re and watch them
escape, just as we had them cornered too."

The inside of his lip hurt him a good deal while he ate. He wanted
to grumble about something; but the fear of being compared to Sylvia
Courtney kept him silent about the broken glass. Priscilla took another
macaroon.

"We were doing Wordsworth's 'Excursion' last term," she said, "in
English literature, and there's a long tract of it called 'Despondency
Corrected.' I wish I had it here now. It's just what would do you good."

Frank nibbled a biscuit with his eyes on the island. The man was
carrying down a bundle of rugs to the boat. The woman followed him with
one of the tents. Then they went back together to their camping ground
and collected a number of small objects which were scattered about.
Frank became desperate.

"Priscilla," he said, "don't you think you could wade across to that
island. There's only about an inch and a half of water round the boat
now. I'd do it myself if it wasn't for this infernal ankle. I simply
can't walk."

"I could," said Priscilla, "and what's more, I would, only that there's
a deep channel between us and them. If I'd jibed that time instead of
trying to stay her I should have kept in the channel and not run on to
this bank. I knew it was here all right, but I forgot it just at the
moment. That's the worst of moments. They simply make one forget things,
however hard one tries not to. I daresay you've noticed that."

Frank had as a matter of fact noticed this peculiarity of moments very
often. It had turned up in the course of his experience both on cricket
and football fields. But it seemed to him that the consequences of being
entrapped by it were much more serious in sailing boats than elsewhere.
He was so far from blaming Priscilla for the plight of the _Tortoise_
that he felt very grateful to her for not blaming him. His moment had
come when she gave him the order about the centreboard. Then not only
memory, but all power of coherent thought had deserted him.

"Let's have at the Californian peaches," said Priscilla. "But we'd
better eat a bit slower now that the first pangs of hunger are allayed.
If we hurry up too much we'll have no food left soon and we have
absolutely nothing else to do except to eat until five o'clock this
afternoon. We can't expect to get off before that."

The spies packed their belongings into Flanagan's old boat and then set
to work to push her down to the sea. Frank, with the point of th