"Can you swim?" he asked. And Aura, with her ready smile, answered that she could. "If we are in the water," she added, seeming to have followed his thoughts, "they would not see us. I can swim very far—can you?"
The Very Young Man nodded.
"If we could get near to Orlog in the water," he said, "we might get a boat. And then when we were small, we could sail up. They wouldn't see us then."
"There are many boats," answered the girl in agreement. "Look!"
There were, indeed, on the lake, within sight of them now, several boats. "We must get the one nearest Orlog," the Very Young Man said. "Or else it will beat us in and carry the news."
In a few minutes more they were at the lake shore. The Very Young Man wore, underneath his robe, a close-fitting knitted garment very much like a bathing-suit. He took off his robe now, and rolling it up, tied it across his back with the cord he had worn around his waist. Aura's tunic was too short to impede her swimming and when the Very Young Man was ready, they waded out into the water together. They found the lake no deeper than to Aura's shoulders, but as it was easier to swim than to wade, they began swimming—away from shore towards the farthest boat that evidently was headed for Orlog.
The Very Young Man thought with satisfaction that, with only their heads visible, huge as they would appear, they could probably reach this boat without being seen by any one in Orlog. The boat was perhaps a quarter of a mile from them—a tiny little toy vessel, it seemed, that they never would have seen except for its sail.
They came up to it rapidly, for they were swimming very much faster than it could sail, passing close to one of the others and nearly swamping it by the waves they made. As they neared the boat they were pursuing—it was different from any the Very Young Man had seen so far, a single, canoe-shaped hull, with out-riders on both sides—they could see it held but a single occupant, a man who sat in its stern—a figure about as long as one of the Very Young Man's fingers.
The Very Young Man and Aura were swimming side by side, now. The water was perfect in temperature—neither too hot nor too cold; they had not been swimming fast, and were not winded.
"We've got him, what'll we do with him," the Very Young Man wanted to know in dismay, as the thought occurred to him. He might have been more puzzled at how to take the drug to make them smaller while they were swimming, but Aura's answer solved both problems.