This weird girl. Water, almost her native element so that suddenly she dove over the bow. Flash of coral limbs, green-sheathed little body and streaming tawny hair. There was hardly a splash as she slipped into the water and then was swimming backward against our gliding little boat. It slid to the dock, gently eased up, and Nereid was gone.
For a moment I held my breath, with my heart pounding. Foolish apprehension. Abruptly she appeared, out in the middle of the cove, head and shoulders bobbing up as she shook the water from her tresses and flung up an arm to greet me.
"Come back here," I called.
The silent cove echoed with the ripple of her laugh. With weaving limbs, incredibly swiftly her body slid through the water; submerged again, and she came up laughing, like a dog shaking herself as she jumped to the dock.
"Some day we will swim together, Kent." Again she flung me that sidelong glance of coquetry. "And if you swim like my father, without much trouble I could drown you. You think so?"
"No argument on that," I said. Queerly I seemed to feel, just for that instant, almost a vague resentment. Resentment of a man at the superior prowess of a woman. Instinctive, of course.
She seemed to understand it, and she laughed again. "Our young men of Venus are like that," she said, "for they, too, cannot swim very well." And instantly her face clouded. "That, too, is part of the trouble of my world—the men who would have their mates kept from the water so that the man may be in everything the master. Our virgins do not like that."
She clung to my hand as we went up the palmetto-lined path to the camp. And suddenly she seemed frightened. An aura of sudden menace was here. I, too, could feel it. Allen had started supper. The things were out; food was in the frying pan, burning now in a charred mass over the campfire flames.
"Kent—something wrong—"