“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 bump 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 bump 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 passed, 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?”