Spencer was the first of the trio ready to enter the water. His movements were wary and deliberate. There was nothing of the professional diver about Spencer. First he stood on the edge and rubbed his arms, regarding the green water beneath with suspicion and dislike. Then, crouching down, he inserted three toes of his left foot, drew them back sharply, and said "Oo!" Then he stood up again. His next move was to slap his chest and dance a few steps, after which he put his right foot into the water, again remarked "Oo!" and resumed Position I.
"Thought you said it was warm," he shouted to Gorrick.
And Spencer came on in. Not because he wanted to--for, by rights, there were some twelve more movements to be gone through before he should finally creep in at the shallow end--but because a cold hand, placed suddenly on the small of his back, urged him forward. Down he went, with the water fizzing and bubbling all over and all round him. He swallowed a good deal of it, but there was still plenty left; and what there was was colder than one would have believed possible.
He came to the surface after what seemed to him a quarter of an hour, and struck out for the side. When he got out, Phipps and Thomas had just got in. Gorrick was standing at the end of the cocoanut matting which formed a pathway to the spring-board. Gorrick was blue, but determined.
"I say! Did I go in all right then?" inquired Gorrick.
"How the dickens do I know?" said Spencer, stung to fresh wrath by the inanity of the question.
"Spencer did," said Thomas, appearing in the water below them and holding on to the rail.
"Look here!" cried Spencer; "did you shove me in then?"
"Me! Shove!" Thomas's voice expressed horror and pain. "Why, you dived in. Jolly good one, too. Reminded me of the diving elephants at the Hippodrome."
"That kid," said Gorrick, gazing after him, "wants his head smacked."
"Badly," agreed Spencer. "Look here! did he shove me in? Did you see him?"
"I was doing my dive. But it must have been him. Phipps never rags in the bath."
Spencer grunted--an expressive grunt--and, creeping down the steps, entered the water again.
It was Spencer's ambition to swim ten lengths of the bath. He was not a young Channel swimmer, and ten lengths represented a very respectable distance to him. He proceeded now to attempt to lower his record. It was not often that he got the bath so much to himself. Usually, there was barely standing-room in the water, and long-distance swimming was impossible. But now, with a clear field, he should, he thought, be able to complete the desired distance.