Page:Minnie's Bishop and Other Stories (1915).djvu/90

 MacNab's attitude and recommended that the facts of the case should be presented to him again. Mr. Nicholson-Croly presented them. He, as it were, formally introduced the Captain to the pier, taking him on shore for the purpose. He expatiated on the beauty of its masonry, on the cost of building it, on the parental affection which the Government naturally felt for it. Captain MacNab's determination remained unchanged, though the language in which he expressed it was modified.

Mr. Nicholson-Croly wrote a second letter to Dublin, and received a second post-card identical with the first. This time ten days elapsed before anyone found leisure to deal with the matter. Then, lest further valuable time should be wasted, some one sent a telegram:—"Adopt other means for landing potatoes."

The only other means that appeared to be available were the five canvas-covered boats used by the natives for fishing. Mr. Nicholson-Croly, with despair in his heart, consulted the priest.

"I expect now," said Father Gibbons, "that if the weather isn't too bad you might get as much as ten stone into each curragh. If you employ the whole five of them, and they make eight journeys in the day—you will hardly get them to do more than that, and, indeed, Jimmy Corcoran's an old man, and has no one to help him but his gossoon of a grandson; he'll hardly go more than four times. Still, that same would bring you"