“Where’s the lake?” they demanded.
“Can you stand it for two minutes more?” the doctor asked.
Now the car was close to the hotel. The boys jumped out and ran ahead, up a little grade. And then they stopped stone dead, and drew in a long breath of astonishment.
Right under their feet the land fell away at so sharp an angle that it was practically a precipice, for more than a thousand feet. This great precipice stretched out to right and left, rising here and there into crags and cliffs a thousand feet above them, and swung around in a vast circle six miles in diameter, thus making what looked like a gigantic hole in the earth. At the bottom of this hole lay the lake; but it was not an ordinary lake. It was not just water. In fact, it didn’t look like water. It was a wonderful, a vivid, an unbelievable blue. It was bluer than the sky.
“It’s the bluest thing I ever saw!” cried Bennie. “Wow! how do you get down to it?”
“There’s just one trail down here,” his uncle answered, “and one around on the east side. Those are the only two ways down to the water.”
“And what’s that little peaked island out there?” Spider asked, pointing to what looked like a pile of cinders at one side of the lake, cinders covered with green weeds.
“That’s Wizard Island. After this old volcano collapsed into the crater, and before it filled with water, she started up again to build a new volcano. That island is the result. It’s a little volcano all by itself, with a crater in the top. That island is 800 feet above the water line, and the green you see on it is made by big trees.”
“Gosh!” said Bennie. “It looks about eight feet high, instead of 800. Can we get to it?”
“We’ll get to it, all right. But we’ve got to make camp before we do anything.”