“That,” she said, “is the most utter rot I’ve ever heard in my life. And in any case, even if it was true, it wouldn’t apply to us. Jimmy Kinsella distinctly said that I might land on the island as much as I like, but that he jolly well wouldn’t have you. We may just as well row now as later on. The breeze is completely gone.” She got out the oars and dropped the rowlocks into their holes. She pulled stroke oar herself. Frank settled himself on the seat behind her. He found himself in a position of extreme discomfort. The Tortoise was designed and built to be a sailing boat. It was not originally contemplated that she should be rowed far or rowed fast. When Frank leaned back at the end of his stroke he bumped against the mast. When he swung forward in the proper way he hit Priscilla between the shoulders with his knuckles. When the boat shot forward the boom swung inboard. If this happened at the end of a stroke Frank was hit on the shoulder. If it happened at the beginning of a stroke the spar struck him on the ear. However he shifted his position he was unable to avoid sitting on some rope. The centreboard case was between his legs and when he tried to get his injured foot against anything firm he found it entangled in ropes which he could not kick away. Priscilla complained. “Put a little more beef into it, Cousin Frank,” she said. “I’m pulling her head round all the time.” Frank put all the energy he could into a series of short jerky strokes, using the muscles of his arms, failing altogether to get the weight of his body on the oar. At the end of twenty minutes Priscilla gave him a rest. “There’s no use our killing ourselves,” she said. “The tide’s under us. It’s a jolly lucky thing it is. If it was the other way we wouldn’t get home to-night. I wonder now whether the Kinsellas think you’ve any connection with the police. You don’t look it in the least, but you never can tell what people will think. If they do mistake you for anything of the sort it might account for their not wanting you to land on Inishbawn.” “Why?” “Oh, I don’t know why exactly--not yet. But there often are things knocking about which it wouldn’t at all do for the police to see. That might happen anywhere. There’s an air of wind coming up behind us. Just get in that oar of yours. We may as well take the good of what’s going.” A faint ripple on the surface of the water approached the Tortoise. Before it reached her the boom swung forward, lifting the dripping main sheet from the water, and the boat slipped on. “But of course,” said Priscilla, “that idea of your being a policeman in disguise doesn’t account for their telling Miss Rutherford that there was something on the island which it wouldn’t be nice for a lady to see. And it doesn’t account for the swine-fever story that Joseph Antony Kinsella told the spies.” “What was that?” “Oh, nothing much. Only that his wife and children had come out all over in bright yellow spots.” “But perhaps they have.”