When he touched the side of the tank he came up. She was not in sight. He drew himself out, panting, and stood ready to dive in at the first sign of her. But there were no signs.
"Seven minutes!" Rita called. "And a half! ... Eight!... And a half!"
And no Paula Forrest broke surface. Graham refused to be alarmed because he could see no alarm on the faces of the others.
"I lose," he announced at Rita's "Nine minutes!"
"She's been under over two minutes, and you're all too blessed calm about it to get me excited," he said. "I've still a minute--maybe I don't lose," he added quickly, as he stepped off feet first into the tank.
As he went down he turned over and explored the cement wall of tank with his hands. Midway, possibly ten feet under the surface he estimated, his hands encountered an opening in the wall. He felt about, learned it Was unscreened, and boldly entered. Almost before he was in, he found he could come up; but he came up slowly, breaking surface in pitchy blackness and feeling about him without splashing.
His fingers touched a cool smooth arm that shrank convulsively at contact while the possessor of it cried sharply with the startle of fright. He held on tightly and began to laugh, and Paula laughed with him. A line from "The First Chanty" flashed into his consciousness-- "Hearing her laugh in the gloom greatly I loved her."
"You did frighten me when you touched me," she said. "You came without a sound, and I was a thousand miles away, dreaming..."
"What?" Graham asked.
"Well, honestly, I had just got an idea for a gown--a dusty, musty, mulberry-wine velvet, with long, close lines, and heavy, tarnished gold borders and cords and things. And the only jewelery a ring--one enormous pigeon-blood ruby that Dick gave me years ago when we sailed the All Away."
"Is there anything you don't do?" he laughed.
She joined with him, and their mirth sounded strangely hollow in the pent and echoing dark.
"Who told you?" she next asked.
"No one. After you had been under two minutes I knew it had to be something like this, and I came exploring."
"It was Dick's idea. He had it built into the tank afterward. You will find him full of whimsies. He delighted in scaring old ladies into fits by stepping off into the tank with their sons or grandsons and hiding away in here. But after one or two nearly died of shock--old ladies, I mean--he put me up, as to-day, to fooling hardier persons like yourself.--Oh, he had another accident. There was a Miss Coghlan, friend of Ernestine, a little seminary girl. They artfully stood her right beside the pipe that leads out, and Dick went off the high dive and swam in here to the inside end of the pipe. After several minutes, by the time she was in collapse over his drowning, he spoke up the pipe to her in most horrible, sepulchral tones. And right there Miss Coghlan fainted dead away."