But it was more than half an hour before Mr. Fulton came upon the two boys, stripped to their B-V-D's and at that instant resting on the bank. He came up just in time to hear Jerry say: "I used to think I could dive! Where'd you get onto it?"
"Just Scout stuff," laughed Phil, modestly. "Every Scout in the patrol's got swimming and diving honors."
"Good!" broke in Mr. Fulton. "Dive me up that motor and I'll get you a special honor as a substitute submarine."
"We've worked down from the point, scraping bottom for twenty feet out—that's about as far as they could heave it, we figured. We've just got to the place where I'd have dived first-off if I had only one chance at it. Here goes for that leather medal," as Phil rose and poised himself for the plunge.
It was as pretty a dive as one could want to see. He split the water with a clean slash, with hardly a bubble. A minute, another, and another passed, the two on shore watching the surface expectantly. They began to grow worried.
"He's been beating me right along" confessed Jerry. "I can't come within a full minute of his ordinary dives. This one is a pippin—there he blows!"
Spouting like a young whale, Phil broke the water and came ashore in long reaching strokes.
"I tried my best!" he gasped as he pushed back his hair and rubbed the water from his eyes. "But I couldn't make it!"
"Better luck next time," encouraged Mr. Fulton. "If you don't find her in two more dives like that, why she isn't in Plum Run, that's all!"
"Find her? I was talking about lifting her. Guess we'll have to get a rope on her—she's pretty well down in the mud."