e 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.

"Larger, I think.... It looks to me through the hydroscope, at
this distance, exactly like a tiny, silvery minnow. It's half a mile
down.... Swimming about.... I can see its eyes; they must be about ten
feet in diameter. I can see its fins moving. And there are about a dozen
others, much deeper, swimming around.... This is easily the most
overwhelming contribution made to science since the discovery of the
purple-spotted dingle-bock, _Bukkus dinglii_.... We've got to catch one
of those gigantic fish!"

"How?" I gasped. "How are we going to catch a minnow as large as a
sleeping car?"

"I don't know, but we've got to do it. We've got to manage it, somehow."

"It would require a steel cable to hold such a fish and a donkey engine
to reel him in! And what about a hook? And if we had hook, line,
steam-winch, and everything else, _what_ about bait?"

He knelt for some time longer, watching the fish, before he resigned the
hydroscope to me. Then I watched it; but it came no nearer, seeming
contented to swim about at the depth of a little more than half a mile.
Deep under this fish I could see others glittering as they sailed or
darted to and fro.

Presently I raised my head and sat thinking. The sun now gilded the
water; a little breeze ruffled it here and there where dainty cat's-paws
played over the surface.

"What on earth do you suppose those gigantic fish feed on?" asked Brown
under his breath.

I thought a moment longer, then it came to me in a flash of
understanding, and I pointed at the dead trees.

"Bats!" I muttered. "They