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 theTortoise’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 theTortoise. 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 theTortoise.
“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. TheTortoiselay 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 theTortoiseand, 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 theTortoise. 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 theTortoiseinto 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 theTortoiseall 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 theTortoiseand 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.
TheTortoise, 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 theTortoiseplayed. They annoyed Frank. Sometimes when the tow rope hung slack in the water, he pulled through his stroke with ease and comfort. Sometimes when theTortoisehung back heavily he seemed to be pulling against an impossible dead weight. But his worst experience came when theTortoisealtered 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 theTortoisewere 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 theTortoiseat 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 theTortoise. 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 Priscilla. “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 theTortoiseon 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.”
Thomas Antony Kinsella sat with his legs dangling over the edge of the quay. Beneath him lay his boat. The tide was flowing, but it had not yet floated her. She was supported on an even keel by the mooring ropes made fast from her bow and stern to bollards on the quay. Her sails and gear lay in confusion on her thwarts. She was still half full of gravel although some of her cargo had been shovelled out and lay in a heap behind Kinsella. He was apparently disinclined to shovel out the rest, an excusable laziness, for the day was very hot.
With the point of a knife Kinsella scraped the charred ash from the bowl of his pipe. Then he cut several thin slices from a plug of black twist tobacco, rolled them slowly between the palm of one hand and the thumb of the other; spat thoughtfully over the side of the quay into his boat, charged his pipe and put it into his mouth. There he held it for some minutes while he stared glassily at the top of his boat’s mast. He spat again and then drew a match from his waistcoat pocket.
Sergeant Rafferty of the Royal Irish Constabulary strolled quietly along the quay. It was his duty to stroll somewhere every day in order to intimidate malefactors. He found the quay on the whole a more interesting place than any of the country roads round the town, so he often chose it for the scene of what his official regulations described as a “patrol.” When he reached Kinsella he stopped.
“Good day to you,” he said.
Kinsella, without looking round, struck his match on a stone beside him and lit his pipe. He sucked in three draughts of smoke, spat again and then acknowledged the sergeant’s greeting.
“It’s a fine day,” said the sergeant
“It is,” said Kinsella, “thanks be to God.”
The sergeant stirred the pile of gravel on the quay thoughtfully with his foot. Then, peering over Kinsella’s shoulder, he took a look at the gravel which still remained in the boat.
“Tell me this, now, Joseph Antony,” he said. “Who might that gravel be for? It’s the third day you’re after bringing in a load and there’s ne’er a cart’s been down for it yet?”
“I couldn’t say who it might be for.”
“Do you tell me that now? And who’s to pay you for it?”
“Sweeny ‘ll pay for it,” said Kinsella. “It was him ordered it.”
The sergeant stirred the gravel again with his foot Timothy Sweeny was a publican who kept a small shop in one of the back streets of Rosnacree. He was known to the sergeant, but was not regarded with favour. There is a way into Sweeny’s house through a back-yard which is reached by climbing a wall. Sweeny’s front door was always shut on Sundays and his shutters were put up during those hours when the law regards the consumption of alcohol as undesirable. But the sergeant had good reason to suppose that many thirsty people found their way to the refreshment they craved through the back-yard. Sweeny was an object of suspicion and dislike to the sergeant. Therefore he stirred the gravel on the quay again and again looked at the gravel in the boat. There is no law against buying gravel; but it seemed to the sergeant very difficult to believe that Sweeny had bought four boatloads of it. Joseph Antony Kinsella felt that some explanation was due to the sergeant.
“It’s a gentleman up the country,” he said, “that Sweeny’s buying the gravel for. I did hear that he’s to send it by rail when I have the whole of it landed.”
He watched the sergeant out of the corners of his eyes to see how he would receive this statement. The sergeant did not seem to be altogether satisfied.
“What are you getting for it?” he asked.
“Five shillings a load.”
“You’re doing well,” said the sergeant.
“It’s good gravel, so it is, the best.”
“It may be good gravel,” said the sergeant, “but the gentleman that’s buying it will buy it dear if you take the half of every load you bring in home in the evening and fetch it here again the next morning along with a little more.”
The sergeant stared at the gravel in the boat as he spoke. His face had cleared, and the look of suspicion had left his eyes. Sweeny, so his instinct told him, must be engaged in some kind of wrongdoing.
Now he understood what it was. The gentleman up the country was to be defrauded of half the gravel he paid for. Curiously enough, considering that his wrongdoing had been detected, the look of anxiety left Kinsella’s face. He sucked at his pipe, found that it had gone out, and slipped it into his waistcoat pocket.
“If neither Sweeny nor the gentleman is making any complaint,” he said, “it would suit you to keep your mouth shut.”
“I’m not blaming you,” said the sergeant “Sure, anybody’d do the same if they got the chance.”
“If there’s people in the world,” said Kinsella, “that hasn’t sense enough to see that they get what they pay for, oughtn’t we to be thankful for it?”
“You’re right there,” said the sergeant
Kinsella took out his pipe and lit it again. Sergeant Rafferty after examining the sea with attentive scrutiny for some minutes, strolled back towards his barracks.
Peter Walsh slid off the window sill of Brannigan’s shop and took a long look at the sky. Having satisfied himself that its appearance was very much what he expected he walked down the quay to the place where Kinsella was sitting.
“It’s a fine evening,” he said.
“It is,” said Kinsella, “as fine an evening as you’d see, thanks be to God.”
Peter Walsh sat down beside his friend and spat into the boat beneath him.
“I seen the sergeant talking to you,” he said.
“That same sergeant has mighty little to do,” said Kinsella.
“It’ll be as well for us if he hasn’t more one of these days.”
“What do you mean by that, Peter Walsh?”
“What might he have been talking to you about?”
“Gravel, no less.”
“Asking who it might be for or the like? Would you say, now, Joseph Antony, that he was anyways uneasy in his mind?”
“He was uneasy,” said Kinsella, “but he’s easy now.”
“Did you tell him who the gravel was for?”
“Is it likely I’d tell him when I didn’t know myself? What I told him was that Timothy Sweeny had the gravel bought off me at five shillings a load and that it was likely he’d be sending it by rail to some gentleman up the country that would have it ordered from him.”
“And what did he say to that?”
“What he as good as said was that Timothy Sweeny and myself would have the gentleman cheated out of half the gravel he’d paid for by the time he’d got the other half. There was a smile on his face like there might be on a man, and him after a long drink, when he found out the way we were getting the better of the gentleman up the country. Believe you me, Peter Walsh, he wouldn’t have rested easy in his bed until he did find out, either that or some other thing.”
“That sergeant is as cute as a pet fox,” said Peter Walsh. “You’d be hard set to keep anything from him that he wanted to know.”
Kinsella sat for some minutes without speaking. Then he took a match from his pocket and lit his pipe for the third time.
“I’d be glad,” he said, “if you’d tell me what it was you had in your mind when you said a minute ago that the sergeant might maybe have more to do than he’d care for one of these days.”
Peter Walsh looked carefully round him in every direction and satisfied himself that there was no one within earshot.
“Was I telling you,” he said, “about the gentleman, and the lady along with him that came in on the train today?”
“You were not.”
“Well, he came, and I’m thinking that he’s a high-up man.”
“What about him?”
“The sergeant was sent for up to the big house,” said Peter Walsh, “soon after the strange gentleman came. I don’t know rightly what they wanted with him. Sweeny was asking Constable Maloney after; but sure the boy knew no more than I did myself.”
“It’s a curious thing,” said Kinsella, “so it is, damned curious.”
“Damned,” said Peter Walsh.
“I wouldn’t be sorry if the whole lot of them was drownded one of these days.”
“I wouldn’t like anything would happen to the young lady.”
“Is it Priscilla? I wasn’t meaning her. But any way, Peter Walsh, you know well the sea wouldn’t drown that one.”
“It would not, surely. Why would it?”
“What I had in my mind,” said Kinsella, “was the rest of them.”
He looked sadly at the sky and then out across the sea, which was perfectly calm.
“But there’ll be no drowning,” he added with a sigh, “while the weather holds the way it is.”
“There’s a feel in the air,” said Peter Walsh hopefully, “like as if there might be thunder.”
A small boat, rowed by a boy, stole past them up the harbour. Neither of the two men spoke until she reached the slip at the end of the quay.
“I’d be sorry,” said Kinsella, “if anything would happen to them two that does be going about in Flanagan’s old boat. There’s no harm in them barring the want of sense.”
“It would be as well for them to be kept off Inishbawn for all that.”
“They never offered to set foot on the island,” said Kinsella, “since the day I told them that herself and the childer had the fever. The way it is with them, they wouldn’t care where they’d be, one place being the same to them as another, if they’d be let alone.”
“That’s what they will not be, then.”
“On account of Priscilla?”
“Her and the young fellow she has with her. They’re out hunting them two that has Flanagan’s old boat the same as it might be some of the boys at a coursing match and the hare in front of them. Such chasing you never seen! It was up out of their beds they were this morning at six o’clock, when you’d think the likes of them would be asleep.”
“I seen them,” said Kinsella.
“And the one of them is as bad as the other. You’d be hard put to it to say whether it was Priscilla has put the comether on the young fellow or him that had her druv’ on to be doing what it would be better for her to leave alone.”
“Tell me this now, Peter Walsh, that young fellow is by the way of having a sore leg on him, so they tell me. Would you say now but that might be a trick the way it would put us off from suspecting any mischief he might be up to?”
“I was thinking myself,” said Peter, “that he might be imposing on us; but it’s my opinion now that the leg’s genuine. I followed them up last night, unbeknown to them, to see would he get out of the perambulator when he was clear of the town and nobody to notice him. But he kept in it and she wheeled him up to the big house every step of the way.”
The evidence was conclusive and carried complete conviction to Kinsella’s mind.
“What would be your own opinion,” said Peter Walsh, “about that one that does be going about the bay in your own boat along with Jimmy?”
“I wouldn’t say there’d be much harm in her. Jimmy says it’s hard to tell what she’d be after. He did think at the first go off that it might be cockles; but it’s not, for he took her to Carribee strand, where there’s plenty of them, and the devil a one she’d pick up. Nor it’s not periwinkles. Nor dilishk, though they do say that the dilishk is reckoned to be a cure for consumption, and you’d think it might be that. But Jimmy says it’s not, for he offered her a bit yesterday and she wouldn’t look at it.”
“I don’t know what else it could be,” said Peter Walsh.
“Nor I don’t know. But Jimmy says she doesn’t speak like one that would be any ways in with the police.”
“She was in Brannigan’s last night, buying peppermint drops and every kind of foolishness, the same as she might be a little girleen that was given a penny and her just out of school.”
“If she hasn’t more sense at her time of life,” said Kinsella, “she never will.”
“Seeing it’s that sort she is, I wouldn’t say we’d any need to be caring where she goes so long as it isn’t to Inishbawn.”
“She’ll not go there,” said Kinsella, “for if she does I’ll flay the skin of Jimmy’s back with the handle of a hay-rake, and well he knows it.”
“If I was easy in my mind about the strange gentleman that’s up at the big house——”
“It’s a curious thing, so it is, him sending for the sergeant the minute he came.”
“Bedamn,” said Peter Walsh, “but it is.”
The extreme oddness of the strange gentleman’s conduct affected both men profoundly. For fully five minutes they sat staring at the sea, motionless, save when one or the other of them thrust his head forward a little in order to spit. Kinsella at last got out his pipe, probed the tobacco a little with the point of his knife so as to loosen it, pressed it together again with his thumb, and then lit it.
“I wouldn’t mind the sergeant,” he said, “cute and all as he thinks himself, I wouldn’t mind him. It’s the strange gentleman I’m thinking of.”
TheTortoisestole round the end of the quay while he spoke. Kinsella eyed her. He noticed at once that Priscilla was steering with an oar. In his acutely suspicious mood every trifle was a matter for investigation.
“What’s wrong with her,” he said, “that she wouldn’t steer with the rudder when she has one?”
“It might be,” said Peter Walsh, “that she’s lost it. You couldn’t tell what the likes of her would do.”
“She was in trouble this morning when I seen her,” said Kinsella, “but she had the rudder then.”
Priscilla hailed them from the boat
“Hullo, Peter!” she shouted. “Go down to the slip and be ready to take the boat. Have you the bath chair ready?”
“I have, Miss. It’s there standing beside the slip where you left it this morning. Who’d touch the like? What’s happened the rudder?”
“Iron’s broken,” said Priscilla, “and it must be mended tonight. I say, Kinsella, Jimmy’s leg isn’t near as bad as you’d think it would be, after having the horn of a wild bull run through it.”
“It wasn’t a bull at all, Miss, but a heifer.”
“I don’t see that it makes much difference which it was,” said Priscilla.
“Do you hear that now?” said Kinsella to his friend in a whisper. “Believe you me, Peter Walsh, it’s as good for the whole of us that she’s not in the police.”
“What’s that you’re saying?” said Priscilla.
The boat, though the wind had almost left her sails, drifted up on the rising tide and was already past the spot where the two men were sitting. Peter Walsh got up and shouted his answer after her.
“Joseph Antony Kinsella,” he said, “is just after telling me that it’s his belief that you’d make a grand sergeant of police.”
“It’s a good job for him that I’m not,” said Priscilla. “For the first thing I’d do if I was would be to go out and see what it is he has going on on Inishbawn.”
Peter Walsh, without unduly hurrying himself, arrived at the slip before theTortoise. Priscilla stepped ashore and handed him the rudder.
“Take that to the smith,” she said, “and tell him to put a new iron on it this evening. We’ll want it again tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll tell him, Miss; but I wouldn’t say he’d do it for you.”
“He’d jolly well better,” said Priscilla.
“That same Patsy the smith,” said Peter Walsh, “has a terrible strong hate in him for doing anything in a hurry whether it’s little or big.”
“Just you tell him from me,” said Priscilla, “that if I don’t get that rudder properly settled when I want it tomorrow morning, I’ll go out to Inishbawn, in spite of your rats and your heifers.”
Peter Walsh’s face remained perfectly impassive. Not even in his eyes was there the smallest expression of surprise or uneasiness.
“What would be the good of saying the like of that to him?” he said. “It’s laughing at me he’d be, for he wouldn’t understand what I’d mean.”
“Don’t tell me,” said Priscilla. “Whatever villainy there is going on between you and Joseph Antony Kinsella, Patsy the smith will be in it along with you.”
Peter Walsh helped Frank into the bath-chair. Priscilla, her face wearing a most determined expression, wheeled him away.
“That rudder will be ready all right,” she said.
“But what do you think is going on on the island?” asked Frank.
“I don’t know.”
“Could they be smuggling?”
“They might be smuggling, only I don’t see where they’d get anything to smuggle. Anyway, it’s no business of ours so long as we get the rudder. I don’t think it’s at all a good plan, Cousin Frank, to be always poking our noses into other people’s secrets, when we don’t absolutely have to.”
It occurred to Frank that Priscilla had shown some eagerness in probing the private affairs of the young couple who had hired Flanagan’s boat. He did not, however, feel it necessary to make this obvious retort.
Peter Walsh, the rudder under his arm, went back to Joseph Antony Kinsella, who was still sitting on the edge of the quay.
“She says,” he said, “that without there’s a new iron on that rudder tomorrow morning, she’ll go out to Inishbawn and the young fellow along with her.”
“Let Patsy the smith put it on for her, then.”
“Sure he can’t.”
“And what’s to hinder him?”
“He was drunk an hour ago,” said Peter Walsh, “and he’ll be drunker now.”
“Bedamn then, but you’d better take him down and dip him in the tide, for I’ll not have that young fellow with the sore leg on Inishbawn. If it was only herself I wouldn’t care.”
“I’d be afeard to do it,” said Peter Walsh.
“Afeard of what?”
“Afeard of Patsy the smith. Sure it’s a madman he is when his temper’s riz.”
“Let you come along with me,” said Kinsella, “and I’ll wake him up if it takes the brand of a hot iron to do it. He can be as mad as he likes after, but he’ll put an iron on that rudder before ever he gets leave to kill you or any other man.”