Dawn awoke me, and I sat up in my blanket and aroused Brown.
No birds were singing. It seemed unusual, and I spoke of it to Brown.
Never have I witnessed such a still, strange daybreak. Mountains, woods,
and water were curiously silent. There was not a sound to be heard,
nothing stirred except the thin veil of vapour over the water, shreds
of which were now parting from the shore and steaming slowly upward.
There was, it seemed to me, something slightly uncanny about this lake,
even in repose. The water seemed as translucent as a dark crystal, and
as motionless as the surface of a mirror. Nothing stirred its placid
surface, not a ripple, not an insect, not a leaf floating.
Brown had lugged the pneumatic raft down to the shore where he was now
pumping it full: I followed with the paddles, pole, and hydroscope. When
the raft had been pumped up and was afloat, we carried the reel of
gossamer piano-wire aboard, followed it, pushed off, and paddled quietly
through the level cobwebs of mist toward the centre of the lake. From
the shore I heard a gruesome noise. It originated under one of the row of
tents of the heavy artillery. Medusa, snoring, was an awesome sound in
that wilderness and solitude of dawn.
I was unscrewing the centre-plug from the raft and screwing into the
empty socket the lens of the hydroscope and attaching the battery, while
Brown started his sounding; and I was still busy when an exclamation from
my companion started me:
"We're breaking some records! Do you know it, Smith?"
"Where is the lead?"
"Three hundred fathoms and still running!"
"Nonsense!"
"Look at it yourself! It goes on unreeling: I've put the drag on. Hurry
and adjust the hydroscope!"
I sighted the powerful instrument for two thousand feet, altering it from
minute to minute as Brown excitedly announced the amazing depth of the
lake. When he called out four thousand feet, I stared at him.
"There's something wrong--" I began.
"There's _nothing_ wrong!" he interrupted. "Four thousand five hundred!
Five thousand! Five thousand five hundred--"
"Are you squatting there and trying to tell me that this lake is over a
mile deep!"
"Look for yourself!" he said in an unsteady voice. "Here is the tape! You
can read, can't you? Six thousand feet--and running evenly. Six thousand
five hundred!... Seven thousand! Seven thousand five--"
"It _can't_ be!" I protested.
But it was true. Astounded, I continued to adjust the hydroscope to a
range incredible, turning the screw to focus at a mile and a half, at two
miles, at two and a quarter, a half, three-quarters, three miles, three
miles and a quarter--click!
"Good Heavens!" he whispered. "This lake is three miles and a quarter
deep!"
Mechanically I set the lachet, screwed the hood firm, drew out the black
eye-mask, locked it, then, kneeling on the raft I rested my face in the
mask, felt for the lever, and switched on the electric light.
Quicker than thought the solid lance of dazzling light plunged down
through profundity, and the vast abyss of water was revealed along its
pathway.
Nothing moved in those tremendous depths except, nearly two miles below,
a few spots of tinsel glittered and drifted like flakes of mica.
At first I scarcely noticed them, supposing them to be vast beds of
silvery bottom sand glittering under the electric pencil of the
hydroscope. But presently it occurred to me that these brilliant specks
in motion were not on the bottom--were a little less than two miles deep,
and therefore suspended.
To be seen at all, at two miles' depth, whatever they were they must have
considerable bulk.
"Do you see anything?" demanded Brown.
"Some silvery specks at a depth of two miles."
"What do they look like?"
"Specks."
"Are they in motion?"
"They seem to be."
"Do they come any nearer?"
After a while I answered:
"One of the specks seems to be growing larger.... I believe it is
in motion and is floating slowly upward.... It's certainly getting
bigger.... It's getting longer."
"Is it a fish?"
"It can't be."
"Why not?"
"It's impossible. Fish don't attain the size of whales in mountain
ponds."
There was a silence. After an interval I said:
"Brown, I don't know what to make of that thing."
"Is it coming any nearer?"
"Yes."
"What does it look like now?"
"It _looks_ like a fish. But it can't be. It looks like a tiny, silver
minnow. But it can't be. Why, if it resembles a minnow in size at this
distance--what can be its actual dimensions?"
"Let me look," he said.
Unwillingly I raised my head from the mask and yielded him my place.
A long silence followed. The western mountain-tops reddened under the
rising sun; the sky grew faintly bluer. Yet, there was not a bird-note in
that still place, not a flash of wings, nothing stirring.
Here and there along the lake shore I noticed unusual-looking trees--very
odd-looking trees indeed, for their trunks seemed bleached and dead, and
as though no bark covered them, yet every stark limb was covered with
foliage--a thick foliage so dark in colour that it seemed black to me.
I glanced at my motionless companion where he knelt with his face in the
mask, then I unslung my field-glasses and focussed them on the nearest of
the curious trees.
At first I could not quite make out what I was looking at; then, to my
astonishment, I saw that these stark, gray trees were indeed lifeless,
and that what I had mistaken for dark foliage were velvety clusters of
bats hanging there asleep--thousands of them thickly infesting and
clotting the dead branches with a sombre and horrid effect of foliage.
I don't mind bats in ordinary numbers. But in such soft, motionless
masses they slightly sickened me. There must have been literally tons
of them hanging to the dead trees.
"This is pleasant," I said. "Look at those bats, Brown."
When Brown spoke without lifting his head, his voice was so shaken, so
altered, that the mere sound of it scared me:
"Smith," he said, "there is a fish in here, shaped exactly like a brook
minnow. And I should judge, by the depth it is swimming in, that it is
about as long as an ordinary Pullman car."
His voice shook, but his words were calm to the point of commonplace.
Which made the effect of his statement all the more terrific.
"A--a _minnow_--as big as a Pullman car?" I repeated, dazed.
"Larger, I think.... It looks to me through the hydroscope, at
this distance, exactly like a tiny, silvery minnow. It's half a mile
down.... Swimming about.... I can see its eyes; they must be about ten
feet in diameter. I can see its fins moving. And there are about a dozen
others, much deeper, swimming around.... This is easily the most
overwhelming contribution made to science since the discovery of the
purple-spotted dingle-bock, _Bukkus dinglii_.... We've got to catch one
of those gigantic fish!"
"How?" I gasped. "How are we going to catch a minnow as large as a
sleeping car?"
"I don't know, but we've got to do it. We've got to manage it, somehow."
"It would require a steel cable to hold such a fish and a donkey engine
to reel him in! And what about a hook? And if we had hook, line,
steam-winch, and everything else, _what_ about bait?"
He knelt for some time longer, watching the fish, before he resigned the
hydroscope to me. Then I watched it; but it came no nearer, seeming
contented to swim about at the depth of a little more than half a mile.
Deep under this fish I could see others glittering as they sailed or
darted to and fro.
Presently I raised my head and sat thinking. The sun now gilded the
water; a little breeze ruffled it here and there where dainty cat's-paws
played over the surface.
"What on earth do you suppose those gigantic fish feed on?" asked Brown
under his breath.
I thought a moment longer, then it came to me in a flash of
understanding, and I pointed at the dead trees.
"Bats!" I muttered. "They feed on bats as other fish feed on the little,
gauzy-winged flies which dance over ponds! You saw those bats flying over
the pond last night, didn't you? That explains the whole thing! Don't you
understand? Why, what we saw were these gigantic fish leaping like trout
after the bats. It was their feeding time!"
I do not imagine that two more excited scientists ever existed than Brown
and I. The joy of discovery transfigured us. Here we had discovered a
lake in the Thunder Mountains which was the deepest lake in the world;
and it was inhabited by a few gigantic fish of the minnow species, the
existence of which, hitherto, had never even been dreamed of by science.
"Kitten," I said, my voice broken by emotion, "which will you have named
after you, the lake or the fish? Shall it be Lake Kitten Brown, or shall
it be _Minnius kittenii_? Speak!"
"What about that old party whose name you said had already been given to
the lake?" he asked piteously.
"Who? Mrs. Batt? Do you think I'd name such an important lake after
_her_? Anyway, she has declined the honour."
"Very well," he said, "I'll accept it. And the fish shall be known as
_Minnius Smithii_!"
Too deeply moved to speak, we bent over and shook hands with each other.
In that solemn and holy moment, surcharged with ecstatic emotion, a deep,
distant reverberation came across the water to our ears. It was the heavy
artillery, snoring.
Never can I forget that scene; sunshine glittering on the pond, the
silent forests and towering peaks, the blue sky overhead, the dead trees
where thousands of bats hung in nauseating clusters, thicker than the
leaves in Valembrosa--and Kitten Brown and I, cross-legged upon our
pneumatic raft, hands clasped in pledge of deathless devotion to science
and a fraternity unending.
"And how about that girl?" he asked.
"What girl?"
"Angelica White?"
"Well," said I, "_what_ about her?"
"Does she go with the lake or with the fish?"
"What do you mean?" I asked coldly, withdrawing my hand from his clasp.
"I mean, which of us gets the first chance to win her?" he said,
blushing. "There's no use denying that we both have been bowled over
by her; is there?"