Page:Rideout--Beached keels.djvu/107

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BLUE PETER
93

hastily till the great white muscles glistened in the sun. He felt hollow from lack of food and sleep; the water stretched hopelessly far to the mainland; but the excitement as he ran splashing out, and the cold shock of the plunge, set his heart thumping stoutly. His first thought was one of despair,—"It's too cold." But he shut his mind to that, and clove his way ahead through the bright green water, swimming with a powerful side stroke. That lowness of vision over a flat surface which is peculiar to swimming made colors and lines abnormally distinct. With his cheek gouging through the water, he could see the ruddy cliffs retreating behind him, the greenness and the black shadows of little trees that clung in crevices, the pink curve of the beach, the shining, shifting lines of the water, his own legs, distorted by refraction till they looked ridiculously pale and green and thin, kicking away like alien marine things in pursuit of his body and of the big, glistening deltoid that capped his shoulder, strongly contracting and relaxing. Ahead, as he shot his arm forward, appeared