“It’ll be all right,” said Priscilla. “They’ll never get here. But of course Barnabas may want to make his will in case of accidents. Just you help the young gentleman ashore, Kinsella. He can’t get along very well by himself on account of the way Lord Torrington treated him. Then you’d better haul the boat up a bit. It’s rather beginning to blow and I see the wind really has got round to the southeast. I hardly thought it would, but it has. Winds so seldom do what everybody says they’re going to. I’m sure you’ve noticed that.”
She walked up the rough stony beach. A fierce gust, spray-laden and eloquent with promise of rain, swept past her.
“If I’d known,” said Kinsella sulkily, “that half the country would be out after them ones, I’d have drownded them in the sea and their tents along with them before I let them set foot on Inishbawn.”
“Lord Torrington won’t do you any harm,” said Frank. “He’s only trying to get back his daughter.”
“I don’t know,” said Kinsella, still in a very bad temper, “what anybody’d want with the likes of that girl. You’d think a man would be glad to get rid of her and thankful to anybody that was fool enough to take her off his hands. She’s no sense. Miss Priscilla has little enough, but she’s young and it’ll maybe come to her later. But that other one—The Lord saves us.”
He helped Frank on shore as he talked. Then he called Jimmy from the cottage. Between them they hauled the Blue Wanderer above high-tide mark.
“There she’ll stay,” said Kinsella vindictively, “for the next twenty-four hours anyway. Do you feel that now?”
Frank felt a sudden gust of wind and a heavy splash of rain. The sky looked singularly dark and heavy over the southeastern shore of the bay. Ragged scuds of clouds, low flying, were tearing across overhead. The sea was almost black and very angry; short waves were getting up, curling rapidly over and breaking in yellow foam. With the aid of Jimmy Kinsella’s arm Frank climbed the beach, passed the Kinsella’s cottage and made his way to the place where the two tents were pitched. Priscilla was sitting on a camp stool at the entrance of Lady Isabel’s tent. The Reverend Barnabas Pennefather, looking cold and miserable, was crouching at her feet in a waterproof coat. Lady Isabel was going round the tents with a hammer in her hand driving the pegs deeper into the ground.
“I’m just explaining to Barnabas,” said Priscilla, “that he’s pretty safe here so far as Lord Torrington is concerned. He doesn’t seem as pleased as I should have expected.”
“It’s blowing very hard,” said Mr. Pennefather, “and it’s beginning to rain. I’m sure our tents will come down and we shall get very wet Won’t you sit down, Mr.—Mr——?”