"My word!" gasped White. "I didn't know you could swim like that."
Doe laughed in his face.
"You loon! He could swim before you were born."
Moles seized Doe by the throat and pretended to push him into the water, but characteristically saved him from falling by placing an arm round his waist.
"Apologise," he hissed, "or I'll drop you."
"Moles," replied Doe reproachfully. "At once let me go; or I'll push you in." I rendered my friend immediate assistance by filling White's shoes with water.
"Shut up that!" said he, quickly releasing Doe, who retired from the baths shouting: "Moles, you ugly old elephant, Ray could give you eighty yards in a hundred, and beat you."
This last impertinence suggested an idea to White. He arranged that Cully, Johnson, he, and I should have a private race, "in camera," as he put. The event came off the following day, and I won it with some yards to spare. My three defeated opponents were generous in their praise.
"Golly!" said Johnson. "I thought we'd be last for the Swimming Cup. But snakes alive! we'll get in the semi-final."
"Why, man," declared Cully. "I see us in the final with Erasmus."