A southeast wind is dreaded, with good reason, in Rosnacree Bay. It descends from the mountains in vicious squalls. It catches rushing tides at baffling angles and lashes them into white-lipped fury. Sturdy island boats of the larger size, boats with bluff bows and bulging sides, brave it under their smallest lugs. But lesser boats, and especially light pleasure crafts like the Tortoise do well to lie snug at their moorings till the southeasterly wind has spent its strength.
CHAPTER XX
Timothy Sweeny, J. P., as suited a man of portly figure and civic dignity, was accustomed to lie long in his bed of a morning. On weekdays he rose, in a bad temper, at nine o’clock. On Sundays, when he washed and shaved, he was half an hour later and his temper was worse. An apprentice took down the shutters of the shop on weekdays at half past nine. By that time Sweeny, having breakfasted, sworn at his wife and abused his children, was ready to enter upon the duties of his calling.
On the morning after the thunderstorm he was wakened at the outrageous hour of half past seven by the rattle of a shower of pebbles against his window. The room he slept in looked out on the back-yard through which his Sunday customers were accustomed to make their way to the bar. Sweeny turned over in his bed and cursed. The window panes rattled again under another shower of gravel. Sweeny shook his wife into consciousness. He bade her get up and see who was in the back-yard. Mrs. Sweeny, a lean harassed woman with grey hair, fastened a dingy pink nightdress round her throat with a pin and obeyed her master.
“It’s Peter Walsh,” she said, after peering out of the window.
“Tell him to go to hell out of that,” said Sweeny.
Mrs. Sweeny wrapped a shawl round her shoulders, opened the bottom of the window and translated her husband’s message.
“Himself’s asleep in his bed,” she said, “but if you’ll step into the shop at ten o’clock he’ll be glad to see you.”
“I’ll be obliged to you, ma’am,” said Peter Walsh, “if you’ll wake him, for what I’m wanting to say to him is particular and he’ll be sorry after if there’s any delay about hearing it.”