“I feel it all acutely,” said Miss Rutherford. “Don’t make it worse for me by enumerating my miseries.”
“And I don’t believe you’ve caught a single sponge,” said Priscilla. “Will they be frightfully angry with you?”
“I’ve got a few,” said Miss Rutherford, “fresh water ones that I caught before I met you. I’ll make the most of them.”
“Anyhow,” said Priscilla, “it’ll be a great comfort to you to feel that you’ve taken part in a noble deed of mercy before you left.”
“That’s something, of course,” said Miss Rutherford, “but you can’t think how annoying it is to have to go away just at this crisis of the adventure. I shall be longing day and night to hear how it ends.”
“I’ll write and tell you, if you like,” said Priscilla.
“Do,” said Miss Rutherford. “Just let me know whether the sanctuary remains inviolable and I shall be satisfied.”
“Right,” said Priscilla. “Goodbye. We needn’t actually kiss each other, need we? Of course, if you want to frightfully you can; but I think kissing’s rather piffle.”
Miss Rutherford contented herself with wringing Priscilla’s hand. Then she and Priscilla helped Frank out of Jimmy Kinsella’s boat and into the Tortoise.
The wind was due east and was blowing a good deal harder than it was when they ran down to Inish-bawn. The Tortoise had a long beat before her, the kind of beat which means that a small boat will take in a good deal of water. Priscilla passed an oilskin coat to Frank. Having been wet through by the thunderstorm and having got dry, Frank had no wish to get wet again. He struggled into the coat, pushing his arms through sleeves which stuck together and buttoned it round him. The Tortoise settled down to her work in earnest She listed over until the foaming dark water rushed along her gunwale. She pounded into the short seas, lifted her bow clear of them, pounded down again, breasted them, took them fair on the curve of her bow, deluged herself, Frank’s oilskin and even the greater part of her sails with showers of spray. The breeze freshened and at the end of each tack the boat swung round so fast that Frank, with his maimed ankle, had hard work to scramble over the centreboard case to the weather side. He slipped and slithered on the wet floor boards. There was a wash of water on the lee side which caught and soaked whichever leg he left behind him. He discovered that an oilskin coat is a miserably inefficient protection in a small boat. Not that the seas came through it. That does not happen. But while he made a grab at the flying foresail sheet a green blob of a wave would rush up his sleeve and soak him elbow high. Or, when he had turned his back to the wind and settled down comfortably, an insidious shower of spray found means to get between his coat and his neck, and trickled swiftly down, saturating his innermost garments to his very waist. Also it is necessary sometimes to squat with knees bent chinward, and then there are bulging spaces between the buttons of the coat. Seas, leaping joyfully clear of the weather bow, came plump into his lap. It became a subject of interesting speculation whether there was a square inch of his body left dry anywhere.