Priscilla's Spies Part 37

"I might," said Joseph Antony.

Priscilla turned to the boat joyfully.

"Hop out, Barnabas," she shouted, "and take the tents and things with you. It's all settled. Joseph Antony will give you the run of his island and you'll be perfectly safe."

Mr. Pennefather climbed over the bows of the _Tortoise_.

Lady Isabel tugged at the hold-all, which was tucked away under a thwart and heaved it with a great effort into her husband's arms. He staggered under the weight of it. Joseph Antony Kinsella's instinctive politeness a.s.serted itself.

"Will you let me take that from you?" he said. "The like of them parcels isn't fit for your reverence to carry."

Lady Isabel got the rest of her luggage out of the _Tortoise_. Then she and Mr. Pennefather went to Jimmy Kinsella's boat and unloaded it. They had a good deal of luggage altogether. When everything was stacked on the beach Mrs. Kinsella, with her baby in her arms, came down and looked at the pile with amazement. Three small, bare-legged Kinsellas, young brothers of Jimmy's, followed her. She turned to Priscilla.

"Maybe now," she said, "them ones is after being evicted? Tell me this, was it out of shops or off the land that they did be getting their living before the trouble came on them?"

"Arrah, whist, woman," said Joseph Antony, "have you no eyes in your head. Can't you see that the gentleman's a clergyman?"

"Glory be to G.o.d!" said Mrs. Kinsella, "and to think now that they'd evict the like of him!"

Lady Isabel held out her hand to Priscilla.

"Goodbye," she said, "and thank you so much for all you've done. If you see my mother??"

"We'll see her tonight," said Priscilla. "I shan't be let in to dinner, but I'll see her afterwards when Aunt Juliet is smoking in the hope of shocking your father."

"Don't tell her we're here," said Lady Isabel.

"Come along, Frank," said Priscilla. "I'll help you out of that boat and into the _Tortoise_. We must be getting home. Goodbye, Miss Rutherford."

"It really is goodbye this time," said Miss Rutherford. "I'm off tomorrow morning."

"Back to London?" said Frank. "Hard luck."

"To that frowsy old Museum," said Priscilla, "full of skeletons of whales and stuffed antelopes and things."

"I feel it all acutely," said Miss Rutherford. "Don't make it worse for me by enumerating my miseries."

"And I don't believe you've caught a single sponge," said Priscilla.

"Will they be frightfully angry with you?"

"I've got a few," said Miss Rutherford, "fresh water ones that I caught before I met you. I'll make the most of them."

"Anyhow," said Priscilla, "it'll be a great comfort to you to feel that you've taken part in a n.o.ble deed of mercy before you left."

"That's something, of course," said Miss Rutherford, "but you can't think how annoying it is to have to go away just at this crisis of the adventure. I shall be longing day and night to hear how it ends."

"I'll write and tell you, if you like," said Priscilla.

"Do," said Miss Rutherford. "Just let me know whether the sanctuary remains inviolable and I shall be satisfied."

"Right," said Priscilla. "Goodbye We needn't actually kiss each other, need we? Of course, if you want to frightfully you can; but I think kissing's rather piffle."

Miss Rutherford contented herself with wringing Priscilla's hand. Then she and Priscilla helped Frank out of Jimmy Kinsella's boat and into the _Tortoise_.

The wind was due east and was blowing a good deal harder than it was when they ran down to Inish-bawn. The _Tortoise_ had a long beat before her, the kind of beat which means that a small boat will take in a good deal of water. Priscilla pa.s.sed an oilskin coat to Frank. Having been wet through by the thunderstorm and having got dry, Frank had no wish to get wet again. He struggled into the coat, pus.h.i.+ng his arms through sleeves which stuck together and b.u.t.toned it round him. The _Tortoise_ settled down to her work in earnest She listed over until the foaming dark water rushed along her gunwale. She pounded into the short seas, lifted her bow clear of them, pounded down again, breasted them, took them fair on the curve of her bow, deluged herself, Frank's oilskin and even the greater part of her sails with showers of spray. The breeze freshened and at the end of each tack the boat swung round so fast that Frank, with his maimed ankle, had hard work to scramble over the centreboard case to the weather side. He slipped and slithered on the wet floor boards. There was a wash of water on the lee side which caught and soaked whichever leg he left behind him. He discovered that an oilskin coat is a miserably inefficient protection in a small boat. Not that the seas came through it. That does not happen. But while he made a grab at the flying foresail sheet a green blob of a wave would rush up his sleeve and soak him elbow high. Or, when he had turned his back to the wind and settled down comfortably, an insidious shower of spray found means to get between his coat and his neck, and trickled swiftly down, saturating his innermost garments to his very waist. Also it is necessary sometimes to squat with knees bent chinward, and then there are bulging s.p.a.ces between the b.u.t.tons of the coat Seas, leaping joyfully clear of the weather bow, came plump into his lap. It became a subject of interesting speculation whether there was a square inch of his body left dry anywhere.

Priscilla, who had no oilskin, got wet quicker but was no wetter in the end. Her cotton frock clung to her. Water oozed out of the tops of her shoes as she pressed her feet against the lee side of the boat to maintain her position on the slippery floor boards. She had crammed her hat under the stern thwart. Her hair, glistening with salt water, blew in tangles round her head. Her face glowed with excitement. She was enjoying herself to the utmost.

Tack after tack brought them further up the bay. The wind was still freshening, but the sea, as they got nearer the eastern sh.o.r.e, became calmer. The _Tortoise_ raced through it. Sharp squalls struck her occasionally. She dipped her lee gunwale and took a lump of solid water on board. Priscilla luffed her and let the main sheet run through her fingers. The _Tortoise_ bounced up on even keel and shook her sails in an ill-tempered way. Priscilla, with a pull at the tiller, set her on her course again. A few minutes later the sea whitened and frothed to windward and the same process was gone through again. The stone perch was pa.s.sed. The tacks became shorter, and the squalls, as the wind descended from the hills, were more frequent.

But the sail ended triumphantly. Never before had Priscilla rounded up the _Tortoise_ to her mooring buoy with such absolute precision. Never before had she so large an audience to witness her skill. Peter Walsh was waiting for her at the buoy in Bran-nigan's punt. Patsy the smith, quite sober but still yellow in the face, was standing on the slip. On the edge of the quay, having torn themselves from their favourite seat, were all the loafers who usually occupied Brannigan's window sills.

Timothy Sweeny had come down from his shop and stood in the background, a paunchy, flabby figure of a man, with keen beady eyes.

"The weather's broke, Miss," said Peter Walsh, as he rowed them ash.o.r.e.

"The wind will work round to the southeast and your sailing's done for this turn."

"It may not," said Priscilla, stepping from the punt to the slip, "you can't be sure about the wind."

"But it will, Miss," said one of the loafers, leaning over to speak to her.

Another and then another of them took up the words. With absolute unanimity they a.s.sured her that sailing next day would be totally impossible.

"Unless you're wanting to drown yourselves," said Patsy the smith sullenly.

"The gla.s.s has gone down," said Timothy Sweeny, coming forward.

"Help the gentleman ash.o.r.e," said Priscilla, "and don't croak about the weather."

"The master was saying today," said Peter Walsh, "that he'd take the _Tortoise_ out tomorrow, and the gentleman that's up at the house along with him. I'd be glad now, Miss, if you'd tell him it'll be no use him wasting his time coming down to the quay on account of the weather being broke and the wind going round to the southeast."

"And the gla.s.s going down," said Sweeny.

"It'll be better for him to amuse himself some other way tomorrow," said Patsy the smith.

"I'll tell him," said Priscilla.

"And if the young gentleman that's with you," said Peter Walsh, "would say the same I'd be glad. We wouldn't like anything would happen to the master, for he's well liked."

"It would be a disgrace to the whole of us," said Patsy the smith, "if the strange gentleman was to be drownded."

"They'd have it on the papers if anything happened him," said Sweeny, "and the place would be getting a bad name, which is what I wouldn't like on account of being a magistrate."

Priscilla began to wheel the bath-chair away from the quay. Having gone a few steps she turned and winked impressively at Peter Walsh. Then she went on. The party on the quay watched her out of sight.

"Now what," said Sweeny, "might she mean by that kind of behaviour?"

"It's as much as to say," said Peter Walsh, "that she knows d.a.m.n well where it is the master and the other gentleman will be wanting to go."

"She's mighty cute," said Sweeny.