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.”