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.