It was a little after ten when the apprehensive,  and soon to be very wet and even more cold, trio of Darlene, Tracy and Kylie arrived at the scene of the small  town's festivities,  and their misery.  As with Julia and Beatrice,  the earlier arrivals they had decided to undress  at home and parade through the village barefoot and swimsuit clad.  They had collected an enthusiastic retinue along the way.  Particularly vociferous,  if crudely expressed,  appreciation was voiced regarding the two thong clad ladies as their fine young bottoms rolled  from side to side in sweet co-ordination with the walking motion of their long well-muscled and shapely legs.   Mrs Jenkinson, who was anxious to get things started as soon as possible,  clucked disapprovingly at their tardy arrival.

A crowd of eager young and not so young men soon gathered around the booth.  The  three scantily clad and pretty young ladies sat in a demurely delicious row at the foot of a ladder leading up to the platform from which they were all fated to be dropped with great regularity and frequency throughout the next few hours.  A second ladder led up from the tank back to the platform.  The process of changing over from one girl to the next promised to be both complicated and lengthy - at least this would give a few added seconds for them all to warm up before the next plunge.

Darlene bravely elected to go first and climbed up the rungs,  turning frequently as she did so, with a bravado she was far from feeling,  to smile enticingly at the assembled citizenry below.  She felt inwardly very much as a French aristocrat,  ascending the steps of the guillotine, must have done,  and it least it would all have been over quickly for him,  rather than the start of  a day-long ordeal by cold torture.

The observant and pessimistic Julia had all too accurately predicted that the very first shot to be aimed at the lever, a piece of wood the size of  a barn door, would send the poor victim straight down into the water.  And so it proved to be for the wretched Darlene! A mighty cheer went up from the heartless spectators and the hearts of the other two girls sank into their boots - or would have if they had not been barefoot and thus bootless.  The hapless and shell-shocked Darlene gasped as she dropped the ten feet towards the water, seemingly leaving her stomach suspended in mid-air above her.  She then sank right to the bottom of the deep glass tank and emerged gasping with cold.  She could not remember ever having had such an utterly shattering physical experience in the whole of her life so far and she had been to the seaside last year and swum when the water was still far from warm.  She was unable to suppress  scream after ear shattering scream  as her head finally emerged and after she had shaken the water from her face and hair.

She climbed the ladder and it was only only a mixture of her own defiant courage and fear of letting down her two companions in misfortune that cut off her hysterics before they got the better of her.  Darlene climbed back down to her friends and took her seat, shaken and almost sobbing next to Kylie.  "Oi   bloody warn you - it's 'orrible, really 'orrible.  Oive never known anything so cold - it's so cold, it's painful, just like a knoife going through you," she whispered to the frightened girl at her side.  "We'll never last all day.  Thank God Julia's going to help out, bless her!  Oi hope the people who dreamt this up get their just desserts - that's all Oi can say!  Oi don't mind a bit of a ducking for a good cause - that's just a bit of fun, but this is something else altogether.  That fucking bitch and that sick bastard of a Brigadier are going to pay for this!  It's roight out of order, what those two are doing to us."

As Mrs Jenkinson had realised earlier on, the warm weather was a very mixed blessing and the contrast between the high air temperature and near freezing water was likely to be nearly lethal to the poor girls' physiology.  It would be some time before they were even half way adjusted to their torment.

The Brigadier had arrived just in time to see this first  victim suffer her hapless fate.  He rubbed his gnarled old hands with glee as he  watched a trembling, but bravely smiling,  Kylie ascend the ladder ready  to be sent falling to her icy fate.  This was going to be such a fun day - such lovely girls and the first one looking so cold already and they had hardly begun!

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Dorothy Parrish undressed on the site of her stand and handed her clothes to her mother to look after.  She was covered in spots as before, but not so many as last year, and whether by accident or design, none of the spots covered her nipples or were any where near her pubic hair, which a watching Julia had to agree was a fine sight, a large, black, wiry  triangle of strongly curling  hairs whose apex stretched almost up to her navel.  She had a plain face, although not by any means displeasing and a well-proportioned body which she obviously kept in reasonably good trim. Her main physical drawbacks were a noticeable thickness of the ankles and feet which had sadly suffered from wearing unsuitable shoes in childhood.

You would not call her graceful, but some of the more unfavourable things that had been said about her  appearance were obviously unfair and maliciously so at that.  Julia could not help but feel a little sorry for her, despite her patrician contempt for this wantonly promiscuous tramp.  Then she remembered that the girl, by all accounts,  was in some way designed to be the instrument of her downfall.  She accordingly hardened her heart against her.

There was soon a line of people queuing up to pay their money to get close enough to see Spotted Dorothy and talk to her, doubtless arranging assignations for later on.  Julia could not see this rather pitiful girl attracting more custom than she, but she did notice something odd, which made her wonder.

"Beatrice, my sweet.  We've got a few minutes before the snake charmer and the knife thrower arrive, would you be a dear and see what that placard is next to Dorothy - the one turned on its face so you can't read it?  It worries me."

Beatrice returned shortly.

"Sorry, Julia.  That witch Jenkinson  whipped it away out of sight before I could get near.  I agree.  It's a worry. I'm sure she's planning something against you and it's to do with Dorothy in some way.  Not really such a bad locker, is she, our Dorothy - if you like your women strong and meaty?"

A worried and distracted Julia agreed.  In advance of Robert and his knives, she turned to the gym apparatus and started off with  her first gymnastic display of the morning.  It was getting very warm and she was soon covered by a sheen of perspiration,  making her supple, sultry and evenly tanned body gleam in the morning sunlight.  People began to gather round, the young men, as she contemptuously noted,  standing in a rapt huddle where they could best see up and between her opened legs as she did her stuff on the vaulting horse.  With an effort she ignored them and concentrated on giving a good, and flawless performance - these awful creatures were customers, after all,  and entitled to their money's worth.

As Julia went through her routines  the regular sound of the platform dropping,  bodies plopping into cold water,  the odd gasping scream and frequent applause and cheering echoed across from the other side of the square as the unlucky trio continued to provide amusement to a group of unfeeling  men and women not one of whom would ever have had the hardihood or courage to go through what those three were enduring.  As Julia dimly apprehended this, she hoped the poor girls would last  until she could go and help them out.  Did she but know it, she was going to be grateful for the touch of cold water on her skin when the time came - very grateful indeed.