It was evident that we had betrayed ourselves to this young girl.
She glanced at us again, and perhaps she noticed in our fascinated gaze an expression akin to terror, for suddenly she laughed--such a clear, sweet, silvery little laugh!
"For my part," she said, "I wish they had come with us. I like--men."
With that she bade us goodnight very politely and went off to her tent, leaving us with our hats pressed against our stomachs, attempting by the profundity of our bows to indicate the depth of our grat.i.tude.
"_There"s_ a girl!" exclaimed Brown, as soon as she had disappeared behind her tent flaps. "She"ll never let on to Medusa, Xantippe, Ca.s.sandra and Company. I _like_ that girl, Smith."
"You"re not the only one imbued by such sentiments," said I.
He smiled a fatuous and reminiscent smile. He certainly was good-looking.
Presently he said:
"She has the most delightful way of gazing at a man--"
"I"ve noticed," I said pleasantly.
"Oh. Did she happen to glance at _you_ that way?" he inquired. I wanted to beat him.
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 ma.s.s 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 sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e, 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 sh.o.r.e 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "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 lat.i.tude," 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--"