Priscilla's Spies Part 17

"Do you mean, really and truly in the inmost bottom of my heart?"

"Yes."

"Well, I don't, of course. It would be too good to be true if they were.

But I mean to go on pretending. Don't you?"

"Oh, yes, I'll pretend. I only wanted to know what you thought."

"All the same," said Priscilla, "they did rather scoot when they saw we were after them. n.o.body can deny that. That may be because they're pretending, too. I daresay they find it pretty dull being stuck on an island all day, though, of course, it must be rather jolly cooking your own food and was.h.i.+ng up plates in the sea. Still they may be tired of that now, and glad enough to pretend to be German spies with us pursuing them. It must be just as good sport for them trying to escape as it is for us trying to catch them. I daresay it's even better, being stalked unwaveringly by a subtle foe ought to give them a delicious creepy feeling down the back. Anyhow we'll track them down. We're much better out of this house tomorrow. It'll be like the tents of Kedar. You and I might be labouring for peace, but everybody else will be making ready for battle. Aunt Juliet will be out for blood the moment she catches sight of the Prime Minister. Good night, Cousin Frank."

CHAPTER XI

Rose, the under housemaid, with the recollection of the scientifically Christian method of treating her toothache fresh in her mind and therefore stimulated by a strong desire to annoy Miss Lentaigne, woke at five a.m. At half past five she called Priscilla and knocked at Frank's door. Priscilla was fully dressed ten minutes later. Frank appeared in the yard at five minutes to six. They started as the stable clock struck six, Priscilla wheeling the bath-chair. Rose yawning widely, watched them from the scullery window.

Priscilla had failed to seize the cold salmon the night before. Rose, foraging early in the morning, with the fear of the cook before her eyes, had secured nothing but half a loaf of bread and a square section of honey. It was therefore something of a disappointment to find that Brannigan's shop was not open when they reached the quay. No biscuits or tinned meats could be bought. Many adventurers would have been daunted by the prospect of a long day's work with such slender provision. It is recorded, for instance, of Julius Caesar, surely the most eminent adventurer of all history, that he hesitated to attempt an expedition against one of the tribes of Gaul "propter inopiam pecuniae," which may very well be translated "on account of a shortage of provisions."

But Julius Caesar, at the period of his greatest conquests, was a middle-aged man. He had lost the first careless rapture of youth. Frank and Priscilla, because their combined ages only amounted to thirty-two years, were more daring than Caesar. With a fine faith in the providence which feeds adventurers, they scorned the wisdom which looks dubiously at bread and honey. They did not hesitate at all.

The tide was still rising when they embarked. At that hour in the morning there was no wind and it was necessary to row the _Tortoise_ out. Priscilla took both oars herself, remembering the gyrations of the boat the day before when Frank was helping her to row.

"There'll be a breeze," she said, "when the tide turns, but we can't afford to wait here for that. When we're outside the stone perch we'll drop anchor. But the first thing is to set pursuit at defiance by getting beyond the reach of the human voice. If we can't hear whoever happens to be calling us we can't be expected to turn back and it won't be disobedience if we don't."

The tide, with an hour more of flow behind it, crept along the grey quay wall, and eddied past the buoys. Two hookers lay moored, and faint spirals of smoke rose from the stove chimneys of their forecastles. Thin wreaths of grey mist hung here and there over the still surface of the bay. Patches of purple slime lay unbroken on the unrippled surface.

Sc.r.a.ps of shrivelled rack, sucked off the sh.o.r.es of the nearer islands, floated past the _Tortoise_. A cormorant, balanced on the top of one of the perches outside Delginish, sat with wings outstretched and neck craned forward, peering out to sea. A fleet of terns floated motionless on the water beyond the island. Two gulls with lazy flappings of their wings, flew westwards down the bay. Priscilla, rowing with short, decisive strokes, drove the _Tortoise_ forward.

"It's going to be blazing hot," she said, "and altogether splendidly glorious. I feel rather like a dove that is covered with silver wings and her feathers like gold. Don't you?"

Frank did. Although he would not have expressed himself in the words of the Psalmist, he recognised them. The most reliable tenor in the choir at Haileybury is necessarily familiar with the Psalms.

They reached the stone perch and cast anchor. It was half past seven o'clock. Priscilla got out the bread and honey.

"The proper thing to do," she said, "would be to go on half rations at once, and serve out the bread by ounces and the honey by teaspoonfuls, but I think we won't. I'm as hungry as any wolf."

"Besides," said Frank, "we haven't got a teaspoon."

"I hope your knife is to the fore. I'm not particular as a rule about the way I eat things, but there's no use beginning the day by making the whole boat sticky. I loathe stickiness, especially when I happen to sit on it, which is one of the reasons which makes me glad I wasn't born a bee. They have to, of course, poor things, even the queen, I believe. It can't be pleasant."

The tug of the boat at her anchor rope slackened as the tide reached its height A light easterly wind came to them from the land. Priscilla swallowed the last morsel of bread and honey as the _Tortoise_ drifted over her anchor and swung round.

"Perhaps," she said, "you'd like to practise steering, Cousin d.i.c.k. If so, creep aft and take the tiller. I'll get the sail on her and haul up the anchor."

Frank, humbled by the experience of the day before, was doubtful.

Priscilla encouraged him. He took the tiller with nervous joy. Priscilla hoisted the lug and then the foresail.

"Now," she said, "I'll get up the anchor and we'll try to go off on the starboard tack. If we don't we'll have to jibe immediately. With this much wind it won't matter, but you might not like the sensation."

Frank did not want to enjoy any sensation of a sudden kind and jibing, as he understood it, was always unexpected. He asked which way he ought to push the tiller so as to make sure of reaching the starboard tack.

Priscilla stood beside the mast and delivered a long, very confusing lecture on the effect of the rudder on the boat and the advantage of hauling down one or other of the foresail sheets when getting under way from anchor. Frank did not understand much of what she said, but was ashamed to ask for more information. Priscilla, on her knees under the foresail, tugged at the anchor rope. The _Tortoise_ quivered slightly, but did not move. Priscilla, leaning well back, tugged harder. The _Tortoise_?it is impossible to speak of a boat except as a live thing with a capricious will?shook herself irritably.

"She's slap over the anchor," said Priscilla. "I can't think how she gets there for there's plenty of rope out; but there she is and I can't move the beastly thing. Perhaps you'll try. You may be stronger than I am. I expect it has got stuck somehow behind a rock."

Frank felt confident that he was stronger in the arms than Priscilla. He crept forward and put his whole strength into a pull on the anchor rope. The _Tortoise_ twisted herself broadside on to the breeze and then listed over to windward. Priscilla looked round her in amazement.

The breeze was certainly very light, but it was contrary to her whole experience that a boat with sails set should heel over towards the wind.

She told Frank to stop pulling. The _Tortoise_ slowly righted herself and then drifted back to her natural position, head to wind.

"The only thing I can think of," said Priscilla, "is that the anchor rope has got round the centreboard. It might. You never can tell exactly what an anchor rope will do. However, if it has, we've nothing to do but haul up the centreboard and clear it."

She took the centreboard rope and pulled. Frank joined her and they both pulled. The centreboard remained immovable. The _Tortoise_ was entirely unaffected by their pulling.

"Jammed," said Priscilla. "I feel a jolly sight less like that dove than I did. It looks rather as if we were going to spend the day here.

I don't want to cut the rope and lose the anchor if I can possibly help it, but of course it may come to that in the end, though even then I'm not sure that we'll get clear."

"Can we do nothing?" said Frank.

"This," said Priscilla, "is a case for prolonged and cool-headed reasoning. You reason your best and I'll bring all the resources of my mind to bear on the problem!"

She sat down in the bottom of the boat and gazed thoughtfully at the stone perch. Frank, to whom the nature of the problem was obscure, also gazed at the stone perch, but without much hope of finding inspiration.

Priscilla looked round suddenly.

"We might try poking at it with the blade of an oar," she said. "I don't think it will be much use, but there's no harm trying."

The poking was a total failure, and Priscilla, reaching far out to thrust the oar well under the keel of the boat, very nearly fell overboard. Frank caught her by the skirt at the last moment and hauled her back.

"We'll have to sit down and think again," she said. "By the way, what was that word which Euclid said when he suddenly found out how to construct an isosceles triangle? He was in his bath at the time, as well as I recollect."

A man is not in the lower sixth at Haileybury without possessing a good working knowledge of the chief events of cla.s.sical antiquity. Frank rose to his opportunity.

"Are you thinking of Archimedes?" he asked. "What he said was 'Eureka'

and what he found out wasn't anything about triangles but?"

"Thanks," said Priscilla. "It doesn't really matter whether it was Euclid or not and it isn't of the least importance what he found out.

It was the word I wanted. Let's agree that whichever of us Eureka's it first stands up and shouts the word far across the sea. You've no objection to that, I suppose. The idea may stimulate our imaginations."

Frank had no objection. He felt tolerably certain that he would not have to shout. Priscilla, frowning heavily, fixed her eyes on the stone perch, A few minutes later she spoke again.

"Once," she said, "I was riding my bicycle in father's mackintosh, which naturally was a little long for me. In process of time the tail of it got wound round and round the back wheel and I was regularly stuck, couldn't move hand or foot and had to lie on my side with the bicycle on top of me. That seems to me very much the way we are now with that anchor rope and the centreboard."

"How did you get out?" said Frank hopefully.

That Priscilla had got out was evident. If her position on the bicycle was really a.n.a.logous to that of the _Tortoise_ the same plan of escape might perhaps be tried.

"I lay there," said Priscilla, "until Peter Walsh happened to come along the road. He kind of unwound me."

A boat, heavily laden, was rowing slowly towards them, making very little way against the gathering strength of the ebb tide and the easterly wind.

"Perhaps," said Frank, "the people in that boat, if it ever gets here, will unwind us."