Aren't you ready ?" "Yes," said Heathcote, flinging himself into his hardly-regained garments.
The "Templeton Tub," as the bathing place was colloquially termed, was a small natural harbour among the rocks at the foot of the cliff on which the school stood.

It was a picturesque spot at all times; but this bright spring morning, with the distant headlands lighting up in the rising sunlight, and the blue sea heaving lazily among the rocks as though not yet awake, Heathcote thought it one of the prettiest places he had ever seen.
The "Tub" suited all sorts of bathers.

The little timid waders could dip their toes and splash their hair in the shallow basin in-shore.

The more advanced could wade out shoulder-deep, and puff and flounder with one foot on the ground and the other up above their heads, and delude the world into the notion they were swimming.

For others there was the spring-board, from which to take a header into deep water; and, further out still, the rocks rose in ledges, where practised divers could take the water from any height they liked, from four feet to thirty.