Jennifer said, “I’ve got a new Lielo we can use to bathe from.”

A Lielo was a kind of English air mattress. Mr. Bazlinton blew it up with a foot pump. He showed us that it had three air chambers for safety. One in the pillow part and the other two divided between the six round tubular floats. The Lielo was made of blue canvas with a rubber coating on the inside. When you put it in the water it got much darker-colored. When you lay on it face down you could smell the rubber and the water would pour over the edges when you moved and make your stomach feel cold even though the seawater was really very warm. That was because the water trapped between the crevices where the round tubes met would get really hot in the sun and so the new water felt cold by contrast.

Jennifer and I loaded our snorkels and masks onto the air mattress and asked Mr. Bazlinton if we could go right around the point of our bay, beyond the castle, and snorkel out of sight of the beach.

He said, “Very well, but you mustn’t be more than twenty yards or so from the shore, old chap. If you are you will run the considerable risk of one of the motor launches running you down. Stay together.”

We set off and I asked Mr. Bazlinton to tell Mom which way we were going so she wouldn’t worry when she looked up and couldn’t see us in the bay anymore. Also because that way I knew it would be too late for her to say no and later I could say Mr. Bazlinton had thought it was all right so I thought she would agree. How could Mom disagree then? Mr. Bazlinton was English and had been to Cambridge University and spoke with a really “refined accent” like she said.

Jennifer lay on the air mattress with her head hanging over the end looking down through her mask at the sandy sea floor sliding by under us.

Since I had the flippers I paddled us from behind by half lying on the mattress with my legs in the water kicking.

“Can’t you do better than that?” Jennifer said. “We’re hardly moving at all!”

“So why don’t you help with your arms?” I said.

Jennifer didn’t answer me but stuck her head back under the water and kept on watching. I tried to kick harder.

“You’re splashing me all over,” said Jennifer. “Mind out, will you?”

“You said you wanted to go faster.”

“You needn’t splash like that. What’s the use of being on a Lielo if you’re being soaked all the time by freezing water?” Then Jennifer put her face back in the water so there was no use me arguing because she couldn’t hear what I said.