Yarns Without Threads 

She seldom thought without a smile of the agitation which had accompanied her first swim. She had been in the water before her guards had realised her intention. ... An excited gabble arose as she struck out, and when she swam back to the ledge, it was to land at the feet of a group astonished into awe and servility.

On this 'morning' - the habit of dividing her time into manageable sections persisted in the face of their inaccuracy - the ceremony was performed as usual. A crowd of a hundred or so persons who associated large quantities of water only with inundation and death, was assembled on her diving-ledge, ready to admire and marvel.

The false modesty which had bothered her at first no longer troubled her as she slid off her clothes. Neither men nor women of the pygmies wore clothes in the ordinary course of things, and she knew now that they regarded hers not as a concealment, but as a badge of office. Her unclothed body they regarded with completely detached admiration. It looked, one of them had told her, as if there were light in it; white, but an utterly different white from the dead pallor of their own skins. For herself, she dreaded the time which must come when this translucence should thicken from lack of sunlight and air to an opaque chalkiness.

She stood for a moment, a slim figure poised on the brink, while the watchers held an awed silence. Then up and out. Her arms spread in the grace of a perfect swallow. She cut the water twenty feet below with the merest spurting of a splash.

For a time she entertained them, laughing up at faces which could not banish all traces of apprehension. She turned and twisted as she would, flashing her white limbs in the dark water. She let herself sink and swam twenty yards under water, baffling them agreeably as to her direction. An excited ovation greeted her reappearance - she had performed a near-miracle. At length she headed with a long, reaching crawl for the landing-place.