A THREATENING SKY.
Rex had brought the camp hatchet and placed it where everybody could see it. None of his fellow-campers spoke of its return. They were all hungry, and they hurried through dinner, took a nap, and then made for the sound while the tide was up.
There was a good diving place just east of their cove, and within a few rods of the spot where the other fellows moored their canoes. When the Walcott Hall boys arrived at the bathing place the four white youths from the other camp were already in the water. Joe Bootleg seemed to have a constitutional objection to water for bathing purposes.
With a driftwood plank they had found, Midkiff and Phillips rigged a diving-board. The rocks which weighted its shoreward end sometimes slipped off and "dumped" the diver ingloriously into the deep hole under the bank, but that merely added to the sport.
Peewee hailed Pudge MacComber, with whom he had struck up something of a doubtful friendship, and soon four of the other fellows were at the spot where the Walcott Hall boys bathed.
Pence, a fine swimmer, dove like a shark and stayed under water longer than anybody in the crowd, save Kingdon himself. The two raced informally from the diving hole to the canoes and back again, and it seemed that Pence had a wee bit the better of it.
"You do that Australian crawl fine," Kingdon told the black-eyed chap frankly.
"That's one thing I do all winter. There's a corking pool in our town gym., and I don't often miss a day."
"Swimming and rowing are as good all round training stuff as a fellow can do," Kingdon said. "Gives you wind and what Downs, our coach, calls stamina. You handle a paddle like a veteran, Pence. How are you with the oar?"
"So-so," Horace replied languidly. "Had good crews at Belding where I went for a year. I made Number Two eight."