"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.