No sooner did he think of this stratagem than he acted upon it. As we have seen, it proved even more successful than he had expected or hoped. The creek was quite deep enough for him to swim a considerable distance beneath the surface. He headed up stream, and kept under water to the limit of his endurance. Then, instead of coming to the surface in the splashing, sputtering fashion of the amateur, he came so far up as to thrust only his face above the waters for breath. So careful were his movements that the anxious watchers did not detect him even at this moment. A second time he went below, swimming beneath the surface for some yards, until he emerged again, this time within a short distance of the bridge. A few strokes brought him to this hiding-place, and he had scarcely ensconced himself there, clinging to one of the heavy wooden supports, when he heard Chapin and Marsh rushing across the planks above his head. He could tell by their tones of alarm, as they talked farther down the bank, that they thought he had drowned. He heard one of them jump into the creek and splash vainly about for some moments, and at last he heard two of them depart, and saw the shadowy outlines of the other two, as they returned disconsolate to wait by the rocks. In about five minutes Tony crawled out from his hiding-place beneath the bridge. He was shivering with the cold, but otherwise not the worse for his long immersion. He ran softly along the dune road, about a hundred yards or so behind Carroll and Marsh on their way to the school. He followed them at a safe distance across the meadows and the campus, and watched them as they rang the bell of the Head Master’s house. Then he hurried off to his own room in Standerland, slipped off his wet clothes, and got into bed. A little alarm as to his safety on the part of his would-be tormentors, he thought, would be a just bit of revenge, particularly against the supercilious Carroll. While Deering lay comfortably in bed, rapidly recovering in body and spirit, the two conspirators had a mournful few minutes as they explained matters to Doctor Forester, who had thrust his head and his pyjama’d shoulders out of an upper window. The Head Master listened to their frightened explanations. “Very well,” he said at length, “I will dress at once. In the meantime, one of you go quickly over to Standerland and see if by any chance he has returned there. It is possible that there has been a serious accident, but I think it much more likely that he has simply outwitted you. I trust that is the case. Report to me immediately.” And with that the Doctor closed his window sash with a bang.