thought
it possible."

"We were mighty lucky," agreed the boy.

"You were!" exclaimed Willett. "I think we're the lucky ones."

"I suppose you are," said Eric. "But, after all, if both your chum and
you had been A No. 1 swimmers, just see how easy it would have been! You
could have got ashore in a few minutes. That's what we want to do with
the kids. We want to teach them to swim so that if they tumble off a
dock with their duds on they can strike out for shore like so many
frogs. We manage to break in nearly every youngster who comes down to
this beach. Most of them want to get the hang of it, anyway, and when
there's a bunch of youngsters to start with, it's a cinch to get the
rest to join in."

"But still I don't see how you can teach them on land," Willett
objected.

"Why not?"

"You're supposed to swim with your legs as well as your hands, aren't
you?"

"Of course. It's the legs that you really do the swimming with."

"That's what I thought. But how can you kick out with both legs when
you're standing on them?"

"Oh, that's what's troubling you," said Eric laughing. "But there's
nothing difficult in that. The idea in the leg motions of swimming is to
bring the legs to the body, isn't it?"

"That's what I always thought."

"It doesn't make any difference if you bring the body to the legs, does
it?"

"I--suppose not," the other said, dubiously.

"Of course it doesn't. That's just the idea. You watch the kids going
through the drill and you'll get on to it. Why, I can put a bunch wise
to swimming, though they're a thousand miles away from any water deep
enough to drown in."

Eric had hardly got outside the station when the boys flocked to him in
a body. He answered their fusillade of greetings with equal heartiness
and then called them to attention.

"Get to business, now!" he called, and the group lined up in fours, each
boy about six feet from his neighbor. "Ready!" he called. "One! Hands
together, palms to each other. Swing 'em around a little behind the
level of the shoulders turning 'em palm outward as you go. This way!" He
showed the motion. "At the word 'Two'--bring the hands in to the breast.
At 'Three' put the hands forward. All together, now: One! Two! Three!"

The boys followed the motions, some doing it well, but others looking
very clumsy and awkward. A dozen times or more the boys went through the
drill until a certain amount of regularity began to appear.

"Leg motions next," Er