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.

III

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