The World Peril of 1910 | Page 3

a bang from the upper road, and the drake dropped. The
Englishman had killed it with a wire cartridge in his choked left barrel.
"I wonder who the devil did that!" said Castellan, as he saw the bird fall.
"It was eighty yards if it was an inch, and that's a good gun with a good
man behind it.
The Englishman left the road to pick up the bird and then went down
the steep, stony hillside towards the shore of the silver-mouthed bay in
the hope of getting another shot farther on, for the birds were now
beginning to come over; and so it came about that he and the Irishman
met within a few yards of each other, one on either side of a low spit of
sand and shingle.
"That was a fine shot you killed the drake with," said the Irishman,
looking at the bird he was carrying by the legs in his left hand.
"A good gun, and a wire cartridge, I fancy, were mainly responsible for
his death," laughed the Englishman. "See you've got the other."
"Yes, and missed yours," said the Irishman.
The other recognised the tone as that of a man to whom failure, even in
the most insignificant matter, was hateful, and he saw a quick gleam in
his eyes which he remembered afterwards under very different
circumstances.

But it so happened that the rivalry between them which was hereafter to
have such momentous consequences was to be manifested there and
then in a fashion much more serious than the hitting or missing of a
brace of wild fowl.
Out on the smooth waters of the bay, about a quarter of a mile from the
spit on which they stood, there were two boats. One was a light skiff, in
which a girl, clad in white jersey and white flannel skirt, with a white
Tam o'Shanter pinned on her head, was sculling leisurely towards the
town. From the swing of her body, the poise of her head and shoulders,
and the smoothness with which her sculls dropped in the water and left
it, it was plain that she was a perfect mistress of the art; wherefore the
two men looked at her, and admired.
The other craft was an ordinary rowing boat, manned by three lads out
for a spree. There was no one steering and the oars were going in and
out of the water with a total disregard of time. The result was that her
course was anything but a straight line. The girl's sculls made no noise,
and the youths were talking and laughing loudly.
Suddenly the boat veered sharply towards the skiff. The Englishman
put his hands to his mouth, and yelled with all the strength of his lungs.
"Look out, you idiots, keep off shore!"
But it was too late. The long, steady strokes were sending the skiff
pretty fast through the smooth water. The boat swerved again, hit the
skiff about midway between the stem and the rowlocks, and the next
moment the sculler was in the water. In the same moment two guns and
two ducks were flung to the ground, two jackets were torn off, two
pairs of shoes kicked away, and two men splashed into the water.
Meanwhile the sculler had dropped quietly out of the sinking skiff, and
after a glance at the two heads, one fair and the other dark, ploughing
towards her, turned on her side and began to swim slowly in their
direction so as to lessen the distance as much as possible.
The boys, horrified at what they had done, made such a frantic effort to
go to the rescue, that one of them caught a very bad crab; so bad indeed

that the consequent roll of the boat sent him headlong into the water;
and so the two others one of whom was his elder brother, perhaps
naturally left the girl to her fate, and devoted their energies to saving
their companion.
Both John Castellan and the Englishman were good swimmers, and the
race was a very close thing. Still, four hundred yards with most of your
clothes on is a task calculated to try the strongest swimmer, and,
although the student had swum almost since he could walk, his muscles
were not quite in such good form as those of the ex-athlete of
Cambridge who, six months before, had won the Thames Swimming
Club Half-mile Handicap from scratch.
Using side stroke and breast-stroke alternately they went at it almost
stroke for stroke about half a dozen yards apart, and until they were
within thirty yards or so of the third swimmer, they were practically
neck and neck, though Castellan had the advantage of what might be
called the inside track. In other words he was a little