CHAPTER XVIII
Priscilla and Frank left the quay at half past seven against a tide which was still rising, but with a pleasant easterly breeze behind them. Once past the stone perch Priscilla set the boat on her course for Craggeen and gave the tiller to Frank. She herself pulled a spinnaker from beneath the stern sheets and explained to Frank that when she had hoisted it the boat’s speed would be considerably increased. Then she made him uncomfortable by hitting him several times in different parts of the body with a long spar which she called the spinnaker boom.
The setting of this sail struck Frank as an immensely complicated business. He watched Priscilla working with a whole series of ropes and admired her skill greatly, until it occurred to him that she was not very sure of what she was doing. A rope, which she had made fast with some care close beside him, had to be cast loose, carried forward, passed outside a stay, and then made fast again. There appeared to be three corners to the spinnaker, and all three were hooked turn about on the end of the boom. Even when the third was unhooked again and the one which had been tried first restored to its place Priscilla seemed a little dissatisfied with the result. Another of the three corners was caught and held by the clip-hooks on the end of the halliard. Priscilla moused these carefully, explaining why she did so, and then found that she had to cut the mousing and catch the remaining corner of the sail with the hooks. When at last she triumphantly hoisted it the thing went up in a kind of bundle. Its own sheet was wrapped round it twice, and a jib sheet which had somehow wandered away from its proper place got twined round and round the boom which remained immovable near the mast. Priscilla surveyed the result of her work with a puzzled frown. Then she lowered the sail and turned to Frank.
“I thoroughly understand spinnakers,” she said, “in theory. I don’t suppose that there’s a single thing known about them that I don’t know. But they’re beastly confusing things when you come to deal with them in practical life. Lots of other things are like that. It’s exactly the same with algebra. I expect I’ve told you that I simply loathe algebra. Well, that’s the reason. I understand it all right, but when it comes to doing it, it comes out just like that spinnaker. However it doesn’t really matter. That’s the great comfort about most things. You get on quite well enough without them, though of course you would get on better with, if you could do them.”
The Tortoise did in fact slip along at a very satisfactory pace in spite of the lightness of the wind. It was just half past eight when they reached the mouth of the bay in which they had lunched the day before with Miss Rutherford.
“I feel rather,” said Priscilla, “as if I could do with a little breakfast There’s no use going on shore. Let’s anchor and eat what we want in the boat.”
Frank who was very hungry agreed at once. He rounded the boat up into the wind and Priscilla flung the anchor overboard. Then she picked her parcels one by one from the folds of the spinnaker in which they had wrapped themselves.
“It won’t do,” she said, “to eat everything today at the first go off the way we did yesterday. Specially as we’ve promised to give Miss Rutherford luncheon. The duck, for instance, had better be kept.”
She laid the duck down again and covered it, a little regretfully, with the spinnaker. She took up the jampot which contained the caramel pudding. Her face brightened as she looked at it.
“By the way, Cousin Frank,” she said. “That word is inviolable.”
“That word?”
“The sanctuary and secret word,” said Priscilla. “Don’t you remember I couldn’t get it last night. But I did after I went to sleep which was jolly lucky. I hopped up at once and wrote it down. Now we know what Inishbawn will be for Lady Torrington’s poor daughter when we get her there. All the same I don’t think we’d better eat the caramel pudding at breakfast. It mightn’t be wholesome for you at this hour—on account of your sprained ankle, I mean, and not being accustomed to puddings at breakfast. Besides I expect Miss Rutherford would rather like it. What do you say to starting with an artichoke each?”
Frank was ready to start with anything that was given him. He ate the artichoke greedily and felt hardly less hungry when he had finished it. Priscilla too seemed unsatisfied. She said that they had perhaps made a mistake in beginning with the artichokes. But her sense of duty and her instinct for hospitality triumphed over her appetite. Feeling that temptation might prove overpowering, she put the slices of cold fish out of sight under the spinnaker with the remark that they ought to be kept for Miss Rutherford. She and Frank ate the herrings’ roes on toast, the sweetbread and one of the four rolls. Then though Frank still looked hungry, Priscilla hoisted the foresail and hauled up the anchor.
They reached the passage past Craggeen when the tide was at the full and threaded their way among the rocks successfully. They passed into the wide water of Finilaun roads. A long reach lay before them and the wind had begun to die down as the tide turned. Priscilla, leaving Frank to steer, settled herself comfortably on the weather side of the boat between the centreboard case and the gunwale. Far down to leeward another boat was slipping across the roads towards the south. She had an old stained jib and an obtrusively new mainsail which shone dazzlingly white in the sun. Priscilla watched her with idle interest for some time. Then she announced that she was Flanagan’s new boat.
“He bought the calico for the sail at Brannigan’s,” she said, “and made it himself. Peter Walsh told me that. I’m bound to say it doesn’t sit badly; but of course you can’t really tell about the sit of a sail when the boat’s off the wind. I’d like to see it when she’s close-hauled. That’s the way with lots of other things besides sails. I dare say now that Lord Torrington is quite an agreeable sort of man when his daughter isn’t running away.”
“I’m sure he’s not,” said Frank.
“You can’t be sure,” said Priscilla. “Nobody could, except of course Lady Torrington and she doesn’t seem to me the sort of person who’s much cowed in her own house. I wish you’d heard her going for Aunt Juliet last night, most politely, but every word she said had what’s called in French a ‘double entendre’ wrapped up in it. That means——”
“I know what it means,” said Frank.
“That’s all right then. I thought perhaps you wouldn’t. I always heard they rather despised French at boys’ schools, which is idiotic of course and may not be true.”
Frank recollected a form master with whom, at one stage of his career at school he used to study the adventures of the innocent Telemaque. This gentleman refused to read aloud or allow his class to read aloud the text of the book, alleging that no one who did not suffer from a malformation of the mouth could pronounce French properly. Still even this master must have attached some meaning to the phrase “double entendre,” though he might not have used it in precisely Priscilla’s sense.
“Flanagan has probably been over to Curraunbeg,” said Priscilla, “to see how his old boat is looking. After what Jimmy Kinsella is sure to have told him about the way they’re treating her he’s naturally a bit anxious. I wonder will he have the nerve to charge them anything extra at the end for dilapidations. It’s curious now that we don’t see the tents on Curraunbeg. I saw them yesterday from Craggeen. Perhaps they’ve moved round to the other side of the island.”
“There’s a boat coming out from behind the point now,” said Frank. “Perhaps they’re moving again.”
Priscilla leaned over the gunwale and stared long at the boat which Frank pointed out.
“There’s a man and a woman in her,” he said.
“It’s not Flanagan’s old boat though,” said Priscilla. “I rather think it’s Jimmy Kinsella. I hope Miss Rutherford hasn’t been hunting them on her own, under the impression that they’re German spies. We oughtn’t to have told her that. She’s so frightfully impulsive you can’t tell what she’d do.”
Jimmy Kinsella had recognised the Tortoise shortly after he rounded the point of Curraunbeg. He dropped his lug sail and began to row up to windward evidently meaning to get within speaking distance of Priscilla. The boats approached each other at an angle. Miss Rutherford stood up in the stern of hers, waved a pocket handkerchief and shouted. Priscilla shouted in reply. Frank threw the Tortoise up into the wind and Jimmy Kinsella pulled alongside.
“They’ve gone,” said Miss Rutherford. “They’ve escaped you again.”
“You’ve frightened them away,” said Priscilla. “I wish you wouldn’t.”
“No,” said Miss Rutherford, “I didn’t Honour bright! They’d gone before I got there. The people on the island said they packed up early this morning and when they saw Flanagan passing in his new boat they hailed him and got him to take them off.”
“Wasn’t that the boat we saw just now?” said Frank.
“Yes,” said Priscilla. “Frightfully annoying, isn’t it?”
“Never mind,” said Miss Rutherford. “I know where they’re gone. The people on the island told me. To Inishminna. Wasn’t Inishminna the name, Jimmy?”
“It was, Miss.”
“Climb on board,” said Priscilla. “That is to say if you want to come. We must be after them at once. We’ll follow Flanagan. Jimmy can row through Craggeen passage and pick you up afterwards.”
Miss Rutherford tumbled from her own boat into the Tortoise.
“Thanks awfully,” she said. “I want to see you arrest those spies more than anything.”
“They’re not spies,” said Priscilla.
“We never really thought they were,” said Frank.
“The truth is——” said Priscilla.
She stopped abruptly and looked round. Jimmy Kinsella was some distance astern heading for Craggeen. He appeared to be quite out of earshot. Nevertheless Priscilla lowered her voice to a whisper.
“We’re on an errand of mercy,” she said.
“Oh,” said Miss Rutherford, “not vengeance. I’m disappointed.”
“Mercy is a much nicer thing,” said Priscilla, “besides being more Christian.”
“All the same,” said Miss Rutherford, “I’m disappointed. Vengeance is far more exciting.”
“To a certain extent,” said Priscilla, “we’re taking vengeance too. At least Frank is, on account of his ankle you know. So you needn’t be disappointed.”
“That cheers me up a little,” said Miss Rutherford, “but do explain.”
“It’s quite simple really,” said Priscilla. “Though it may seem a little complicated. You explain, Cousin Frank, and be sure to begin at the beginning or she won’t understand.”
“Lord Torrington,” said Frank, “is Secretary of State for War, and his daughter, Lady Isabel—but perhaps I’d better tell you first that as I was coming over to Ireland I met——”
“‘Now who be ye would cross Lochgyle,” said Priscilla, waving her hands towards the sea, “‘this dark and stormy water?’”
“‘Oh I’m the chief of Ulva’s Isle, and this Lord Ullin’s daughter.’ You know that poem, I suppose.”
“I’ve known it for years,” said Miss Rutherford.
“Well, thats it,” said Priscilla. “You have the whole thing now.”
“I see,” said Miss Rutherford, “I see it all now, or almost all. This is far better than spies. How did you ever think of it?”
“It’s true,” said Priscilla.
“Lord Torrington,” said Frank, “is over here stopping with my uncle, and he came specially to find his daughter who’s run away.”
“‘One lovely hand stretched out for aid,’” said Priscilla, “‘and one was round her lover.’ That’s what we want to avoid if we can. I call that an errand of mercy. Don’t you?”
“It’s far and away the most merciful errand I ever heard of,” said Miss Rutherford. “But why don’t you hurry? At any moment now her father’s men may reach the shore.”
“We can’t,” said Priscilla, “hurry any more than we are. The wind’s dropping every minute. Luff her a little bit, Frank, or she won’t clear the point. The tide’s taking us down, and that point runs out a terrific distance.”
“The only thing I don’t quite see yet,” said Miss Rutherford, “is where the vengeance comes in.”
“That’s to be taken on her father,” said Priscilla.
“Quite right,” said Miss Rutherford, “as a matter of abstract justice; but I rather gathered from the way you spoke, Priscilla, that Frank had some kind of private feud with the old gentleman.”
“He shoved me off the end of the steamer’s gangway,” said Frank, “and sprained my ankle. He has never so much as said he was sorry.”
“Good,” said Miss Rutherford. “Now our consciences are absolutely clear. What we are going to do is to carry off the blushing bride to some distant island.”
“Inishbawn,” said Priscilla.
The Tortoise had slipped through the passage at the south end of Finislaun. She was moving very slowly across another stretch of open water. On her lee bow lay Inishbawn. The island differs from most others in the bay in being twin. Instead of one there are two green mounds linked together by a long ridge of grey boulders. Tides sweep furiously round the two horns of it, but the water inside is calm and sheltered from any wind except one from the south east. On the slope of the northern hill stands the Kinsellas’ cottage, with certain patches of cultivated land around it. The southern hill is bare pasture land roamed over by bullocks and a few sheep which in stormy weather or night cross the stony isthmus to seek companionship and shelter near the cottage.
“Isn’t that Inishbawn?” said Miss Rutherford. “Jimmy Kinsella told me it was the day I first met you.”
“That’s it,” said Priscilla, “that’s where we mean to put her.”
“It’s not half far enough away,” said Miss Rutherford. “Lord Ullin or Torrington or whatever lord it is will quite easily follow her there. We must go much further, right out into the west to High Brasail, where lovers are ever young and angry fathers do not come.”
“Inishbawn will do all right,” said Priscilla.
“Priscilla says,” said Frank, “that the people won’t let Lord Torrington land on Inishbawn.”
“They certainly seemed to have some objection to letting any one land,” said Miss Rutherford. “Every time I suggested going there Jimmy has headed me off with one excuse or another.”
“They have very good reasons,” said Priscilla. “I have more or less idea what they are; but of course I can’t tell you. It’s never right to tell other people’s secrets unless you’re perfectly sure that you know them yourself, and I’m not sure. You hardly ever can be unless you happen to be one of the people that has the secret and in this case I’m not.”
“I don’t want to ask embarrassing questions,” said Miss Rutherford, “though I’m almost consumed with curiosity about the secret. But are you quite sure that it’s of a kind that will really prevent Lord Torrington landing there?”
“Quite absolutely, dead, cock sure,” said Priscilla. “If I’m right about the secret and I think I am, though of course it’s quite possible that I may not be, but if I am there isn’t a man about the bay who wouldn’t die a thousand miserable deaths rather than let Lord Torrington and the police sergeant land on that island.”
“Then all we’ve got to do,” said Miss Rutherford, “is to get her there and she’s safe.”
Priscilla hurriedly turned over the corner of the spinnaker and got out the jam pot. She glanced at its paper cover.
“Inishbawn is an inviolable sanctuary,” she said. “What a mercy it is that I wrote down that word last night. I had forgotten it again. It’s a desperately hard word to remember.”
“It’s a very good word,” said Miss Rutherford.
“It’s useful anyhow,” said Priscilla. “In fact, considering what we’re going to do I don’t see how we could very well get on without it. I suppose it’s rather too early to have luncheon.”
“It’s only half past eleven,” said Frank, “but——”
“I breakfasted early,” said Miss Rutherford.
“We scarcely breakfasted at all,” said Frank.
“All right,” said Priscilla, “the wind’s gone hopelessly. It’s much too hot to row, so I suppose we may as well have luncheon though it’s not the proper time.”
“Let us shake ourselves free of the wretched conventions of ordinary civilisation,” said Miss Rutherford. “Let us eat when we are hungry without regard to the clock. Let us gorge ourselves with California peach juice. Let us suck the burning peppermint—”
“We haven’t any today,” said Priscilla. “Brannigan’s wasn’t open when we started.”
“The principle is just the same,” said Miss Rutherford. “Whatever food you have is sure to be refreshingly unusual.”