“The boathouse — heck, that wasn’t nothing! All that stuff, that was in the spring. They go away on their cruise in June. Guy don’t hardly get warmed up by then — don’t really feel like diving. But in the summertime — say, that Annapolis gang really gets going then!”
“Yeah, and what do they do?”
“I’m telling you. They dive.”
“Off the boathouse roof, hey?”
“The boathouse roof? Say, that wouldn’t interest that gang. Off whatever they can find, so it’s high. Steamboat — right off her pilothouse. Schooner — off her cross-trees. Anywheres. They don’t care.”
“What schooner?”
“Any schooner.”
“What’s the name of the schooner?” they persisted.
“Boys, you got me there. There’s so many boats in Annapolis harbor I couldn’t tell you the names of them. Schooners, sloops, canoes, bug-eyes, destroyers, battleships — anything you want. They even got seaplanes.”
“And you dove off a seaplane too, did you?”
Surfeited with success, he let opponent take a trick, merely to be merciful. “No, I never did. Those things, they only draw about six inches of water, and they generally anchor them over on the flats. You dive off them, you’re li’ble to break your neck.”
He puckered his mouth in what he conceived to be a look of vast wisdom. “Believe me, when you’re up high you gotta be sure what’s down there. That’s one thing you guys better remember if you ever expect to do any diving. It better be deep.”
Then in a day or two, as a fine surprise, his mother announced that Wally Bowman was coming to visit him. Wally had been his own particular freckle-faced pal back in Annapolis. But here, after being met at the steamboat, fed ice cream, and lodged regally in the spare bed, Wally developed ratlike yellow-bellied tendencies. Admitted to the society of the back stoop, he at once formed a hot treasonable friendship with Roger, and betrayed the stark and bitter truth.
“Wally, he says you never been in a shell.”
“Yah, what does he know? His mother never let him out of the yard for fear the dogs would bite him.”
“Wally, he says every time you went near the navy boathouse they chased you away.”
“Chased him away, you mean.”
“Wally, he says you can’t even dive at all.”
“How would he know? That Annapolis gang, the real Annapolis gang, they wouldn’t even let him come along! He’s nothing but a sissy!”
“Wally, he says—”
“Sissy! Sissy! Sissy!”
Even the girls wavered in their allegiance, for Wally knew the sailors’ hornpipe. The whole back yard became a sort of Pinafore deck, with dresses, curls, and ribbons flouncing to the siren measure. Only Phyllis, lovely Phyllis, remained stanch. But one time, when he retired in a rage and then returned unexpectedly, even she was out there, her shoes off, kicking about in socklets and pulling foolishly on imaginary halyards.
School opened, and the weather turned bright and hot. Wally stayed on, partly because the Annapolis schools didn’t open until a week later. Edwin took advantage of the change in weather to make a dramatic entrance into the new school and thus calk his leaking prestige. That is, he wore his “work suit.” This was a white gob’s uniform, very popular with the boys around Annapolis, and still more popular with their mothers, since it could be bought cheaply in any navy-supply store. The effect was a knockout. There were gibes from Roger, but they quickly died. Phyllis admired it loudly, and so did the rest of the female contingent.
But when, after the morning session, Edwin repaired to the drugstore, flushed and triumphant, for a cooling drink, who should be sitting there but Wally in his work suit. It was too much to be borne. He pushed Wally from the stool. Wally retorted with a sock in the eye. He retorted with a butt in the stomach. Mr. Nevers, the druggist, retorted with a clip on the ear for them both and a lecture on how to behave. Edwin climbed on a stool and sullenly ordered his drink. Roger came in with several boys, detected the tension, and tried to get an account of the fracas from Wally. Phyllis came in with some girls, and there was excited twittering. Several grown-ups came in, among them Mr. Charlie Hand with Miss Ruth Downey. Edwin paid no attention to anything until Phyllis asked him excitedly if he wanted to go swimming.
“No!”
“But we’re going down to Mortimer’s! Mr. Charlie Hand is going to take us down, he and Ruth Downey! Aw, come on, Edwin! It’s so hot, and you’ll love it!”
He had answered her out of the choler of his mood; but now sober judgment spoke and told him that, in view of his boasts and claims, about the last thing he should do was go swimming.
“Water’s too cold.”
“Aw, it’s not cold! Look what a hot day it is!”
“After all that rain, be colder than ice.”
“Aw, Edwin, come on! We’re going right after lunch.”
“Anyway, it’s too late in the year. Swimming’s over.”
“Gee, Edwin, I think you’re mean!”
He glanced in the direction of Wally and delivered what he intended to be his final shot: “Me go swimming? Say, that’s funny. With that thing on my hands? Could I ask you to take him along? That dose of poison ivy? Me go swimming — a fat chance!”
Phyllis babbled excitedly that of course they could take Wally along. But Wally cut her off: “Count me out, Phyllis, I wouldn’t go swimming. Not in the same river with him. I don’t want to catch no smallpox. Oh, no. Not me!”
This abnegation was so unlike Wally that Edwin was astonished. So was Roger, and he set up a noisy caveat. But Wally was not to be swayed. “No, I’m out. Just have your swim without me. And anyway, me and Roger has got something on today a whole lot more important than swimming.” Roger suddenly subsided, and Edwin had a sweet vision of the romantic afternoon he could have with Phyllis, once his two tormentors were out of the way.
“Well, in that case, Phyllis — O. K. Glad to go.”
Mortimer’s turned out to be a big farmhouse three or four miles below the town. A housekeeper appeared, waved a hand vaguely toward the rear, and they all scrambled back there, the girls into one shed, the boys into another. Edwin, with a disk harrow for a locker, was the last one out, and found Phyllis waiting for him. In a red swimming suit, he thought she looked enchantingly beautiful, and he felt an impulse to dawdle, to take her hand, to run off and chase butterflies. So, apparently, did she; but at the end of thirty seconds of dawdling they found themselves strolling slowly to the beach.
As they stepped from the trees to the sand, Edwin’s heart skipped a beat. There, lying on their sides, were two bicycles, one his own, the other Roger’s. And there, beside the bicycles, and not in swimming suits, were Wally and Roger, shark grins on their faces. One glance at the river told him the reason for the grins. Not a hundred yards away, tied up at the Mortimer private wharf and busily discharging fertilizer, was a schooner. She was the most nauseating schooner Edwin had ever seen. Pink dust covered her deck, from the fertilizer. Her three masts rose out of a hull devoid of shape, and her topmasts were missing. Her bowsprit was a makeshift, obviously a replacement for the original member. It consisted of one long round timber, squared off at the end, and held in place, at a crazy uptilted angle, by iron collars to which were attached wire cables that ran back to the foremast. Accustomed to the trim craft of Annapolis harbor, Edwin sickened at the sight of her, and yet he knew full well her import. She was, presumably, his favorite take-off for diving. He had been sucked into a neat, deliberate, and horrible trap, and he needed but one guess as to the designer of it. It was Wally, who had come up-river on the steamboat; Wally, who knew that schooner was lying there; Wally, who had declined the swimming invitation and thus enticed him to his doom.