“It’s a grand day for seeing Inishrua,” he said. “Not a better day there’s been the whole summer up to now. And why wouldn’t it be fine? It would be a queer day that wouldn’t when a young lady like yourself is wanting to go on the sea.”
This was the kind of speech, flattering, exaggerated, slightly surprising, which Michael Kane was accustomed to make to his passengers. Miss Clarence did not know that something of the same sort was said to every lady, young or old, who ventured into Michael’s boat. She was greatly pleased and made a mental note of the words.
Michael Kane and Peter Gahan went over to a dirty and dilapidated boat which lay on the slip. They seized her by the gunwale, raised her and laid her keel on a roller. They dragged her across the slip and launched her, bow first, with a loud splash.
“Step easy now, miss,” said Michael, “and lean on my shoulder. Give the young lady your hand, Peter. Can’t you see the stones is slippy?”
Peter was quite convinced that all members of the bourgeois class ought to be allowed, for the good of society, to break their legs on slippery rocks. But he was naturally a courteous man. He offered Miss Clarence an oily hand and she got safely into the boat.
The engine throbbed and the screw under the rudder revolved slowly. The boat slid forward, gathering speed, and headed out to sea for Inishrua.
Michael Kane began to talk. Like a pianist who strikes the notes of his instrument tentatively, feeling about for the right key, he touched on one subject after another, confident that in the end he would light on something really interesting to his passenger. Michael Kane was happy in this, that he could talk equally well on all subjects. He began with the coast scenery, politics and religion, treating these thorny topics with such detachment that no one could have guessed what party or what church he belonged to. Miss Clarence was no more than moderately interested. He passed on to the Islanders of Inishrua, and discovered that he had at last reached the topic he was seeking. Miss Clarence listened eagerly to all he said. She even asked questions, after the manner of intelligent journalists.
“If it’s the island people you want to see, miss,” he said, “it’s well you came this year. There’ll be none of them left soon. They’re dying out, so they are.”
Miss Clarence thought of a hardy race of men wringing bare subsistence from a niggardly soil, battered by storms, succumbing slowly to the impossible conditions of their island. She began to see her way to an article of a pathetic kind.
“It’s sleep that’s killing them off,” said Michael Kane.