“I thought,” said Priscilla, “that they’d hit on that dodge sooner or later. Now they’ll get on a bit. Go on scalping the peach tin, Cousin Frank.”
The peaches had been cut in half by the kindly Californian who preserved them and a half peach fits, with a little squeezing, into any mouth of ordinary size. Priscilla and Frank fished them out with their fingers and ate them. Some juice, but considering the circumstances very little, dripped down the front of Frank’s white flannel coat, the glorious crimson bound coat of the first eleven. He did not care in the least. He had lapsed hopelessly. No urchin in the lower school, brewing cocoa over a form room fire, ladling out condensed milk with the blade of a penknife, would have been more dead to the decencies of life than this degenerate hero of the lower sixth.
“They’re getting the boat down,” said Priscilla, swallowing a lump of peach. “Do you think that you could throw stones far enough to hit them when they get out into the channel? I’d grub up the stones for you. We might frighten them back that way.”
Frank had won second prize in the sports at the end of the Easter term for throwing the cricket ball. He looked across the stretch of water and judged the distance carefully.
“No,” he said, regretfully, “I couldn’t.”
“That’s a pity,” said Priscilla, “for I can’t, either. I never could shy worth tuppence. Curious, isn’t it? Hardly any girls can.”
The spies had got old Flanagan’s boat down to the water’s edge. They went back to the place where she had lain first. By a series of laborious portages they got all their goods down to the beach and packed them into the boat.
“They’re off now,” said Frank, regretfully.
“I wouldn’t be too sure,” said Priscilla. “That fellow’s an extraordinary ass with a boat.”
Her optimism was well founded. By shoving hard the spies ran their boat into the water. The lady spy stopped at the brink. The man, with reckless indifference to wet feet, followed the boat, still shoving. It happens that the shore of the north side of Inishark shelves very rapidly into the deep channel. The boat floated suddenly, and urged by the violence of the last shove, slid rapidly from the shore. The man grasped at her. His fingers slid along the gunwale. He plunged forward knee-deep, snatched at the retreating bow, missed it, stumbled and fell headlong into the water. The boat floated free and swung into the channel on the tide.