"The day's getting late and it's growing cold. However, if you want to—"
Ian did not greatly want to. But if Alexander could be so indifferent, he could be determined and ardent. "What's a little mirk and cold? I want to say I've swum in it." He began to unbutton his waistcoat.
They stripped, left their clothes in the stone's keeping, and ran down the moorside. The light played over their bodies, unblemished, smooth, and healthfully colored, clean-lined and rightly spare. They had beautiful postures and movements when they stood, when they ran; a youthful and austere grace as of Spartan youth plunging down to the icy Eurotas. The earth around lay as stripped as they; the naked, ineffable blue ether held them as it did all things; the wandering air broke against them in invisible surf. They ran down the long slope of the moor, parted the reeds, and dived to meet their own reflections. The water was most truly deep and cold. They struck out, they swam to the middle of the pool, they turned upon their backs and looked up to the blue zenith, then, turning again, with strong arm strokes they sent the wave over each other. They rounded the pool under the twisted willows, beside the shaking reeds; they swam across and across.
Alexander looked at the sun that was deep in the western quarter. "Time to be out and going!" He swam to the edge of the pool, but before he should draw himself out stopped to look up at a willow above him, the one that he thought he might, in the mist, have taken for the kelpie's daughter. It was of a height that, seen at a little distance, might even a tall woman. It put out two broken, shortened branches like arms.... He lost himself in the study of possibilities, balanced among the reeds that sighed around. He could not decide, so at last he shook himself from that consideration, and, pushing into shallow water, stepped from the pool. He had taken a few steps up the moor ere with suddenness he felt that Ian was not with him. He turned. Ian was yet out in the middle ring of the tarn. The light struck upon his head. Then he dived under—or seemed to dive under. He was long in coming up; and when he did so it was in the same place and his backward-drawn face had a strangeness.
"Ian!"
Ian sank again.
"He's crampit!" Alexander flashed like a thrown brand down the way he had mounted and across the strip of weeds, and in again to the steel-dark water. "I'm coming!" He gained to his fellow, caught him ere he sank the third time.
Dragged from the Kelpie's Pool, Ian lay upon the moor. Alexander, bringing with haste the clothes from the stone above, knelt beside him, rubbed and kneaded the life into him. He opened his eyes.
"Alexander—!"
Alexander rubbed with vigor. "I'm here. Eh, lad, but you gave me a fright!"