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 wer