He stopped when he reached the ridge, but Bob fearlessly made his way to the top and looked over it.
“Great Scott!” were the first words that escaped his lips. “Come up here, George. This mound is a silicious deposit, which has been thrown up by the spring, and it is as solid as rock.”
“It ought to be,” replied George, “for it is flint.”
“Then what are you afraid of?”
Bob’s companion would have found it hard work to answer this question, for he did not know just what he was afraid of.
Laying his rifle on the ground, he climbed to the summit of the ridge, and saw below him an extensive, oval-shaped basin, partly filled with water, which was so clear that the smallest pebbles on the bottom could be plainly seen.
Its surface was as smooth as a mirror, and there was nothing in or about the basin to tell of the terrible commotion that had taken place there a short time before.
“This bangs the great geyser of Iceland,” said Bob. “That famous spring, in its calm periods, appears to be a circular basin about seventy-two feet in diameter and four feet deep; but this one is two or three hundred feet wide, and the water must be twenty feet deep. Do you see those little holes, about a foot in diameter, that are scattered all over the bottom? There is where the stream comes from that raises these round-topped waves, while the power that threw that huge column of water so high in the air must have come from somewhere over there,” added Bob, jerking a piece of flint as far as he could toward the centre of the basin. “I wish I had pluck enough to put my skiff in here and take a better look at it.”
“Good gracious!” exclaimed George, backing down the mound. “If you do that, you will have to go alone.”
