The at Long Lake Part 9 (2/2)
”I'm perfectly willing to stay right here by the lake,” said Margery Burton, ”for one. It's as nice here as it can possibly be anywhere else. I'd like someone to go in swimming with me.”
”If it isn't too cold I will,” cried Dolly, cheerfully.
And so, after the midday meal--two hours afterward, too, for Eleanor Mercer was too wise a Guardian to allow them to run any risk by going into the water before their food had been thoroughly digested--bathing suits were brought out, and Margery Burton, or Minnehaha, as the one who had proposed the sport, was unanimously elected a committee of one to try the water, and see if it was warm enough for swimming.
”And no tricks, Margery!” warned Dolly. ”I know you, and if you found it was cold it would be just like you to pretend it was fine so that we'd all get in and be as cold as you were yourself!”
”I'll be good! I promise,” laughed Margery, and, without any preliminary hesitation on the water's edge, she walked to the end of the little dock that was used for the boats and plunged boldly in. She was a splendid swimmer, a fact that had once, when Bessie had first joined the Camp Fire, nearly cost her her life, for, seeing her upset, no one except Bessie had thought it necessary to jump in after her, and she had actually been slightly stunned, so that she had been unable to swim.
But this time there was no accident. She disappeared under the water with a beautiful forward dive, and plunged along for many feet before she rose to the surface, laughing, and shaking the water out of her eyes. Then, treading water, she called to the group on the dock.
”It's all right for everyone but Dolly, I think,” she cried. ”I'm afraid it would be too cold for her. I like it; I think it's great!”
”You can't fool me,” said Dolly, and, without any more delay, she too plunged in. But she rose to the surface at once, gasping for breath, and looking about for Margery.
”Why, it's as cold as ice!” she exclaimed. ”Ugh! I'm nearly frozen to death! Margery, why didn't you tell me it was so cold?”
”I did, stupid!” laughed Margery. ”I said it was warm enough for me, but that I was afraid it would be too cold for you, didn't I?”
”I--I thought you were just fooling me; you knew I'd never let the others go in if I didn't!”
”It's not my fault if you wouldn't believe me. All I promised was to tell you whether it was cold or not! Come on, you girls! It is cold, but you won't mind it after you've been in for a minute!”
”Look out! Give me room for a dive!” cried Eleanor Mercer, suddenly appearing from her tent. ”I know this water; I've been in it every year since I was a lot smaller than you. I'm afraid of it every year the first time I go in, but how I do love it afterward!”
And, running at full speed, she sped down to the edge of the dock, leaped up and turned a somersault, making a beautiful dive that filled the girls who were still dry with envy. And a moment later they were all in, swimming happily and enjoying themselves immensely. All, that is, except Zara, who could not swim.
”Oh, I wish I could dive like that, Miss Eleanor!” exclaimed Bessie, who had been one of the first to go into the water.
”Oh, that's nothing; you can learn easily, Bessie. You swim better than any of us. Isn't this water cold for you? I should think you wouldn't be used to it. All the others have been in pretty cold water before now.”
”Oh, so have I! You see, around Hedgeville we used to go into the regular swimming holes, and they never get very warm. There's no beach, you just go in off the bank, and most of the swimming holes have trees all around them so that they're shady, and the sun doesn't strike them. They're in the shade all the time, and that keeps the water cold. This is warmer than that, ever so much.”
”I tell you what we'll do, girls; we'll fix up a spring-board and have some lessons in real diving. Wouldn't that be fun?”
”It certainly would! I'd love to be able to do a backward dive!”
”Well, this is a good place to learn; no one around to make you nervous, and good deep water. It's sixteen or seventeen feet off that dock, all the time, and that's deep enough for almost any diving; for any that we're likely to do, certainly.”
Later they talked it over again, when they had dried and resumed the clothes they wore about the camp, and Eleanor Mercer, her enthusiasm warming her cheeks, told them something they had not heard even a hint of as yet.
”A friend of mine is scoutmaster of a troop of Boy Scouts,” she said. ”And he has teased me, sometimes, about our work. He says we just imitate the Boy Scouts, and that we just pretend we're camping out and doing all the things they do. Well, I told him that some time we'd have a contest with them, and show them; a regular field day. And, just for fun, we made up a sort of list of events.”
”Oh, what were they?”
”Well, we planned to start in, all morning, and make a regular trip, cook meals, and come back. And on the way we to divide into parties; there are three patrols his troop, you know, and we could divide up the same way. The parties were to keep in touch with one another by smoke signals--they're made with blankets--and there was to be a fire-making contest, to see which could make fire quickest without matches. And, oh, lots of other things.”
”That would be fine.”
”Then I got reckless, I think. I said my girls could beat his boys in the water--that we could swim better--I meant more usefully, not just faster, in a race, because I think they'd beat us easily in just a plain race. And I'm afraid I boasted a little.”
”I bet you didn't; I bet we can do just as well as any old Boy Scouts!” exclaimed Dolly. ”I wish we just had the chance, that's all.”
”Well, you have,” said Eleanor, with a smile. ”That's what I'm trying to tell you, girls. Mr. Hastings is over at Third Lake right now with one patrol of his troop. He got there yesterday and the way I happened to hear about it was that he was on his way over yesterday morning--he got in ahead of the boys--to help us look for Dolly and Bessie, when they were found.”
”Oh, that's fine! And shall we have that field day?”
”Later on, before we go home, yes. But he began teasing me again yesterday, and I told him we'd have a water carnival any time he wanted to bring his boys over. And he said they'd come Sat.u.r.day.”
”We'll have to get ready and show them what we can do, then,” said Margery Burton, with determination in her voice. ”My brother's a Boy Scout, and I know just what they're like; they think we're just the same as all the other girls they know. I tell you what would be fun; to get up a baseball team.”
”Maybe we'll try that later,” said Eleanor. ”But right now we want to be ready for Sat.u.r.day. So I'll teach you everything I can. And I'm quite sure we can beat them in a life-saving drill; their three best against our three. We'd have you, Margery, and Bessie, and Dolly Ransom.”
So it was agreed, and they all began to practice.
”I wish I could do something,” said Zara, wistfully. ”But I don't believe I could learn to swim before Sat.u.r.day.”
”You could learn to keep yourself afloat,” said Margery. ”But that wouldn't be much good, of course. You'd rather not go in at all, I suppose, unless you could really swim.”
”I know what I could do, though,” said Zara, suddenly, after she had watched Bessie go through the life saving drill. But she would not confide her idea to anyone but Miss Mercer, who looked more than doubtful when she heard it.
”I don't know, Zara,” she said, ”I'll see. It seems a little risky. But I'll think it over. It would be splendid, but, well, we'll see.”
Speed swimming, pure racing, was barred when Sat.u.r.day came. But with Scoutmaster Hastings and Miss Mercer as referees, and three summer visitors from the Loon Pond Hotel, who had no prejudice in favor of either side as judges, several contests were arranged that called for skill rather than strength.
”In this diving,” Hastings explained to the judges, ”what we want to figure on is the way they do it. If a dive is graceful, and the diver strikes the water true, going straight down, with arms and legs held close together, you give so many points for that. I'll make each dive first; that will serve as a model, you see.”
Scoutmaster Hastings was not speaking in a boastful manner. He was a noted diver, and had won prizes and medals in many meets for his skill. And, when everything was arranged, he did all the standard dives from the spring-board at the end of the dock, and three members of each organization followed him.
Bessie had taken remarkably well to these new tricks, as she considered them. Her powers as a swimmer no one had questioned, but it was remarkable to see how quickly she had acquired the ability to dive well and gracefully. And, to the surprise and chagrin of the Boy Scouts, who had expected, as boys always do, when they are pitted against girls, to win so easily that they could afford to be magnanimous, and to abstain from gloating, the judges were unanimous in deciding that she had done better than any of the six compet.i.tors in all five of the standard dives in which Hastings showed the way.
As there were six compet.i.tors, the judges awarded six points for first place in each dive, five for second, four for third, three for fourth, two for fifth, and one for sixth place. And in two of the dives second place went to Margery Burton, while one of the Boy Scouts, Jack Perry, was second in the other four.
To the disgust of the other boys, Margery was placed third in the four dives in which Jack Perry beat her, and Dolly, a good, but not a really wonderful diver, was fifth in every one of the dives, beating at least one boy in each. So sixty-six points altogether went to the Camp Fire Girls, while the Boy Scouts, who had expected to finish one, two, three, had to be content with forty-eight, and were soundly beaten.
”That girl that was first is a wonder,” said Hastings admiringly to Miss Mercer. ”I take it all back, Eleanor. But I didn't think you'd have anyone as good as she is. Why, she's better than you are, and I always thought you were the nearest to a fish of any girl I ever saw in the water. She could win the woman's champions.h.i.+p with a little more practice.”
”Maybe you won't crow so much over us after this,” said Eleanor, with a laugh.
”Not about the diving, certainly,” said Hastings, generously, ”But that's tricky, after all. The life saving is going to be different There strength figures more. I really think my boys ought to give a handicap in that.”
”Not a bit of it,” said Eleanor. ”Women have been taking handicaps from men too long. They've got so that they think they can't do anything as well as a man. This Camp Fire movement is going to show you that that's all over and done with.”
”Well, we'll go through the tests first,” said Hastings. ”Then your girls will know what they've got to beat, anyhow.”
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