Priscilla's Spies Part 7

On such days all the drama of the flowing and ebbing tides may be watched with ever increasing wonder and delight The sea is caught by the islands and goes whirling down the channels. It is turned backwards by some stray spit of land and set beating against some other current of the same tide which has taken a different way and reached the same point in strong opposite flow. The little glistening wavelets leap to meet each other, like lovers reunited whose mouths are hungry for the pressure of glad greetings. There are places where the water eddies round and round, where smooth eager lips, rising from the whirlpools, seem as if they reached up for something to kiss, and are sucked down again into the depths with voiceless pa.s.sion. Foot by foot the water gains on the rocks beside the channels, on the fringes of the boulders, on the stony sh.o.r.es, and covers the stretches of mud:

The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pale ablution round earth's human sh.o.r.e. But they do not escape without defilement On the surface of the tide, when it ebbs from the mudbanks, there gathers an iridescent slime. Tiny particles of floating sand catch and reflect the light Fragments of dead weed, black or brown, are borne along. The tide has stolen across the beaches below the cottages and carried away the garbage cast there. It has pa.s.sed where a little while before the cattle strayed, and pa.s.sing has been stained. Here is no breaking of clear green waves against black defiant rocks, no tumultuous pitched battle between the ocean, inspired by the supreme pa.s.sion of the tide, and the sullen resistance of unyielding cliffs. Instead a dubious sea wanders in and out amid scenes which the experience of many centuries has not made familiar to it.

It was into this s.h.i.+ning bay that the _Tortoise_ sped, her white sails bellied with the pleasant wind. Priscilla exulted, with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes.

Frank, yielding a little to the fascination of the sailing, was yet ill at ease. His conscience troubled him, the acutely sensitive conscience of a prefect who had been responsible for the tone of Edmondstone House. He feared that he had done wrong in going with Priscilla in the _Tortoise_, wrong of a particularly flagrant kind. He thought of himself as a man of responsibility placed in the position of trust. Had he been guilty of a breach of trust? It seemed remotely unlikely, so cheerful and sparkling was the sea, that any accident could possibly occur. But with what feelings could he face a broken and reproachful father should anything happen and Priscilla be drowned? The blame would justly rest on him. The fault would be entirely his.

"Priscilla," he said, "I wish we hadn't come. I ought not to have come when Uncle Lucius has forbidden you to use this boat."

"Oh," said Priscilla, "don't you fret Father doesn't really mind a bit.

He only pretends to, has to, you know, on account of Aunt Juliet He knows jolly well that I can sail the _Tortoise_, any one could."

Frank could not; but Priscilla's tone comforted him a little. Yet his conscience was ill at ease.

"But Miss Lentaigne," he said, "your Aunt Juliet??"

"She'll object, all right, of course," said Priscilla. "If she knew where we are this minute she'd be dead, c.o.c.k sure that we'd be drowned.

She'd probably spend the afternoon planning out nice warm ways of wrapping up our clammy corpses when she got them back. But she doesn't know, so that's all right."

"She will know, this evening. We shall have to tell her."

On one point Frank was entirely decided. Priscilla should neither lure nor drive him into any kind of deceit about the expedition. But Priscilla had no such intention.

"We'll tell her right enough," she said, "when we get home. She'll be pretty mad, of course, inwardly; but she can't _say_ much on account of her principles."

"I don't see what her principles have to do with it."

"Don't you? Then you must be rather stupid. Can't you see that if you haven't really got a sprained ankle, but only believe you have, and wouldn't have it if you believed you hadn't, then we shouldn't really be drowned, supposing we were drowned, I mean, which, of course, we're not going to be?if we believed we weren't drowned? And Aunt Juliet, with her principles, would be bound to believe we weren't, even if we were.

We've only got to put it to her that way and she won't have a ghost of a grievance left. It's the simplest form of Christian Science. But in any case, whatever silliness Aunt Juliet may indulge in, we were simply bound to have the _Tortoise_ today. It's a matter of duty. I don't see how you can get around that, Cousin Frank, no matter how you argue."

Frank did not want to get behind his duty. He had been brought up with a very high regard for the word, If it had been clearly shown him that it was his duty to take an ocean voyage in the _Tortoise_, with Priscilla as leader of the expedition, he would have bidden a long farewell to his friends and gone forth cheerfully. But he did not see that this particular sail, which seemed, indeed, little better than a humiliating, though agreeable, act of truancy, could possibly be sheltered under the name of duty. Priscilla enlightened him.

"I daresay you don't know," she said, "that there is a German spy at the present moment making a chart of this bay. We are hunting him."

There is something intensely stimulating to every healthy mind in the idea of hunting a spy. No prefect in the world, no master even, not Mr.

Dupre himself, not the remote divine head-master in the calm Elysium of his garden, could have escaped a thrill at the mention of such a sport.

Frank was conscious of a sudden relapse from the serenity of the grown man's common sense. For an instant he became a normal schoolboy.

"Rot!" he said. "What spy?"

"It's not rot," said Priscilla. "You've read 'The Riddle of the Sands,'

I suppose. You must have. Well, that's exactly what he's at, mapping out mud-banks and things so as to be able to run a masked flotilla of torpedo boats in and out when the time comes. There was one of the same lot caught the other day sketching a fortification in Lough Sw.i.l.l.y.

Father read it to me out of a newspaper."

Frank had seen a report of that capture. German spies have of late, been appearing with disquieting frequency. They are met with in the most unlikely places. Frank was a little shaken in his scepticism.

"What makes you say there's a German spy?" he said

"I saw him. So did Peter Walsh. So did Joseph Antony Kinsella. You heard Peter Walsh talking about him this morning. I saw him yesterday. I was bathing at the time and he ran his boat on a rock off the point of Delginish. If it hadn't been for me he'd have been there still, only drowned, of course, for his boat floated away from him. I wish now that I'd left him there, but, of course, I didn't know at the time that he was a spy. That idea only came to me afterwards. I say, Cousin Frank, wouldn't it be absolutely spiffing if it turned out that he really was?"

It was impossible for any one to deny that such a thing would be spiffing in the very highest possible degree.

"If he is," said Priscilla, "and I don't see any reason why he shouldn't?anyhow it's jolly good sport to pretend?and if he is, it's our plain duty to hunt him down at any risk. Sylvia Courtney says that Wordsworth's 'Ode to Duty' is quite the most thrillingly impressive poem in the whole 'Golden Treasury' so you won't want to go back on it."

Frank's prize had been won for Greek Iambics, not for English literature. He was not in a position to discuss the value of Wordsworth's "Ode to Duty" as a guide to conduct in ordinary life.

"My plan," said Priscilla, "is to begin at the south of the bay and work across to the north, investigating every island until we light on the one where he is. That's the reason I had to take the _Tortoise_. The _Blue Wanderer_ wouldn't have done it for us. She won't go to windward.

But the _Tortoise_ is a racing boat. Father bought her cheap at Kingstown because she never won any races, which is the reason why he called her the _Tortoise_. But she can sail faster than Flanagan's old boat, anyhow. And that's the one which the spy has got."

Frank was not inclined to discuss the appropriateness of the _Tortoise's_ new name. He was just beginning to recover from the feeling of bewildered annoyance induced by the sudden introduction of Wordsworth's poem into the conversation.

"But what makes you say he's a spy?" he said. "I know there are spies, and I saw about the capture of that one in Lough Sw.i.l.l.y. But why should this man be one?"

"I don't say he is," said Priscilla. "All I say is that until we've hunted him down we can't possibly be sure that he isn't. You never can be sure about anything until you've actually tried it. And, anyway, what else can he be? You can't deny that there's some mystery about him.

Remember what Peter Walsh said about his looking as innocent as a child.

That's the way spies always look. Besides, I don't think his clothes really belonged to him. I could see that at a glance. He had a pair of white flannel trousers with creases down the fronts of the legs, quite as swagger as yours, if not swaggerer, and a white sweater. He didn't look a bit comfortable in them, not as if they were the kind of clothes he was accustomed to wear. That's Rossmore head on the left there, Cousin Frank. He's not there. I didn't expect he would be, and he isn't.

I don't expect he's in that bay to the southwest of it either. But we'll just run in a bit and make sure."

The breeze had freshened a little, and the _Tortoise_ made good way through the calm water. Frank began to feel some little trust in Priscilla. She handled the boat with an air of confidence which was rea.s.suring. His conscience was troubling him less than it did. There is nothing in the world equal to sailing as a means of quieting anxious consciences. A man may be suffering mental agonies from the recollection of some cruel and cold-blooded murder which he happens to have committed. On land his life would be a burden to him. But let him go down to the sea in a small white sailed s.h.i.+p, and in forty-eight hours or less, he will have ceased to feel any remorse for his victim. This may be the reason why all Protestant nations are maritime powers. Having denied themselves the orthodox anaesthetic of the confessional, these peoples have been obliged to take to the sea as a means of preventing their consciences from harrying them. Driven forth across the waves by the clamorous importunity of the voice within, they, of very necessity, acquire a certain skill in the management of boats, a skill which sooner or later leads to the burdensome possession of a navy and so to maritime importance. It is interesting to see how this curious law works out in quite modern times.

The Italian navy is now considerable, but it has only become so since the people were driven to the sea as a consequence of the anti-clerical feeling which led them to desert the confessional. It is quite possible that the Portuguese, having in their new Republic developed a strong antipathy to sacraments and so laid up for themselves a future of spiritual disquiet, may see their ancient maritime glories revived, and in seeking relief beyond the mouth of the Tagus from the gnawings of their consciences, may give birth to some reincarnation of Vasco da Gama or Prince Henry, the Navigator.

"I don't think," said Priscilla, looking round her searchingly, "that he's anywhere in this bay. How's your ankle?"

"It's quite comfortable," said Frank.

"I asked," said Priscilla, "because in order to get out of the bay I shall have to jibe, and that means that you've got to hop across the centreboard case."

Frank had not the least idea of what happens when a small boat jibes. He intended to ask for information, but was not given any opportunity.

The boom, which had hitherto behaved with dignity and self-possession, suddenly swung across the boat with such swiftness that he had no time to duck his head to avoid it. His straw hat, struck on the brim, was swept over the side of the boat. He found himself thrown down against the gunwale, while a quant.i.ty of cold water poured over his legs. He grasped the centreboard case, the nearest stable thing at hand, and pulled himself up again into the middle of the boat. Priscilla, a good deal tangled in a writhing rope, was struggling past the tiller to the windward side.

"What's happened?" asked Frank.

"Jibed all standing," said Priscilla. "I didn't mean to, of course. I must have been sailing her by the lee. But it's all right. We didn't s.h.i.+p more than a bucketful. I say, I'm rather sorry about your hat; but that's a rotten kind of hat in a boat anyway. Would you mind getting up to windward? I've got to luff her a bit and she'll heel over."

"Is it gone?"

"What? Oh, the hat. Yes, quite. We couldn't get it without jibing again."

"Don't let us do that," said Frank, "if we can help it.

"I won't. But do get up to windward. That is to say if your ankle's not too bad. I must luff a bit or we'll go ash.o.r.e. The water's getting very shallow."

Frank scrambled over the centreboard case and b.u.mped down on the floor boards on the windward side of the boat Priscilla pushed over the tiller and began to haul vigorously on the main sheet The _Tortoise_ swept round, heeled over and rushed through the water on a broad reach. The wind, so it seemed to Frank, began to blow much harder than before.

He clung to the weather stay and watched the bubbling water tear past within an inch or two of the lower gunwale. A sudden spasm of extreme nervousness seized him. He looked anxiously at Priscilla. She seemed to be entirely calm and self-possessed. His self-respect rea.s.serted itself. He remembered that she was merely a girl. He set his teeth and determined to show no sign of fear. Gradually the exhilaration of the motion, the coolness of the breeze through his hair, the dancing, impulsive rush of the boat, and the s.h.i.+ning white of the sail in front of him conquered his qualms. He began to enjoy himself as he had never in his life enjoyed himself before.

"I say, Priscilla," he said, "this is fine."