20
Chapter Four
Sarah studied Andrew's face before she spoke. “Why do ye no like
Pentland?" she asked. The old nan, whose eyes had been fixed on the rowers,
turned to her. He dashed the drops vigorously from his brow and mouth. "Pah:
That pachel - he's only an ould jinny of a man!” When she did not respond
he added without taking his attention from the boat's course: "when ye see
mair o' him, you'll heed what 1 say."
The nose of the punt was set below Rathard so that the rowers could get
what ease they might by running with the race down the lough and pulling up
gain in the calmer waters under the hill. Andrew now crept forward and took
a third oar, so that he and Frank were pulling on the starboard side and
Hamilton, the most powerful rower of the three, was rowing on the port. Slowly
the boat began to move obliquely across the channel-race. The wind was rising
again, and it became evident to the three men that they were being carried down
at such a pace that it would be impossible to make the passage between the
small islands which lay between them and home. Hamilton decided what they should
give up the idea of landing at Rathard and let themselves be carried further
down and round the shelter of a third island from where they could pull across
into Dufferin bay, two miles below Rathard. He shouted this in disjointed
sentences as he bent and straightened to his oar,witih a rusty tin Sarah
bailed the rain water and spume that gurgled and slopped at her feet. She was
drenched to the skin but long past caring, »hen she looked up she saw the heads
and bodies of the three men approaching and receding as they combed the tumbling
waves.
Impeded by hundreds of islands, the waves never mounted to the fury of
those of the sea, the menace lying in the currents that raced through the
passages between island and island. The punt was now crawling across such
