_ CHAPTER IX
Frank learned several things while the sails were being hoisted. The word halyard became familiar to him and connected itself definitely with certain ropes. He discovered that a sheet is, oddly enough, not an expanse of canvas, but another rope. He impressed carefully on his mind the part of the boat in which he might, under favourable circumstances, expect to find the centreboard tackle.
The wind, which had dropped completely at low water, sprang up again, this time from the west, with the rising tide. This was pleasant and promised a fair run home, but Priscilla eyed the sky suspiciously. She was weather-wise.
"It'll die clean away," she said, "towards evening. It always does on this kind of day when it has worked round with the sun. Curious things winds are, Cousin Frank, aren't they? Rather like ices in some ways, I always think."
Frank had considerable experience of ices, and had been obliged, while playing various games, to take some notice of the wind from time to time; but he missed the point of Priscilla's comparison. She explained herself.
"If you put in a good spoonful at once," she said, "it gives you a pain in some tooth or other and you don't enjoy it. On the other hand, if you put in a very little bit it gets melted away before you're able to taste it properly. That's just the way the wind behaves when you're out sailing. Either it has you clinging on to the main sheet for all you're worth or else it dies away and leaves you flapping. It's only about once a month that you get just what you want."
It seemed to Frank, when the boat got under way, that they had happened on the one propitious day. The
Tortoise slipped pleasantly along, her sails well filled, the boom pressed forward against the shroud, the main sheet an attenuated coil at Priscilla's feet.
"I'm feeling a bit bothered," said Priscilla.
"We ought to have been back for luncheon," said Frank. "I know that."
"It's not luncheon that's bothering me; although it's quite likely that we won't be back for dinner either. What I can't quite make up my mind about is what we ought to do next about those spies."
"Go after them again to-morrow."
"That's all well enough; but things are much more mixed up than that. In some ways I rather wish we had Sylvia Courtney with us. She's president of our Browning Society and tremendously good at every kind of complication. What I feel is that we're rather like those boys in the poem who went out to catch a hare and came on a lion unaware. I haven't got the passage quite right but you probably know it."
Frank did. He could not, since English literature is still only fitfully studied in public schools, have named the author. But he quoted the lines with fluent confidence. It was by turning them into Greek Iambics that he had won the head-master's prize.
"That's it," said Priscilla. "And that's more or less what has happened to us. We went out to chase a simple, ordinary German spy and we have come on two other mysteries of the most repulsively fascinating kind. First there's Miss Rutherford, if that's her real name, who says she's fishing for sponges, which is certainly a lie."
"I don't know about it's being a lie," said Frank. "She explained it to me after you'd gone."
"Oh, that about zoophytes. You don't believe that surely?"
"I do," said Frank. "There are lots of queer things in the British Museum. I was there once."
"My own belief is," said Priscilla, "that she simply trotted out those zoophyte things and the British Museum when she found that we weren't inclined to swallow the ordinary sponge. At the same time I can't believe that she's a criminal of any kind. She struck me as being an uncommonly good sort. The wind's dropping. I told you it would. Very soon now we shall have to row. Can you row, Cousin Frank?"
Frank replied with cheerful confidence that he could. He had sat at Priscilla's feet all day and bowed to her superior knowledge of sailing. When it came to rowing he was sure that he could hold his own. He understood the phraseology of the art, had learned to take advantage of sliding seats, could keep his back straight and had been praised by a member of a University eight for his swing.
"The other mystery," said Priscilla, "is Inishbawn. The Kinsellas won't let the spies land on the island. They won't let Miss Rutherford. They won't let you, They tell every kind of ridiculous story to head people off."
The thought of his prowess as an oarsman had restored Frank's self-respect. He recollected the reason given by Jimmy Kinsella for not allowing Miss Rutherford to land on Inishbawn.
"I don't see anything ridiculous about it," he said. "Young Kinsella simply said that it wasn't a suitable place for ladies. There are lots of places we men go to where we wouldn't take-------"
His sentence tailed away. Priscilla's eyes expressed an amount of amusement which made him feel singularly uncomfortable.
"That," she said, "is the most utter rot I've ever heard in my life. And in any case, even if it was true, it wouldn't apply to us. Jimmy Kinsella distinctly said that I might land on the island as much as I like, but that he jolly well wouldn't have you. We may just as well row now as later on. The breeze is completely gone."
She got out the oars and dropped the rowlocks into their holes. She pulled stroke oar herself. Frank settled himself on the seat behind her. He found himself in a position of extreme discomfort. The
Tortoise was designed and built to be a sailing boat. It was not originally contemplated that she should be rowed far or rowed fast. When Frank leaned back at the end of his stroke he bumped against the mast When he swung forward in the proper way he hit Priscilla between the shoulders with his knuckles. When the boat shot forward the boom swung inboard. If this happened at the end of a stroke Frank was hit on the shoulder. If it happened at the beginning of a stroke the spar struck him on the ear. However he shifted his position he was unable to avoid sitting on some rope. The centreboard case was between his legs and when he tried to get his injured foot against anything firm he found it entangled in ropes which he could not kick away. Priscilla complained.
"Put a little more beef into it, Cousin Frank," she said. "I'm pulling her head round all the time."
Frank put all the energy he could into a series of short jerky strokes, using the muscles of his arms, failing altogether to get the weight of his body on the oar. At the end of twenty minutes Priscilla gave him a rest.
"There's no use our killing ourselves," she said. "The tide's under us. It's a jolly lucky thing it is. If it was the other way we wouldn't get home to-night. I wonder now whether the Kinsellas think you've any connection with the police. You don't look it in the least, but you never can tell what people will think. If they do mistake you for anything of the sort it might account for their not wanting you to land on Inishbawn."
"Why?"
"Oh, I don't know why exactly--not yet. But there often are things knocking about which it wouldn't at all do for the police to see. That might happen anywhere. There's an air of wind coming up behind us. Just get in that oar of yours. We may as well take the good of what's going."
A faint ripple on the surface of the water approached the
Tortoise. Before it reached her the boom swung forward, lifting the dripping main sheet from the water, and the boat slipped on.
"But of course," said Priscilla, "that idea of your being a policeman in disguise doesn't account for their telling Miss Rutherford that there was something on the island which it wouldn't be nice for a lady to see. And it doesn't account for the swine-fever story that Joseph Antony Kinsella told the spies."
"What was that?"
"Oh, nothing much. Only that his wife and children had come out all over in bright yellow spots."
"But perhaps they have."
"Not they. You might just as well believe in Peter Walsh's rats. That leaves us with three different mysteries on hand." Priscilla hooked her elbow over the tiller and ticked off the three mysteries on the fingers of her right hand. "The sponge lady, whose name may be Miss Rutherford, one. Inishbawn Island, that's two. The original spies, which makes three. I'm afraid we'll have to row again. Do you think you can, Cousin Frank?"
"Of course I can."
"Don't be offended. I only meant that you mightn't be able to on account of your ankle. How is your ankle?"
"It's all right," said Frank, "That is to say it's just the same."
No other favouring breeze rippled the surface of the bay. For rather more than an hour, with occasional intervals for rest, Frank tugged at his oar, bumped his back, and was struck on the side of the head by the boom. He was very much exhausted when the
Tortoise was at length brought alongside the slip at the end of the quay. Priscilla still seemed fresh and vigorous.
"I wonder," said Frank, "if we could hire a boy."
"Dozens," said Priscilla, "if you want them... What for?"
"To wheel that bath-chair. I can't walk, you know. And I don't like to think of your pushing me up the hill. You must be tired."
"That," said Priscilla, "is what I call real politeness. There are lots of other kinds of politeness which aren't worth tuppence. But that kind is rather nice. It makes me feel quite grown up. All the same I'll wheel you home."
She pushed the bath-chair up the hill from the village without any obvious effort. At the gate of the avenue she stopped. Two small children were playing just inside it. A rather larger child set on the doorstep of the gate lodge with a baby on her knee.
"What time is it, Cousin Frank?" said Priscilla.
"It's ten minutes past seven."
"Susan Ann, where's your mother?"
The girl with the baby on her knee struggled to her feet and answered:
"She's up at the house beyond, Miss."
"I just thought she must be," said Priscilla, "when I saw William Thomas and the other boy playing there, and you nursing the baby. If your mother wasn't up at the house you'd all be in your beds."
She wheeled the bath-chair on until she turned the corner of the avenue and was lost to the sight of the children who peered after her. Then she paused.
"Cousin Frank," she said, "it's just as well for you to be prepared for some kind of fuss when we get home."
"We're awfully late, I know."
"It's not that. It's something far worse. The fuss that's going on up there at the present moment is a thunderstorm compared to what there would be over our being late."
"How do you know there's a fuss?"
"Before she was married," said Priscilla, "Mrs. Geraghty--that's the woman at the gate lodge, the mother of those four children--was our upper housemaid. Aunt Juliet simply loved her. She rubs her into all the other servants day and night. She says she was the only sufficient housemaid. I'm not sure that that's quite the right word. It may be efficient Any how she says she's the only something-or-other-ficient housemaid she ever had; which of course is a grand thing for Mrs. Geraghty, though not really as nice as it seems, because whenever anything perfectly appalling happens Aunt Juliet sends for her. Then she and Aunt Juliet rag the other servants until things get smoothed out again. The minute I saw those children sporting about when by rights they ought to be in bed I knew that Mrs. Geraghty had been sent for. Now you understand the sort of thing you have to expect when we get home. I thought I'd just warn you, so that you wouldn't be taken by surprise."
Frank felt that he still might be taken by surprise and urged Priscilla to give him some further details about the catastrophe.
"We'll find out soon enough," said Priscilla. "At least we may. If it's the kind of thing that's visible, streams of water running down the front stairs or anything like that, we'll see for ourselves, but if it happens to be a more inward sort of disaster which we can't see--and that's the kind there's always the worst fuss about--then it may take us some time to find out. Aunt Juliet doesn't think it's good for children to know about inward disasters, and so she never talks of them when I'm there except in what she calls French, and not much of that because Father can't understand her. They may, of course, confide in you. It all depends on whether they think you're a child or not."
"I'm not."
"
I know that, of course. And Aunt Juliet saw you in your evening coat last night at dinner, so she oughtn't to. But you never can tell about things of that kind. Look at the sponge lady for instance. She said you were the nicest child she ever saw. Still they may tell you."
Frank did not like being reminded of Miss Rutherford's remark. Priscilla's repetition of it goaded him to a reply which he immediately afterwards felt to be unworthy.
"If they do tell me," he said, "I won't tell you."
"Then you'll be a mean, low beast," said Priscilla.
Frank pulled himself together with an effort. He realised that it would never do to bandy schoolboy repartee with Priscilla. His loss of dignity would be complete. And besides, he was very likely to get the worst of the encounter. He was out of practise. Prefects do not descend to personalities.
"My dear Priscilla," he said, "I only meant that I wouldn't tell you if it was the sort of thing a girl oughtn't to hear."
"Like what Jimmy Kinsella has on Inishbawn," said Priscilla. "Do you know, Cousin Frank, you're quite too funny for words when you go in for being grand. Now would you like me to wheel you up to the hall-door and ring the bell, or would you rather we sneaked round through the shrubbery into the yard, and got in by the gunroom door and so up the back stairs?"
"I don't care," said Frank.
"The back way would be the wisest," said Priscilla, "but in the state of grandeur you're in now----"
"Oh, do drop it, Priscilla."
"I don't want to keep it up."
"Then go by the back door."
"Do you promise to tell me all about it, supposing they tell you, and they may? You can never be sure what they'll do."
"Yes, I promise."
"A faithful, solemn oath?"
"Yes."
"Whether it's the sort of thing a girl ought to be told or not?"
"Yes. Only do go on. It'll take me hours to dress, and we're awfully late already."
Priscilla trotted briskly through the shrubbery, crossed the yard and helped Frank out of the chair at the gunroom door. She gave him her arm while he hobbled up the back stairs. At the top of the first flight she deserted him suddenly. She darted forward, half opened a baize covered swing door and peeped through.
"I just thought I heard them at it," she said. "Mrs. Geraghty and the two housemaids are rioting in the long gallery, dragging the furniture about and, generally speaking, playing old hokey. That gives us a certain amount of information, Cousin Frank." _