gravity of her look was gone, lost in the flash of her white teeth and
quivering dimples as her dripping face rose above the sea. When their
eyes met she dived again, but quickly reappeared on the other bow,
swimming with lazy, easy strokes, her smiling head thrown back over
her white shoulder, as if luring him to a race. If her smile was a
revelation to him, still more so was this first touch of feminine
coquetry in her attitude. He pulled eagerly towards her; with a few long
overhand strokes she kept her distance, or, if he approached too near,
she dived like a loon, coming up astern of him with the same childlike,
mocking cry. In vain he pursued her, calling her to stop in her own
tongue, and laughingly protested; she easily avoided his boat at every
turn. Suddenly, when they were nearly abreast of the river estuary,
she rose in the water, and, waving her little hands with a gesture of
farewell, turned, and curving her back like a dolphin, leaped into the
surging swell of the estuary bar and was lost in its foam. It would have
been madness for him to have attempted to follow in his boat, and he
saw that she knew it. He waited until her yellow crest appeared in the
smoother water of the river, and then rowed back. In his excitement and
preoccupation he had quite forgotten his long exposure to the sun
during his active exercise, and that he was poorly equipped for the cold
sea-fog which the heat had brought in earlier, and which now was quietly
obliterating sea and shore. This made his progress slower and more
difficult, and by the time he had reached the lighthouse he was chilled
to the bone.
The next morning he woke with a dull headache and great weariness, and
it was with considerable difficulty that he could attend to his duties.
At nightfall, feeling worse, he determined to transfer the care of the
light to Jim, but was amazed to find that he had disappeared, and what
was more ominous, a bottle of spirits which Pomfrey had taken from his
locker the night before had disappeared too. Like all Indians, Jim's
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