The clammer and the submarine

by William John Hopkins

"We shall be glad to," she said. And she turned to me. "Hurry, Adam, and row around to the ladder."

So I got us around to the steps, and there was a sailor with a boat-hook to hold the boat for us and to take charge of it, and Captain Fergus waiting at the gangway. And I introduced myself, but Eve did not wait for introductions, but smiled at him, and said that she thought he knew her father.

The wrinkles about Captain Fergus's pleasant eyes deepened.

"You are very like him," he said. And he led us over to the port side, toward some chairs from one of which had risen a slender woman, with a pleasant face and hair beginning to be well streaked with gray, but not many years older than Eve. Mrs. Fergus, I found, had been Marian Wafer; had been Miss Wafer for so long that she had become confirmed in the habit of spinsterhood, and did not find it easy to get out of that habit now that she was married.

We settled ourselves in the chairs, and had some pleasant, desultory talk; and the sun shone, not too brightly, through a bluish haze; there was hardly a breath of wind to ruffle the calm surface of the bay, and peace was on the face of the waters. The stillness almost seemed to drowse and to make a soft noise, like the distant sound of locusts in August. It soothed us, and the talk died, and we sat motionless and in silence, gazing out at the distant islands in their misty blue veils, or at two tiny sails, motionless too, two or three miles away, or, nearer yet, at an empty expanse of glassy water.

Suddenly a cat's-paw swept over the surface like a breath over a mirror, and the shining launch of the Arcadia shot out from Old Goodwin's landing, and came toward us at great speed; not at forty miles an hour, for the landing was not far off. She was towing an aquaplane, which stood very nearly perpendicular in the water, and I saw one man standing up and steering, and the heads of three or four people showing occasionally above the deck. The launch itself was at a pretty angle, with daylight showing under ten feet of her keel, and throwing cataracts out from either side like a fire engine; and she hid her passengers until she swerved. She was not bringing her passengers aboard the Arcadia, for she slackened speed and curved prettily, and drifted before us, almost within reach, and I saw that the people aboard of her, besides an officer and a sailor, were Old Goodwin and Elizabeth Radnor and another girl, a stranger. Miss Radnor and the stranger were clad in bathing-suits.

Eve did not seem as much surprised as I should have expected, and she smiled and spoke to her father and Miss Radnor, and he waved his hand; and the strange girl arose, stood poised for a moment on the rail, tossed her arms high above her head, dived overboard and struck out for the aquaplane. Miss Radnor instantly arose and followed, without bothering to poise, and they had a race for it. The strange girl swam well, but Miss Radnor had more power, and she gained.

Captain Fergus's great voice rang out. "Go it, Olivia! You're almost there. Once more and more power to you!"

And Olivia spurted, but got to laughing and lost a stroke; and Elizabeth Radnor caught her, but she got to laughing too, so that both seized their goal at the same instant. They drew themselves partly upon it, but the aquaplane sank under their weight, and the water swirled about their knees, for the launch was barely moving. But it began to surge ahead, faster and faster, so that the two girls found a firm support beneath their feet as they rose carefully. Olivia held two ropes fastened at the forward corners, and Miss Radnor steadied herself behind, with a hand on Olivia.

The launch twisted and turned, and made loops and circles and spirals, and Olivia still stood straight, like a Greek charioteer, holding the lines with hands and rigid arms that were beginning to ache; but Miss Radnor's knees were bending more and more, and she was swaying. And she laughed.