Boys, if you have ever read Benjamin Franklin’s directions to those learning to swim, you will understand the methods our Captain pursued to teach us. In his boat he was always dressed in bathing-clothes, and would often jump out to show us by example how to swim under water, how to float, how to dive, etcetera. I can assure you we enjoyed that sport as much as any we had, and before many weeks had passed we could all swim a few strokes. By the close of the season, I, the youngest pupil, could swim out to Leander’s Rock, dive from it twenty feet deep, and swim ashore again easily. But more about Bath Bay, and our adventures there, hereafter.
After our baths and Juno’s nice dinners we usually went to sail, and in a few weeks the Captain let some of us take the helm, he sitting by to instruct us, and to remedy, if need be, any mistake of the young sailor who happened to be our skipper at the time. Sometimes, instead of sailing, we would row in an excellent boat which we had for that purpose, and, four of us being at the oars, try how quick time we could make from point to point of the shore. With such practice, we made rapid improvements and by the middle of July could row a mile in twelve minutes; a month before we could only do that in twenty minutes. Sometimes Mr Clare and the captain took oars in our boat; at other times they rowed against us in the Captain’s punt. That was glorious fun, and how we fellows did strive to beat our tutors, and often came very near it too—so near that we determined, if there was any merit in Try, to do it yet.
One night—it was about the 2nd of June, if my memory serves me—when we had gone up to our rooms for bed, and got undressed, Walter, who had been very quiet ever since our row in the afternoon when our tutors contended with and beat us as usual, called us to order, that we might organise, he said, as a regular boat club. We answered, “Good!” “Good!” and each boy, putting a pillow on his footboard, took a senatorial seat—each boy arrayed in the flowing cotton nightgown. When silence ensued, Walter addressed us in his energetic, determined way, but lowered his voice that not a whisper of our deliberations might reach the ears of Mr Clare, who was only separated from us by a partition.
“Fellows, we must beat our tutes—we must beat them, that is what I say. Let’s get our boat in good order immediately—let’s call her the Pupil—let’s row every day, but not alongside of our adversary—no, no!—but where we can’t be seen, and for two hard hours each day. And I move we have a coxswain, and that Bob be the boy—he is small, quick, and cool. Let’s challenge our tutes to-morrow for a race.”
“Agreed—agreed! hurrah!” we all shouted.
“For a race, I say, on, let me see, the anniversary of the glorious battle of Waterloo.”
“Grand! splendid! hurrah!” were our interruptions again, and Drake expressed his delight by taking the pillow from beneath him, and slinging it with tremendous speed at Alf Higginson’s head, who in consequence fell off his perch like a dead squirrel from a pine-tree. Alf fell heavily on his side, and we roared with laughter; but he was up in a moment, and rushed at Drake with a bolster. Walter, our dignified chairman, swooped down from his perch in a second, and catching the incensed Alfred by the extremity of his flying robe, slung him under a bed.
“Order! Order, boys!” he cried. “Pretty fellows you are to hold a meeting. You, Drake! pitch any more pillows, and we’ll slide you out of the window. There, stop your racket! Mr Clare is up. Before he comes hurry up and say, all together, ‘We will beat.’”
“We will beat,” was responded as fiercely as if life was at stake, and, as Mr Clare opened the door to ascertain what was the disturbance, five innocent boys were under blankets and apparently sleeping the deepest slumber. Drake had even reached a regular bass snore. The moonlight streaming in the room, and which showed us a smile breaking irresistibly on Mr Clare’s face, was not more placid than we. The door had hardly closed behind Mr Clare before Harry Higginson had sprung from his bed, and, almost on the space our tutor had stood a half second before, was enacting a ridiculous and vigorous pantomime of kicking our “fresh tute” from the room. As quickly the door opened again, and before Harry could get a single limb in order, Mr Clare had him by the arm. But the whole affair was too humorous for even Mr Clare’s dignity. He could only say “So you are the noisy one, Henry Higginson. You can get in bed now as quickly as you got out of it, and to-morrow, when the afternoon’s study is done, recite to me fifty lines of Virgil—from the twentieth to the seventieth line of the first book.”
With that, Mr Clare went from the room, and Harry, with a low, long, whistled “phew,” sought his bed disconsolately.