final dash, for they could smell the river. In
a moment more they were at the Deepole.

O! that Deepole! Where the big creek took a great sweep around before
it tore over the rapids and down into the gorge. It was always in cool
shade; the great fan-topped elm-trees hung far out over it, and the
alders and the willows edged its banks. How cool and clear the dark
brown waters looked! And how beautiful the golden mottling on their
smooth, flowing surface, where the sun rained down through the
over-spreading elm boughs! And the grassy sward where the boys tore off
their garments, and whence they raced and plunged, was so green and firm
and smooth under foot! And the music of the rapids down in the gorge,
and the gurgle of the water where it sucked in under the jam of dead
wood before it plunged into the boiling pool farther down! Not that
the boys made note of all these delights accessory to the joys of
the Deepole itself, but all these helped to weave the spell that the
swimming-hole cast over them. Without the spreading elms, without
the mottled, golden light upon the cool, deep waters, and without the
distant roar of the little rapid, and the soft gurgle at the jam, the
Deepole would still have been a place of purest delight, but I doubt if,
without these, it would have stolen in among their day dreams in after
years, on hot, dusty, weary days, with power to waken in them a vague
pain and longing for the sweet, cool woods and the clear, brown waters.
Oh, for one plunge! To feel the hug of the waters, their soothing
caress, their healing touch! These boys are men now, such as are on the
hither side of the darker river, but not a man of them can think, on a
hot summer day, of that cool, shaded, mottled Deepole, without a longing
in his heart and a lump in his throat.

The last quarter of a mile was always a dead race, for it was a point of
distinction to be the first to plunge, and the last few seconds of the
race were spent in the preliminaries of the disrobing. A single brace
slipped off the shoulder, a flutter of a shirt over the head, a kick
of the trousers, and whoop! plunge! "Hurrah! first in." The little boys
always waited to admire the first series of plunges, for there were many
series before the hour was over, and then they would off to their own
crossing, going through a similar performance on a small scale.

What an hour it was! What contests of swimming and diving! What water
fights and mud fights! What ca