"Hold on firmly with both hands to the bar," the prefect directed. "Swing your body well forward when we begin to move and I'll give you a good push-off."
Gerry hated this particular form of merry-go-round. It made her feel sick and giddy, and she was unable to work her body backwards and forwards rhythmically enough to keep her place in the magic circle. She gasped for breath and held on tightly while Muriel ran her two or three times round the ring, and endeavoured to work her body as the other girls were doing. But the result was a hopeless failure, and when the head girl, having given her pupil what she thought was a super-excellent start, left go her hold, Gerry swung helplessly at the end of her rope, getting into the way of the girl who was swinging behind her, and finally bringing them both to an ignominious finish in the middle of the ring.
"What a donkey you are!" said Margaret Taylor angrily. She stooped down to rub her ankle, which Gerry had kicked rather hard in her efforts to keep herself going. "I was having a perfectly lovely swing, and now you've made me lose my turn." And she continued to glare angrily at the unfortunate new girl until the other striders dropped out one by one and the ring finally stopped.
Muriel made Gerry have one more try, but with no better results than before. After that, the new girl was handed on to Monica Deane, who was superintending the vaulting-horse. Gerry fared no better at this, and although each prefect in turn tried their hand upon her, none of them could find anything in the nature of apparatus upon which the new girl could perform with any measure of success.
Muriel Paget had been keeping her eye upon Gerry, and saw the hopeless exhibition the Lower Fifth girl was making of herself. But the prefect was determined to conquer the nervousness which was such a handicap to her protégée; and acting upon the plan which had succeeded so well with Gerry at hockey, she cast about in her mind for something to set her to do which would help her to make a start.
Finally she thought of the rope ladders.
"Nobody, not even the most hopeless duffer at gym, could make an utter mess of them, surely," she thought to herself, and ordered the ladders to be let down. But even here she had reckoned without Gerry's nerves! The girl was in a desperately overwrought state by this time. The troubles of the last few days culminating in her disgrace in class that morning, added to the hopeless exhibition she had been making of herself all through the afternoon, had rendered her unfit for even the simplest thing. When ordered to climb the rope ladder she obeyed dumbly, much in the way a condemned man might obey the order to walk to the scaffold; and, spurred on by Muriel's urging from below, she did succeed in mounting to a fair height. But rope ladders are not such easy things to climb as a novice might suppose. They have a nasty knack of doubling up and slipping away from you when you least expect them to, and when she was some thirty feet up this was what happened to the one Gerry was endeavouring to mount. And instead of trying to regain her balance, the girl gave way to the panic that had possessed her more or less all the afternoon.
She clutched desperately to the rope with her hands, and pushed hard with her feet, which, of course, only had the effect of turning her still more upside down.
"Let your body hang limp until you are in a proper position again," called Muriel. But Gerry was far too terrified and unnerved to act upon her directions, even if she had been able to take in exactly what they meant.
"Muriel! I—I can't get right way up," she gasped, struggling to keep her self-control. But Muriel did not realise quite how frightened Gerry really was. She spoke impatiently as she answered her, while a gale of laughter at the unsightly figure poor Gerry made as she clung to the rope like a drowning man, went through the gymnasium.