy?" he said
"I saw him. So did Peter Walsh. So did Joseph Antony Kinsella. You heard Peter Walsh talking about him this morning. I saw him yesterday. I was bathing at the time and he ran his boat on a rock off the point of Delginish. If it hadn't been for me he'd have been there still, only drowned, of course, for his boat floated away from him. I wish now that I'd left him there, but, of course, I didn't know at the time that he was a spy. That idea only came to me afterwards. I say, Cousin Frank, wouldn't it be absolutely spiffing if it turned out that he really was?"
It was impossible for any one to deny that such a thing would be spiffing in the very highest possible degree.
"If he is," said Priscilla, "and I don't see any reason why he shouldn't--anyhow it's jolly good sport to pretend--and if he is, it's our plain duty to hunt him down at any risk. Sylvia Courtney says that Wordsworth's 'Ode to Duty' is quite the most thrillingly impressive poem in the whole 'Golden Treasury' so you won't want to go back on it."
Frank's prize had been won for Greek Iambics, not for English literature. He was not in a position to discuss the value of Wordsworth's "Ode to Duty" as a guide to conduct in ordinary life.
"My plan," said Priscilla, "is to begin at the south of the bay and work across to the north, investigating every island until we light on the one where he is. That's the reason I had to take the
Tortoise. The
Blue Wanderer wouldn't have done it for us. She won't go to windward. But the
Tortoise is a racing boat. Father bought her cheap at Kingstown because she never won any races, which is the reason why he called her the
Tortoise. But she can sail faster than Flanagan's old boat, anyhow. And that's the one which the spy has got."
Frank was not inclined to discuss the appropriateness of the
Tortoise's new name. He was just beginning to recover from the feeling of bewildered annoyance induced by the sudden introduction of Wordsworth's poem into the conversation.
"But what makes you say he's a spy?" he said. "I know there are spies, and I saw about the capture of that one in Lough Swilly. But why should this man be one?"
"I don't say he is," said Priscilla. "All I say is that until we've hunted him down we can't possibly be sure that he isn't. You never can be sure about anything until you've actually tried it. And, anyway, what else can he be? You can't deny that there's some mystery about him. Remember what Peter Walsh said about his looking as innocent as a child. That's the way spies always look. Besides, I don't think his clothes really belonged to him. I could see that at a glance. He had a pair of white flannel trousers with creases down the fronts of the legs, quite as swagger as yours, if not swaggerer, and a white sweater. He didn't look a bit comfortable in them, not as if they were the kind of clothes he was accustomed to wear. That's Rossmore head on the left there, Cousin Frank. He's not there. I didn't expect he would be, and he isn't. I don't expect he's in that bay to the southwest of it either. But we'll just run in a bit and make sure."
The breeze had freshened a little, and the
Tortoise made good way through the calm water. Frank began to feel some little trust in Priscilla. She handled the boat with an air of confidence which was reassuring. His conscience was troubling him less than it did. There is nothing in the world equal to sailing as a means of quieting anxious consciences. A man may be suffering mental agonies from the recollection of some cruel and cold-blooded murder which he happens to have committed. On land his life would be a burden to him. But let him go down to the sea in a small white sailed ship, and in forty-eight hours or less, he will have ceased to feel any remorse for his victim. This may be the reason why all Protestant nations are maritime powers. Having denied themselves the orthodox anaesthetic of the confessional, these peoples have been obliged to take to the sea as a means of preventing their consciences from harrying them. Driven forth across the waves by the clamorous importunity of the voice within, they, of very necessity, acquire a certain skill in the management of boats, a skill which sooner or later leads to the burdensome possession of a navy and so to maritime importance. It is interesting to see how this curious law works out in quite modern times.
The Italian navy is now considerable, but it has only become so since the people were driven to the sea as a consequence of the anti-clerical feeling which led them to desert the confessional. It is quite possible that the Portuguese, having in their new Republic developed a strong antipathy to sacraments and so laid up for themselves a future of spiritual disquiet, may see their ancient maritime glories revived, and in seeking relief beyond the mouth of the Tagus from the gnawings of their consciences, may give birth to some reincarnation of Vasco da Gama or Prince Henry, the Navigator.
"I don't think," said Priscilla, looking round her searchingly, "that he's anywhere in this bay. How's your ankle?"
"It's quite comfortable," said Frank.
"I asked," said Priscilla, "because in order to get out of the bay I shall have to jibe, and that means that you've got to hop across the centreboard case."
Frank had not the least idea of what happens when a small boat jibes. He intended to ask for information, but was not given any opportunity. The boom, which had hitherto behaved with dignity and self-possession, suddenly swung across the boat with such swiftness that he had no time to duck his head to avoid it. His straw hat, struck on the brim, was swept over the side of the boat. He found himself thrown down against the gunwale, while a quantity of cold water poured over his legs. He grasped the centreboard case, the nearest stable thing at hand, and pulled himself up again into the middle of the boat. Priscilla, a good deal tangled in a writhing rope, was struggling past the tiller to the windward side.
"What's happened?" asked Frank.
"Jibed all standing," said Priscilla. "I didn't mean to, of course. I must have been sailing her by the lee. But it's all right. We didn't ship more than a bucketful. I say, I'm rather sorry about your hat; but that's a rotten kind of hat in a boat anyway. Would you mind getting up to windward? I've got to luff her a bit and she'll heel over."
"Is it gone?"
"What? Oh, the hat. Yes, quite. We couldn't get it without jibing again."
"Don't let us do that," said Frank, "if we can help it.
"I won't. But do get up to windward. That is to say if your ankle's not too bad. I must luff a bit or we'll go ashore. The water's getting very shallow."
Frank scrambled over the centreboard case and bumped down on the floor boards on the windward side of the boat Priscilla pushed over the tiller and began to haul vigorously on the main sheet The
Tortoise swept round, heeled over and rushed through the water on a broad reach. The wind, so it seemed to Frank, began to blow much harder than before. He clung to the weather stay and watched the bubbling water tear past within an inch or two of the lower gunwale. A sudden spasm of extreme nervousness seized him. He looked anxiously at Priscilla. She seemed to be entirely calm and self-possessed. His self-respect reasserted itself. He remembered that she was merely a girl. He set his teeth and determined to show no sign of fear. Gradually the exhilaration of the motion, the coolness of the breeze through his hair, the dancing, impulsive rush of the boat, and the shining white of the sail in front of him conquered his qualms. He began to enjoy himself as he had never in his life enjoyed himself before.
"I say, Priscilla," he said, "this is fine."
"Topping," said Priscilla.
The feel of the cricket ball caught clean in the centre of the bat, sent in one clear flight to square leg across the boundary line, is glorious. Frank knew the exultation of such moments. The dash across the goal line from a swiftly taken pass is a thing to live for. Frank, as a fast three-quarter back, knew that too. But this tearing of a heeling boat through bubbling green water became to him, when he got over the first terror of it, a delirious joy.
"That's Inishminna ahead of us to windward," said Priscilla. "Flanagan lives there, who hired him the old boat. He might be there, but he isn't. I can see the whole slope of the island. We'll slip under the lee of the end of it past Illaunglos. It's a likely enough island."
Frank suddenly remembered that they were in pursuit of a German spy. The remainder of his scepticism forsook him. Amid such surroundings, with the singing of the wind and the gurgling swish of the flying boat in his ears, any adventure seemed possible. The prosaic limitations of ordinary life dropped off from him. Only it seemed a pity to find the spy, since finding him would stop their sailing.
"I say, Priscilla," he said. "Don't let us bother about the old spy. Let's go on sailing."
"Just hunker down a bit," said Priscilla, "and look under the foot of the sail. I can't see to leeward. Is there anything like a tent on that island?"
Frank curled himself into a cramped and difficult attitude. He peered under the sail and made his report.
"There's nothing there," he said, "except three bullocks. But I can only see two sides of the island."
"We'll open the north side in a minute," said Priscilla. "He can't be at the west end of it, for it is all bluff and boulders. If he isn't on the north shore he's not there at all.
Frank twisted himself again into the bottom of the boat, and peeped under the sail. The north shore of Illaunglos held no tent.
"Good," said Priscilla. "Well stand on The next island is Inishark. He may be there. There's a well on it, and he'd naturally want to camp somewhere within reach of water."
Frank, still curled up beside the centreboard case, gazed under the sail at Inishark. The boat, swaying and dipping in a still freshening breeze, sped on.
"Is there any large white stone on the ridge of the island?" he asked.
"No," said Priscilla. "There isn't a white stone of any size in the whole bay. It's most likely a sheep."
"It's not a sheep. Nobody ever saw a sheep with a back that went up into a point. I believe it's the top of a tent. Steer for it, Priscilla."
Frank was aglow with excitement. The sailing intoxicated him. The sight of the triangular apex of the tent put himself beside himself.
"Turn the boat, Priscilla. Go down to the island."
Priscilla was cooler.
"We'll hold on a minute," she said, "and make sure. There's no use running all that way down to leeward until we're certain. We'd only have to beat up again."
"It is a tent," said Frank. "I can see now. There are two tents."
Priscilla caught his excitement She knelt on the floor boards, crooked her elbow over the tiller, leaned over the side of the boat and stared under the sail at the island.
"That's him," she said. "Now, Cousin Frank, we'll have to jibe again to get down there. Do you think you can be a bit nippier in getting over the centreboard than you were last time. It's blowing harder, and it won't do to upset. You very nearly had us over before."
Frank was too excited to notice that she now put the whole blame of the sudden violence of the last jibe on him. Thinking over the matter afterwards, he remembered that she had apologised at the time for her own bad steering. Now she wanted to hold his awkwardness responsible for what might have been a disaster.
"All right," he said, "All right I'll do whatever you tell me."
"I won't risk it," said Priscilla. "You'd mean to do all right, but you wouldn't when the time came. That ankle of yours, you know. After all, it's just as easy to run her up into the wind and stay her."
"There's a man at the door of one of the tents looking at us through a pair of glasses," said Frank.
"Let him," said Priscilla.
She was hauling in the main sheet as the boat swept up into the wind.
"Now, Cousin Frank, ready about. You must slack off the jib sheet and haul down the other. That thin rope at your hand. Yes, that's it."
The meaning of this new manoeuvre was dim and uncertain to Frank. He grasped the rope indicated to him and then heard a noise as if some one at the bottom of the sea, an angry mermaid perhaps, was striking the keel of the boat hard with a hammer.
"She's touching," said Priscilla. "Up centreboard, quick."
Frank gazed at her in pained bewilderment. He had not the least idea of what she wanted him to do. The knocking at the boat's bottom became more frequent and violent. Priscilla gave the main sheet a turn round a cleat and stretched forward, holding the tiller with her left hand. She grasped a rope, one out of a tangled web of wet ropes, and tugged. The knocking ceased. The boat swept up into the wind. There was a sudden arrest of movement, a violent list over, a dart forward, a soft crunching sound, and then a dead stop.
"Bother," said Priscilla, "we're aground."
She sprang overboard at once, stood knee deep in the water, and tugged at the stern of the boat The centreboard, when she dropped its rope, fell to the bottom of its case, caught in the mud under the boat, and anchored her immovably. Priscilla tugged in vain.
"It's no good," she said at last, "and the tide's ebbing. We're here for hours and hours. I hope you didn't hurt your ankle, Cousin Frank, during that fray." _