e got to luff her a bit and she'll heel over."

"Is it gone?"

"What? Oh, the hat. Yes, quite. We couldn't get it without jibing
again."

"Don't let us do that," said Frank, "if we can help it.

"I won't. But do get up to windward. That is to say if your ankle's not
too bad. I must luff a bit or we'll go ashore. The water's getting very
shallow."

Frank scrambled over the centreboard case and bumped down on the floor
boards on the windward side of the boat Priscilla pushed over the tiller
and began to haul vigorously on the main sheet The _Tortoise_ swept
round, heeled over and rushed through the water on a broad reach. The
wind, so it seemed to Frank, began to blow much harder than before.
He clung to the weather stay and watched the bubbling water tear past
within an inch or two of the lower gunwale. A sudden spasm of extreme
nervousness seized him. He looked anxiously at Priscilla. She seemed to
be entirely calm and self-possessed. His self-respect reasserted
itself. He remembered that she was merely a girl. He set his teeth and
determined to show no sign of fear. Gradually the exhilaration of
the motion, the coolness of the breeze through his hair, the dancing,
impulsive rush of the boat, and the shining white of the sail in front
of him conquered his qualms. He began to enjoy himself as he had never
in his life enjoyed himself before.

"I say, Priscilla," he said, "this is fine."

"Topping," said Priscilla.

The feel of the cricket ball caught clean in the centre of the bat, sent
in one clear flight to square leg across the boundary line, is glorious.
Frank knew the exultation of such moments. The dash across the goal
line from a swiftly taken pass is a thing to live for. Frank, as a fast
three-quarter back, knew that too. But this tearing of a heeling boat
through bubbling green water became to him, when he got over the first
terror of it, a delirious joy.

"That's Inishminna ahead of us to windward," said Priscilla. "Flanagan
lives there, who hired him the old boat. He might be there, but he
isn't. I can see the whole slope of the island. We'll slip under the lee
of the end of it past Illaunglos. It's a likely enough island."

Frank suddenly remembered that they were in pursuit of a German spy. The
remainder of his scepticism forsook him. Amid such surroundings, with
the singing of the wind and the gurgling swish of the flying boat in his
ears, any adventure seemed possible. The prosaic limitations of