Downstream

by the salt water that he
couldn’t see for four days.
The following year he wore a
mask made of ‘sticker’s
plaster’ with glass, but this
attempt failed – ‘I was
completely blind, and in
considerable agony’ – as did
the next. In 1914 he wrote a
book entitled Swimming,
whose opening words were:
‘Everyone ought to know
how to swim. We are a nation
of sailors . . . and yet