"I can't imagine," said Frank; "but anyway it seems as though your new process of cooking was not a brilliant success. You won't hold office as cook very long."
"Not if the dinner is going to blow up in this way every time," was the reply. "But I'd like to know how it happened."
"The explanation is very simple," said the Doctor, who had been called from his tent by the explosion. "The stones came from the lake, where they have been lying for centuries. They contained cells filled with water, and as the stones were heated the water was turned to steam. Hence the blow-up."
Fred decided that he would make no farther experiments in teaching the uneducated African the mysteries of American cookery. Frank made a sketch of the scene, with a few exaggerations, and said he believed a similar incident was narrated in "Porte Crayon's" account of a journey in the mountains of North Carolina.
ON THE LAKE.