ral harbour among the rocks at the foot of the cliff on which
the school stood. It was a picturesque spot at all times; but this
bright spring morning, with the distant headlands lighting up in the
rising sunlight, and the blue sea heaving lazily among the rocks as
though not yet awake, Heathcote thought it one of the prettiest places
he had ever seen.

The "Tub" suited all sorts of bathers. The little timid waders could
dip their toes and splash their hair in the shallow basin in-shore. The
more advanced could wade out shoulder-deep, and puff and flounder with
one foot on the ground and the other up above their heads, and delude
the world into the notion they were swimming. For others there was the
spring-board, from which to take a header into deep water; and, further
out still, the rocks rose in ledges, where practised divers could take
the water from any height they liked, from four feet to thirty. Except
with leave, no boy was permitted to swim beyond the harbour mouth into
the open. But leave was constantly being applied for, and as constantly
granted; and perhaps every boy, at some time or other, cast wistful
glances at the black buoy bobbing a mile out at sea, and wondered when
he, like Pontifex and Mansfield, and other of the Sixth, should be able
to wear the image of it on his belt, and call himself a Templeton
"shark?"

Heathcote, on his first appearance at the "Tub," acquitted himself
creditably. He took a mild header from the spring-board without more
than ordinary splashing, and swam across the pool and back in fair
style. Gosse, who only went in from the low ledge, and swam half-way
across and back, was good enough to give him some very good advice, and
promise to make a good swimmer of him in time. Whereat Heathcote looked
grateful, and wished Dick had been there to astonish some of them.

One or two of the Fifth, including Swinstead and Birket, arrived as the
youngsters were dressing.

"Hallo!" said Swinstead to Heathcote, "you here? Where's your chum?"

"Asleep," said Heathcote, quite pleased to think he should be able to
tell Dick he had been having a talk with Swinstead that morning.

"Have you been in?"

"Yes."

"Can you swim?"

"Yes, a little," said Gosse, answering for him. "We're about equal."

Heathcote couldn't stand the barefaced libel meekly.

"Why, you can't swim once across!" he said, scornfully, "and you can't
go in off the board!"

The Fifth-form boys laughed.