The orders were too numerous and too complicated. Frank could keep his head on the football field while hostile forwards charged down on him, could run, kick or pass at such a crisis without setting his nerves a-quiver. He lost all power of reasoning when the Tortoise sprang towards Jimmy Kinsella’s boat and the gravelly shore. He had judged with absolute accuracy the flight of the ball which the Uppingham captain drove hard and high into the long field. As it left the bat he had started to run, had calculated the curve of its fall, had gauged the pace of his own running, had arrived to receive it in his outstretched hands. He failed altogether in calculating the speed of the Tortoise. He suddenly forgot which way to push the tiller in order to attain the result he desired. A wild cry from Priscilla confused him more than ever. He was dimly aware of a sudden check in the motion of the boat. He saw Priscilla start up, and then the lady, who a moment before was standing in the sea, precipitated herself head first over the bow. At the same moment the Tortoise grounded on the gravel with a sharp grinding sound. Frank looked about him amazed. Jimmy Kinsella, standing on the shore with his hands in his pockets, spoke slowly. “Bedamn,” he said, “but I never seen the like. With the whole of the wide sea for you to choose out of was there no place that would do you except just the one place where the lady happened to be standing?” CHAPTER XII Priscilla’s reproaches were sharper and less broadly philosophic in tone. “Why didn’t you luff when I told you?” she said. “Didn’t I say you were to keep up to windward of Jimmy Kinsella’s boat? If you couldn’t do that why hadn’t you the sense to let out the main sheet? If we hadn’t run into the sponge lady we’d have stripped the copper band off our keel. As it is, I expect she’s dead. She hit her head a most frightful crack against the mast.” Miss Rutherford was lying on her stomach across the fore part of the gunwale of the Tortoise. Her head was close to the mast. She was groping about with her hands in the bottom of the boat. The lower part of her body, which was temporarily, owing to her position, the upper part, was outside the boat. Her feet beat the air with futile vigour. She wriggled convulsively and after a time her legs followed her head and shoulders into the boat. She rose on her knees, very red in the face, a good deal dishevelled, but laughing heartily. “I’m not a bit dead,” she said, “but I expect my hair’s coming down.” “It is,” said Priscilla. “I don’t believe you have a hairpin left unless one or two have been driven into your skull. Are you much hurt?” “Not at all,” said Miss Rutherford. “Is your mast all right? I hit it rather hard.” Priscilla looked at the mast critically and stroked the part hit by Miss Rutherford’s head to find out if it was bruised or cracked.