All I said was: "She's certainly some kitten." Which bottled that young man for a while. We lay on the bank of the tiny lake, our backs against a huge pine-tree, watching the last traces of colour fading from peak and tree-top. "Isn't it queer," I said, "that not a trout has splashed? It can't be that there are no fish in the lake." "There _are_ such lakes." "Yes, very deep ones. I wonder how deep this is." "We'll be out at sunrise with our reel of piano wire and take soundings," he said. "The heavy artillery won't wake until they're ready to be loaded with flap-jacks." I shuddered: "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 culpae 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.