Complete weird tales of.., p.1315
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 1315
Also we disposed of almost half a ton of toilet necessities — powder, perfumery, cosmetics, hot-water bags, slippers, negligees, novels, magazines, bon-bons, chewing-gum, hat-boxes, gloves, stockings, underwear.
We left enough apparel for each lady to change once. They’d have to do some scrubbing now. Science can not be halted by hatpins; cosmos can not be side-tracked by cosmetics.
Toward sunset we came upon a small, crystal clear pond, set between the bases of several lofty mountains. I was ready to drop with fatigue, but I nerved myself, drew a deep, exultant breath, and with one of those fine, sweeping gestures, I cried:
“Lake Mrs. Gladys Doolittle Batt! Eureka! At last! Excelsior!”
There was a profound silence behind me. I turned, striving to mask my apprehension with a smile. The ladies were regarding the pond in surprise. I admit that it was a pond, not a lake.
Injecting into my voice the last remnants of glee which I could summon, I shouted, “Eureka!” and began to caper about as though the size and beauty of the pond had affected me with irrepressible enthusiasm, hoping by my emotion to stampede the convention.
The cold voice of Mrs. Doolittle Batt checked my transports:
“Is that puddle named after me?” she demanded.
“M-ma’am?” I stammered.
“If that wretched frog-pond has been christened with my name, somebody is going to get into trouble,” she said ominously.
A profound silence ensued. Arthur patiently switched at flies. As for me, I looked up at the majestic pines, gazed upon the lofty and eternal hills, then ventured a sneaking glance all around me. But I could discover no avenue of escape in case Mrs. Batt should charge me.
“I had been informed,” she began dangerously, “that the majestic body of water, which I understood had been honoured with my name, was twelve miles long and three miles wide. This appears to be a puddle!”
“B-b-but it’s very p-pretty,” I protested feebly. “It’s quite round and clear, and it’s nearly a quarter of a mile in d-diameter—”
“Mind your business!” retorted Mrs. Doolittle Batt. “I’ve been swindled!”
Kitten Brown knew more about women than did I. He said in a fairly steady voice:
“Madame, it is an outrage! The women of this mighty nation should make the Government answerable for its duplicity! Your lake should have been at least twenty miles long!”
Everybody turned and looked at Kitten. He was a handsome dog.
“This young man appears to have some trace of common-sense,” said Mrs. Batt. “I shall see to it that the Government is held responsible for this odious act of insulting duplicity. I — I won’t have my name given to this — this wallow!—” She advanced toward me, her small eyes blazing: I retreated to leeward of Arthur.
“Guide!” she said in a voice still trembling with passion. “Are you certain that you have made no mistake? You appear to be unusually ignorant.”
“I am afraid there can be no room for doubt,” I said, almost scared out of my senses.
“And on top of this outrage, am I to eat your cooking?” she demanded passionately. “Did I come here to look at this frog-pond and choke on your cooking? Did I?”
“I can cook,” said a clear, pleasant voice at my elbow. And Miss White came forward, cool, clean, fresh as a posy in her uniform and cap. I immediately got behind her.
“I can cook very nicely,” she said smilingly. “It is part of my profession, you know. So if you two guides will be kind enough to build the fire and help me—” She let her violet eyes linger on me for an instant, then on Brown. A moment later he and I were jostling each other in our eagerness to obey her slightest suggestion. It is that way with men.
So we built her a fire and unpacked our provisions, and we waited very politely on the ladies when dinner was ready.
It was a fine dinner — coffee, bacon, flap-jacks, soup, ash-bread, stewed chicken.
The heavy artillery, made ravenous by their journey, required vast quantities of ammunition. They banqueted largely. I gazed in amazement at Mrs. Doolittle Batt as she swallowed one flap-jack after another, while her eyes bulged larger and larger.
Nor was the capacity of Miss Dingleheimer and the Reverend Dr. Jones to be mocked at by pachyderms.
Brown and I left them eating while we erected the row of little tents. Every lady had demanded a separate tent.
So we cut saplings, set up the silk, drove pegs, and brought armfuls of balsam boughs.
I was afraid they’d demand their knitting and other utensils, but they had eaten to repletion, and were sleepy; and as each toilet case or reticule contained also a nightgown, they drew the flaps of their several tents without insisting that we unpack Arthur’s panniers.
They all had disappeared within their tents except Miss White, who insisted on cooking something for us, although we protested that the scraps of the banquet were all right for mere guides.
She stood beside us for a few minutes, watching us busy with our delicious dinner.
“You poor fellows,” she said gently. “You are nearly starved.”
It is agreeable to be sympathized with by a tall, fair, fresh young girl. We looked up, simpering gratefully.
“This is really a most lovely little lake,” she said, gazing out across the still, crystalline water which was all rose and gold in the sunset, save where the sombre shapes of the towering mountains were mirrored in glassy depths.
“It’s odd,” I said, “that no trout are jumping. There ought to be lots of them there, and this is their jumping hour.”
We all looked at the quiet, oval bit of water. Not a circle, not the slightest ripple disturbed it.
“It must be deep,” remarked Brown.
We gazed up at the three lofty peaks, the bases of which were the shores of this tiny gem among lakes. Deep, deep, plunging down into dusky profundity, the rocks fell away sheer into limpid depths.
“That little lake may be a thousand feet deep,” I said. “In 1903 Professor Farrago, of Bronx Park, measured a lake in the Thunder Mountains, which was two thousand seven hundred and sixty-nine feet deep.”
Miss White looked at me curiously.
Into a patch of late sunshine flitted a small butterfly — one of the Grapta species. It settled on a chip of wood, uncoiled its delicate proboscis, and spread its fulvous and deeply indented wings.
“Grapta California,” remarked Brown to me.
“Vanessa asteriska” I corrected him. “Note the anal angle of the secondaries and the argentiferous discal area bordering the subcostal nervule.”
“The characteristic stripes on the primaries are wanting,” he demurred.
“It is double brooded. The summer form lacks the three darker bands.”
A few moments’ silence was broken by the voice of Miss White.
“I had no idea,” she remarked, “that Alaskan guides were so familiar with entomological terms and nomenclature.”
We both turned very red.
Brown mumbled something about having picked up a smattering. I added that Brown had taught me.
Perhaps she believed us; her blue eyes rested on us curiously, musingly. Also, at moments, I fancied there was the faintest glint of amusement in them.
She said:
“Two scientific gentlemen from New York requested permission to join this expedition, but Mrs. Batt refused them.” She gazed thoughtfully upon the waters of Lake Gladys Doolittle Batt. “I wonder,” she murmured, “what became of those two gentlemen.”
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 gratitude.
“There’s a girl!” exclaimed Brown, as soon as she had disappeared behind her tent flaps. “She’ll never let on to Medusa, Xantippe, Cassandra 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 culpæ 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 mass 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 shore to shore, 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 shore 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.
* * *
“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 latitude,” 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—”
Her voice was blotted out in a mighty crash from the lake. Appalled, I whirled on my heel, just in time to see another huge jet of water rise high in the starlight, another, another, until the entire lake was but a cluster of gigantic geysers exploding a hundred feet in the air, while through them, falling back into the smother of furious foam, great silvery bulks dropped crashing, one after another.
I don’t know how long the incredible vision lasted; the woods roared with the infernal pandemonium, echoed and re-echoed from mountain to mountain; the tree-tops fairly stormed spray, driving it in sheets through the leaves; and the shores of the lake spouted surf long after the last vast, silvery shape had fallen back again into the water.
As my senses gradually recovered, I found myself supporting Mrs. Batt on one arm and the Reverend Dr. Jones upon my bosom. Both had fainted. I released them with a shudder and turned to look for Brown.
Somebody had swooned in his arms, too.
* * *
“Somebody had swooned in his arms, too.”
* * *
He was not noticing me, and as I approached him I heard him say something resembling the word “kitten.”
In spite of my demoralization, another fear seized me, and I drew nearer and peered closely at what he was holding so nobly in his arms. It was, as I supposed, Angelica White.
I don’t know whether my arrival occultly revived her, for as I stumbled over a tent-peg she opened her blue eyes, and then disengaged herself from Brown’s arms.
“Oh, I am so frightened,” she murmured. She looked at me sideways when she said it.
“Come,” said I coldly to Brown, “let Miss White retire and lie down. This meteoric shower is over and so is the danger.”
He evinced a desire to further soothe and minister to Miss White, but she said, 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, and as motionless as the surface of a mirror. Nothing stirred its placid surface, not a ripple, not an insect, not a leaf floating.
Brown had lugged the pneumatic raft down to the shore where he was now pumping it full: I followed with the paddles, pole, and hydroscope. When the raft had been pumped up and was afloat, we carried the reel of gossamer piano-wire aboard, followed it, pushed off, and paddled quietly through the level cobwebs of mist toward the centre of the lake. From the shore I heard a gruesome noise. It originated under one of the row of tents of the heavy artillery. Medusa, snoring, was an awesome sound in that wilderness and solitude of dawn.
