the
morning there was no wind and it was necessary to row the _Tortoise_
out. Priscilla took both oars herself, remembering the gyrations of the
boat the day before when Frank was helping her to row.

"There'll be a breeze," she said, "when the tide turns, but we can't
afford to wait here for that. When we're outside the stone perch we'll
drop anchor. But the first thing is to set pursuit at defiance by
getting beyond the reach of the human voice. If we can't hear whoever
happens to be calling us we can't be expected to turn back and it won't
be disobedience if we don't."

The tide, with an hour more of flow behind it, crept along the grey
quay wall, and eddied past the buoys. Two hookers lay moored, and faint
spirals of smoke rose from the stove chimneys of their forecastles. Thin
wreaths of grey mist hung here and there over the still surface of the
bay. Patches of purple slime lay unbroken on the unrippled surface.
Scraps of shrivelled rack, sucked off the shores of the nearer islands,
floated past the _Tortoise_. A cormorant, balanced on the top of one
of the perches outside Delginish, sat with wings outstretched and neck
craned forward, peering out to sea. A fleet of terns floated motionless
on the water beyond the island. Two gulls with lazy flappings of their
wings, flew westwards down the bay. Priscilla, rowing with short,
decisive strokes, drove the _Tortoise_ forward.

"It's going to be blazing hot," she said, "and altogether splendidly
glorious. I feel rather like a dove that is covered with silver wings
and her feathers like gold. Don't you?"

Frank did. Although he would not have expressed himself in the words of
the Psalmist, he recognised them. The most reliable tenor in the choir
at Haileybury is necessarily familiar with the Psalms.

They reached the stone perch and cast anchor. It was half past seven
o'clock. Priscilla got out the bread and honey.

"The proper thing to do," she said, "would be to go on half rations at
once, and serve out the bread by ounces and the honey by teaspoonfuls,
but I think we won't. I'm as hungry as any wolf."

"Besides," said Frank, "we haven't got a teaspoon."

"I hope your knife is to the fore. I'm not particular as a rule about
the way I eat things, but there's no use beginning the day by making the
whole boat sticky. I loathe stickiness, especially when I happen to sit
on it, which is one of the reasons which makes me glad I wasn't born a
bee. They have to, of