Lubin, standing nude and shapely, like a fair Greek statue, for a
moment on the bank, took a silent header and disappeared. Then Austin
prepared to follow. He tumbled rather than plunged into the water,
and, unable to attain an erect position owing to his imperfect
organism, would have fared badly if Lubin had not caught him in his
arms and turned him deftly over on his back.

"You just content yourself with floating face upwards, Sir," he said.
"There's no sort of use in trying to strike out, you'd only sink to
the bottom like a boat with a hole in it. There--let me hold you like
this; one hand'll do it. Look out for the river-weeds. Now try and
work your foot. Seems to be making you go round and round, somehow.
But that don't matter. A bathe's a bathe, all said and done. How jolly
cool it is!"

"Isn't it exquisite?" murmured Austin, with closed eyes. "I do think
that drowning must be a lovely death. We're like the minnows, Lubin,
'staying their wavy bodies 'gainst the streams, to taste the luxury of
sunny beams tempered with coolness.' That's what _our_ wavy bodies are
doing now. Don't you like it? 'Now more than ever it seems rich to
die----'"

But the next moment, owing probably to Lubin having lost his
equilibrium, the young rhapsodist found himself, spluttering and
half-choked, nearer to the bed of the river than the surface, while
his leg was held in chancery by a network of clinging water-weeds.
Lubin had some slight difficulty in extricating him, and for the
moment, at least, his poetic fantasies came to an abrupt and
unromantic finish.