As he came to the surface he took up the yell where he had left off and again began the windmill motions to the accompaniment of incoherent profanity. Then he went down again. By this time his strange conduct was perfectly understood by his companions, for they had themselves been attacked by the same insidious foe. A swarm of yellow-jacket hornets, proverbially mad, had descended upon them without apparent provocation, and wholly without warning.
As soon as the wily yellowjackets discovered that their prey was in the water, they hovered about over the surface, striking at everything that came up. And while mankind is, in a limited way, amphibious, surely he makes no claim of extensive submarine ability. This fact the murderous hordes seemed to have taken into consideration in carrying out their attack.
By painful stages the victims worked their way downstream until they were out of range. Then they dragged themselves up on the bank and started what looked like a cartoon of a mud-slinging campaign. To an idle passerby a group of full grown human beings with their heads and often their bodies completely poulticed in black mud would have been an amusing sight. But on this occasion not so much as a suspicion of a smile crossed the face of any person present. An incipient laugh would doubtless have been punished by immediate execution.
The only observers who were not among the suffering participants were in no mood for smiles. They lay absolutely motionless back in the bushes and devoutly hoped that their labored breathing and pounding heartbeats would not be overheard. The affair had got away from them entirely. There was no telling what would happen if their part in it should be discovered.
Not until it was quite dark did the badly stung bathers dare to return for their clothes. The hornets were gone. And the languid stillness of the summer night was broken only by their grim tokens of exclamation.
Some time after the last suffering victim had dragged his weary feet down the path leading from the pool, two dark shadows cautiously emerged from the shrubbery.
"Let's beat it for home!" urged a husky voice. "If any one saw us around here they'd prob'ly kill us!"
"All right," breathed the other. "The quicker the better!"
"Do you s'pose any one ever did die from bee-sting?"
"I'm afraid so. One feller said if he didn't die before mornin' he might have one chance in a hundred—"