“This is a very queer sort of a lake!” Kit declared, stopping at the edge of one of the round beds to examine it. “I think I can see how it is made. First there is a lake of water here, with a great bed of molten pitch somewhere beneath. A column of the pitch shoots up, like a waterspout, and when it reaches the surface, the top of it flattens out, like an immense mushroom, held up by the narrow column that reaches down dear knows how far. This water between the black mushrooms looks very deep and black; bah! I shouldn’t care to fall in there.”
“That’s about the way the thing grows,” Mr. Clark agreed. “Some of the ‘mushrooms,’ as you call them, are only a yard or so in diameter, and some are twelve or fifteen feet. Gradually enough of them have come up to cover the entire surface of the lake, which must be two or three thousand acres. What a desolate-looking place, isn’t it? And they tell me that no matter how much is cut out, a fresh column of pitch shoots up and fills the hole. I shouldn’t care to wander around here much after dark.”
It was not a very safe path even by daylight. In some places the “mushrooms” not only touched, but crowded and indented each other; but in other places there were gaps two, three, sometimes even six feet wide, that had to be crossed on the planks. When they stood in the middle of one of the big “mushrooms,” it was firm enough; but when they stood upon its edge, their weight bent it down until the water ran over its surface.
They made the passage in safety, however, and Mr. Clark had a long talk with the superintendent while Kit remained on the lake. It was a very satisfactory talk, the purser said when he came out, for everything had been arranged and the contract signed. But Kit had been watching the sky for some time with uneasiness. Engrossed with his business, Mr. Clark had given no attention to the passing of time, and it was with some alarm that Kit had seen the sun set behind the mountains and darkness begin to gather.
Mr. Clark was a little uneasy about it, too, when he saw how long he had stayed. He was not particularly fond of walking, even on a good pavement; and the prospect of crossing the end of the lake in the dusk, sometimes on narrow planks across the openings, sometimes on the yielding pitch beds, did not please him.
“We’ll have to hurry up, Silburn,” he called to Kit when he reached the edge of the lake. “You know there’s precious little twilight in this part of the world; it’s either daylight or it’s dark. One of those old rattletrap cabs in Bridgetown would be better than walking over these tarry islands. But come on, youngster! You may think I’m no walker, but I’ll show you!”
He started out at a great pace, with Kit following. But Mr. Clark’s physique was not adapted to severe exercise. After the first hundred yards he began to breathe hard, and soon he stopped entirely.
“I’ve got to—to—(hech!) to stop and get my (hech! hech!)—my second wind!” he panted. “Hang their old (phew! phew!) old pitch lakes! If they make—make (hech!) streets out of ’em, I wish they’d (phew! phew!) make some here. It’s getting darker every—every minute, too!”
“We started out too fast, sir,” Kit answered; “if we take it slower, I think we’ll get along all right. It’s going to be dark before we get across, anyhow, so we may as well take our time to it.”
Mr. Clark was compelled to take his time to it, for he had no more wind for fast walking. It was not fairly dark yet, but “pretty thick dusk,” as Kit called it, and they had to feel their way along. The purser remained in the lead when they set out again, for Kit hesitated to go ahead, for fear of going too fast for him.