"Thanks, but I think I'll go with you, Lieutenant Kenton."
"Then come to the bottom!" exclaimed Harry, as he dived forward like a flash, seized Shepard by the ankles and headed for the bottom of the river with him. The water gurgled in his eyes and ears and nose, but he held on for many seconds, despite the man's desperate struggles. Then he was forced to let go and rise.
As his head shot above the stream he saw another shooting up in the same manner about fifteen feet away. Both were choked and gasping, but Harry managed to say:
"I didn't intend for you to come up so soon."
"I suppose not, but perhaps you didn't pause to think that when you rose I'd rise with you."
"Yes, that's true. It seems to me that matters grow complicated. Can't you persuade yourself, Mr. Shepard, to go and leave me alone? I really have no use for you here."
"I'd like to oblige you, Lieutenant Kenton, but I intend to see that you don't reach General Lee."
"Still harping upon that? It seems to me that you're a stupidly stubborn man. Don't you know that I'm going anyhow?"
Harry had never ceased to watch his eyes, and he saw there the signal of a coming movement. Shepard dived suddenly for him, intending to repeat his own trick, but the youth was like a fish in the water, and he darted to the right. The man came up grasping nothing. Harry laughed. The chagrin of Shepard compelled his amusement, although he liked the man.
"I wish you'd go away, Mr. Shepard," he said. "On land you could, perhaps, overpower me, but in the water I think I'm your master. All through my boyhood I devoted a great deal of my time to swimming. Dr. Russell of the Pendleton Academy—but you never knew him—used to say that if I would swim less and study more I could make greater pretensions to scholarship."