The young man looked at her suspiciously and then took his oars.

"I hope your island is quite near," said Priscilla, "For if it isn't
you're not likely to get there. Were you ever in a boat before?"

The young man pulled a few strokes and got his boat into the channel
beyond the red perches.

"I think," said Priscilla, "that you might say 'thank you,' Only for me
you'd have been left stranded on that rock till the tide rose again and
floated you off somewhere between four and five o'clock this afternoon."

"Thank you," said the young man, "thank you very much indeed."

"But where are you going?"

The question seemed to frighten him. He began to row with desperate
energy. In a few minutes he was far down the channel Priscilla watched
him. Then she swam to her bay, pushed the _Blue Wanderer_ a little
further from the shore and landed.

The island of Delginish is a pleasant spot on a warm day. Above its
gravel beach rises a slope of coarse short grass, woven through with
wild thyme and yellow crowtoe. Sea-pinks cluster on the fringe of grass
and delicate groups of fairy-flax are bright-blue in stony places. Red
centaury and yellow bed-straw and white bladder campion flourish. Tiny
wild roses, clinging to the ground, fleck the green with spots of
vivid white. The sun reaches every yard of the shadeless surface of the
island. Here and there grey rocks peep up, climbed over, mellowed by
olive green stonecrops. Priscilla, glowing from her bath, lay full
stretch among the flowers, drawing deep breaths of scented air and
gazing at the sky. But nothing was further from her mind than soulful
sentimentalising over the beauties of nature. She was puzzling about the
young man who had left her, endeavoring to arrive at some theory of who
he was and what he could be doing in Rosnacree. After awhile she turned
over on her side, fumbled in her pocket and drew out two more biscuits
in crumbly fragments. She munched them contentedly.

At eleven o'clock she raised herself slowly on one elbow and looked
round. The tide had nearly reached its lowest, and the Blue Wanderer lay
half in, half out of the water; her stern perched high, her bow with the
useless anchor rope depending from it, dipped deep. Priscilla realised
that she had no time to lose. She put her shoulder to the stern of
the boat and pushed, springing on board as the boat floated. The Blue
Wanderer, even with her new lug sail, does not work well to windward. It
is possibl