They found several such ponds, and after the third or fourth (all of them near ruins) Jack understood that these ponds had been excavated, or at least enlarged and rounded out, by (safe to say) thousands of wretches with picks and shovels. It recalled to his mind some bit of zargon-lore he'd picked up from a gypsy in Paris, who'd ranted to him about lakes, far to the East, but not so far as Romania, where big fish were raised just as herdsman raised beef-cattle in pastures. From the fish skeletons scattered along the shores of these ponds, Jack could see others had been here, harvesting the vestiges of those dead Protestants' clammy flocks. It made his mouth water.