"What the blazes is holding it? Come on, Chichester, and put your back into it!"
Chichester's back, ample as it would seem, had no appreciable effect on the situation.
"You ought to go and help them, Sinclair," said my wife, with that readiness to offer a vicarious sacrifice that is so characteristic of wives.
I said I would wait till I was asked. I had not to wait long.
I took my turn at the warm handle-bar of the windlass, and grunted and strove as strenuously as my predecessors. The sun poured down in undesired geniality, the mainsail lurched and flapped; the boom tugged at its tether; the water jabbered and gurgled past the bows.
"I think we're in the consommé!" remarked Bill, putting his hands in his pockets.
"Here," said Lord Derryclare, with a very red face; "confound her! we'll sail her off it!"
Chichester sat down in a deck-chair as remote as possible from his kind, and once again consulted his watch. Bill took the tiller; ropes were hauled, slacked, made fast; the boom awoke to devastating life; the Sheila swung, tilted over to the breeze, and made a rush for freedom. The rush ended in a jerk, the anchor remained immovable, and the process was repeated in the opposite direction, with a vigour that restored Chichester abruptly to the bosom of society—in point of fact, my bosom. He said nothing, or at least nothing to signify, as I assisted him to rise, but I felt as if I were handling a live shell.
During the succeeding quarter of an hour the Sheila, so it seemed to my untutored mind, continued to sail in tangents towards all the points of the compass, and at the end of each tangent was brought up with an uncompromising negative from the anchor. By that time my invariable yacht-headache was established, and all the other men in the ship were advancing, at a varying rate of progress, into a frame of mind that precluded human intercourse, and was entirely removed from perceiving any humour in the situation.
Through all these affairs the sound of conversation ascended steadily through the main-hatch. Lady Derryclare and my wife were playing Patience in the cabin, and were at the same time discussing intricate matters in connection with District Nurses, with that strange power of doing one thing and talking about another that I have often noticed in women. It was at about this period that the small, rat-like head of Bill's kitchen-maid, Jimmy, appeared at the fore-hatch (accompanied by a reek of such potency that I immediately assigned it to the pig's face), and made the suggestion about the Congested Diver. That the Diver, however congested, was a public official, engaged at the moment in laying the foundations of the Eyries Pier, did not, this being Ireland, complicate the situation. The punt, with Bill, hot and taciturn, in the stern, sprang forth on her errand, smashing and bouncing through the sharpened edges of the little waves. As I faced that dainty and appetising breeze, I felt the first pang of the same hunger that was, I knew, already gnawing Chichester like a wolf.