Shadows in Bronze

XXXVIII

Next day my friends decided I must be taught to swim.

It was probably a bad idea for them to try giving lessons to someone who still went rigid at any possibility of going under with seawater filling his lungs. Still, they all took it seriously so I attempted to co-operate.

It was hopeless. Petronius could hardly hold me up by the back of my tunic as he did with his children, and when Larius tried making water wings from inflated wineskins he just wore himself out blowing them up.

Nobody laughed, however. And nobody condemned me when I climbed back out of the water, walked up the beach, and sat down alone.

I stayed by myself, morosely flipping pebbles at a hermit crab. I skimined them to miss, since I was not in the mood for outright cruelty; the crab found a shell of his own and started to build an extension to his house.