"Let go of my neck, you silly little fool!" gasped Sawyer, striving to break the boy's hold.
"You let him be!" gurgled Tom, half-drowned but clinging like a limpet. "You let him be, you big bully!"
Then the two went under and Steve, recovering his breath, wrenched them apart somehow and pulled poor Tom to the side of the tank. Sawyer, breathing with difficulty after Tom's choking grasp about his neck, floundered to the edge, got a sustaining grip on the rim of the tank and glared angrily at the two boys.
"I'll get you for this, you smart Alecks," he declared chokingly. "You're too fresh, both of you. Don't you know better than to grab a fellow around the neck in the water, you fool kid?"
But Tom was too far gone to answer. "That's what you did, isn't it?" Steve demanded. "That's a funny way to talk!"
"It is, is it?" sneered Sawyer. "I'll show you something that is funny some time, and don't you forget it!"
Still growling, he swam away toward the nearer ladder, while Steve, with Roy and Harry and others helping, lifted Tom out of the tank and then followed himself. Tom was very, very sick there for a minute and the younger fellows were properly sympathetic and indignant. Presently they half carried Tom back to the locker room and helped him into his clothes, and then, Roy and Harry in attendance, Steve conveyed him back to Billings and laid him on his bed, a very weak but now quite cheerful Tom.
"He nearly drowned me, didn't he?" he asked with a grin. "But I choked him good, you bet! Bet you his old neck will be sore for a week, fellows!"
"You want to keep away from him for awhile," said Harry with a direful shake of his head. "He's a mean chap when he's mad."