. "Sit still while I drive this
boat back to the mainland! I've to get back to Tara immediate! You've
done it, my darlin', you've done it, and it's a great day for the
Irish! It's even a great day for the Erse! It's your birthday will be a
planetary holiday long after we're married and our grandchildren think
I'm as big a nuisance as your grandfather Sean O'Donohue! It's a fine
grand marriage we'll be havin'----"

He kissed her again and whirled the boat about and sent it streaking
for the mainland. From time to time he whooped. Rather more frequently,
he hugged Moira exuberantly. And she tended to look puzzled, but she
definitely looked pleased.

* * * * *

Behind them, of course, the Committee of the Dail on the Condition of
the Planet Eire explored McGillicuddy Island. They saw the big
dinies--sixty-footers and fifty-footers and lesser ones. The dinies
ambled aimlessly about the island. Now and again they reached up on
elongated, tapering necks with incongruously small heads on them, to
snap off foliage that looked a great deal like palm leaves. Now and
again, without enthusiasm, one of them stirred the contents of various
green-scummed pools and apparently extracted some sort of nourishment
from it. They seemed to have no intellectual diversions. They were not
interested in the visitors, but one of the committee members--not
Moira's grandfather--shivered a little.

"I've dreamed about them," he said plaintively, "but even when I was
dreamin' I didn't believe it!"

Two youthful dinies--they would weigh no more than a couple of tons
apiece--engaged in languid conflict. They whacked each other with blows
which would have destroyed elephants. But they weren't really
interested. One of them sat down and looked bored. The other sat down.
Presently, reflectively, he gnawed at a piece of whitish rock. The
gnawing made an excruciating sound. It made one's flesh crawl. The diny
dozed off. His teeth had cut distinct, curved grooves in the stone. The
manufacturer of precision machinery--back on Earth--turned pale.

"L-let's get out of here!"

The committee and the two members of the cabinet returned to the shore.
There was no boat. It was far away, headed for the mainland.

"Shenanigans!" said Sean O'Donohue in a voice that would have curdled
sulphuric acid. "I warned him no shenanigans! The dirty young
bog-trotter's left us here to be eaten up by the beasts!"

The solicitor g