"They're fearsome creatures, Brown. Somehow, that resolute and bony one
has inspired me with a terror unutterable."
"Mrs. Batt?"
"Yes."
He said seriously:
"She'll make a horrid outcry when she asks for her knitting. What are you
going to tell her?"
"I shall say that Indians ambuscaded us while she was asleep, and carried
off all those things."
"You lie very nicely, don't you?" he remarked admiringly.
"_In vitium ducit culpæ fuga_," said I. "Besides, they don't really need
those articles."
He laughed. He didn't seem to be very much afraid of Mrs. Batt.
It had grown deliciously dusky, and myriads of stars were coming out.
Little by little the lake lost its shape in the darkness, until only an
irregular, star-set area of quiet water indicated that there was any lake
there at all.
I remember that Brown and I, reclining at the foot of the tree, were
looking at the still and starry surface of the lake, over which numbers
of bats were darting after insects; and I recollect that I was just about
to speak, when, of a sudden, the silent and luminous surface of the water
was shattered as with a subterranean explosion; a geyser of scintillating
spray shot upward flashing, foaming, towering a hundred feet into the
air. And through it I seemed to catch a glimpse of a vast, quivering,
twisting mass of silver falling back with a crash into the lake, while
the huge fountain rained spray on every side and the little lake rocked
and heaved from shore to shore, sending great sheets of surf up over the
rocks so high that the very tree-tops dripped.
Petrified, dumb, our senses almost paralyzed by the shock, our ears still
deafened by the watery crash of that gigantic something that had fallen
into the lake, and our eyes starting from their sockets, we stared at the
darkness.
Slap--slash--slush went the waves, hitting the shore with a clashing
sound almost metallic. Vision and hearing told us that the water in the
lake was rocking like the contents of a bath-tub.
"G-g-good Lord!" whispered Brown. "Is there a v-volcano under that lake?"
"Did you see that huge, glittering shape that seemed to fall into the
water?" I gasped.
"Yes. What was it? A meteor?"
"No. It was something that first came out of the lake and fell back--the
way a trout leaps. Heavens! It couldn't have been alive, could it?"
"W-wh-what do you mean?" stammered Brown.
"It couldn't have been a f-f-fish, could it?" I asked with chattering
teeth.
"No! _No!_ It was as big as a Pullman car! It must have been a falling
star. Did you ever hear of a fish as big as a sleeping car?"
I was too thoroughly unnerved to reply. The roaring of the surf had
subsided somewhat, enough for another sound to reach our ears--a raucous,
gallinacious, squawking sound.
I sprang up and looked at the row of tents. White-robed figures loomed in
front of them. The heavy artillery was evidently frightened.
[Illustration: "The heavy artillery was evidently frightened."]
We went over to them, and when we got nearer they chastely scuttled
into their tents and thrust out a row of heads--heads hideous with
curl-papers.
"What was that awful noise? An earthquake?" shrilled the Reverend Dr.
Jones. "I think I'll go home."
"Was it an avalanche?" demanded Mrs. Batt, in a deep and shaky voice.
"Are we in any immediate danger, young man?"
I said that it was probably a flying-star which had happened to strike
the lake and explode.
"What an awful region!" wailed Miss Dingleheimer. "I've had my money's
worth. I wish to go back to New York at once. I'll begin to dress
immediately--"
"It might be a million years before another meteor falls in this
latitude," I said, soothingly.
"Or it might be ten minutes," sobbed Miss Dingleheimer. "What do _you_
know about it, anyway! I want to go home. I'm putting on my stockings
now. I'm getting dressed as fast as I can--"
Her voice was blotted out in a mighty crash from the lake. Appalled, I
whirled on my heel, just in time to see another huge jet of water rise
high in the starlight, another, another, until the entire lake was but
a cluster of gigantic geysers exploding a hundred feet in the air, while
through them, falling back into the smother of furious foam, great
silvery bulks dropped crashing, one after another.
I don't know how long the incredible vision lasted; the woods roared with
the infernal pandemonium, echoed and re-echoed from mountain to mountain;
the tree-tops fairly stormed spray, driving it in sheets through the
leaves; and the shores of the lake spouted surf long after the last vast,
silvery shape had fallen back again into the water.
As my senses gradually recovered, I found myself supporting Mrs. Batt on
one arm and the Reverend Dr. Jones upon my bosom. Both had fainted. I
released them with a shudder and turned to look for Brown.
Somebody had swooned in his arms, too.
[Illustration: "Somebody had swooned in his arms, too."]
He was not noticing me, and as I approached him I heard him say something
resembling the word "kitten."
In spite of my demoralization, another fear seized me, and I drew nearer
and peered closely at what he was holding so nobly in his arms. It was,
as I supposed, Angelica White.
I don't know whether my arrival occultly revived her, for as I stumbled
over a tent-peg she opened her blue eyes, and then disengaged herself
from Brown's arms.
"Oh, I am _so_ frightened," she murmured. She looked at me sideways when
she said it.
"Come," said I coldly to Brown, "let Miss White retire and lie down. This
meteoric shower is over and so is the danger."
He evinced a desire to further soothe and minister to Miss White, but she
said, with considerable composure, that she was feeling better; and Brown
came unwillingly with me to inspect the heavy artillery lines.
That formidable battery was wrecked, the pieces dismounted and lying
tumbled about in their emplacements.
But a vigorous course of cold water in dippers revived them, and we
herded them into one tent and quieted them with some soothing
prevarication, the details of which I have forgotten; but it was
something about a flock of meteors which hit the earth every twelve
billion years, and that it was now all over for another such interim, and
everybody could sleep soundly with the consciousness of having assisted
at a spectacle never before beheld except by a primordial protoplasmic
cell.
Which flattered them, I think, for, seated once more at the base of our
tree, presently we heard weird noises from the reconcentrados, like the
moaning of the harbour bar.
They slept, the heavy guns, like unawakened engines of destruction all
a-row in battery. But Brown and I, fearfully excited, still dazed and
bewildered, sat with our fascinated eyes fixed on the lake, asking each
other what in the name of miracles it was that we had witnessed and
heard.
On one thing we were agreed. A scientific discovery of the most enormous
importance awaited our investigation.
This was no time for temporising, for deception, for any species of
polite shilly-shallying. We must, on the morrow, tear off our masks and
appear before these misguided and feminine victims of our duplicity in
our own characters as scientists. We must boldly avow our identities and
flatly refuse to stir from this spot until the mystery of this astounding
lake had been thoroughly investigated.
And so, discussing our policy, our plans for the morrow, and mutually
reassuring each other concerning our common ability to successfully defy
the heavy artillery, we finally fell asleep.