"All O.K.," Bert assured. "I went in myself. The pipe is working.
There's plenty of air."

"Ready!" Rita called. "Go!"

Graham ran toward their end like a foot-racer, while Paula darted up
the high dive. By the time she had gained the top platform, his hands
and feet were on the lower rungs. When he was half-way up she
threatened a dive, compelling him to cease from climbing and to get
out on the twenty-foot platform ready to follow her to the water.
Whereupon she laughed down at him and did not dive. "Time is passing--
the precious seconds are ticking off," Ernestine chanted.

When he started to climb, Paula again chased him to the half-way
platform with a threat to dive. But not many seconds did Graham waste.
His next start was determined, and Paula, poised for her dive, could
not send him scuttling back. He raced upward to gain the thirty-foot
platform before she should dive, and she was too wise to linger. Out
into space she launched, head back, arms bent, hands close to chest,
legs straight and close together, her body balanced horizontally on
the air as it fell outward and downward.

"Oh you Annette Kellerman!" Bert Wamwright's admiring cry floated up.

Graham ceased pursuit to watch the completion of the dive, and saw his
hostess, a few feet above the water, bend her head forward, straighten
out her arms and lock the hands to form the arch before her head, and,
so shifting the balance of her body, change it from the horizontal to
the perfect, water-cleaving angle.