"I don't see what there is to do," said Matty, "barring a gunboat."
Mr. Benson started, and meditated a flat rejection of a proposal hardly less absurd to his mind than the idea of swimming. Then he recollected that on other occasions, in other places along the western Irish coast, the ships of his Majesty's navy had been employed on similar errands. He went home and wrote a letter to his superior officer. That gentleman, in turn, wrote to some one else. Many letters passed between the police authorities in Dublin Castle, the Local Government Board, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, and the Admiralty. The whole correspondence, when collected, filed, and submitted to the Lord-Lieutenant, made an imposing bundle of foolscap.
Three weeks later H.M. gunboat Curlew steamed out of Queenstown Harbor. Lieutenant Eckersley, who commander her, was in a very bad temper. He did not want to voyage round the coasts of Kerry and battle his way northward through the Atlantic. He wanted to stay in Queenstown and take part in a lawn-tennis tournament which he had helped to organise. He disliked the prospect of feeling his way to an unknown anchorage off the town of Ballymore. The Connaught coast has a bad reputation among sailors. There are hidden rocks in unexpected places, tides which sweep violently along, and an almost total absence of buoys, lights and other aids to navigation. The
