touching the bottom. She fancied that he was actually touching bottom
with his hands. Yes, he was. Bending low over the water she saw his
brown fingers, stretched out and well divided, promenading over the
basin of the sea as lightly and springily as the claws of a crab tip-
toeing to some hiding-place. Presently he let himself down a little
more, pressed his flat palms against the ground, and with the impetus
thus gained made his body shoot back towards the surface feet
foremost. Then bringing his body up till it was in a straight line
with his feet, he swam slowly under water, curving first in this
direction then in that, with a lithe ease that was enchantingly
graceful. Finally, he turned over on his back and sank slowly down
until he looked like a corpse lying at the bottom of the sea.

Then Vere felt a sickness of fear steal over her, and leaning over the
sea till her face almost touched the water, she cried out fiercely:

"Come up! Come up! Presto! Presto!"

As the boy had seemed to obey her when she cried out to him from the
summit of the cliff, so he seemed to obey her now.

When her voice died down into the sea-depths he rose from those
depths, and she saw his eyes laughing, his lips laughing at her, freed
from the strange veil of the water, which had cast upon him a spectral
aspect, the likeness of a thing deserted by its soul.

"Did you hear me that time?" Vere said, rather eagerly.

The boy lifted his dark head from the water to shake it, drew a long
breath, trod water, then threw up his chin with the touch of tongue