"Off where?" Mr. Davenant exclaimed.

"Off in the curragh, yer honour. Me and Tim Connolly helped them carry it
round the Nose, and they launched her there. There they are. Sure you can
see them for yourself."

The party rushed out from the shelter, and there, a quarter of a mile
along on the right, a small boat was seen, making its way over the waves.

"Be jabers, yer honour, and they have done it," the boatmen said, as Mr.
Davenant gave a cry of alarm.

"I didn't think of the curragh, and if I had, she could not have been
launched here. Mr. Walter has hit on the only place where there was a
chance. Under the shelter of the Nose it might be done, but nowhere
else."

The Nose was a formidable reef of rocks, running off from a point and
trending to the south. Many a ship had gone ashore on its jagged edge,
but, with the wind from the northeast, it formed somewhat of a shelter,
and it was under its lee that Walter and Larry had launched the curragh.

The curragh is still found on the Irish coast. It is a boat whose
greatest width is at the stern, so much so that it looks like a boat cut
in two. The floor is almost flat, and rises so much to the bow that three
or four feet are entirely out of water. They are roughly built, and by no
means fast, but they are wonderfully good sea boats, for their size, and
can live in seas which would swamp a boat of ordinary build.