"Then, suddenly, without the faintest shadow of warning, from the centre of the lake...."

Police!!! (1915) by Robert W. Chambers

A group of leading suffragists and eugenicists is being taken on a tour of a bottomless Alaskan lake. The lake is home to an unknown species of gigantic fish. The story is told by one of their guides, who I can easily imagine begin played by Franklin Pangborn in the movie version.

....That afternoon the heavy artillery held a council of war, and evidently came to a conclusion to make the best of the situation, for toward sundown they accosted me with a request for the raft, explaining that they desired to picnic aboard and afterward row about the lake and indulge in song.

     So Brown and I put aboard the craft a substantial cold supper; and the heavy artillery embarked, taking aboard a guitar to be worked by Miss Dingleheimer, and knitting for the others.

     It was a lovely evening. Brown and I had been discussing a plan to dynamite the lake and stun the fish, that method appealing to us as the only possible way to secure a specimen of the stupendous minnows which inhabited the depths. In fact, it was our only hope of possessing one of these creatures — fishing with a donkey engine, steel cable, and a hook baited with a bat being too uncertain and far more laborious and expensive.

     I was still smoking my pipe, seated at the foot of the big pine-tree, watching the water turn from gold to pink: Brown sat higher up the slope, his arm around Angelica White. I carefully kept my back toward them.

     On the lake the heavy artillery were revelling loudly, banqueting, singing, strumming the guitar, and trailing their hands overboard across the sunset-tinted water.

     I was thinking of nothing in particular as I now remember, except that I noticed the bats beginning to flit over the lake; when Brown called to me from the slope above, asking whether it was perfectly safe for the heavy artillery to remain out so late.

     “Why?” I demanded.

     “Suppose,” he shouted, “that those fish should begin to jump and feed on the bats again?”

     I had never thought of that.

     I rose and hurried nervously down to the shore, and, making a megaphone of my hands, I shouted:

     “Come in! It isn’t safe to remain out any longer!”

     Scornful laughter from the artillery answered my appeal.

     “You’d better come in!” I called.    “You can’t tell what might happen if any of those fish should jump.”

     “Mind your business!” retorted Mrs. Batt. “We’ve had enough of your prevarications —”

     Then, suddenly, without the faintest shadow of warning, from the centre of the lake a vast geyser of water towered a hundred feet in the air.

     For one dreadful second I saw the raft hurled skyward, balanced on the crest of the stupendous fountain, spilling ladies, supper, guitars, and knitting in every direction.

     Then a horrible thing occurred; fish after fish shot up out of the storm of water and foam, seizing, as they fell, ladies, luncheon, and knitting in mid-air, falling back with a crashing shock which seemed to rock the very mountains.

     “Help!” I screamed. And fainted dead away....

From Police!!! (1915) By Robert W. Chambers