"It might be," said the sergeant "I didn't ask."

"You could guess though."

"And if I could, do you think I'd tell you? It's too fond of asking questions you are, Peter Walsh, about what doesn't concern you."

The sergeant turned his back and walked away. Peter Walsh watched him enter the barrack. Then he himself went back to Sweeny's shop.

"They're wanting a boat," he said. "Joseph Antony Kinsella's or another."

"And what for?"

"Unless it's to go out to Inishbawn," said Peter, "I don't know what for."

"Bed.a.m.n then," said Sweeny, "there's no boat for them."

"I was thinking that myself."

"I wouldn't wonder," said Sweeney, "but something might stop Joseph Antony Kinsella from coming in today after all, thought he's due with another load of gravel."

"He mightn't come," said Patsy the smith. "There's many a thing could happen to prevent him."

"What time were they thinking of starting?" said Sweeny.

"Twelve o'clock," said Peter Walsh.

"Patsy," said Sweeny, "let you take Brannigan's old punt and go down as far as the stone perch to try can you see Joseph Antony Kinsella coming in."

Patsy the smith was in a condition of great physical misery; but the occasion demanded energy and self-sacrifice. He staggered down to the slip, loosed the mooring rope of Brannigan's dilapidated punt and drove her slowly down the harbour, waggling one oar over her stern.

"Let you go round the town," said Sweeny to Peter Walsh, "and find out where the fellows is that came in with the boats that's at the quay this minute. It's time they were off out of this."

Peter Walsh left the shop. In a minute or two he came back again.

"There's Miss Priscilla's boat," he said, "the _Blue Wanderer_. You're forgetting her."

"They'd never venture as far as Inishbawn in her," said Sweeny.

"They might then. The wind's east and she'd run out easy enough under the little lug."

"They'd have to row back."

"The likes of them ones," said Peter Walsh, "wouldn't think about how they'd get back till the time came. I'm uneasy about that boat, so I am."

"Tell me this now," said Sweeny, after a moment's consideration. "Did the young lady say e'er a word to you about giving the boat a fresh lick of paint?"

"She did not. Why would she? Amn't I just after painting the boat?"

"Are you sure now she didn't say she'd be the better of another coat?"

"She might then, some time that I wouldn't be paying much attention to what she said. I'm a terrible one to disremember things anyway."

"You'd better do it then," said Sweeny. "There's plenty of the same paint you had before in Brannigan's, and it will do the boat no harm to get a lick with it."

Peter Walsh left the shop again and walked in a careless way down the street. Sweeny followed him at a little distance and spoke to the men who were sitting on Brannigan's window sills. They rose at once and walked down to the slip. In a few minutes the _Blue Wanderer_ was dragged from her moorings and carried up to a gla.s.sy patch of waste land at the end of the quay. Her floor boards were taken out of her, her oars, rudder and mast were laid on the gra.s.s. The boat herself was turned bottom upwards."

In the course of the next half hour the owners of the boats which lay alongside the quay sauntered down one by one. Brown lugsails were run up on the smaller boats. The mainsail of the hooker was slowly hoisted. At half past eleven there was not a single boat of any kind left afloat in the harbour. Peter Walsh, his coat off and his sleeves rolled up, was laying long stripes of green paint on the already shining bottom of the Blue Wanderer. He worked with the greatest zeal and earnestness. Timothy Sweeny looked at the empty harbour with satisfaction. Then he went back to the shop and dosed comfortably behind his bar.

Patsy the smith stood in the stern of the punt and waggled his oar with force and skill. He disliked taking this kind of exercise very much indeed. His nature craved for copious, cooling drafts of porter, drawn straight from the cask and served in large thick tumblers. He had intended to spend the morning in taking this kind of refreshment The day was exceedingly hot. When he reached the end of the quay his mouth was quite dry inside and his legs were shaking under him. He looked round with eyes which were strikingly bloodshot. There was no sign of Joseph Antony Kinsella's boat on the long stretch of water between him and the stone perch. If he could have articulated at all he would have sworn.

Being unable to swear he groaned deeply and took his oar again. The punt wobbled forward very much as a fat duck walks.

When he reached Delgipish he looked round again. A mile out beyond the stone perch he saw a boat moving slowly towards him. His eyes served him badly and although he could see the splash of the oars in the water he could not make out who the rower was. A man of weaker character, suffering the same physical torture, would have allowed himself to drift on the sh.o.r.e of Delginish and there would have awaited the coming of the boat he had seen. But Patsy the smith was brave. He was also nerved by the extreme importance of his mission. It was absolutely necessary that something should happen to prevent Joseph Antony bringing his boat to Rosnacree harbour. The sight of one brown sail and then another stealing round the end of the quay gave him fresh courage. Timothy Sweeny and Peter Walsh had done their work on sh.o.r.e. He was determined not to fail in carrying through his part of a masterly scheme.

For twenty minutes Patsy the smith sculled on. It seemed to him sometimes as if each sway of his body, each tug of his tired arms must be the last possible. Yet he succeeded in going on. He dared not look round lest the boat he had seen should prove after all not to be the one he sought. Such a disappointment would, he knew, be more than he could bear. At last the splash of oars reached his ears and he heard himself hailed by name. The voice was Kinsella's. The relief was too much for Patsy. He sat down on the thwart behind him and was violently sick.

Kinsella laid his boat alongside the punt and looked calmly at his friend. Not until the worst spasms were over did he speak.

"Faith, Patsy," he said, "it must have been a terrible drenching you gave yourself last night, and the stuff was good too, as good as ever I seen. What has you in the state you're in at all?"

The sickness had to some extent revived Patsy the smith. He was able to speak, though with difficulty.

"Go back out of that," he said.

"And why would I go back?"

"Timothy Sweeny says you're to go back, for if you come in to the quay today there'll be the devil and all if not worse."

"If that's the way of it I will go back; but I'd be glad, so I would, if I knew what Sweeny means by it. It's a poor thing to be breaking my back rowing a boatload of gravel all the way from Inishbawn and then to be told to turn round and go back; and just now too, when the wind has dropped and it's beginning to look mighty black over to the eastward."

"You're to go back," said Patsy, "because the strange gentleman that's up at the big house is wanting your boat."

"Let him want!"

"He'll get it, if so be that you go in to the quay, and when he has it the first thing he'll do is to go out to Inishbawn. It's there he wants to be and it's yourself knows best what he'd find if he got there. Go back, I tell you."

"If you'll take my advice," said Kinsella, "you will go back yourself.

There's thunder beyond there coming up, and there'll be a breeze setting towards it from the west before another ten minutes is over our heads.

I don't know will you care for that in the state you're in this minute, with that old punt and only one oar. The tide'll be running strong against the breeze and there'll be a kick-up at the stone perch."

Patsy the smith saw the wisdom of this advice. Tired as he was he seized his one oar and began sculling home. Kinsella watched him go and then did a peculiar thing. He took the shovel which lay amidships in his boat and began to heave his cargo of gravel into the sea. As he worked a faint breeze from the west rose, fanned him and died away. Another succeeded it and then another. Kinsella looked round him. The four boats which had drifted out from the quay before the easterly breeze of the morning, had hauled in their sheets. They were awaiting a wind from the west. The heavy purple thunder cloud was rapidly climbing the sky.

Kinsella shovelled hard at his gravel. His boat, lightened of her load, rose in the water, showing inch by inch more free board. A steady breeze from the west succeeded the light occasional puffs. It increased in strength. The four boats inside him stooped to it. They sped across and across the channel towards the stone perch in short tacks. Kinsella hoisted his sail and took the tiller. The boat swung up into the wind and coursed away to the south west, close hauled to a stiff west wind.

The thunder cloud burst over Rosnacree.

Sir Lucius and Lord Torrington drove into the town and pulled up in front of Brannigan's shop at a quarter to twelve. They looked round the empty harbour in some surprise. Sir Lucius went at once into the shop.

Lord Torrington, being an Englishman with a proper belief in the forces of law and order, walked a few yards back and entered the police barracks.

"Brannigan," said Sir Lucius, "where's my boat? and where's that ruffian Peter Walsh?"

"Your boat, is it?" said Brannigan.

"I sent down word to Peter Walsh to have her ready for me at twelve, or, if my daughter had taken her out??"