“Coo-ee, Jim! Come on—it’s ripping!” Jim appeared from a cave, shedding the last of his raiment. There was no pause in his dive; his swift rush along the point ended in a leap that carried him far out, and when he emerged, strong over-arm strokes carried him quickly in towards a tiny bay where hard yellow sand made a perfect landing-place. Wally gave chase, unavailingly: when his feet touched the shore Jim was already racing again along the rocks, his dive this time beginning with a complete somersault in the air, before, with a mighty splash, he disappeared once more. Wally came hard upon his heels, springing in, in a sitting position, his hands locked under his knees; and for the next twenty minutes the chums sported in the water like a couple of seals, racing, playing tricks upon each other, and practising the dozen different dives taught them in schoolboy days in Australia. Finally they rubbed themselves down with dry, warm sand, donned their clothes, and subsided, glowing, on a sunny rock, to light their pipes. “What a perfect place for a swim!” Jim said, looking at the long, narrow inlet with its twin headlands. “That point only needs one thing, Wal—a really good spring-board.” “Yes. Do you remember the big spring-board in the St. Kilda baths—the one you broke when you were trying how high you could spring before diving?” “Do I not!” said Jim ruefully. “It was the pride of the baths, and replacing it made me a poor man for the rest of the term!” He pitched a shell far out into the sea. “Doesn’t that seem ages ago!” “So it is: anything that happened before the war _is_ ages ago,” Wally answered. “And I suppose, when we get back to Billabong, all this”—he swept a comprehensive gesture that included Ireland and Europe—“will seem a kind of prehistoric dream. Anyhow it’s a good dream while it lasts.” “Yes, it’s all too good to have missed it,” Jim said. “Ireland has been jolly, beyond our hopes, thanks to O’Neill—what a brick that poor chap is! Now if we can only finish up by a bit of real fighting, it will all be a huge lark. I’m not a scrap sorry to have been in the trenches; it was all good experience. But I say, Wal, I do want to get going above ground!” “Rather!” Wally answered. “I want to take a hand in a general worry, and afterwards to be in it when we chase the lovely Hun back to his happy home. And I specially want to be there when we chase ’em out of Brussels: I’d like to see that plucky Belgian King marching down his main street again. Won’t they howl!”