Priscilla's Spies Part 22

Priscilla looked out at the sea. The tide was falling rapidly. Through the opening of the pa.s.sage 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. The _Tortoise_ lay afloat in a pool, but the Finilaun end of the pa.s.sage 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 the _Tortoise_ and, standing on the thwart amidships, began poling the boat back into the open water at the south-eastern end of the pa.s.sage. Jimmy, also poling, followed in his boat.

Miss Rutherford, the broken rudder still on her knees, and Frank, were left on sh.o.r.e.

"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 s.n.a.t.c.hing 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 sh.o.r.e.

"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 sh.o.r.e's mortal rough."

Miss Rutherford refused to desert Frank. She recognised that the sh.o.r.e 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 princ.i.p.ally of Frank on account of his sprained ankle. A gra.s.sy couch would be much pleasanter for him, and there is gra.s.s 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 the _Tortoise_. 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 the _Tortoise_ into 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 the _Tortoise_ all 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 b.u.mp 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 the _Tortoise_ and 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.

The _Tortoise_, 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 b.u.mp 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 the _Tortoise_ played. They annoyed Frank. Sometimes when the tow rope hung slack in the water, he pulled through his stroke with ease and comfort Sometimes when the _Tortoise_ hung back heavily he seemed to be pulling against an impossible dead weight But his worst experience came when the _Tortoise_ altered 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 the _Tortoise_ were 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 the _Tortoise_ at 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 pa.s.sed, 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 the _Tortoise_. 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 j.a.panese 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."