The boat was flat-bottomed, clumsily and heavily built. The paint which had originally declared her a white vessel had long ago peeled off or faded to a yellowish grey. She squatted on the water like a very flat duck, and water lay in her, and evidently had lain long. There were no oars, and nothing that could be used to bale. Altogether, no craft could have looked less tempting.
“Well, Jim reckoned the boat on Lough Aniller bad, and the Nacurra one only fit for a museum,” Wally said. “I’d like him to see this one: it would do his old heart good. Timsy, how does one row a boat in this country when there are no oars?”
Timsy, thus appealed to, gave as his opinion that the paddles would be up at Michael McCarthy’s house, beyant; further, that if Patsy knew how the said Michael McCarthy had the boat left, he’d have him destroyed. “Let ye sit down, sir, and Miss Norah, too,” concluded the small boy, shouldering the burden of the responsibility. “I’ll slip up and bring the paddles and a baling-tin down in no time at all.”
“You won’t,” said Wally, firmly. “I’m in this job, Timsy. Come along and we’ll interview Mr. McCarthy.”
That gentleman, however, was from home, his place being taken by a lame son, who produced two oars which were not even distantly related to each other, remarking that his father was wore out with keeping the boat in order for the gentry, and none of them coming anigh her. When Wally demanded a baling-tin, he cast about him a wild glance which finally rested on an excellent tin dipper which presumably belonged to his mother.
“Herself is away with the hins—let you take it,” he said, thankfully. “Hiven send she do not come back on me before you’d be gone!”
With this pious hope echoing in their ears, the marauding party withdrew, Timsy racing ahead with the dipper, lest “herself” should make an untimely appearance and demand her cherished vessel. When Norah and Wally arrived at the boat he was baling furiously, and clung to his job until he was too breathless to argue the question further with Wally.
A flat-bottomed boat, built on elementary principles, is not the easiest thing to empty. They tilted her sideways, getting very wet in the process, and wielded the dipper until it scraped dismally against the boards; but a large residue of water still lingered, defying anything but a pump or a bath-sponge, equipment which they lacked. When they restored her to an even keel the water slapped dismally across the sodden bottom boards.
“I’m afraid we’ll never get her dry,” Wally said, ruefully. “Tell you what, Norah—I’ll put in a few bits of wood, and you can put your feet on them; that will keep them out of the water, at any rate.”
Wood is scarce in Donegal. There was not a bit to be found except the tough lumps of bog-wood sticking out of the water, and of these Wally managed to secure enough for his purpose.