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Updated: May 22, 2025
The man wore the white sweater which had attracted her attention when she first saw him, a garment most unusual among boatmen in Rosnacree Bay. The woman was the same who had mopped her dripping companion with a pocket handkerchief on Inishark. They talked eagerly together. Now and then the man turned and looked back at Craggeen. The woman pointed something out to him. Priscilla understood.
On the south, reaching almost to the point of Finilaun, is Craggeen, and between the two is a shallow strait. On the east is the mainland, broken and bitten into with long creeks and bays. On the north lies a chain of islands, Ilaunure, Curraunbeg and Curraunmor, separated from each other by narrow channels, through which the tide runs strongly in and out of the roadstead.
The rudder, swept forward by the tide, drifted away until it went ashore on a reef at the northern end of the passage. The Tortoise, after making one or two ineffective efforts to sail without a rudder, grounded on the beach of Craggeen Island. Priscilla jumped out. "Just you two sit where you are," said said, "and don't let the boat drift.
She hesitated and looked round. "Thank goodness," she said, "here's Jimmy Kinsella coming in the other boat. He'll get the rudder." Beyond the rock-strewn passage of Craggeen lies the wide roadstead of Finilaun. Here the water is deep, and the shelter, from every quarter, almost complete. Across the western end of it stretches like a bent bow, the long island of Finilaun.
They reached the passage past Craggeen when the tide was at the full and threaded their way among the rocks successfully. They passed into the wide water of Finilaun roads. A long reach lay before them and the wind had begun to die down as the tide turned. Priscilla, leaving Frank to steer, settled herself comfortably on the weather side of the boat between the centreboard case and the gunwale.
Priscilla and Frank left the quay at half past seven against a tide which was still rising, but with a pleasant easterly breeze behind them. Once past the stone perch Priscilla set the boat on her course for Craggeen and gave the tiller to Frank.
Across the open roadstead Flanagan's old boat crept under her patched lug sail. Priscilla, standing on the shore of Craggeen, watched eagerly. At first she could see the occupants of the boat quite plainly, a man at the tiller, a woman sitting forward near the mast. She had no difficulty in recognising them.
She had no desire to lie imprisoned for hours on Craggeen, she had lain the day before on the bank off Inishark. She took the sails off the Tortoise and, standing on the thwart amidships, began poling the boat back into the open water at the south-eastern end of the passage. Jimmy, also poling, followed in his boat.
He had spent the intervening seven and a half hours on the sea, eating nothing but the one peppermit cream which Miss Rutherford pressed on him while he held the Tortoise at Craggeen. Priscilla had eaten a great many peppermint cream and was besides more inured to starvation on the water of the bay than Frank was.
But even Priscilla, when the excitement of getting away from Craggeen had passed, seemed slightly depressed. She scarcely spoke at all, and when she replied to Miss Rutherford's accusation of "bucketing" did so incisively. The boats turned into the bay from which Miss Rutherford had first hailed the Tortoise. They were safely beached.
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