the lady who waved and shouted to them.

"It's a gravelly shore," said Priscilla. "We'll beach her. Sail her easy
now, Cousin Frank, and slack away your main sheet if you find there's
too much way on her. We don't want to knock a hole in her bottom. Keep
her just to windward of Jimmy Kinsella's boat."

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 w