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The Moon Pool

by Abraham Merritt · English · Gutenberg #765 · 579,087 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Moon Pool

Author: Abraham Merritt


        
Release date: December 1, 1996 [eBook #765]
                Most recently updated: January 1, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/765

Credits: Produced by Judith Boss.  HTML version by Al Haines.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MOON POOL ***




Produced by Judith Boss.  HTML version by Al Haines.









The Moon Pool

A. MERRITT




Foreword

The publication of the following narrative of Dr. Walter T. Goodwin
has been authorized by the Executive Council of the International
Association of Science.

First:

To end officially what is beginning to be called the Throckmartin
Mystery and to kill the innuendo and scandalous suspicions which have
threatened to stain the reputations of Dr. David Throckmartin, his
youthful wife, and equally youthful associate Dr. Charles Stanton ever
since a tardy despatch from Melbourne, Australia, reported the
disappearance of the first from a ship sailing to that port, and the
subsequent reports of the disappearance of his wife and associate from
the camp of their expedition in the Caroline Islands.

Second:

Because the Executive Council have concluded that Dr. Goodwin's
experiences in his wholly heroic effort to save the three, and the
lessons and warnings within those experiences, are too important
to humanity as a whole to be hidden away in scientific papers
understandable only to the technically educated; or to be presented
through the newspaper press in the abridged and fragmentary form
which the space limitations of that vehicle make necessary.

For these reasons the Executive Council commissioned Mr. A. Merritt
to transcribe into form to be readily understood by the layman the
stenographic notes of Dr. Goodwin's own report to the Council,
supplemented by further oral reminiscences and comments by Dr.
Goodwin; this transcription, edited and censored by the Executive
Council of the Association, forms the contents of this book.

Himself a member of the Council, Dr. Walter T. Goodwin, Ph.D.,
F.R.G.S. etc., is without cavil the foremost of American botanists, an
observer of international reputation and the author of several epochal
treaties upon his chosen branch of science. His story, amazing in the
best sense of that word as it may be, is fully supported by proofs
brought forward by him and accepted by the organization of which I
have the honor to be president. What matter has been elided from
this popular presentation--because of the excessively menacing
potentialities it contains, which unrestricted dissemination might
develop--will be dealt with in purely scientific pamphlets of
carefully guarded circulation.

THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SCIENCE
  Per J. B. K., President




CONTENTS

       I  The Thing on the Moon Path
      II  "Dead!  All Dead!"
     III  The Moon Rock
      IV  The First Vanishings
       V  Into the Moon Pool
      VI  "The Shining Devil Took Them!"
     VII  Larry O'Keefe
    VIII  Olaf's Story
      IX  A Lost Page of Earth
       X  The Moon Pool
      XI  The Flame-Tipped Shadows
     XII  The End of the Journey
    XIII  Yolara, Priestess of the Shining One
     XIV  The Justice of Lora
      XV  The Angry, Whispering Globe
     XVI  Yolara of Muria vs. the O'Keefe
    XVII  The Leprechaun
   XVIII  The Amphitheatre of Jet
     XIX  The Madness of Olaf
      XX  The Tempting of Larry
     XXI  Larry's Defiance
    XXII  The Casting of the Shadow
   XXIII  Dragon Worm and Moss Death
    XXIV  The Crimson Sea
     XXV  The Three Silent Ones
    XXVI  The Wooing of Lakla
   XXVII  The Coming of Yolara
  XXVIII  In the Lair of the Dweller
    XXIX  The Shaping of the Shining One
     XXX  The Building of the Moon Pool
    XXXI  Larry and the Frog-Men
   XXXII  "Your Love; Your Lives; Your Souls!"
  XXXIII  The Meeting of Titans
   XXXIV  The Coming of the Shining One
    XXXV  "Larry--Farewell!"




CHAPTER I

The Thing on the Moon Path

For two months I had been on the d'Entrecasteaux Islands gathering
data for the concluding chapters of my book upon the flora of the
volcanic islands of the South Pacific. The day before I had reached
Port Moresby and had seen my specimens safely stored on board the
Southern Queen. As I sat on the upper deck I thought, with homesick
mind, of the long leagues between me and Melbourne, and the longer
ones between Melbourne and New York.

It was one of Papua's yellow mornings when she shows herself in her
sombrest, most baleful mood. The sky was smouldering ochre. Over the
island brooded a spirit sullen, alien, implacable, filled with the
threat of latent, malefic forces waiting to be unleashed. It seemed an
emanation out of the untamed, sinister heart of Papua herself--sinister
even when she smiles. And now and then, on the wind, came a breath from
virgin jungles, laden with unfamiliar odours, mysterious and menacing.

It is on such mornings that Papua whispers to you of her immemorial
ancientness and of her power. And, as every white man must, I fought
against her spell. While I struggled I saw a tall figure striding down
the pier; a Kapa-Kapa boy followed swinging a new valise. There was
something familiar about the tall man. As he reached the gangplank he
looked up straight into my eyes, stared for a moment, then waved his
hand.

And now I knew him.  It was Dr. David Throckmartin--"Throck" he was to
me always, one of my oldest friends and, as well, a mind of the first
water whose power and achievements were for me a constant inspiration
as they were, I know, for scores other.

Coincidentally with my recognition came a shock of surprise,
definitely--unpleasant. It was Throckmartin--but about him was
something disturbingly unlike the man I had known long so well and to
whom and to whose little party I had bidden farewell less than a month
before I myself had sailed for these seas. He had married only a few
weeks before, Edith, the daughter of Professor William Frazier,
younger by at least a decade than he but at one with him in his ideals
and as much in love, if it were possible, as Throckmartin. By virtue
of her father's training a wonderful assistant, by virtue of her own
sweet, sound heart a--I use the word in its olden sense--lover. With
his equally youthful associate Dr. Charles Stanton and a Swedish
woman, Thora Halversen, who had been Edith Throckmartin's nurse from
babyhood, they had set forth for the Nan-Matal, that extraordinary
group of island ruins clustered along the eastern shore of Ponape in
the Carolines.

I knew that he had planned to spend at least a year among these ruins,
not only of Ponape but of Lele--twin centres of a colossal riddle of
humanity, a weird flower of civilization that blossomed ages before
the seeds of Egypt were sown; of whose arts we know little enough and
of whose science nothing. He had carried with him unusually complete
equipment for the work he had expected to do and which, he hoped,
would be his monument.

What then had brought Throckmartin to Port Moresby, and what was that
change I had sensed in him?

Hurrying down to the lower deck I found him with the purser.  As I
spoke he turned, thrust out to me an eager hand--and then I saw what
was that difference that had so moved me. He knew, of course by my
silence and involuntary shrinking the shock my closer look had given
me. His eyes filled; he turned brusquely from the purser, hesitated--then
hurried off to his stateroom.

"'E looks rather queer--eh?" said the purser.  "Know 'im well, sir?
Seems to 'ave given you quite a start."

I made some reply and went slowly up to my chair.  There I sat,
composed my mind and tried to define what it was that had shaken me
so. Now it came to me. The old Throckmartin was on the eve of his
venture just turned forty, lithe, erect, muscular; his controlling
expression one of enthusiasm, of intellectual keenness, of--what shall
I say--expectant search. His always questioning brain had stamped its
vigor upon his face.

But the Throckmartin I had seen below was one who had borne some
scaring shock of mingled rapture and horror; some soul cataclysm that
in its climax had remoulded, deep from within, his face, setting on it
seal of wedded ecstasy and despair; as though indeed these two had
come to him hand in hand, taken possession of him and departing left
behind, ineradicably, their linked shadows!

Yes--it was that which appalled.  For how could rapture and horror,
Heaven and Hell mix, clasp hands--kiss?

Yet these were what in closest embrace lay on Throckmartin's face!

Deep in thought, subconsciously with relief, I watched the shore line
sink behind; welcomed the touch of the wind of the free seas. I had
hoped, and within the hope was an inexplicable shrinking that I would
meet Throckmartin at lunch. He did not come down, and I was sensible
of deliverance within my disappointment. All that afternoon I lounged
about uneasily but still he kept to his cabin--and within me was no
strength to summon him. Nor did he appear at dinner.

Dusk and night fell swiftly.  I was warm and went back to my
deck-chair. The Southern Queen was rolling to a disquieting swell and
I had the place to myself.

Over the heavens was a canopy of cloud, glowing faintly and testifying
to the moon riding behind it. There was much phosphorescence. Fitfully
before the ship and at her sides arose those stranger little swirls of
mist that swirl up from the Southern Ocean like breath of sea
monsters, whirl for an instant and disappear.

Suddenly the deck door opened and through it came Throckmartin.  He
paused uncertainly, looked up at the sky with a curiously eager,
intent gaze, hesitated, then closed the door behind him.

"Throck," I called.  "Come!  It's Goodwin."

He made his way to me.

"Throck," I said, wasting no time in preliminaries. "What's wrong?
Can I help you?"

I felt his body grow tense.

"I'm going to Melbourne, Goodwin," he answered.  "I need a few
things--need them urgently. And more men--white men--"

He stopped abruptly; rose from his chair, gazed intently toward the
north. I followed his gaze. Far, far away the moon had broken through
the clouds. Almost on the horizon, you could see the faint
luminescence of it upon the smooth sea. The distant patch of light
quivered and shook. The clouds thickened again and it was gone. The
ship raced on southward, swiftly.

Throckmartin dropped into his chair.  He lighted a cigarette with a
hand that trembled; then turned to me with abrupt resolution.

"Goodwin," he said.  "I do need help.  If ever man needed it, I do.
Goodwin--can you imagine yourself in another world, alien, unfamiliar,
a world of terror, whose unknown joy is its greatest terror of all;
you all alone there, a stranger! As such a man would need help, so I
need--"

He paused abruptly and arose; the cigarette dropped from his fingers.
The moon had again broken through the clouds, and this time much
nearer. Not a mile away was the patch of light that it threw upon the
waves. Back of it, to the rim of the sea was a lane of moonlight; a
gigantic gleaming serpent racing over the edge of the world straight
and surely toward the ship.

Throckmartin stiffened to it as a pointer does to a hidden covey.  To
me from him pulsed a thrill of horror--but horror tinged with an
unfamiliar, an infernal joy. It came to me and passed away--leaving me
trembling with its shock of bitter sweet.

He bent forward, all his soul in his eyes.  The moon path swept
closer, closer still. It was now less than half a mile away. From it
the ship fled--almost as though pursued. Down upon it, swift and
straight, a radiant torrent cleaving the waves, raced the moon stream.

"Good God!" breathed Throckmartin, and if ever the words were a prayer
and an invocation they were.

And then, for the first time--I saw--_it_!

The moon path stretched to the horizon and was bordered by darkness.
It was as though the clouds above had been parted to form a lane-drawn
aside like curtains or as the waters of the Red Sea were held back to
let the hosts of Israel through. On each side of the stream was the
black shadow cast by the folds of the high canopies And straight as a
road between the opaque walls gleamed, shimmered, and danced the
shining, racing, rapids of the moonlight.

Far, it seemed immeasurably far, along this stream of silver fire I
sensed, rather than saw, something coming. It drew first into sight as
a deeper glow within the light. On and on it swept toward us--an
opalescent mistiness that sped with the suggestion of some winged
creature in arrowed flight. Dimly there crept into my mind memory of
the Dyak legend of the winged messenger of Buddha--the Akla bird
whose feathers are woven of the moon rays, whose heart is a living
opal, whose wings in flight echo the crystal clear music of the white
stars--but whose beak is of frozen flame and shreds the souls of
unbelievers.

Closer it drew and now there came to me sweet, insistent
tinklings--like pizzicati on violins of glass; crystal clear; diamonds
melting into sounds!

Now the Thing was close to the end of the white path; close up to the
barrier of darkness still between the ship and the sparkling head of
the moon stream. Now it beat up against that barrier as a bird against
the bars of its cage. It whirled with shimmering plumes, with swirls
of lacy light, with spirals of living vapour. It held within it odd,
unfamiliar gleams as of shifting mother-of-pearl. Coruscations and
glittering atoms drifted through it as though it drew them from the
rays that bathed it.

Nearer and nearer it came, borne on the sparkling waves, and ever
thinner shrank the protecting wall of shadow between it and us. Within
the mistiness was a core, a nucleus of intenser light--veined,
opaline, effulgent, intensely alive. And above it, tangled in the
plumes and spirals that throbbed and whirled were seven glowing
lights.

Through all the incessant but strangely ordered movement of
the--_thing_--these lights held firm and steady. They were seven--like
seven little moons. One was of a pearly pink, one of a delicate
nacreous blue, one of lambent saffron, one of the emerald you see in
the shallow waters of tropic isles; a deathly white; a ghostly
amethyst; and one of the silver that is seen only when the flying fish
leap beneath the moon.

The tinkling music was louder still.  It pierced the ears with a
shower of tiny lances; it made the heart beat jubilantly--and checked
it dolorously. It closed the throat with a throb of rapture and
gripped it tight with the hand of infinite sorrow!

Came to me now a murmuring cry, stilling the crystal notes.  It was
articulate--but as though from something utterly foreign to this
world. The ear took the cry and translated with conscious labour into
the sounds of earth. And even as it compassed, the brain shrank from
it irresistibly, and simultaneously it seemed reached toward it with
irresistible eagerness.

Throckmartin strode toward the front of the deck, straight toward the
vision, now but a few yards away from the stern. His face had lost all
human semblance. Utter agony and utter ecstasy--there they were side
by side, not resisting each other; unholy inhuman companions blending
into a look that none of God's creatures should wear--and deep, deep
as his soul! A devil and a God dwelling harmoniously side by side! So
must Satan, newly fallen, still divine, seeing heaven and
contemplating hell, have appeared.

And then--swiftly the moon path faded!  The clouds swept over the sky
as though a hand had drawn them together. Up from the south came a
roaring squall. As the moon vanished what I had seen vanished with
it--blotted out as an image on a magic lantern; the tinkling ceased
abruptly--leaving a silence like that which follows an abrupt thunder
clap. There was nothing about us but silence and blackness!

Through me passed a trembling as one who has stood on the very verge
of the gulf wherein the men of the Louisades says lurks the fisher of
the souls of men, and has been plucked back by sheerest chance.

Throckmartin passed an arm around me.

"It is as I thought," he said.  In his voice was a new note; the calm
certainty that has swept aside a waiting terror of the unknown. "Now I
know! Come with me to my cabin, old friend. For now that you too have
seen I can tell you"--he hesitated--"what it was you saw," he ended.

As we passed through the door we met the ship's first officer.
Throckmartin composed his face into at least a semblance of normality.

"Going to have much of a storm?" he asked.

"Yes," said the mate.  "Probably all the way to Melbourne."

Throckmartin straightened as though with a new thought. He gripped the
officer's sleeve eagerly.

"You mean at least cloudy weather--for"--he hesitated--"for the next
three nights, say?"

"And for three more," replied the mate.

"Thank God!" cried Throckmartin, and I think I never heard such relief
and hope as was in his voice.

The sailor stood amazed.  "Thank God?" he repeated. "Thank--what d'ye
mean?"

But Throckmartin was moving onward to his cabin.  I started to follow.
The first officer stopped me.

"Your friend," he said, "is he ill?"

"The sea!" I answered hurriedly.  "He's not used to it.  I am going to
look after him."

Doubt and disbelief were plain in the seaman's eyes but I hurried on.
For I knew now that Throckmartin was ill indeed--but with a sickness
the ship's doctor nor any other could heal.



CHAPTER II

"Dead!  All Dead!"

He was sitting, face in hands, on the side of his berth as I entered.
He had taken off his coat.

"Throck," I cried.  "What was it?  What are you flying from, man?
Where is your wife--and Stanton?"

"Dead!" he replied monotonously.  "Dead!  All dead!" Then as I
recoiled from him--"All dead. Edith, Stanton, Thora--dead--or worse.
And Edith in the Moon Pool--with them--drawn by what you saw on the
moon path--that has put its brand upon me--and follows me!"

He ripped open his shirt.

"Look at this," he said.  Around his chest, above his heart, the skin
was white as pearl. This whiteness was sharply defined against the
healthy tint of the body. It circled him with an even cincture about
two inches wide.

"Burn it!" he said, and offered me his cigarette.  I drew back.  He
gestured--peremptorily. I pressed the glowing end of the cigarette
into the ribbon of white flesh. He did not flinch nor was there odour
of burning nor, as I drew the little cylinder away, any mark upon the
whiteness.

"Feel it!" he commanded again.  I placed my fingers upon the band.  It
was cold--like frozen marble.

He drew his shirt around him.

"Two things you have seen," he said.  "_It_--and its mark. Seeing,
you must believe my story. Goodwin, I tell you again that my wife is
dead--or worse--I do not know; the prey of--what you saw; so, too, is
Stanton; so Thora. How--"

Tears rolled down the seared face.

"Why did God let it conquer us?  Why did He let it take my Edith?" he
cried in utter bitterness. "Are there things stronger than God, do you
think, Walter?"

I hesitated.

"Are there?  Are there?" His wild eyes searched me.

"I do not know just how you define God," I managed at last through my
astonishment to make answer. "If you mean the will to know, working
through science--"

He waved me aside impatiently.

"Science," he said.  "What is our science against--that? Or against
the science of whatever devils that made it--or made the way for it to
enter this world of ours?"

With an effort he regained control.

"Goodwin," he said, "do you know at all of the ruins on the Carolines;
the cyclopean, megalithic cities and harbours of Ponape and Lele, of
Kusaie, of Ruk and Hogolu, and a score of other islets there?
Particularly, do you know of the Nan-Matal and the Metalanim?"

"Of the Metalanim I have heard and seen photographs," I said.  "They
call it, don't they, the Lost Venice of the Pacific?"

"Look at this map," said Throckmartin.  "That," he went on, "is
Christian's chart of Metalanim harbour and the Nan-Matal. Do you see
the rectangles marked Nan-Tauach?"

"Yes," I said.

"There," he said, "under those walls is the Moon Pool and the seven
gleaming lights that raise the Dweller in the Pool, and the altar and
shrine of the Dweller. And there in the Moon Pool with it lie Edith
and Stanton and Thora."

"The Dweller in the Moon Pool?" I repeated half-incredulously.

"The Thing you saw," said Throckmartin solemnly.

A solid sheet of rain swept the ports, and the Southern Queen began to
roll on the rising swells. Throckmartin drew another deep breath of
relief, and drawing aside a curtain peered out into the night. Its
blackness seemed to reassure him. At any rate, when he sat again he
was entirely calm.

"There are no more wonderful ruins in the world," he began almost
casually. "They take in some fifty islets and cover with their
intersecting canals and lagoons about twelve square miles. Who built
them? None knows. When were they built? Ages before the memory of
present man, that is sure. Ten thousand, twenty thousand, a hundred
thousand years ago--the last more likely.

"All these islets, Walter, are squared, and their shores are frowning
seawalls of gigantic basalt blocks hewn and put in place by the hands
of ancient man. Each inner water-front is faced with a terrace of
those basalt blocks which stand out six feet above the shallow canals
that meander between them. On the islets behind these walls are
time-shattered fortresses, palaces, terraces, pyramids; immense
courtyards strewn with ruins--and all so old that they seem to wither
the eyes of those who look on them.

"There has been a great subsidence.  You can stand out of Metalanim
harbour for three miles and look down upon the tops of similar
monolithic structures and walls twenty feet below you in the water.

"And all about, strung on their canals, are the bulwarked islets with
their enigmatic walls peering through the dense growths of
mangroves--dead, deserted for incalculable ages; shunned by those who
live near.

"You as a botanist are familiar with the evidence that a vast shadowy
continent existed in the Pacific--a continent that was not rent
asunder by volcanic forces as was that legendary one of Atlantis in
the Eastern Ocean.[1] My work in Java, in Papua, and in the Ladrones
had set my mind upon this Pacific lost land. Just as the Azores are
believed to be the last high peaks of Atlantis, so hints came to me
steadily that Ponape and Lele and their basalt bulwarked islets were
the last points of the slowly sunken western land clinging still to
the sunlight, and had been the last refuge and sacred places of the
rulers of that race which had lost their immemorial home under the
rising waters of the Pacific.

"I believed that under these ruins I might find the evidence
that I sought.

"My--my wife and I had talked before we were married of making this
our great work. After the honeymoon we prepared for the expedition.
Stanton was as enthusiastic as ourselves. We sailed, as you know, last
May for fulfilment of my dreams.

"At Ponape we selected, not without difficulty, workmen to help
us--diggers. I had to make extraordinary inducements before I could
get together my force. Their beliefs are gloomy, these Ponapeans. They
people their swamps, their forests, their mountains, and shores, with
malignant spirits--ani they call them. And they are afraid--bitterly
afraid of the isles of ruins and what they think the ruins hide. I do
not wonder--now!

"When they were told where they were to go, and how long we expected
to stay, they murmured. Those who, at last, were tempted made what I
thought then merely a superstitious proviso that they were to be
allowed to go away on the three nights of the full moon. Would to God
we had heeded them and gone too!"

"We passed into Metalanim harbour.  Off to our left--a mile away arose
a massive quadrangle. Its walls were all of forty feet high and
hundreds of feet on each side. As we drew by, our natives grew very
silent; watched it furtively, fearfully. I knew it for the ruins that
are called Nan-Tauach, the 'place of frowning walls.' And at the
silence of my men I recalled what Christian had written of this place;
of how he had come upon its 'ancient platforms and tetragonal
enclosures of stonework; its wonder of tortuous alleyways and
labyrinth of shallow canals; grim masses of stonework peering out from
behind verdant screens; cyclopean barricades,' and of how, when he had
turned 'into its ghostly shadows, straight-way the merriment of guides
was hushed and conversation died down to whispers.'"

He was silent for a little time.

"Of course I wanted to pitch our camp there," he went on again
quietly, "but I soon gave up that idea. The natives were
panic-stricken--threatened to turn back. 'No,' they said, 'too great
ani there. We go to any other place--but not there.'

"We finally picked for our base the islet called Uschen-Tau.  It was
close to the isle of desire, but far enough away from it to satisfy
our men. There was an excellent camping-place and a spring of fresh
water. We pitched our tents, and in a couple of days the work was in
full swing."


[1] For more detailed observations on these points refer to G. Volkens,
Uber die Karolinen Insel Yap, in Verhandlungen Gesellschaft Erdkunde
Berlin, xxvii (1901); J. S. Kubary, Ethnographische Beitrage zur
Kentniss des Karolinen Archipel (Leiden, 1889-1892); De Abrade
Historia del Conflicto de las Carolinas, etc. (Madrid, 1886).--W. T. G.



CHAPTER III

The Moon Rock

"I do not intend to tell you now," Throckmartin continued, "the
results of the next two weeks, nor of what we found. Later--if I am
allowed, I will lay all that before you. It is sufficient to say that
at the end of those two weeks I had found confirmation for many of my
theories.

"The place, for all its decay and desolation, had not infected us with
any touch of morbidity--that is not Edith, Stanton, or myself. But
Thora was very unhappy. She was a Swede, as you know, and in her blood
ran the beliefs and superstitions of the Northland--some of them so
strangely akin to those of this far southern land; beliefs of spirits
of mountain and forest and water werewolves and beings malign. From
the first she showed a curious sensitivity to what, I suppose, may be
called the 'influences' of the place. She said it 'smelled' of ghosts
and warlocks.

"I laughed at her then--

"Two weeks slipped by, and at their end the spokesman for our natives
came to us. The next night was the full of the moon, he said. He
reminded me of my promise. They would go back to their village in the
morning; they would return after the third night, when the moon had
begun to wane. They left us sundry charms for our 'protection,' and
solemnly cautioned us to keep as far away as possible from Nan-Tauach
during their absence. Half-exasperated, half-amused I watched them go.

"No work could be done without them, of course, so we decided to spend
the days of their absence junketing about the southern islets of the
group. We marked down several spots for subsequent exploration, and on
the morning of the third day set forth along the east face of the
breakwater for our camp on Uschen-Tau, planning to have everything in
readiness for the return of our men the next day.

"We landed just before dusk, tired and ready for our cots.
It was only a little after ten o'clock that Edith awakened me.

"'Listen!' she said.  'Lean over with your ear close to the ground!'

"I did so, and seemed to hear, far, far below, as though coming up
from great distances, a faint chanting. It gathered strength, died
down, ended; began, gathered volume, faded away into silence.

"'It's the waves rolling on rocks somewhere,' I said.  'We're probably
over some ledge of rock that carries the sound.'

"'It's the first time I've heard it,' replied my wife doubtfully.  We
listened again. Then through the dim rhythms, deep beneath us, another
sound came. It drifted across the lagoon that lay between us and
Nan-Tauach in little tinkling waves. It was music--of a sort; I won't
describe the strange effect it had upon me. You've felt it--"

"You mean on the deck?" I asked.  Throckmartin nodded.

"I went to the flap of the tent," he continued, "and peered out.
As I did so Stanton lifted his flap and walked out into the moonlight,
looking over to the other islet and listening. I called to him.

"'That's the queerest sound!' he said.  He listened again.
'Crystalline! Like little notes of translucent glass. Like the bells
of crystal on the sistrums of Isis at Dendarah Temple,' he added
half-dreamily. We gazed intently at the island. Suddenly, on the
sea-wall, moving slowly, rhythmically, we saw a little group of
lights. Stanton laughed.

"'The beggars!' he exclaimed.  'That's why they wanted to get away, is
it? Don't you see, Dave, it's some sort of a festival--rites of some
kind that they hold during the full moon! That's why they were so
eager to have us _keep_ away, too.'

"The explanation seemed good.  I felt a curious sense of relief,
although I had not been sensible of any oppression.

"'Let's slip over,' suggested Stanton--but I would not.

"'They're a difficult lot as it is,' I said.  'If we break into one of
their religious ceremonies they'll probably never forgive us. Let's
keep out of any family party where we haven't been invited.'

"'That's so,' agreed Stanton.

"The strange tinkling rose and fell, rose and fell--

"'There's something--something very unsettling about it,' said Edith
at last soberly. 'I wonder what they make those sounds with. They
frighten me half to death, and, at the same time, they make me feel as
though some enormous rapture were just around the corner.'

"'It's devilish uncanny!' broke in Stanton.

"And as he spoke the flap of Thora's tent was raised and out into the
moonlight strode the old Swede. She was the great Norse type--tall,
deep-breasted, moulded on the old Viking lines. Her sixty years had
slipped from her. She looked like some ancient priestess of Odin.

"She stood there, her eyes wide, brilliant, staring.  She thrust her
head forward toward Nan-Tauach, regarding the moving lights; she
listened. Suddenly she raised her arms and made a curious gesture to
the moon. It was--an archaic--movement; she seemed to drag it from
remote antiquity--yet in it was a strange suggestion of power, Twice
she repeated this gesture and--the tinklings died away! She turned to
us.

"'Go!' she said, and her voice seemed to come from far distances.  'Go
from here--and quickly! Go while you may. It has called--' She pointed
to the islet. 'It knows you are here. It waits!' she wailed. 'It
beckons--the--the--"

"She fell at Edith's feet, and over the lagoon came again the
tinklings, now with a quicker note of jubilance--almost of triumph.

"We watched beside her throughout the night.  The sounds from
Nan-Tauach continued until about an hour before moon-set. In the
morning Thora awoke, none the worse, apparently. She had had bad
dreams, she said. She could not remember what they were--except that
they had warned her of danger. She was oddly sullen, and throughout
the morning her gaze returned again and again half-fascinatedly,
half-wonderingly to the neighbouring isle.

"That afternoon the natives returned.  And that night on Nan-Tauach
the silence was unbroken nor were there lights nor sign of life.

"You will understand, Goodwin, how the occurrences I have related
would excite the scientific curiosity. We rejected immediately, of
course, any explanation admitting the supernatural.

"Our--symptoms let me call them--could all very easily be accounted
for. It is unquestionable that the vibrations created by certain
musical instruments have definite and sometimes extraordinary effect
upon the nervous system. We accepted this as the explanation of the
reactions we had experienced, hearing the unfamiliar sounds. Thora's
nervousness, her superstitious apprehensions, had wrought her up to a
condition of semi-somnambulistic hysteria. Science could readily
explain her part in the night's scene.

"We came to the conclusion that there must be a passage-way between
Ponape and Nan-Tauach known to the natives--and used by them during
their rites. We decided that on the next departure of our labourers we
would set forth immediately to Nan-Tauach. We would investigate during
the day, and at evening my wife and Thora would go back to camp,
leaving Stanton and me to spend the night on the island, observing
from some safe hiding-place what might occur.

"The moon waned; appeared crescent in the west; waxed slowly toward
the full. Before the men left us they literally prayed us to accompany
them. Their importunities only made us more eager to see what it was
that, we were now convinced, they wanted to conceal from us. At least
that was true of Stanton and myself. It was not true of Edith. She was
thoughtful, abstracted--reluctant.

"When the men were out of sight around the turn of the harbour, we
took our boat and made straight for Nan-Tauach. Soon its mighty
sea-wall towered above us. We passed through the water-gate with its
gigantic hewn prisms of basalt and landed beside a half-submerged
pier. In front of us stretched a series of giant steps leading into a
vast court strewn with fragments of fallen pillars. In the centre of
the court, beyond the shattered pillars, rose another terrace of
basalt blocks, concealing, I knew, still another enclosure.

"And now, Walter, for the better understanding of what
follows--and--and--" he hesitated. "Should you decide later to return
with me or, if I am taken, to--to--follow us--listen carefully to my
description of this place: Nan-Tauach is literally three rectangles.
The first rectangle is the sea-wall, built up of monoliths--hewn and
squared, twenty feet wide at the top. To get to the gateway in the
sea-wall you pass along the canal marked on the map between Nan-Tauach
and the islet named Tau. The entrance to the canal is bidden by dense
thickets of mangroves; once through these the way is clear. The steps
lead up from the landing of the sea-gate through the entrance to the
courtyard.

"This courtyard is surrounded by another basalt wall, rectangular,
following with mathematical exactness the march of the outer
barricades. The sea-wall is from thirty to forty feet high--originally
it must have been much higher, but there has been subsidence in parts.
The wall of the first enclosure is fifteen feet across the top and its
height varies from twenty to fifty feet--here, too, the gradual
sinking of the land has caused portions of it to fall.

"Within this courtyard is the second enclosure.  Its terrace, of the
same basalt as the outer walls, is about twenty feet high. Entrance is
gained to it by many breaches which time has made in its stonework.
This is the inner court, the heart of Nan-Tauach! There lies the great
central vault with which is associated the one name of living being
that has come to us out of the mists of the past. The natives say it
was the treasure-house of Chau-te-leur, a mighty king who reigned long
'before their fathers.' As Chan is the ancient Ponapean word both for
sun and king, the name means, without doubt, 'place of the sun king.'
It is a memory of a dynastic name of the race that ruled the Pacific
continent, now vanished--just as the rulers of ancient Crete took the
name of Minos and the rulers of Egypt the name of Pharaoh.

"And opposite this place of the sun king is the moon rock that hides
the Moon Pool.

"It was Stanton who discovered the moon rock.  We had been inspecting
the inner courtyard; Edith and Thora were getting together our lunch.
I came out of the vault of Chau-te-leur to find Stanton before a part
of the terrace studying it wonderingly.

"'What do you make of this?' he asked me as I came up. He pointed to
the wall. I followed his finger and saw a slab of stone about fifteen
feet high and ten wide. At first all I noticed was the exquisite
nicety with which its edges joined the blocks about it. Then I
realized that its colour was subtly different--tinged with grey and of
a smooth, peculiar--deadness.

"'Looks more like calcite than basalt,' I said.  I touched it and
withdrew my hand quickly for at the contact every nerve in my arm
tingled as though a shock of frozen electricity had passed through it.
It was not cold as we know cold. It was a chill force--the phrase I
have used--frozen electricity--describes it better than anything else.
Stanton looked at me oddly.

"'So you felt it too,' he said.  'I was wondering whether I was
developing hallucinations like Thora. Notice, by the way, that the
blocks beside it are quite warm beneath the sun.'

"We examined the slab eagerly.  Its edges were cut as though by an
engraver of jewels. They fitted against the neighbouring blocks in
almost a hair-line. Its base was slightly curved, and fitted as
closely as top and sides upon the huge stones on which it rested. And
then we noted that these stones had been hollowed to follow the line
of the grey stone's foot. There was a semicircular depression running
from one side of the slab to the other. It was as though the grey rock
stood in the centre of a shallow cup--revealing half, covering half.
Something about this hollow attracted me. I reached down and felt it.
Goodwin, although the balance of the stones that formed it, like all
the stones of the courtyard, were rough and age-worn--this was as
smooth, as even surfaced as though it had just left the hands of the
polisher.

"'It's a door!' exclaimed Stanton.  'It swings around in that little
cup. That's what makes the hollow so smooth.'

"'Maybe you're right,' I replied.  'But how the devil can we open it?'

"We went over the slab again--pressing upon its edges, thrusting
against its sides. During one of those efforts I happened to look
up--and cried out. A foot above and on each side of the corner of the
grey rock's lintel was a slight convexity, visible only from the angle
at which my gaze struck it.

"We carried with us a small scaling-ladder and up this I went.  The
bosses were apparently nothing more than chiseled curvatures in the
stone. I laid my hand on the one I was examining, and drew it back
sharply. In my palm, at the base of my thumb, I had felt the same
shock that I had in touching the slab below. I put my hand back. The
impression came from a spot not more than an inch wide. I went
carefully over the entire convexity, and six times more the chill ran
through my arm. There were seven circles an inch wide in the curved
place, each of which communicated the precise sensation I have
described. The convexity on the opposite side of the slab gave exactly
the same results. But no amount of touching or of pressing these spots
singly or in any combination gave the slightest promise of motion to
the slab itself.

"'And yet--they're what open it,' said Stanton positively.

"'Why do you say that?' I asked.

"'I--don't know,' he answered hesitatingly.  'But something tells me
so. Throck,' he went on half earnestly, half laughingly, 'the purely
scientific part of me is fighting the purely human part of me. The
scientific part is urging me to find some way to get that slab either
down or open. The human part is just as strongly urging me to do
nothing of the sort and get away while I can!'

"He laughed again--shamefacedly.

"'Which shall it be?' he asked--and I thought that in his tone the
human side of him was ascendant.

"'It will probably stay as it is--unless we blow it to bits,' I said.

"'I thought of that,' he answered, 'and I wouldn't dare,' he added
soberly enough. And even as I had spoken there came to me the same
feeling that he had expressed. It was as though something passed out
of the grey rock that struck my heart as a hand strikes an impious
lip. We turned away--uneasily, and faced Thora coming through a breach
on the terrace.

"'Miss Edith wants you quick,' she began--and stopped. Her eyes went
past me to the grey rock. Her body grew rigid; she took a few stiff
steps forward and then ran straight to it. She cast herself upon its
breast, hands and face pressed against it; we heard her scream as
though her very soul were being drawn from her--and watched her fall
at its foot. As we picked her up I saw steal from her face the look I
had observed when first we heard the crystal music of
Nan-Tauach--that unhuman mingling of opposites!"



CHAPTER IV

The First Vanishings

"We carried Thora back, down to where Edith was waiting. We told her
what had happened and what we had found. She listened gravely, and as
we finished Thora sighed and opened her eyes.

"'I would like to see the stone,' she said.  'Charles, you stay here
with Thora.' We passed through the outer court silently--and stood
before the rock. She touched it, drew back her hand as I had; thrust
it forward again resolutely and held it there. She seemed to be
listening. Then she turned to me.

"'David,' said my wife, and the wistfulness in her voice hurt
me--'David, would you be very, very disappointed if we went from
here--without trying to find out any more about it--would you?'

"Walter, I never wanted anything so much in my life as I wanted to
learn what that rock concealed. Nevertheless, I tried to master my
desire, and I answered--'Edith, not a bit if you want us to do it.'

"She read my struggle in my eyes.  She turned back toward the grey
rock. I saw a shiver pass through her. I felt a tinge of remorse and
pity!

"'Edith,' I exclaimed, 'we'll go!'

"She looked at me again.  'Science is a jealous mistress,' she quoted.
'No, after all it may be just fancy. At any rate, you can't run away.
No! But, Dave, I'm going to stay too!'

"And there was no changing her decision.  As we neared the others she
laid a hand on my arm.

"'Dave,' she said, 'if there should be something--well--inexplicable
tonight--something that seems--too dangerous--will you promise to go
back to our own islet tomorrow, if we can--and wait until the natives
return?'

"I promised eagerly--the desire to stay and see what came with the
night was like a fire within me.

"We picked a place about five hundred feet away from the steps leading
into the outer court.

"The spot we had selected was well hidden.  We could not be seen, and
yet we had a clear view of the stairs and the gateway. We settled down
just before dusk to wait for whatever might come. I was nearest the
giant steps; next me Edith; then Thora, and last Stanton.

"Night fell.  After a time the eastern sky began to lighten, and we
knew that the moon was rising; grew lighter still, and the orb peeped
over the sea; swam into full sight. I glanced at Edith and then at
Thora. My wife was intently listening. Thora sat, as she had since we
had placed ourselves, elbows on knees, her hands covering her face.

"And then from the moonlight flooding us there dripped down on me a
great drowsiness. Sleep seemed to seep from the rays and fall upon my
eyes, closing them--closing them inexorably. Edith's hand in mine
relaxed. Stanton's head fell upon his breast and his body swayed
drunkenly. I tried to rise--to fight against the profound desire for
slumber that pressed on me.

"And as I fought, Thora raised her head as though listening; and
turned toward the gateway. There was infinite despair in her face--and
expectancy. I tried again to rise--and a surge of sleep rushed over
me. Dimly, as I sank within it, I heard a crystalline chiming; raised
my lids once more with a supreme effort.

"Thora, bathed in light, was standing at the top of the stairs.

"Sleep took me for its very own--swept me into the heart of oblivion!

"Dawn was breaking when I wakened.  Recollection rushed back; I thrust
a panic-stricken hand out toward Edith; touched her and my heart gave
a great leap of thankfulness. She stirred, sat up, rubbing dazed eyes.
Stanton lay on his side, back toward us, head in arms.

"Edith looked at me laughingly.  'Heavens!  What sleep!' she said.
Memory came to her.

"'What happened?' she whispered.  'What made us sleep like that?'

"Stanton awoke.

"'What's the matter!' he exclaimed.  'You look as though you've been
seeing ghosts.'

"Edith caught my hands.

"'Where's Thora?' she cried.  Before I could answer she had run out
into the open, calling.

"'Thora was taken,' was all I could say to Stanton, 'together we went
to my wife, now standing beside the great stone steps, looking up
fearfully at the gateway into the terraces. There I told them what I
had seen before sleep had drowned me. And together then we ran up the
stairs, through the court and to the grey rock.

"The slab was closed as it had been the day before, nor was there
trace of its having opened. No trace? Even as I thought this Edith
dropped to her knees before it and reached toward something lying at
its foot. It was a little piece of gay silk. I knew it for part of the
kerchief Thora wore about her hair. She lifted the fragment. It had
been cut from the kerchief as though by a razor-edge; a few threads
ran from it--down toward the base of the slab; ran on to the base of
the grey rock and--under it!

"The grey rock was a door!  And it had opened and Thora had passed
through it!

"I think that for the next few minutes we all were a little insane.
We beat upon that portal with our hands, with stones and sticks. At
last reason came back to us.

"Goodwin, during the next two hours we tried every way in our power to
force entrance through the slab. The rock resisted our drills. We
tried explosions at the base with charges covered by rock. They made
not the slightest impression on the surface, expending their force, of
course, upon the slighter resistance of their coverings.

"Afternoon found us hopeless.  Night was coming on and we would have
to decide our course of action. I wanted to go to Ponape for help. But
Edith objected that this would take hours and after we had reached
there it would be impossible to persuade our men to return with us
that night, if at all. What then was left? Clearly only one of two
choices: to go back to our camp, wait for our men, and on their return
try to persuade them to go with us to Nan-Tauach. But this would mean
the abandonment of Thora for at least two days. We could not do it; it
would have been too cowardly.

"The other choice was to wait where we were for night to come; to wait
for the rock to open as it had the night before, and to make a sortie
through it for Thora before it could close again.

"Our path lay clear before us.  We had to spend that night on
Nan-Tauach!

"We had, of course, discussed the sleep phenomena very fully.  If our
theory that lights, sounds, and Thora's disappearance were linked with
secret religious rites of the natives, the logical inference was that
the slumber had been produced by them, perhaps by vapours--you know as
well as I, what extraordinary knowledge these Pacific peoples have of
such things. Or the sleep might have been simply a coincidence and
produced by emanations either gaseous or from plants, natural causes
which had happened to coincide in their effects with the other
manifestations. We made some rough and ready but effective
respirators.

"As dusk fell we looked over our weapons.  Edith was an excellent shot
with both rifle and pistol. We had decided that my wife was to remain
in the hiding-place. Stanton would take up a station on the far side
of the stairway and I would place myself opposite him on the side near
Edith. The place I picked out was less than two hundred feet from her,
and I could reassure myself now and then as to her safety as it looked
down upon the hollow wherein she crouched. From our respective
stations Stanton and I could command the gateway entrance. His
position gave him also a glimpse of the outer courtyard.

"A faint glow in the sky heralded the moon.  Stanton and I took our
places. The moon dawn increased rapidly; the disk swam up, and in a
moment it was shining in full radiance upon ruins and sea.

"As it rose there came a curious little sighing sound from the inner
terrace. Stanton straightened up and stared intently through the
gateway, rifle ready.

"'Stanton, what do you see?' I called cautiously.  He waved a
silencing hand. I turned my head to look at Edith. A shock ran through
me. She lay upon her side. Her face, grotesque with its nose and mouth
covered by the respirator, was turned full toward the moon. She was
again in deepest sleep!

"As I turned again to call to Stanton, my eyes swept the head of the
steps and stopped, fascinated. For the moonlight had thickened. It
seemed to be--curdled--there; and through it ran little gleams and
veins of shimmering white fire. A languor passed through me. It was
not the ineffable drowsiness of the preceding night. It was a sapping
of all will to move. I tried to cry out to Stanton. I had not even the
will to move my lips. Goodwin--I could not even move my eyes!

"Stanton was in the range of my fixed vision.  I watched him leap up
the steps and move toward the gateway. The curdled radiance seemed to
await him. He stepped into it--and was lost to my sight.

"For a dozen heart beats there was silence.  Then a rain of tinklings
that set the pulses racing with joy and at once checked them with tiny
fingers of ice--and ringing through them Stanton's voice from the
courtyard--a great cry--a scream--filled with ecstasy insupportable
and horror unimaginable! And once more there was silence. I strove to
burst the bonds that held me. I could not. Even my eyelids were fixed.
Within them my eyes, dry and aching, burned.

"Then Goodwin--I first saw the--inexplicable!  The crystalline music
swelled. Where I sat I could take in the gateway and its basalt
portals, rough and broken, rising to the top of the wall forty feet
above, shattered, ruined portals--unclimbable. From this gateway an
intenser light began to flow. It grew, it gushed, and out of it walked
Stanton.

"Stanton!  But--God!  What a vision!"

A deep tremor shook him.  I waited--waited.



CHAPTER V

Into the Moon Pool

"Goodwin," Throckmartin went on at last, "I can describe him only as a
thing of living light. He radiated light; was filled with light;
overflowed with it. A shining cloud whirled through and around him in
radiant swirls, shimmering tentacles, luminescent, coruscating
spirals.

"His face shone with a rapture too great to be borne by living man,
and was shadowed with insuperable misery. It was as though it had been
remoulded by the hand of God and the hand of Satan, working together
and in harmony. You have seen that seal upon my own. But you have
never seen it in the degree that Stanton bore it. The eyes were wide
open and fixed, as though upon some inward vision of hell and heaven!

"The light that filled and surrounded him had a nucleus, a
core--something shiftingly human shaped--that dissolved and changed,
gathered itself, whirled through and beyond him and back again. And as
its shining nucleus passed through him Stanton's whole body pulsed
radiance. As the luminescence moved, there moved above it, still and
serene always, seven tiny globes of seven colors, like seven little
moons.

"Then swiftly Stanton was lifted--levitated--up the unscalable wall
and to its top. The glow faded from the moonlight, the tinkling music
grew fainter. I tried again to move. The tears were running down now
from my rigid lids and they brought relief to my tortured eyes.

"I have said my gaze was fixed.  It was.  But from the side,
peripherally, it took in a part of the far wall of the outer
enclosure. Ages seemed to pass and a radiance stole along it. Soon
drifted into sight the figure that was Stanton. Far away he was--on
the gigantic wall. But still I could see the shining spirals whirling
jubilantly around and through him; felt rather than saw his tranced
face beneath the seven moons. A swirl of crystal notes, and he had
passed. And all the time, as though from some opened well of light,
the courtyard gleamed and sent out silver fires that dimmed the
moonrays, yet seemed strangely to be a part of them.

"At last the moon neared the horizon.  There came a louder burst of
sound; the second, and last, cry of Stanton, like an echo of his
first! Again the soft sighing from the inner terrace. Then--utter
silence!

"The light faded; the moon was setting and with a rush life and power
to move returned to me. I made a leap for the steps, rushed up them,
through the gateway and straight to the grey rock. It was closed--as I
knew it would be. But did I dream it or did I hear, echoing through it
as though from vast distances a triumphant shouting?

"I ran back to Edith.  At my touch she wakened; looked at me
wanderingly; raised herself on a hand.

"'Dave!' she said, 'I slept--after all.' She saw the despair on my
face and leaped to her feet. 'Dave!' she cried. 'What is it? Where's
Charles?'

"I lighted a fire before I spoke.  Then I told her.  And for the
balance of that night we sat before the flames, arms around each
other--like two frightened children."

Abruptly Throckmartin held his hands out to me appealingly.

"Walter, old friend!" he cried.  "Don't look at me as though I were
mad. It's truth, absolute truth. Wait--" I comforted him as well as I
could. After a little time he took up his story.

"Never," he said, "did man welcome the sun as we did that morning.  A
soon as it had risen we went back to the courtyard. The walls whereon
I had seen Stanton were black and silent. The terraces were as they
had been. The grey slab was in its place. In the shallow hollow at its
base was--nothing. Nothing--nothing was there anywhere on the islet
of Stanton--not a trace.

"What were we to do?  Precisely the same arguments that had kept us
there the night before held good now--and doubly good. We could not
abandon these two; could not go as long as there was the faintest hope
of finding them--and yet for love of each other how could we remain? I
loved my wife,--how much I never knew until that day; and she loved me
as deeply.

"'It takes only one each night,' she pleaded.  'Beloved, let it take
me.'

"I wept, Walter.  We both wept.

"'We will meet it together,' she said.  And it was thus at last that
we arranged it."

"That took great courage indeed, Throckmartin," I interrupted.  He
looked at me eagerly.

"You do believe then?" he exclaimed.

"I believe," I said.  He pressed my hand with a grip that nearly
crushed it.

"Now," he told me.  "I do not fear.  If I--fail, you will follow with
help?"

I promised.

"We talked it over carefully," he went on, "bringing to bear all our
power of analysis and habit of calm, scientific thought. We considered
minutely the time element in the phenomena. Although the deep chanting
began at the very moment of moonrise, fully five minutes had passed
between its full lifting and the strange sighing sound from the inner
terrace. I went back in memory over the happenings of the night
before. At least ten minutes had intervened between the first
heralding sigh and the intensification of the moonlight in the
courtyard. And this glow grew for at least ten minutes more before the
first burst of the crystal notes. Indeed, more than half an hour must
have elapsed, I calculated, between the moment the moon showed above
the horizon and the first delicate onslaught of the tinklings.

"'Edith!' I cried.  'I think I have it!  The grey rock opens five
minutes after upon the moonrise. But whoever or whatever it is that
comes through it must wait until the moon has risen higher, or else it
must come from a distance. The thing to do is not to wait for it, but
to surprise it before it passes out the door. We will go into the
inner court early. You will take your rifle and pistol and hide
yourself where you can command the opening--if the slab does open. The
instant it opens I will enter. It's our best chance, Edith. I think
it's our only one.'

"My wife demurred strongly.  She wanted to go with me. But I convinced
her that it was better for her to stand guard without, prepared to
help me if I were forced again into the open by what lay behind the
rock.

"At the half-hour before moonrise we went into the inner court.  I
took my place at the side of the grey rock. Edith crouched behind a
broken pillar twenty feet away; slipped her rifle-barrel over it so
that it would cover the opening.

"The minutes crept by.  The darkness lessened and through the breaches
of the terrace I watched the far sky softly lighten. With the first
pale flush the silence of the place intensified. It deepened; became
unbearably--expectant. The moon rose, showed the quarter, the half,
then swam up into full sight like a great bubble.

"Its rays fell upon the wall before me and suddenly upon the
convexities I have described seven little circles of light sprang out.
They gleamed, glimmered, grew brighter--shone. The gigantic slab
before me glowed with them, silver wavelets of phosphorescence pulsed
over its surface and then--it turned as though on a pivot, sighing
softly as it moved!

"With a word to Edith I flung myself through the opening. A tunnel
stretched before me. It glowed with the same faint silvery radiance.
Down it I raced. The passage turned abruptly, passed parallel to the
walls of the outer courtyard and then once more led downward.

"The passage ended.  Before me was a high vaulted arch. It seemed to
open into space; a space filled with lambent, coruscating,
many-coloured mist whose brightness grew even as I watched. I passed
through the arch and stopped in sheer awe!

"In front of me was a pool.  It was circular, perhaps twenty feet
wide. Around it ran a low, softly curved lip of glimmering silvery
stone. Its water was palest blue. The pool with its silvery rim was
like a great blue eye staring upward.

"Upon it streamed seven shafts of radiance.  They poured down upon the
blue eye like cylindrical torrents; they were like shining pillars of
light rising from a sapphire floor.

"One was the tender pink of the pearl; one of the aurora's green; a
third a deathly white; the fourth the blue in mother-of-pearl; a
shimmering column of pale amber; a beam of amethyst; a shaft of molten
silver. Such are the colours of the seven lights that stream upon the
Moon Pool. I drew closer, awestricken. The shafts did not illumine the
depths. They played upon the surface and seemed there to diffuse, to
melt into it. The Pool drank them?

"Through the water tiny gleams of phosphorescence began to dart,
sparkles and coruscations of pale incandescence. And far, far below I
sensed a movement, a shifting glow as of a radiant body slowly rising.

"I looked upward, following the radiant pillars to their source.  Far
above were seven shining globes, and it was from these that the rays
poured. Even as I watched their brightness grew. They were like seven
moons set high in some caverned heaven. Slowly their splendour
increased, and with it the splendour of the seven beams streaming from
them.

"I tore my gaze away and stared at the Pool.  It had grown milky,
opalescent. The rays gushing into it seemed to be filling it; it was
alive with sparklings, scintillations, glimmerings. And the
luminescence I had seen rising from its depths was larger, nearer!

"A swirl of mist floated up from its surface.  It drifted within the
embrace of the rosy beam and hung there for a moment. The beam seemed
to embrace it, sending through it little shining corpuscles, tiny rosy
spiralings. The mist absorbed the rays, was strengthened by them,
gained substance. Another swirl sprang into the amber shaft, clung and
fed there, moved swiftly toward the first and mingled with it. And now
other swirls arose, here and there, too fast to be counted; hung
poised in the embrace of the light streams; flashed and pulsed into
each other.

"Thicker and thicker still they arose until over the surface of the
Pool was a pulsating pillar of opalescent mist steadily growing
stronger; drawing within it life from the seven beams falling upon it;
drawing to it from below the darting, incandescent atoms of the Pool.
Into its centre was passing the luminescence rising from the far
depths. And the pillar glowed, throbbed--began to send out questing
swirls and tendrils--

"There forming before me was That which had walked with Stanton, which
had taken Thora--the thing I had come to find!

"My brain sprang into action.  My hand threw up the pistol and I fired
shot after shot into the shining core.

"As I fired, it swayed and shook; gathered again.  I slipped a second
clip into the automatic and another idea coming to me took careful aim
at one of the globes in the roof. From thence I knew came the force
that shaped this Dweller in the Pool--from the pouring rays came its
strength. If I could destroy them I could check its forming. I fired
again and again. If I hit the globes I did no damage. The little motes
in their beams danced with the motes in the mist, troubled. That was
all.

"But up from the Pool like little bells, like tiny bursting bubbles of
glass, swarmed the tinkling sounds--their pitch higher, all their
sweetness lost, angry.

"And out from the Inexplicable swept a shining spiral.

"It caught me above the heart; wrapped itself around me. There rushed
through me a mingled ecstasy and horror. Every atom of me quivered
with delight and shrank with despair. There was nothing loathsome in
it. But it was as though the icy soul of evil and the fiery soul of
good had stepped together within me. The pistol dropped from my hand.

"So I stood while the Pool gleamed and sparkled; the streams of light
grew more intense and the radiant Thing that held me gleamed and
strengthened. Its shining core had shape--but a shape that my eyes and
brain could not define. It was as though a being of another sphere
should assume what it might of human semblance, but was not able to
conceal that what human eyes saw was but a part of it. It was neither
man nor woman; it was unearthly and androgynous. Even as I found its
human semblance it changed. And still the mingled rapture and terror
held me. Only in a little corner of my brain dwelt something
untouched; something that held itself apart and watched. Was it the
soul? I have never believed--and yet--

"Over the head of the misty body there sprang suddenly out seven
little lights. Each was the colour of the beam beneath which it
rested. I knew now that the Dweller was--complete!

"I heard a scream.  It was Edith's voice.  It came to me that she had
heard the shots and followed me. I felt every faculty concentrate into
a mighty effort. I wrenched myself free from the gripping tentacle and
it swept back. I turned to catch Edith, and as I did so slipped--fell.

"The radiant shape above the Pool leaped swiftly--and straight into it
raced Edith, arms outstretched to shield me from it! God!

"She threw herself squarely within its splendour," he whispered.  "It
wrapped its shining self around her. The crystal tinklings burst forth
jubilantly. The light filled her, ran through and around her as it had
with Stanton; and dropped down upon her face--the look!

"But her rush had taken her to the very verge of the Moon Pool.  She
tottered; she fell--with the radiance still holding her, still
swirling and winding around and through her--into the Moon Pool! She
sank, and with her went--the Dweller!

"I dragged myself to the brink.  Far down was a shining, many-coloured
nebulous cloud descending; out of it peered Edith's face,
disappearing; her eyes stared up at me--and she vanished!

"'Edith!' I cried again.  'Edith, come back to me!'

"And then a darkness fell upon me.  I remember running back through
the shimmering corridors and out into the courtyard. Reason had left
me. When it returned I was far out at sea in our boat wholly estranged
from civilization. A day later I was picked up by the schooner in
which I came to Port Moresby.

"I have formed a plan; you must hear it, Goodwin--" He fell upon his
berth. I bent over him. Exhaustion and the relief of telling his story
had been too much for him. He slept like the dead.

All that night I watched over him.  When dawn broke I went to my room
to get a little sleep myself. But my slumber was haunted.

The next day the storm was unabated.  Throckmartin came to me at
lunch. He had regained much of his old alertness.

"Come to my cabin," he said.  There, he stripped his shirt from him.
"Something is happening," he said. "The mark is smaller." It was as he
said.

"I'm escaping," he whispered jubilantly, "Just let me get to Melbourne
safely, and then we'll see who'll win! For, Walter, I'm not at all
sure that Edith is dead--as we know death--nor that the others are.
There is something outside experience there--some great mystery."

And all that day he talked to me of his plans.

"There's a natural explanation, of course," he said.  "My theory is
that the moon rock is of some composition sensitive to the action of
moon rays; somewhat as the metal selenium is to sun rays. The little
circles over the top are, without doubt, its operating agency. When
the light strikes them they release the mechanism that opens the slab,
just as you can open doors with sun or electric light by an ingenious
arrangement of selenium-cells. Apparently it takes the strength of the
full moon both to do this and to summon the Dweller in the Pool. We
will first try a concentration of the rays of the waning moon upon
these circles to see whether that will open the rock. If it does we
will be able to investigate the Pool without interruption
from--from--what emanates.

"Look, here on the chart are their locations.  I have made this in
duplicate for you in the event--of something happening--to me. And if
I lose--you'll come after us, Goodwin, with help--won't you?"

And again I promised.

A little later he complained of increasing sleepiness.

"But it's just weariness," he said.  "Not at all like that other
drowsiness. It's an hour till moonrise still," he yawned at last.
"Wake me up a good fifteen minutes before."

He lay upon the berth.  I sat thinking.  I came to myself with a
guilty start. I had completely lost myself in my deep preoccupation.
What time was it? I looked at my watch and jumped to the port-hole. It
was full moonlight; the orb had been up for fully half an hour. I
strode over to Throckmartin and shook him by the shoulder.

"Up, quick, man!" I cried.  He rose sleepily.  His shirt fell open at
the neck and I looked, in amazement, at the white band around his
chest. Even under the electric light it shone softly, as though little
flecks of light were in it.

Throckmartin seemed only half-awake.  He looked down at his breast,
saw the glowing cincture, and smiled.

"Yes," he said drowsily, "it's coming--to take me back to Edith!
Well, I'm glad."

"Throckmartin!" I cried.  "Wake up!  Fight!"

"Fight!" he said.  "No use; come after us!"

He went to the port and sleepily drew aside the curtain. The moon
traced a broad path of light straight to the ship. Under its rays the
band around his chest gleamed brighter and brighter; shot forth little
rays; seemed to writhe.

The lights went out in the cabin; evidently also throughout the ship,
for I heard shoutings above.

Throckmartin still stood at the open port.  Over his shoulder I saw a
gleaming pillar racing along the moon path toward us. Through the
window cascaded a blinding radiance. It gathered Throckmartin to it,
clothed him in a robe of living opalescence. Light pulsed through and
from him. The cabin filled with murmurings--

A wave of weakness swept over me, buried me in blackness.  When
consciousness came back, the lights were again burning brightly.

But of Throckmartin there was no trace!



CHAPTER VI

"The Shining Devil Took Them!"

My colleagues of the Association, and you others who may read this my
narrative, for what I did and did not when full realization returned I
must offer here, briefly as I can, an explanation; a defense--if you
will.

My first act was to spring to the open port.  The coma had lasted
hours, for the moon was now low in the west! I ran to the door to
sound the alarm. It resisted under my frantic hands; would not open.
Something fell tinkling to the floor. It was the key and I remembered
then that Throckmartin had turned it before we began our vigil. With
memory a hope died that I had not known was in me, the hope that he
had escaped from the cabin, found refuge elsewhere on the ship.

And as I stooped, fumbling with shaking fingers for the key, a thought
came to me that drove again the blood from my heart, held me rigid. I
could sound no alarm on the Southern Queen for Throckmartin!

Conviction of my appalling helplessness was complete. The ensemble of
the vessel from captain to cabin boy was, to put it conservatively,
average. None, I knew, save Throckmartin and myself had seen the first
apparition of the Dweller. Had they witnessed the second? I did not
know, nor could I risk speaking, not knowing. And not seeing, how
could they believe? They would have thought me insane--or worse;
even, it might be, his murderer.

I snapped off the electrics; waited and listened; opened the door with
infinite caution and slipped, unseen, into my own stateroom. The hours
until the dawn were eternities of waking nightmare. Reason, resuming
sway at last, steadied me. Even had I spoken and been believed where
in these wastes after all the hours could we search for Throckmartin?
Certainly the captain would not turn back to Port Moresby. And even if
he did, of what use for me to set forth for the Nan-Matal without the
equipment which Throckmartin himself had decided was necessary if one
hoped to cope with the mystery that lurked there?

There was but one thing to do--follow his instructions; get the
paraphernalia in Melbourne or Sydney if it were possible; if not sail
to America as swiftly as might be, secure it there and as swiftly
return to Ponape. And this I determined to do.

Calmness came back to me after I had made this decision. And when I
went up on deck I knew that I had been right. They had not seen the
Dweller. They were still discussing the darkening of the ship, talking
of dynamos burned out, wires short circuited, a half dozen
explanations of the extinguishment. Not until noon was Throckmartin's
absence discovered. I told the captain that I had left him early in
the evening; that, indeed, I knew him but slightly, after all. It
occurred to none to doubt me, or to question me minutely. Why should
it have? His strangeness had been noted, commented upon; all who had
met him had thought him half mad. I did little to discourage the
impression. And so it came naturally that on the log it was entered
that he had fallen or leaped from the vessel some time during the
night.

A report to this effect was made when we entered Melbourne.  I slipped
quietly ashore and in the press of the war news Throckmartin's
supposed fate won only a few lines in the newspapers; my own presence
on the ship and in the city passed unnoticed.

I was fortunate in securing at Melbourne everything I needed except a
set of Becquerel ray condensers--but these were the very keystone of
my equipment. Pursuing my search to Sydney I was doubly fortunate in
finding a firm who were expecting these very articles in a consignment
due them from the States within a fortnight. I settled down in
strictest seclusion to await their arrival.

And now it will occur to you to ask why I did not cable, during this
period of waiting, to the Association; demand aid from it. Or why I
did not call upon members of the University staffs of either Melbourne
or Sydney for assistance. At the least, why I did not gather, as
Throckmartin had hoped to do, a little force of strong men to go with
me to the Nan-Matal.

To the first two questions I answer frankly--I did not dare. And this
reluctance, this inhibition, every man jealous of his scientific
reputation will understand. The story of Throckmartin, the happenings
I had myself witnessed, were incredible, abnormal, outside the facts
of all known science. I shrank from the inevitable disbelief, perhaps
ridicule--nay, perhaps even the graver suspicion that had caused me to
seal my lips while on the ship. Why I myself could only half believe!
How then could I hope to convince others?

And as for the third question--I could not take men into the range of
such a peril without first warning them of what they might encounter;
and if I did warn them--

It was checkmate!  If it also was cowardice--well, I have atoned for
it. But I do not hold it so; my conscience is clear.

That fortnight and the greater part of another passed before the ship
I awaited steamed into port. By that time, between my straining
anxiety to be after Throckmartin, the despairing thought that every
moment of delay might be vital to him and his, and my intensely eager
desire to know whether that shining, glorious horror on the moon path
did exist or had been hallucination, I was worn almost to the edge of
madness.

At last the condensers were in my hands.  It was more than a week
later, however, before I could secure passage back to Port Moresby and
it was another week still before I started north on the Suwarna, a
swift little sloop with a fifty-horsepower auxiliary, heading straight
for Ponape and the Nan-Matal.

We sighted the Brunhilda some five hundred miles south of the
Carolines. The wind had fallen soon after Papua had dropped astern.
The Suwarna's ability to make her twelve knots an hour without it had
made me very fully forgive her for not being as fragrant as the Javan
flower for which she was named. Da Costa, her captain, was a
garrulous Portuguese; his mate was a Canton man with all the marks of
long and able service on some pirate junk; his engineer was a
half-breed China-Malay who had picked up his knowledge of power
plants, Heaven alone knew where, and, I had reason to believe, had
transferred all his religious impulses to the American built deity of
mechanism he so faithfully served. The crew was made up of six huge,
chattering Tonga boys.

The Suwarna had cut through Finschafen Huon Gulf to the protection of
the Bismarcks. She had threaded the maze of the archipelago
tranquilly, and we were then rolling over the thousand-mile stretch of
open ocean with New Hanover far behind us and our boat's bow pointed
straight toward Nukuor of the Monte Verdes. After we had rounded
Nukuor we should, barring accident, reach Ponape in not more than
sixty hours.

It was late afternoon, and on the demure little breeze that marched
behind us came far-flung sighs of spice-trees and nutmeg flowers. The
slow prodigious swells of the Pacific lifted us in gentle, giant hands
and sent us as gently down the long, blue wave slopes to the next
broad, upward slope. There was a spell of peace over the ocean,
stilling even the Portuguese captain who stood dreamily at the wheel,
slowly swaying to the rhythmic lift and fall of the sloop.

There came a whining hail from the Tonga boy lookout draped lazily
over the bow.

"Sail he b'long port side!"

Da Costa straightened and gazed while I raised my glass. The vessel
was a scant mile away, and must have been visible long before the
sleepy watcher had seen her. She was a sloop about the size of the
Suwarna, without power. All sails set, even to a spinnaker she
carried, she was making the best of the little breeze. I tried to read
her name, but the vessel jibed sharply as though the hands of the man
at the wheel had suddenly dropped the helm--and then with equal
abruptness swung back to her course. The stern came in sight, and on
it I read Brunhilda.

I shifted my glasses to the man at wheel.  He was crouching down over
the spokes in a helpless, huddled sort of way, and even as I looked
the vessel veered again, abruptly as before. I saw the helmsman
straighten up and bring the wheel about with a vicious jerk.

He stood so for a moment, looking straight ahead, entirely oblivious
of us, and then seemed again to sink down within himself. It came to
me that his was the action of a man striving vainly against a
weariness unutterable. I swept the deck with my glasses. There was no
other sign of life. I turned to find the Portuguese staring intently
and with puzzled air at the sloop, now separated from us by a scant
half mile.

"Something veree wrong I think there, sair," he said in his curious
English. "The man on deck I know. He is captain and owner of the
Br-rwun'ild. His name Olaf Huldricksson, what you say--Norwegian. He
is eithair veree sick or veree tired--but I do not undweerstand where
is the crew and the starb'd boat is gone--"

He shouted an order to the engineer and as he did so the faint breeze
failed and the sails of the Brunhilda flapped down inert. We were now
nearly abreast and a scant hundred yards away. The engine of the
Suwarna died and the Tonga boys leaped to one of the boats.

"You Olaf Huldricksson!" shouted Da Costa.  "What's a matter wit'
you?"

The man at the wheel turned toward us.  He was a giant; his shoulders
enormous, thick chested, strength in every line of him, he towered
like a viking of old at the rudder bar of his shark ship.

I raised the glass again; his face sprang into the lens and never have
I seen a visage lined and marked as though by ages of unsleeping
misery as was that of Olaf Huldricksson!

The Tonga boys had the boat alongside and were waiting at the oars.
The little captain was dropping into it.

"Wait!" I cried.  I ran into my cabin, grasped my emergency medical
kit and climbed down the rope ladder. The Tonga boys bent to the oars.
We reached the side and Da Costa and I each seized a lanyard dangling
from the stays and swung ourselves on board. Da Costa approached
Huldricksson softly.

"What's the matter, Olaf?" he began--and then was silent, looking down
at the wheel. The hands of Huldricksson were lashed fast to the spokes
by thongs of thin, strong cord; they were swollen and black and the
thongs had bitten into the sinewy wrists till they were hidden in the
outraged flesh, cutting so deeply that blood fell, slow drop by drop,
at his feet! We sprang toward him, reaching out hands to his fetters
to loose them. Even as we touched them, Huldricksson aimed a vicious
kick at me and then another at Da Costa which sent the Portuguese
tumbling into the scuppers.

"Let be!" croaked Huldricksson; his voice was thick and lifeless as
though forced from a dead throat; his lips were cracked and dry and
his parched tongue was black. "Let be! Go! Let be!"

The Portuguese had picked himself up, whimpering with rage and knife
in hand, but as Huldricksson's voice reached him he stopped.
Amazement crept into his eyes and as he thrust the blade back into
his belt they softened with pity.

"Something veree wrong wit' Olaf," he murmured to me. "I think he
crazee!" And then Olaf Huldricksson began to curse us. He did not
speak--he howled from that hideously dry mouth his imprecations. And
all the time his red eyes roamed the seas and his hands, clenched and
rigid on the wheel, dropped blood.

"I go below," said Da Costa nervously.  "His wife, his daughter--" he
darted down the companionway and was gone.

Huldricksson, silent once more, had slumped down over the wheel.

Da Costa's head appeared at the top of the companion steps.

"There is nobody, nobody," he paused--then--"nobody--nowhere!" His
hands flew out in a gesture of hopeless incomprehension. "I do not
understan'."

Then Olaf Huldricksson opened his dry lips and as he spoke a chill ran
through me, checking my heart.

"The sparkling devil took them!" croaked Olaf Huldricksson, "the
sparkling devil took them! Took my Helma and my little Freda! The
sparkling devil came down from the moon and took them!"

He swayed; tears dripped down his cheeks.  Da Costa moved toward him
again and again Huldricksson watched him, alertly, wickedly, from his
bloodshot eyes.

I took a hypodermic from my case and filled it with morphine.  I drew
Da Costa to me.

"Get to the side of him," I whispered, "talk to him." He moved over
toward the wheel.

"Where is your Helma and Freda, Olaf?" he said.

Huldricksson turned his head toward him.  "The shining devil took
them," he croaked. "The moon devil that spark--"

A yell broke from him.  I had thrust the needle into his arm just
above one swollen wrist and had quickly shot the drug through. He
struggled to release himself and then began to rock drunkenly. The
morphine, taking him in his weakness, worked quickly. Soon over his
face a peace dropped. The pupils of the staring eyes contracted. Once,
twice, he swayed and then, his bleeding, prisoned hands held high and
still gripping the wheel, he crumpled to the deck.

With utmost difficulty we loosed the thongs, but at last it was done.
We rigged a little swing and the Tonga boys slung the great inert body
over the side into the dory. Soon we had Huldricksson in my bunk. Da
Costa sent half his crew over to the sloop in charge of the Cantonese.
They took in all sail, stripping Huldricksson's boat to the masts and
then with the Brunhilda nosing quietly along after us at the end of a
long hawser, one of the Tonga boys at her wheel, we resumed the way so
enigmatically interrupted.

I cleansed and bandaged the Norseman's lacerated wrists and sponged
the blackened, parched mouth with warm water and a mild antiseptic.

Suddenly I was aware of Da Costa's presence and turned. His unease was
manifest and held, it seemed to me, a queer, furtive anxiety.

"What you think of Olaf, sair?" he asked.  I shrugged my shoulders.
"You think he killed his woman and his babee?" He went on. "You think
he crazee and killed all?"

"Nonsense, Da Costa," I answered.  "You saw the boat was gone.  Most
probably his crew mutinied and to torture him tied him up the way you
saw. They did the same thing with Hilton of the Coral Lady; you'll
remember."

"No," he said.  "No.  The crew did not.  Nobody there on board when
Olaf was tied."

"What!" I cried, startled.  "What do you mean?"

"I mean," he said slowly, "that Olaf tie himself!"

"Wait!" he went on at my incredulous gesture of dissent. "Wait, I show
you." He had been standing with hands behind his back and now I saw
that he held in them the cut thongs that had bound Huldricksson. They
were blood-stained and each ended in a broad leather tip skilfully
spliced into the cord. "Look," he said, pointing to these leather
ends. I looked and saw in them deep indentations of teeth. I snatched
one of the thongs and opened the mouth of the unconscious man on the
bunk. Carefully I placed the leather within it and gently forced the
jaws shut on it. It was true. Those marks were where Olaf
Huldricksson's jaws had gripped.

"Wait!" Da Costa repeated, "I show you." He took other cords and
rested his hands on the supports of a chair back. Rapidly he twisted
one of the thongs around his left hand, drew a loose knot, shifted the
cord up toward his elbow. This left wrist and hand still free and with
them he twisted the other cord around the right wrist; drew a similar
knot. His hands were now in the exact position that Huldricksson's had
been on the Brunhilda but with cords and knots hanging loose. Then Da
Costa reached down his head, took a leather end in his teeth and with
a jerk drew the thong that noosed his left hand tight; similarly he
drew tight the second.

He strained at his fetters.  There before my eyes he had pinioned
himself so that without aid he could not release himself. And he was
exactly as Huldricksson had been!

"You will have to cut me loose, sair," he said.  "I cannot move them.
It is an old trick on these seas. Sometimes it is necessary that a man
stand at the wheel many hours without help, and he does this so that
if he sleep the wheel wake him, yes, sair."

I looked from him to the man on the bed.

"But why, sair," said Da Costa slowly, "did Olaf have to tie his
hands?"

I looked at him, uneasily.

"I don't know," I answered.  "Do you?"

He fidgeted, avoided my eyes, and then rapidly, almost surreptitiously
crossed himself.

"No," he replied.  "I know nothing.  Some things I have heard--but
they tell many tales on these seas."

He started for the door.  Before he reached it he turned. "But this I
do know," he half whispered, "I am damned glad there is no full moon
tonight." And passed out, leaving me staring after him in amazement.
What did the Portuguese know?

I bent over the sleeper.  On his face was no trace of that unholy
mingling of opposites the Dweller stamped upon its victims.

And yet--what was it the Norseman had said?

"The sparkling devil took them!"  Nay, he had been even more
explicit--"The sparkling devil that came down from the moon!"

Could it be that the Dweller had swept upon the Brunhilda, drawing
down the moon path Olaf Huldricksson's wife and babe even as it had
drawn Throckmartin?

As I sat thinking the cabin grew suddenly dark and from above came a
shouting and patter of feet. Down upon us swept one of the abrupt,
violent squalls that are met with in those latitudes. I lashed
Huldricksson fast in the berth and ran up on deck.

The long, peaceful swells had changed into angry, choppy waves from
the tops of which the spindrift streamed in long stinging lashes.

A half-hour passed; the squall died as quickly as it had arisen.  The
sea quieted. Over in the west, from beneath the tattered, flying edge
of the storm, dropped the red globe of the setting sun; dropped slowly
until it touched the sea rim.

I watched it--and rubbed my eyes and stared again.  For over its
flaming portal something huge and black moved, like a gigantic
beckoning finger!

Da Costa had seen it, too, and he turned the Suwarna straight toward
the descending orb and its strange shadow. As we approached we saw it
was a little mass of wreckage and that the beckoning finger was a wing
of canvas, sticking up and swaying with the motion of the waves. On
the highest point of the wreckage sat a tall figure calmly smoking a
cigarette.

We brought the Suwarna to, dropped a boat, and with myself as coxswain
pulled toward a wrecked hydroairplane. Its occupant took a long puff
at his cigarette, waved a cheerful hand, shouted a greeting. And just
as he did so a great wave raised itself up behind him, took the
wreckage, tossed it high in a swelter of foam, and passed on. When we
had steadied our boat, where wreck and man had been was--nothing.

There came a tug at the side--, two muscular brown hands gripped it
close to my left, and a sleek, black, wet head showed its top between
them. Two bright, blue eyes that held deep within them a laughing
deviltry looked into mine, and a long, lithe body drew itself gently
over the thwart and seated its dripping self at my feet.

"Much obliged," said this man from the sea.  "I knew somebody was sure
to come along when the O'Keefe banshee didn't show up."

"The what?" I asked in amazement.

"The O'Keefe banshee--I'm Larry O'Keefe.  It's a far way from Ireland,
but not too far for the O'Keefe banshee to travel if the O'Keefe was
going to click in."

I looked again at my astonishing rescue.  He seemed perfectly serious.

"Have you a cigarette?  Mine went out," he said with a grin, as he
reached a moist hand out for the little cylinder, took it, lighted it.

I saw a lean, intelligent face whose fighting jaw was softened by the
wistfulness of the clean-cut lips and the honesty that lay side by
side with the deviltry in the laughing blue eyes; nose of a
thoroughbred with the suspicion of a tilt; long, well-knit, slender
figure that I knew must have all the strength of fine steel; the
uniform of a lieutenant in the Royal Flying Corps of Britain's navy.

He laughed, stretched out a firm hand, and gripped mine.

"Thank you really ever so much, old man," he said.

I liked Larry O'Keefe from the beginning--but I did not dream as the
Tonga boys pulled us back to the Suwarna bow that liking was to be
forged into man's strong love for man by fires which souls such as his
and mine--and yours who read this--could never dream.

Larry!  Larry O'Keefe, where are you now with your leprechauns and
banshee, your heart of a child, your laughing blue eyes, and your
fearless soul? Shall I ever see you again, Larry O'Keefe, dear to me
as some best beloved younger brother? Larry!



CHAPTER VII

Larry O'Keefe

Pressing back the questions I longed to ask, I introduced myself.
Oddly enough, I found that he knew me, or rather my work. He had
bought, it appeared, my volume upon the peculiar vegetation whose
habitat is disintegrating lava rock and volcanic ash, that I had
entitled, somewhat loosely, I could now perceive, Flora of the
Craters. For he explained naively that he had picked it up, thinking
it an entirely different sort of a book, a novel in fact--something
like Meredith's Diana of the Crossways, which he liked greatly.

He had hardly finished this explanation when we touched the side of
the Suwarna, and I was forced to curb my curiosity until we reached
the deck.

"That thing you saw me sitting on," he said, after he had thanked the
bowing little skipper for his rescue, "was all that was left of one of
his Majesty's best little hydroairplanes after that cyclone threw it
off as excess baggage. And by the way, about where are we?"

Da Costa gave him our approximate position from the noon reckoning.

O'Keefe whistled.  "A good three hundred miles from where I left the
H.M.S. Dolphin about four hours ago," he said. "That squall I rode in
on was some whizzer!

"The Dolphin," he went on, calmly divesting himself of his soaked
uniform, "was on her way to Melbourne. I'd been yearning for a joy
ride and went up for an alleged scouting trip. Then that blow shot out
of nowhere, picked me up, and insisted that I go with it.

"About an hour ago I thought I saw a chance to zoom up and out of it,
I turned, and _blick_ went my right wing, and down I dropped."

"I don't know how we can notify your ship, Lieutenant O'Keefe," I
said. "We have no wireless."

"Doctair Goodwin," said Da Costa, "we could change our course,
sair--perhaps--"

"Thanks--but not a bit of it," broke in O'Keefe.  "Lord alone knows
where the Dolphin is now. Fancy she'll be nosing around looking for
me. Anyway, she's just as apt to run into you as you into her. Maybe
we'll strike something with a wireless, and I'll trouble you to put me
aboard." He hesitated. "Where are you bound, by the way?" he asked.

"For Ponape," I answered.

"No wireless there," mused O'Keefe.  "Beastly hole. Stopped a week ago
for fruit. Natives seemed scared to death at us--or something. What
are you going there for?"

Da Costa darted a furtive glance at me.  It troubled me.

O'Keefe noted my hesitation.

"Oh, I beg your pardon," he said.  "Maybe I oughn't to have asked
that?"

"It's no secret, Lieutenant," I replied.  "I'm about to undertake some
exploration work--a little digging among the ruins on the Nan-Matal."

I looked at the Portuguese sharply as I named the place. A pallor
crept beneath his skin and again he made swiftly the sign of the
cross, glancing as he did so fearfully to the north. I made up my mind
then to question him when opportunity came. He turned from his quick
scrutiny of the sea and addressed O'Keefe.

"There's nothing on board to fit you, Lieutenant."

"Oh, just give me a sheet to throw around me, Captain," said O'Keefe
and followed him. Darkness had fallen, and as the two disappeared into
Da Costa's cabin I softly opened the door of my own and listened.
Huldricksson was breathing deeply and regularly.

I drew my electric-flash, and shielding its rays from my face, looked
at him. His sleep was changing from the heavy stupor of the drug into
one that was at least on the borderland of the normal. The tongue had
lost its arid blackness and the mouth secretions had resumed action.
Satisfied as to his condition I returned to deck.

O'Keefe was there, looking like a spectre in the cotton sheet he had
wrapped about him. A deck table had been cleated down and one of the
Tonga boys was setting it for our dinner. Soon the very creditable
larder of the Suwarna dressed the board, and O'Keefe, Da Costa, and I
attacked it. The night had grown close and oppressive. Behind us the
forward light of the Brunhilda glided and the binnacle lamp threw up a
faint glow in which her black helmsman's face stood out mistily.
O'Keefe had looked curiously a number of times at our tow, but had
asked no questions.

"You're not the only passenger we picked up today," I told him.  "We
found the captain of that sloop, lashed to his wheel, nearly dead with
exhaustion, and his boat deserted by everyone except himself."

"What was the matter?" asked O'Keefe in astonishment.

"We don't know," I answered.  "He fought us, and I had to drug him
before we could get him loose from his lashings. He's sleeping down in
my berth now. His wife and little girl ought to have been on board,
the captain here says, but--they weren't."

"Wife and child gone!" exclaimed O'Keefe.

"From the condition of his mouth he must have been alone at the wheel
and without water at least two days and nights before we found him," I
replied. "And as for looking for anyone on these waters after such a
time--it's hopeless."

"That's true," said O'Keefe.  "But his wife and baby!  Poor, poor
devil!"

He was silent for a time, and then, at my solicitation, began to tell
us more of himself. He had been little more than twenty when he had
won his wings and entered the war. He had been seriously wounded at
Ypres during the third year of the struggle, and when he recovered the
war was over. Shortly after that his mother had died. Lonely and
restless, he had re-entered the Air Service, and had remained in it
ever since.

"And though the war's long over, I get homesick for the lark's land
with the German planes playing tunes on their machine guns and their
Archies tickling the soles of my feet," he sighed. "If you're in love,
love to the limit; and if you hate, why hate like the devil and if
it's a fight you're in, get where it's hottest and fight like hell--if
you don't life's not worth the living," sighed he.

I watched him as he talked, feeling my liking for him steadily
increasing. If I could but have a man like this beside me on the path
of unknown peril upon which I had set my feet I thought, wistfully. We
sat and smoked a bit, sipping the strong coffee the Portuguese made so
well.

Da Costa at last relieved the Cantonese at the wheel. O'Keefe and I
drew chairs up to the rail. The brighter stars shone out dimly through
a hazy sky; gleams of phosphorescence tipped the crests of the waves
and sparkled with an almost angry brilliance as the bow of the Suwarna
tossed them aside. O'Keefe pulled contentedly at a cigarette. The
glowing spark lighted the keen, boyish face and the blue eyes, now
black and brooding under the spell of the tropic night.

"Are you American or Irish, O'Keefe?" I asked suddenly.

"Why?" he laughed.

"Because," I answered, "from your name and your service I would
suppose you Irish--but your command of pure Americanese makes me
doubtful."

He grinned amiably.

"I'll tell you how that is," he said.  "My mother was an American--a
Grace, of Virginia. My father was the O'Keefe, of Coleraine. And these
two loved each other so well that the heart they gave me is half Irish
and half American. My father died when I was sixteen. I used to go to
the States with my mother every other year for a month or two. But
after my father died we used to go to Ireland every other year. And
there you are--I'm as much American as I am Irish.

"When I'm in love, or excited, or dreaming, or mad I have the brogue.
But for the everyday purpose of life I like the United States talk,
and I know Broadway as well as I do Binevenagh Lane, and the Sound as
well as St. Patrick's Channel; educated a bit at Eton, a bit at
Harvard; always too much money to have to make any; in love lots of
times, and never a heartache after that wasn't a pleasant one, and
never a real purpose in life until I took the king's shilling and
earned my wings; something over thirty--and that's me--Larry
O'Keefe."

"But it was the Irish O'Keefe who sat out there waiting for the
banshee," I laughed.

"It was that," he said somberly, and I heard the brogue creep over his
voice like velvet and his eyes grew brooding again. "There's never an
O'Keefe for these thousand years that has passed without his warning.
An' twice have I heard the banshee calling--once it was when my
younger brother died an' once when my father lay waiting to be carried
out on the ebb tide."

He mused a moment, then went on: "An' once I saw an Annir Choille, a
girl of the green people, flit like a shade of green fire through
Carntogher woods, an' once at Dunchraig I slept where the ashes of the
Dun of Cormac MacConcobar are mixed with those of Cormac an' Eilidh
the Fair, all burned in the nine flames that sprang from the harping
of Cravetheen, an' I heard the echo of his dead harpings--"

He paused again and then, softly, with that curiously sweet, high
voice that only the Irish seem to have, he sang:

    Woman of the white breasts, Eilidh;
    Woman of the gold-brown hair, and lips of the red, red rowan,
    Where is the swan that is whiter, with breast more soft,
    Or the wave on the sea that moves as thou movest, Eilidh.



CHAPTER VIII

Olaf's Story

There was a little silence.  I looked upon him with wonder. Clearly he
was in deepest earnest. I know the psychology of the Gael is a curious
one and that deep in all their hearts their ancient traditions and
beliefs have strong and living roots. And I was both amused and
touched.

Here was this soldier, who had faced war and its ugly realities
open-eyed and fearless, picking, indeed, the most dangerous branch of
service for his own, a modern if ever there was one, appreciative of
most unmystical Broadway, and yet soberly and earnestly attesting to
his belief in banshee, in shadowy people of the woods, and phantom
harpers! I wondered what he would think if he could see the Dweller
and then, with a pang, that perhaps his superstitions might make him
an easy prey.

He shook his head half impatiently and ran a hand over his eyes;
turned to me and grinned:

"Don't think I'm cracked, Professor," he said.  "I'm not. But it takes
me that way now and then. It's the Irish in me. And, believe it or
not, I'm telling you the truth."

I looked eastward where the moon, now nearly a week past the full, was
mounting.

"You can't make me see what you've seen, Lieutenant," I laughed.  "But
you can make me hear. I've always wondered what kind of a noise a
disembodied spirit could make without any vocal cords or breath or any
other earthly sound-producing mechanism. How does the banshee sound?"

O'Keefe looked at me seriously.

"All right," he said.  "I'll show you." From deep down in his throat
came first a low, weird sobbing that mounted steadily into a keening
whose mournfulness made my skin creep. And then his hand shot out and
gripped my shoulder, and I stiffened like stone in my chair--for from
behind us, like an echo, and then taking up the cry, swelled a wail
that seemed to hold within it a sublimation of the sorrows of
centuries! It gathered itself into one heartbroken, sobbing note and
died away! O'Keefe's grip loosened, and he rose swiftly to his feet.

"It's all right, Professor," he said.  "It's for me.  It found me--all
this way from Ireland."

Again the silence was rent by the cry.  But now I had located it.  It
came from my room, and it could mean only one thing--Huldricksson had
wakened.

"Forget your banshee!" I gasped, and made a jump for the cabin.

Out of the corner of my eye I noted a look of half-sheepish relief
flit over O'Keefe's face, and then he was beside me. Da Costa shouted
an order from the wheel, the Cantonese ran up and took it from his
hands and the little Portuguese pattered down toward us. My hand on
the door, ready to throw it open, I stopped. What if the Dweller were
within--what if we had been wrong and it was not dependent for its
power upon that full flood of moon ray which Throckmartin had thought
essential to draw it from the blue pool!

From within, the sobbing wail began once more to rise. O'Keefe pushed
me aside, threw open the door and crouched low within it. I saw an
automatic flash dully in his hand; saw it cover the cabin from side to
side, following the swift sweep of his eyes around it. Then he
straightened and his face, turned toward the berth, was filled with
wondering pity.

Through the window streamed a shaft of the moonlight. It fell upon
Huldricksson's staring eyes; in them great tears slowly gathered and
rolled down his cheeks; from his opened mouth came the woe-laden
wailing. I ran to the port and drew the curtains. Da Costa snapped the
lights.

The Norseman's dolorous crying stopped as abruptly as though cut.  His
gaze rolled toward us. And at one bound he broke through the leashes I
had buckled round him and faced us, his eyes glaring, his yellow hair
almost erect with the force of the rage visibly surging through him.
Da Costa shrunk behind me. O'Keefe, coolly watchful, took a quick step
that brought him in front of me.

"Where do you take me?" said Huldricksson, and his voice was like the
growl of a beast. "Where is my boat?"

I touched O'Keefe gently and stood before the giant.

"Listen, Olaf Huldricksson," I said.  "We take you to where the
sparkling devil took your Helma and your Freda. We follow the
sparkling devil that came down from the moon. Do you hear me?" I spoke
slowly, distinctly, striving to pierce the mists that I knew swirled
around the strained brain. And the words did pierce.

He thrust out a shaking hand.

"You say you follow?" he asked falteringly.  "You know where to
follow? Where it took my Helma and my little Freda?"

"Just that, Olaf Huldricksson," I answered.  "Just that!  I pledge you
my life that I know."

Da Costa stepped forward.  "He speaks true, Olaf.  You go faster on
the Suwarna than on the Br-rw-un'ilda, Olaf, yes."

The giant Norseman, still gripping my hand, looked at him.  "I know
you, Da Costa," he muttered. "You are all right. Ja! You are a fair
man. Where is the Brunhilda?"

"She follow be'ind on a big rope, Olaf," soothed the Portuguese.
"Soon you see her. But now lie down an' tell us, if you can, why you
tie yourself to your wheel an' what it is that happen, Olaf."

"If you'll tell us how the sparkling devil came it will help us all
when we get to where it is, Huldricksson," I said.

On O'Keefe's face there was an expression of well-nigh ludicrous doubt
and amazement. He glanced from one to the other. The giant shifted his
own tense look from me to the Irishman. A gleam of approval lighted in
his eyes. He loosed me, and gripped O'Keefe's arm. "Staerk!" he said.
"Ja--strong, and with a strong heart. A man--ja! He comes too--we
shall need him--ja!"

"I tell," he muttered, and seated himself on the side of the bunk.
"It was four nights ago. My Freda"--his voice shook--"Mine Yndling!
She loved the moonlight. I was at the wheel and my Freda and my Helma
they were behind me. The moon was behind us and the Brunhilda was like
a swanboat sailing down with the moonlight sending her, ja.

"I heard my Freda say: 'I see a nisse coming down the track of the
moon.' And I hear her mother laugh, low, like a mother does when her
Yndling dreams. I was happy--that night--with my Helma and my Freda,
and the Brunhilda sailing like a swan-boat, ja. I heard the child say,
'The nisse comes fast!' And then I heard a scream from my Helma, a
great scream--like a mare when her foal is torn from her. I spun
around fast, ja! I dropped the wheel and spun fast! I saw--" He
covered his eyes with his hands.

The Portuguese had crept close to me, and I heard him panting like a
frightened dog.

"I saw a white fire spring over the rail," whispered Olaf
Huldricksson. "It whirled round and round, and it shone like--like
stars in a whirlwind mist. There was a noise in my ears. It sounded
like bells--little bells, ja! Like the music you make when you run
your finger round goblets. It made me sick and dizzy--the hell noise.

"My Helma was--indeholde--what you say--in the middle of the white
fire. She turned her face to me and she turned it on the child, and my
Helma's face burned into my heart. Because it was full of fear, and it
was full of happiness--of glaede. I tell you that the fear in my
Helma's face made me ice here"--he beat his breast with clenched
hand--"but the happiness in it burned on me like fire. And I could
not move--I could not move.

"I said in here"--he touched his head--"I said, 'It is Loki come out
of Helvede. But he cannot take my Helma, for Christ lives and Loki has
no power to hurt my Helma or my Freda! Christ lives! Christ lives!' I
said. But the sparkling devil did not let my Helma go. It drew her to
the rail; half over it. I saw her eyes upon the child and a little she
broke away and reached to it. And my Freda jumped into her arms. And
the fire wrapped them both and they were gone! A little I saw them
whirling on the moon track behind the Brunhilda--and they were gone!

"The sparkling devil took them!  Loki was loosed, and he had power.  I
turned the Brunhilda, and I followed where my Helma and mine Yndling
had gone. My boys crept up and asked me to turn again. But I would
not. They dropped a boat and left me. I steered straight on the path.
I lashed my hands to the wheel that sleep might not loose them. I
steered on and on and on--

"Where was the God I prayed when my wife and child were taken?" cried
Olaf Huldricksson--and it was as though I heard Throckmartin asking
that same bitter question. "I have left Him as He left me, ja! I pray
now to Thor and to Odin, who can fetter Loki." He sank back, covering
again his eyes.

"Olaf," I said, "what you have called the sparkling devil has taken
ones dear to me. I, too, was following it when we found you. You shall
go with me to its home, and there we will try to take from it your
wife and your child and my friends as well. But now that you may be
strong for what is before us, you must sleep again."

Olaf Huldricksson looked upon me and in his eyes was that something
which souls must see in the eyes of Him the old Egyptians called the
Searcher of Hearts in the Judgment Hall of Osiris.

"You speak truth!" he said at last slowly.  "I will do what you say!"

He stretched out an arm at my bidding.  I gave him a second injection.
He lay back and soon he was sleeping. I turned toward Da Costa. His
face was livid and sweating, and he was trembling pitiably. O'Keefe
stirred.

"You did that mighty well, Dr. Goodwin," he said.  "So well that I
almost believed you myself."

"What did you think of his story, Mr. O'Keefe?" I asked.

His answer was almost painfully brief and colloquial.

"Nuts!" he said. I was a little shocked, I admit. "I think he's crazy,
Dr. Goodwin," he corrected himself, quickly. "What else could I
think?"

I turned to the little Portuguese without answering.

"There's no need for any anxiety tonight, Captain," I said. "Take my
word for it. You need some rest yourself. Shall I give you a sleeping
draft?"

"I do wish you would, Dr. Goodwin, sair," he answered gratefully.
"Tomorrow, when I feel bettair--I would have a talk with you."

I nodded.  He did know something then!  I mixed him an opiate of
considerable strength. He took it and went to his own cabin.

I locked the door behind him and then, sitting beside the sleeping
Norseman, I told O'Keefe my story from end to end. He asked few
questions as I spoke. But after I had finished he cross-examined me
rather minutely upon my recollections of the radiant phases upon each
appearance, checking these with Throckmartin's observations of the
same phenomena in the Chamber of the Moon Pool.

"And now what do you think of it all?" I asked.

He sat silent for a while, looking at Huldricksson.

"Not what you seem to think, Dr. Goodwin," he answered at last,
gravely. "Let me sleep over it. One thing of course is certain--you
and your friend Throckmartin and this man here saw--something. But--"
he was silent again and then continued with a kindness that I found
vaguely irritating--"but I've noticed that when a scientist gets
superstitious it--er--takes very hard!

"Here's a few things I can tell you now though," he went on while I
struggled to speak--"I pray in my heart that we'll meet neither the
Dolphin nor anything with wireless on board going up. Because, Dr.
Goodwin, I'd dearly love to take a crack at your Dweller.

"And another thing," said O'Keefe.  "After this--cut out the
trimmings, Doc, and call me plain Larry, for whether I think you're
crazy or whether I don't, you're there with the nerve, Professor, and
I'm for _you_.

"Good night!" said Larry and took himself out to the deck hammock he
had insisted upon having slung for him, refusing the captain's
importunities to use his own cabin.

And it was with extremely mixed emotions as to his compliment that I
watched him go. Superstitious. I, whose pride was my scientific
devotion to fact and fact alone! Superstitious--and this from a man
who believed in banshees and ghostly harpers and Irish wood nymphs and
no doubt in leprechauns and all their tribe!

Half laughing, half irritated, and wholly happy in even the part
promise of Larry O'Keefe's comradeship on my venture, I arranged a
couple of pillows, stretched myself out on two chairs and took up my
vigil beside Olaf Huldricksson.



CHAPTER IX

A Lost Page of Earth

When I awakened the sun was streaming through the cabin porthole.
Outside a fresh voice lilted. I lay on my two chairs and listened. The
song was one with the wholesome sunshine and the breeze blowing
stiffly and whipping the curtains. It was Larry O'Keefe at his matins:

  The little red lark is shaking his wings,
  Straight from the breast of his love he springs

Larry's voice soared.

  His wings and his feathers are sunrise red,
  He hails the sun and his golden head,
  Good morning, Doc, you are long abed.

This last was a most irreverent interpolation, I well knew. I opened
my door. O'Keefe stood outside laughing. The Suwarna, her engines
silent, was making fine headway under all sail, the Brunhilda skipping
in her wake cheerfully with half her canvas up.

The sea was crisping and dimpling under the wind.  Blue and white was
the world as far as the eye could reach. Schools of little silvery
green flying fish broke through the water rushing on each side of us;
flashed for an instant and were gone. Behind us gulls hovered and
dipped. The shadow of mystery had retreated far over the rim of this
wide awake and beautiful world and if, subconsciously, I knew that
somewhere it was brooding and waiting, for a little while at least I
was consciously free of its oppression.

"How's the patient?" asked O'Keefe.

He was answered by Huldricksson himself, who must have risen just as I
left the cabin. The Norseman had slipped on a pair of pajamas and,
giant torso naked under the sun, he strode out upon us. We all of us
looked at him a trifle anxiously. But Olaf's madness had left him. In
his eyes was much sorrow, but the berserk rage was gone.

He spoke straight to me: "You said last night we follow?"

I nodded.

"It is where?" he asked again.

"We go first to Ponape and from there to Metalanim Harbour--to the
Nan-Matal. You know the place?"

Huldricksson bowed--a white gleam as of ice showing in his blue eyes.

"It is there?" he asked.

"It is there that we must first search," I answered.

"Good!" said Olaf Huldricksson.  "It is good!"

He looked at Da Costa inquiringly and the little Portuguese, following
his thought, answered his unspoken question.

"We should be at Ponape tomorrow morning early, Olaf."

"Good!" repeated the Norseman.  He looked away, his eyes tear-filled.

A restraint fell upon us; the embarrassment all men experience when
they feel a great sympathy and a great pity, to neither of which they
quite know how to give expression. By silent consent we discussed at
breakfast only the most casual topics.

When the meal was over Huldricksson expressed a desire to go aboard
the Brunhilda.

The Suwarna hove to and Da Costa and he dropped into the small boat.
When they reached the Brunhilda's deck I saw Olaf take the wheel and
the two fall into earnest talk. I beckoned to O'Keefe and we stretched
ourselves out on the bow hatch under cover of the foresail. He lighted
a cigarette, took a couple of leisurely puffs, and looked at me
expectantly.

"Well?" I asked.

"Well," said O'Keefe, "suppose you tell me what you think--and then
I'll proceed to point out your scientific errors." His eyes twinkled
mischievously.

"Larry," I replied, somewhat severely, "you may not know that I have a
scientific reputation which, putting aside all modesty, I may say is
an enviable one. You used a word last night to which I must interpose
serious objection. You more than hinted that I hid--superstitions. Let
me inform you, Larry O'Keefe, that I am solely a seeker, observer,
analyst, and synthesist of facts. I am not"--and I tried to make my
tone as pointed as my words--"I am not a believer in phantoms or
spooks, leprechauns, banshees, or ghostly harpers."

O'Keefe leaned back and shouted with laughter.

"Forgive me, Goodwin," he gasped.  "But if you could have seen
yourself solemnly disclaiming the banshee"--another twinkle showed in
his eyes--"and then with all this sunshine and this wide-open
world"--he shrugged his shoulders--"it's hard to visualize anything
such as you and Huldricksson have described."

"I know how hard it is, Larry," I answered.  "And don't think I have
any idea that the phenomenon is supernatural in the sense
spiritualists and table turners have given that word. I do think it is
supernormal; energized by a force unknown to modern science--but that
doesn't mean I think it outside the radius of science."

"Tell me your theory, Goodwin," he said.  I hesitated--for not yet
had I been able to put into form to satisfy myself any explanation of
the Dweller.

"I think," I hazarded finally, "it is possible that some members of
that race peopling the ancient continent which we know existed here in
the Pacific, have survived. We know that many of these islands are
honeycombed with caverns and vast subterranean spaces, literally
underground lands running in some cases far out beneath the ocean
floor. It is possible that for some reason survivors of this race
sought refuge in the abysmal spaces, one of whose entrances is on the
islet where Throckmartin's party met its end.

"As for their persistence in these caverns--we know they possessed a
high science. They may have gone far in the mastery of certain
universal forms of energy--especially that we call light. They may
have developed a civilization and a science far more advanced than
ours. What I call the Dweller may be one of the results of this
science. Larry--it may well be that this lost race is planning to
emerge again upon earth's surface!"

"And is sending out your Dweller as a messenger, a scientific dove
from their Ark?" I chose to overlook the banter in his question.

"Did you ever hear of the Chamats?" I asked him.  He shook his head.

"In Papua," I explained, "there is a wide-spread and immeasurably old
tradition that 'imprisoned under the hills' is a race of giants who
once ruled this region 'when it stretched from sun to sun before the
moon god drew the waters over it'--I quote from the legend. Not only
in Papua but throughout Malaysia you find this story. And, so the
tradition runs, these people--the Chamats--will one day break through
the hills and rule the world; 'make over the world' is the literal
translation of the constant phrase in the tale. It was Herbert Spencer
who pointed out that there is a basis of fact in every myth and legend
of man. It is possible that these survivors I am discussing form
Spencer's fact basis for the Malaysian legend.[1]

"This much is sure--the moon door, which is clearly operated by the
action of moon rays upon some unknown element or combination and the
crystals through which the moon rays pour down upon the pool their
prismatic columns, are humanly made mechanisms. So long as they are
humanly made, and so long as it _is_ this flood of moonlight from which
the Dweller draws its power of materialization, the Dweller itself, if
not the product of the human mind, is at least dependent upon the
product of the human mind for its appearance."

"Wait a minute, Goodwin," interrupted O'Keefe.  "Do you mean to say
you think that this thing is made of--well--of moonshine?"

"Moonlight," I replied, "is, of course, reflected sunlight. But the
rays which pass back to earth after their impact on the moon's surface
are profoundly changed. The spectroscope shows that they lose
practically all the slower vibrations we call red and infra-red, while
the extremely rapid vibrations we call the violet and ultra-violet are
accelerated and altered. Many scientists hold that there is an unknown
element in the moon--perhaps that which makes the gigantic luminous
trails that radiate in all directions from the lunar crater
Tycho--whose energies are absorbed by and carried on the moon rays.

"At any rate, whether by the loss of the vibrations of the red or by
the addition of this mysterious force, the light of the moon becomes
something entirely different from mere modified sunlight--just as the
addition or subtraction of one other chemical in a compound of several
makes the product a substance with entirely different energies and
potentialities.

"Now these rays, Larry, are given perhaps still another mysterious
activity by the globes through which Throckmartin said they passed in
the Chamber of the Moon Pool. The result is the necessary factor in
the formation of the Dweller. There would be nothing scientifically
improbable in such a process. Kubalski, the great Russian physicist,
produced crystalline forms exhibiting every faculty that we call vital
by subjecting certain combinations of chemicals to the action of
highly concentrated rays of various colours. Something in light and
nothing else produced their pseudo-vitality. We do not begin to know
how to harness the potentialities of that magnetic vibration of the
ether we call light."

"Listen, Doc," said Larry earnestly, "I'll take everything you say
about this lost continent, the people who used to live on it, and
their caverns, for granted. But by the sword of Brian Boru, you'll
never get me to fall for the idea that a bunch of moonshine can handle
a big woman such as you say Throckmartin's Thora was, nor a two-fisted
man such as you say Throckmartin was, nor Huldricksson's wife--and
I'll bet she was one of those strapping big northern women too--you'll
never get me to believe that any bunch of concentrated moonshine could
handle them and take them waltzing off along a moonbeam back to
wherever it goes. No, Doc, not on your life, even Tennessee moonshine
couldn't do that--nix!"

"All right, O'Keefe," I answered, now very much irritated indeed.
"What's your theory?" And I could not resist adding: "Fairies?"

"Professor," he grinned, "if that Thing's a fairy it's Irish and when
it sees me it'll be so glad there'll be nothing to it. 'I was lost,
strayed, or stolen, Larry avick,' it'll say, 'an' I was so homesick
for the old sod I was desp'rit,' it'll say, an' 'take me back quick
before I do any more har-rm!' it'll tell me--an' that's the truth.

"Now don't get me wrong.  I believe you all saw something all right.
But what I think you saw was some kind of gas. All this region is
volcanic and islands and things are constantly poking up from the sea.
It's probably gas; a volcanic emanation; something new to us and that
drives you crazy--lots of kinds of gas do that. It hit the
Throckmartin party on that island and they probably were all more or
less delirious all the time; thought they saw things; talked it over
and--collective hallucination--just like the Angels of Mons and other
miracles of the war. Somebody sees something that looks like something
else. He points it out to the man next him. 'Do you see it?' asks he.
'Sure I see it,' says the other. And there you are--collective
hallucination.

"When your friends got it bad they most likely jumped overboard one by
one. Huldricksson sails into a place where it is and it hits his wife.
She grabs the child and jumps over. Maybe the moon rays make it
luminous! I've seen gas on the front under the moon that looked like a
thousand whirling dervish devils. Yes, and you could see the devil's
faces in it. And if it got into your lungs nothing could ever make you
think you hadn't seen real devils."

For a time I was silent.

"Larry," I said at last, "whether you are right or I am right, I must
go to the Nan-Matal. Will you go with me, Larry?"

"Goodwin," he replied, "I surely will.  I'm as interested as you are.
If we don't run across the Dolphin I'll stick. I'll leave word at
Ponape, to tell them where I am should they come along. If they report
me dead for a while there's nobody to care. So that's all right. Only
old man, be reasonable. You've thought over this so long, you're going
bug, honestly you are."

And again, the gladness that I might have Larry O'Keefe with me, was
so great that I forgot to be angry.


[1] William Beebe, the famous American naturalist and ornithologist,
recently fighting in France with America's air force, called attention
to this remarkable belief in an article printed not long ago in the
Atlantic Monthly. Still more significant was it that he noted a
persistent rumour that the breaking out of the buried race was
close.--W.J. B., Pres. I. A. of S.



CHAPTER X

The Moon Pool

Da Costa, who had come aboard unnoticed by either of us, now tapped me
on the arm.

"Doctair Goodwin," he said, "can I see you in my cabin, sair?"

At last, then, he was going to speak.  I followed him.

"Doctair," he said, when we had entered, "this is a veree strange
thing that has happened to Olaf. Veree strange. An' the natives of
Ponape, they have been very much excite' lately.

"Of what they fear I know nothing, nothing!" Again that quick, furtive
crossing of himself. "But this I have to tell you. There came to me
from Ranaloa last month a man, a Russian, a doctair, like you. His
name it was Marakinoff. I take him to Ponape an' the natives there
they will not take him to the Nan-Matal where he wish to go--no! So I
take him. We leave in a boat, wit' much instrument carefully tied up.
I leave him there wit' the boat an' the food. He tell me to tell no
one an' pay me not to. But you are a friend an' Olaf he depend much
upon you an' so I tell you, sair."

"You know nothing more than this, Da Costa?" I asked. "Nothing of
another expedition?"

"No," he shook his head vehemently.  "Nothing more."

"Hear the name Throckmartin while you were there?" I persisted.

"No," his eyes were steady as he answered but the pallor had crept
again into his face.

I was not so sure.  But if he knew more than he had told me why was he
afraid to speak? My anxiety deepened and later I sought relief from it
by repeating the conversation to O'Keefe.

"A Russian, eh," he said.  "Well, they can be damned nice, or
damned--otherwise. Considering what you did for me, I hope I can look
him over before the Dolphin shows up."

Next morning we raised Ponape, without further incident, and before
noon the Suwarna and the Brunhilda had dropped anchor in the harbour.
Upon the excitement and manifest dread of the natives, when we sought
among them for carriers and workmen to accompany us, I will not dwell.
It is enough to say that no payment we offered could induce a single
one of them to go to the Nan-Matal. Nor would they say why.

Finally it was agreed that the Brunhilda should be left in charge of a
half-breed Chinaman, whom both Da Costa and Huldricksson knew and
trusted. We piled her long-boat up with my instruments and food and
camping equipment. The Suwarna took us around to Metalanim Harbour,
and there, with the tops of ancient sea walls deep in the blue water
beneath us, and the ruins looming up out of the mangroves, a scant
mile from us, left us.

Then with Huldricksson manipulating our small sail, and Larry at the
rudder, we rounded the titanic wall that swept down into the depths,
and turned at last into the canal that Throckmartin, on his map, had
marked as that which, running between frowning Nan-Tauach and its
satellite islet, Tau, led straight to the gate of the place of ancient
mysteries.

And as we entered that channel we were enveloped by a silence; a
silence so intense, so--weighted that it seemed to have substance; an
alien silence that clung and stifled and still stood aloof from
us--the living. It was a stillness, such as might follow the long
tramping of millions into the grave; it was--paradoxical as it may
be--filled with the withdrawal of life.

Standing down in the chambered depths of the Great Pyramid I had known
something of such silence--but never such intensity as this. Larry
felt it and I saw him look at me askance. If Olaf, sitting in the bow,
felt it, too, he gave no sign; his blue eyes, with again the glint of
ice within them, watched the channel before us.

As we passed, there arose upon our left sheer walls of black basalt
blocks, cyclopean, towering fifty feet or more, broken here and there
by the sinking of their deep foundations.

In front of us the mangroves widened out and filled the canal.  On
our right the lesser walls of Tau, sombre blocks smoothed and squared
and set with a cold, mathematical nicety that filled me with vague
awe, slipped by. Through breaks I caught glimpses of dark ruins and of
great fallen stones that seemed to crouch and menace us, as we passed.
Somewhere there, hidden, were the seven globes that poured the moon
fire down upon the Moon Pool.

Now we were among the mangroves and, sail down, the three of us pushed
and pulled the boat through their tangled roots and branches. The
noise of our passing split the silence like a profanation, and from
the ancient bastions came murmurs--forbidding, strangely sinister. And
now we were through, floating on a little open space of shadow-filled
water. Before us lifted the gateway of Nan-Tauach, gigantic, broken,
incredibly old; shattered portals through which had passed men and
women of earth's dawn; old with a weight of years that pressed
leadenly upon the eyes that looked upon it, and yet was in some
curious indefinable way--menacingly defiant.

Beyond the gate, back from the portals, stretched a flight of enormous
basalt slabs, a giant's stairway indeed; and from each side of it
marched the high walls that were the Dweller's pathway. None of us
spoke as we grounded the boat and dragged it upon a half-submerged
pier. And when we did speak it was in whispers.

"What next?" asked Larry.

"I think we ought to take a look around," I replied in the same low
tones. "We'll climb the wall here and take a flash about. The whole
place ought to be plain as day from that height."

Huldricksson, his blue eyes alert, nodded.  With the greatest
difficulty we clambered up the broken blocks.

To the east and south of us, set like children's blocks in the midst
of the sapphire sea, lay dozens of islets, none of them covering more
than two square miles of surface; each of them a perfect square or
oblong within its protecting walls.

On none was there sign of life, save for a few great birds that
hovered here and there, and gulls dipping in the blue waves beyond.

We turned our gaze down upon the island on which we stood.  It was, I
estimated, about three-quarters of a mile square. The sea wall
enclosed it. It was really an enormous basalt-sided open cube, and
within it two other open cubes. The enclosure between the first and
second wall was stone paved, with here and there a broken pillar and
long stone benches. The hibiscus, the aloe tree, and a number of small
shrubs had found place, but seemed only to intensify its stark
loneliness.

"Wonder where the Russian can be?" asked Larry.

I shook my head.  There was no sign of life here.  Had Marakinoff
gone--or had the Dweller taken him, too? Whatever had happened, there
was no trace of him below us or on any of the islets within our range
of vision. We scrambled down the side of the gateway. Olaf looked at
me wistfully.

"We start the search now, Olaf," I said.  "And first, O'Keefe, let us
see whether the grey stone is really here. After that we will set up
camp, and while I unpack, you and Olaf search the island. It won't
take long."

Larry gave a look at his service automatic and grinned. "Lead on,
Macduff," he said. We made our way up the steps, through the outer
enclosures and into the central square, I confess to a fire of
scientific curiosity and eagerness tinged with a dread that O'Keefe's
analysis might be true. Would we find the moving slab and, if so,
would it be as Throckmartin had described? If so, then even Larry
would have to admit that here was something that theories of gases and
luminous emanations would not explain; and the first test of the whole
amazing story would be passed. But if not--And there before us, the
faintest tinge of grey setting it apart from its neighbouring blocks
of basalt, was the moon door!

There was no mistaking it.  This was, in very deed, the portal through
which Throckmartin had seen pass that gloriously dreadful apparition
he called the Dweller. At its base was the curious, seemingly polished
cup-like depression within which, my lost friend had told me, the
opening door swung.

What was that portal--more enigmatic than was ever sphinx?  And what
lay beyond it? What did that smooth stone, whose wan deadness
whispered of ages-old corridors of time opening out into alien,
unimaginable vistas, hide? It had cost the world of science
Throckmartin's great brain--as it had cost Throckmartin those he
loved. It had drawn me to it in search of Throckmartin--and its shadow
had fallen upon the soul of Olaf the Norseman; and upon what thousands
upon thousands more I wondered, since the brains that had conceived it
had vanished with their secret knowledge?

What lay beyond it?

I stretched out a shaking hand and touched the surface of the slab.  A
faint thrill passed through my hand and arm, oddly unfamiliar and as
oddly unpleasant; as of electric contact holding the very essence of
cold. O'Keefe, watching, imitated my action. As his fingers rested on
the stone his face filled with astonishment.

"It's the door?" he asked.  I nodded.  There was a low whistle from
him and he pointed up toward the top of the grey stone. I followed the
gesture and saw, above the moon door and on each side of it, two
gently curving bosses of rock, perhaps a foot in diameter.

"The moon door's keys," I said.

"It begins to look so," answered Larry.  "If we can find them," he
added.

"There's nothing we can do till moonrise," I replied.  "And we've none
too much time to prepare as it is. Come!"

A little later we were beside our boat.  We lightered it, set up the
tent, and as it was now but a short hour to sundown I bade them leave
me and make their search. They went off together, and I busied myself
with opening some of the paraphernalia I had brought with me.

First of all I took out the two Becquerel ray-condensers that I had
bought in Sydney. Their lenses would collect and intensify to the
fullest extent any light directed upon them. I had found them most
useful in making spectroscopic analysis of luminous vapours, and I
knew that at Yerkes Observatory splendid results had been obtained
from them in collecting the diffused radiance of the nebulae for the
same purpose.

If my theory of the grey slab's mechanism were correct, it was
practically certain that with the satellite only a few nights past the
full we could concentrate enough light on the bosses to open the rock.
And as the ray streams through the seven globes described by
Throckmartin would be too weak to energize the Pool, we could enter
the chamber free from any fear of encountering its tenant, make our
preliminary observations and go forth before the moon had dropped so
far that the concentration in the condensers would fall below that
necessary to keep the portal from closing.

I took out also a small spectroscope, and a few other instruments for
the analysis of certain light manifestations and the testing of metal
and liquid. Finally, I put aside my emergency medical kit.

I had hardly finished examining and adjusting these before O'Keefe and
Huldricksson returned. They reported signs of a camp at least ten days
old beside the northern wall of the outer court, but beyond that no
evidence of others beyond ourselves on Nan-Tauach.

We prepared supper, ate and talked a little, but for the most part
were silent. Even Larry's high spirits were not in evidence; half a
dozen times I saw him take out his automatic and look it over. He was
more thoughtful than I had ever seen him. Once he went into the tent,
rummaged about a bit and brought out another revolver which, he said,
he had got from Da Costa, and a half-dozen clips of cartridges. He
passed the gun over to Olaf.

At last a glow in the southeast heralded the rising moon. I picked up
my instruments and the medical kit; Larry and Olaf shouldered each a
short ladder that was part of my equipment, and, with our electric
flashes pointing the way, walked up the great stairs, through the
enclosures, and straight to the grey stone.

By this time the moon had risen and its clipped light shone full upon
the slab. I saw faint gleams pass over it as of fleeting
phosphorescence--but so faint were they that I could not be sure of
the truth of my observation.

We set the ladders in place.  Olaf I assigned to stand before the door
and watch for the first signs of its opening--if open it should. The
Becquerels were set within three-inch tripods, whose feet I had
equipped with vacuum rings to enable them to hold fast to the rock.

I scaled one ladder and fastened a condenser over the boss; descended;
sent Larry up to watch it, and, ascending the second ladder, rapidly
fixed the other in its place. Then, with O'Keefe watchful on his
perch, I on mine, and Olaf's eyes fixed upon the moon door, we began
our vigil. Suddenly there was an exclamation from Larry.

"Seven little lights are beginning to glow on this stone!" he cried.

But I had already seen those beneath my lens begin to gleam out with a
silvery lustre. Swiftly the rays within the condenser began to thicken
and increase, and as they did so the seven small circles waxed like
stars growing out of the dusk, and with a queer--curdled is the best
word I can find to define it--radiance entirely strange to me.

Beneath me I heard a faint, sighing murmur and then the voice of
Huldricksson:

"It opens--the stone turns--"

I began to climb down the ladder.  Again came Olaf's voice:

"The stone--it is open--" And then a shriek, a wail of blended anguish
and pity, of rage and despair--and the sound of swift footsteps racing
through the wall beneath me!

I dropped to the ground.  The moon door was wide open, and through it
I caught a glimpse of a corridor filled with a faint, pearly vaporous
light like earliest misty dawn. But of Olaf I could see--nothing! And
even as I stood, gaping, from behind me came the sharp crack of a
rifle; the glass of the condenser at Larry's side flew into fragments;
he dropped swiftly to the ground, the automatic in his hand flashed
once, twice, into the darkness.

And the moon door began to pivot slowly, slowly back into its place!

I rushed toward the turning stone with the wild idea of holding it
open. As I thrust my hands against it there came at my back a snarl
and an oath and Larry staggered under the impact of a body that had
flung itself straight at his throat. He reeled at the lip of the
shallow cup at the base of the slab, slipped upon its polished curve,
fell and rolled with that which had attacked him, kicking and
writhing, straight through the narrowing portal into the passage!

Forgetting all else, I sprang to his aid.  As I leaped I felt the
closing edge of the moon door graze my side. Then, as Larry raised a
fist, brought it down upon the temple of the man who had grappled with
him and rose from the twitching body unsteadily to his feet, I heard
shuddering past me a mournful whisper; spun about as though some
giant's hand had whirled me--

The end of the corridor no longer opened out into the moonlit square
of ruined Nan-Tauach. It was barred by a solid mass of glimmering
stone. The moon door had closed!

O'Keefe took a stumbling step toward the barrier behind us. There was
no mark of juncture with the shining walls; the slab fitted into the
sides as closely as a mosaic.

"It's shut all right," said Larry.  "But if there's a way in, there's
a way out. Anyway, Doc, we're right in the pew we've been heading
for--so why worry?" He grinned at me cheerfully. The man on the floor
groaned, and he dropped to his knees beside him.

"Marakinoff!" he cried.

At my exclamation he moved aside, turning the face so I could see it.
It was clearly Russian, and just as clearly its possessor was one of
unusual force and intellect.

The strong, massive brow with orbital ridge unusually developed, the
dominant, high-bridged nose, the straight lips with their more than
suggestion of latent cruelty, and the strong lines of the jaw beneath
a black, pointed beard all gave evidence that here was a personality
beyond the ordinary.

"Couldn't be anybody else," said Larry, breaking in on my thoughts.
"He must have been watching us over there from Chau-ta-leur's vault
all the time."

Swiftly he ran practised hands over his body; then stood erect,
holding out to me two wicked-looking magazine pistols and a knife. "He
got one of my bullets through his right forearm, too," he said. "Just
a flesh wound, but it made him drop his rifle. Some arsenal, our
little Russian scientist, what?"

I opened my medical kit.  The wound was a slight one, and Larry stood
looking on as I bandaged it.

"Got another one of those condensers?" he asked, suddenly.  "And do
you suppose Olaf will know enough to use it?"

"Larry," I answered, "Olaf's not outside!  He's in here somewhere!"

His jaw dropped.

"The hell you say!" he whispered.

"Didn't you hear him shriek when the stone opened?" I asked.

"I heard him yell, yes," he said.  "But I didn't know what was the
matter. And then this wildcat jumped me--" He paused and his eyes
widened. "Which way did he go?" he asked swiftly. I pointed down the
faintly glowing passage.

"There's only one way," I said.

"Watch that bird close," hissed O'Keefe, pointing to Marakinoff--and
pistol in hand stretched his long legs and raced away. I looked down
at the Russian. His eyes were open, and he reached out a hand to me. I
lifted him to his feet.

"I have heard," he said.  "We follow, quick.  If you will take my arm,
please, I am shaken yet, yes--" I gripped his shoulder without a word,
and the two of us set off down the corridor after O'Keefe. Marakinoff
was gasping, and his weight pressed upon me heavily, but he moved with
all the will and strength that were in him.

As we ran I took hasty note of the tunnel.  Its sides were smooth and
polished, and the light seemed to come not from their surfaces, but
from far within them--giving to the walls an illusive aspect of
distance and depth; rendering them in a peculiarly weird
way--spacious. The passage turned, twisted, ran down, turned again. It
came to me that the light that illumined the tunnel was given out by
tiny points deep within the stone, sprang from the points ripplingly
and spread upon their polished faces.

There was a cry from Larry far ahead.

"Olaf!"

I gripped Marakinoff's arm closer and we sped on.  Now we were coming
fast to the end of the passage. Before us was a high arch, and through
it I glimpsed a dim, shifting luminosity as of mist filled with
rainbows. We reached the portal and I looked into a chamber that might
have been transported from that enchanted palace of the Jinn King that
rises beyond the magic mountains of Kaf.

Before me stood O'Keefe and a dozen feet in front of him,
Huldricksson, with something clasped tightly in his arms. The
Norseman's feet were at the verge of a shining, silvery lip of stone
within whose oval lay a blue pool. And down upon this pool staring
upward like a gigantic eye, fell seven pillars of phantom light--one
of them amethyst, one of rose, another of white, a fourth of blue, and
three of emerald, of silver, and of amber. They fell each upon the
azure surface, and I knew that these were the seven streams of
radiance, within which the Dweller took shape--now but pale ghosts of
their brilliancy when the full energy of the moon stream raced through
them.

Huldricksson bent and placed on the shining silver lip of the Pool
that which he held--and I saw that it was the body of a child! He set
it there so gently, bent over the side and thrust a hand down into the
water. And as he did so he moaned and lurched against the little body
that lay before him. Instantly the form moved--and slipped over the
verge into the blue. Huldricksson threw his body over the stone, hands
clutching, arms thrust deep down--and from his lips issued a
long-drawn, heart-shrivelling wail of pain and of anguish that held in
it nothing human!

Close on its wake came a cry from Marakinoff.

"Catch him!" shouted the Russian.  "Drag him back! Quick!"

He leaped forward, but before he could half clear the distance,
O'Keefe had leaped too, had caught the Norseman by the shoulders and
toppled him backward, where he lay whimpering and sobbing. And as I
rushed behind Marakinoff I saw Larry lean over the lip of the Pool and
cover his eyes with a shaking hand; saw the Russian peer into it with
real pity in his cold eyes.

Then I stared down myself into the Moon Pool, and there, sinking, was
a little maid whose dead face and fixed, terror-filled eyes looked
straight into mine; and ever sinking slowly, slowly--vanished! And I
knew that this was Olaf's Freda, his beloved yndling!

But where was the mother, and where had Olaf found his babe?

The Russian was first to speak.

"You have nitroglycerin there, yes?" he asked, pointing toward my
medical kit that I had gripped unconsciously and carried with me
during the mad rush down the passage. I nodded and drew it out.

"Hypodermic," he ordered next, curtly; took the syringe, filled it
accurately with its one one-hundredth of a grain dosage, and leaned
over Huldricksson. He rolled up the sailor's sleeves half-way to the
shoulder. The arms were white with somewhat of that weird
semitranslucence that I had seen on Throckmartin's breast where a
tendril of the Dweller had touched him; and his hands were of the same
whiteness--like a baroque pearl. Above the line of white, Marakinoff
thrust the needle.

"He will need all his heart can do," he said to me.

Then he reached down into a belt about his waist and drew from it a
small, flat flask of what seemed to be lead. He opened it and let a
few drops of its contents fall on each arm of the Norwegian. The
liquid sparkled and instantly began to spread over the skin much as
oil or gasoline dropped on water does--only far more rapidly. And as
it spread it drew a sparkling film over the marbled flesh and little
wisps of vapour rose from it. The Norseman's mighty chest heaved with
agony. His hands clenched. The Russian gave a grunt of satisfaction at
this, dropped a little more of the liquid, and then, watching closely,
grunted again and leaned back. Huldricksson's laboured breathing
ceased, his head dropped upon Larry's knee, and from his arms and
hands the whiteness swiftly withdrew.

Marakinoff arose and contemplated us--almost benevolently.

"He will all right be in five minutes," he said.  "I know.  I do it to
pay for that shot of mine, and also because we will need him. Yes." He
turned to Larry. "You have a poonch like a mule kick, my young
friend," he said. "Some time you pay me for that, too, eh?" He smiled;
and the quality of the grimace was not exactly reassuring. Larry
looked him over quizzically.

"You're Marakinoff, of course," he said.  The Russian nodded,
betraying no surprise at the recognition.

"And you?" he asked.

"Lieutenant O'Keefe of the Royal Flying Corps," replied Larry,
saluting. "And this gentleman is Dr. Walter T. Goodwin."

Marakinoff's face brightened.

"The American botanist?" he queried.  I nodded.

"Ah," cried Marakinoff eagerly, "but this is fortunate. Long I have
desired to meet you. Your work, for an American, is most excellent;
surprising. But you are wrong in your theory of the development of the
Angiospermae from Cycadeoidea dacotensis. Da--all wrong--"

I was interrupting him with considerable heat, for my conclusions from
the fossil Cycadeoidea I knew to be my greatest triumph, when Larry
broke in upon me rudely.

"Say," he spluttered, "am I crazy or are you?  What in damnation kind
of a place and time is this to start an argument like that?

"Angiospermae, is it?" exclaimed Larry.  "HELL!"

Marakinoff again regarded him with that irritating air of benevolence.

"You have not the scientific mind, young friend," he said. "The
poonch, yes! But so has the mule. You must learn that only the fact is
important--not you, not me, not this"--he pointed to Huldricksson--"or
its sorrows. Only the fact, whatever it is, is real, yes. But"--he
turned to me--"another time--"

Huldricksson interrupted him.  The big seaman had risen stiffly to his
feet and stood with Larry's arm supporting him. He stretched out his
hands to me.

"I saw her," he whispered.  "I saw mine Freda when the stone swung.
She lay there--just at my feet. I picked her up and I saw that mine
Freda was dead. But I hoped--and I thought maybe mine Helma was
somewhere here, too, So I ran with mine yndling--here--" His voice
broke. "I thought maybe she was _not_ dead," he went on. "And I saw
that"--he pointed to the Moon Pool--"and I thought I would bathe her
face and she might live again. And when I dipped my hands within--the
life left them, and cold, deadly cold, ran up through them into my
heart. And mine Freda--she fell--" he covered his eyes, and dropping
his head on O'Keefe's shoulder, stood, racked by sobs that seemed to
tear at his very soul.



CHAPTER XI

The Flame-Tipped Shadows

Marakinoff nodded his head solemnly as Olaf finished.

"Da!" he said.  "That which comes from here took them both--the woman
and the child. Da! They came clasped within it and the stone shut upon
them. But why it left the child behind I do not understand."

"How do you know that?" I cried in amazement.

"Because I saw it," answered Marakinoff simply.  "Not only did I see
it, but hardly had I time to make escape through the entrance before
it passed whirling and murmuring and its bell sounds all joyous. Da!
It was what you call the squeak close, that."

"Wait a moment," I said--stilling Larry with a gesture. "Do I
understand you to say that you were within this place?"

Marakinoff actually beamed upon me.

"Da, Dr. Goodwin," he said, "I went in when that which comes from it
went out!"

I gaped at him, stricken dumb; into Larry's bellicose attitude crept a
suggestion of grudging respect; Olaf, trembling, watched silently.

"Dr.  Goodwin and my impetuous young friend, you," went on Marakinoff
after a moment's silence and I wondered vaguely why he did not include
Huldricksson in his address--"it is time that we have an
understanding. I have a proposal to make to you also. It is this; we
are what you call a bad boat, and all of us are in it. Da! We need all
hands, is it not so? Let us put together our knowledge and our brains
and resources--and even a poonch of a mule is a resource," he looked
wickedly at O'Keefe, "and pull our boat into quiet waters again. After
that--"

"All very well, Marakinoff," interjected Larry, "but I don't feel very
safe in any boat with somebody capable of shooting me through the
back."

Marakinoff waved a deprecatory hand.

"It was natural that," he said, "logical, da!  Here is a very great
secret, perhaps many secrets to my country invaluable--" He paused,
shaken by some overpowering emotion; the veins in his forehead grew
congested, the cold eyes blazed and the guttural voice harshened.

"I do not apologize and I do not explain," rasped Marakinoff.  "But I
will tell you, da! Here is my country sweating blood in an experiment
to liberate the world. And here are the other nations ringing us like
wolves and waiting to spring at our throats at the least sign of
weakness. And here are you, Lieutenant O'Keefe of the English wolves,
and you Dr. Goodwin of the Yankee pack--and here in this place may be
that will enable my country to win its war for the worker. What are
the lives of you two and this sailor to that? Less than the flies I
crush with my hand, less than midges in the sunbeam!"

He suddenly gripped himself.

"But that is not now the important thing," he resumed, almost coldly.
"Not that nor my shooting. Let us squarely the situation face. My
proposal is so: that we join interests, and what you call see it
through together; find our way through this place and those secrets
learn of which I have spoken, if we can. And when that is done we will
go our ways, to his own land each, to make use of them for our lands
as each of us may. On my part, I offer my knowledge--and it is very
valuable, Dr. Goodwin--and my training. You and Lieutenant O'Keefe do
the same, and this man Olaf, what he can of his strength, for I do not
think his usefulness lies in his brains, no."

"In effect, Goodwin," broke in Larry as I hesitated, "the professor's
proposition is this: he wants to know what's going on here but he
begins to realize it's no one man's job and besides we have the drop
on him. We're three to his one, and we have all his hardware and
cutlery. But also we can do better with him than without him--just as
he can do better with us than without us. It's an even break--for a
while. But once he gets that information he's looking for, then look
out. You and Olaf and I are the wolves and the flies and the midges
again--and the strafing will be about due. Nevertheless, with three to
one against him, if he can get away with it he deserves to. I'm for
taking him up, if you are."

There was almost a twinkle in Marakinoff's eyes.

"It is not just as I would have put it, perhaps," he said, "but in its
skeleton he has right. Nor will I turn my hand against you while we
are still in danger here. I pledge you my honor on this."

Larry laughed.

"All right, Professor," he grinned.  "I believe you mean every word
you say. Nevertheless, I'll just keep the guns."

Marakinoff bowed, imperturbably.

"And now," he said, "I will tell you what I know.  I found the secret
of the door mechanism even as you did, Dr. Goodwin. But by
carelessness, my condensers were broken. I was forced to wait while I
sent for others--and the waiting might be for months. I took certain
precautions, and on the first night of this full moon I hid myself
within the vault of Chau-ta-leur."

An involuntary thrill of admiration for the man went through me at the
manifest heroism of this leap in the dark. I could see it reflected in
Larry's face.

"I hid in the vault," continued Marakinoff, "and I saw that which
comes from here come out. I waited--long hours. At last, when the moon
was low, it returned--ecstatically--with a man, a native, in embrace
enfolded. It passed through the door, and soon then the moon became
low and the door closed.

"The next night more confidence was mine, yes.  And after that which
comes had gone, I looked through its open door. I said, 'It will not
return for three hours. While it is away, why shall I not into its
home go through the door it has left open?' So I went--even to here. I
looked at the pillars of light and I tested the liquid of the Pool on
which they fell. That liquid, Dr. Goodwin, is not water, and it is not
any fluid known on earth." He handed me a small vial, its neck held in
a long thong.

"Take this," he said, "and see."

Wonderingly, I took the bottle; dipped it down into the Pool.  The
liquid was extraordinarily light; seemed, in fact, to give the vial
buoyancy. I held it to the light. It was striated, streaked, as though
little living, pulsing veins ran through it. And its blueness, even in
the vial, held an intensity of luminousness.

"Radioactive," said Marakinoff.  "Some liquid that is intensely
radioactive; but what it is I know not at all. Upon the living skin it
acts like radium raised to the nth power and with an element most
mysterious added. The solution with which I treated him," he pointed
to Huldricksson, "I had prepared before I came here, from certain
information I had. It is largely salts of radium and its base is
Loeb's formula for the neutralization of radium and X-ray burns.
Taking this man at once, before the degeneration had become really
active, I could negative it. But after two hours I could have done
nothing."

He paused a moment.

"Next I studied the nature of these luminous walls.  I concluded that
whoever had made them, knew the secret of the Almighty's manufacture
of light from the ether itself! Colossal! Da! But the substance of
these blocks confines an atomic--how would you say--atomic
manipulation, a conscious arrangement of electrons, light-emitting and
perhaps indefinitely so. These blocks are lamps in which oil and wick
are electrons drawing light waves from ether itself! A Prometheus,
indeed, this discoverer! I looked at my watch and that little guardian
warned me that it was time to go. I went. That which comes forth
returned--this time empty-handed.

"And the next night I did the same thing.  Engrossed in research, I
let the moments go by to the danger point, and scarcely was I replaced
within the vault when the shining thing raced over the walls, and in
its grip the woman and child.

"Then you came--and that is all.  And now--what is it you know?"

Very briefly I went over my story.  His eyes gleamed now and then, but
he did not interrupt me.

"A great secret!  A colossal secret!" he muttered, when I had ended.
"We cannot leave it hidden."

"The first thing to do is to try the door," said Larry, matter of
fact.

"There is no use, my young friend," assured Marakinoff mildly.

"Nevertheless we'll try," said Larry.  We retraced our way through the
winding tunnel to the end, but soon even O'Keefe saw that any idea of
moving the slab from within was hopeless. We returned to the Chamber
of the Pool. The pillars of light were fainter, and we knew that the
moon was sinking. On the world outside before long dawn would be
breaking. I began to feel thirst--and the blue semblance of water
within the silvery rim seemed to glint mockingly as my eyes rested on
it.

"Da!" it was Marakinoff, reading my thoughts uncannily. "Da!  We will
be thirsty. And it will be very bad for him of us who loses control
and drinks of that, my friend. Da!"

Larry threw back his shoulders as though shaking a burden from them.

"This place would give an angel of joy the willies," he said.  "I
suggest that we look around and find something that will take us
somewhere. You can bet the people that built it had more ways of
getting in than that once-a-month family entrance. Doc, you and Olaf
take the left wall; the professor and I will take the right."

He loosened one of his automatics with a suggestive movement.

"After you, Professor," he bowed, politely, to the Russian. We parted
and set forth.

The chamber widened out from the portal in what seemed to be the arc
of an immense circle. The shining walls held a perceptible curve, and
from this curvature I estimated that the roof was fully three hundred
feet above us.

The floor was of smooth, mosaic-fitted blocks of a faintly yellow
tinge. They were not light-emitting like the blocks that formed the
walls. The radiance from these latter, I noted, had the peculiar
quality of _thickening_ a few yards from its source, and it was this
that produced the effect of misty, veiled distances. As we walked, the
seven columns of rays streaming down from the crystalline globes high
above us waned steadily; the glow within the chamber lost its
prismatic shimmer and became an even grey tone somewhat like moonlight
in a thin cloud.

Now before us, out from the wall, jutted a low terrace.  It was all of
a pearly rose-coloured stone, slender, graceful pillars of the same
hue. The face of the terrace was about ten feet high, and all over it
ran a bas-relief of what looked like short-trailing vines, surmounted
by five stalks, on the tip of each of which was a flower.

We passed along the terrace.  It turned in an abrupt curve. I heard a
hail, and there, fifty feet away, at the curving end of a wall
identical with that where we stood, were Larry and Marakinoff.
Obviously the left side of the chamber was a duplicate of that we had
explored. We joined. In front of us the columned barriers ran back a
hundred feet, forming an alcove. The end of this alcove was another
wall of the same rose stone, but upon it the design of vines was much
heavier.

We took a step forward--there was a gasp of awe from the Norseman, a
guttural exclamation from Marakinoff. For on, or rather within, the
wall before us, a great oval began to glow, waxed almost to a flame
and then shone steadily out as though from behind it a light was
streaming through the stone itself!

And within the roseate oval two flame-tipped shadows appeared, stood
for a moment, and then seemed to float out upon its surface. The
shadows wavered; the tips of flame that nimbused them with flickering
points of vermilion pulsed outward, drew back, darted forth again, and
once more withdrew themselves--and as they did so the shadows
thickened--and suddenly there before us stood two figures!

One was a girl--a girl whose great eyes were golden as the fabled
lilies of Kwan-Yung that were born of the kiss of the sun upon the
amber goddess the demons of Lao-Tz'e carved for him; whose softly
curved lips were red as the royal coral, and whose golden-brown hair
reached to her knees!

And the second was a gigantic frog--A _woman_ frog, head helmeted with
carapace of shell around which a fillet of brilliant yellow jewels
shone; enormous round eyes of blue circled with a broad iris of green;
monstrous body of banded orange and white girdled with strand upon
strand of the flashing yellow gems; six feet high if an inch, and with
one webbed paw of its short, powerfully muscled forelegs resting upon
the white shoulder of the golden-eyed girl!

Moments must have passed as we stood in stark amazement, gazing at
that incredible apparition. The two figures, although as real as any
of those who stood beside me, unphantomlike as it is possible to be,
had a distinct suggestion of--projection.

They were there before us--golden-eyed girl and grotesque
frog-woman--complete in every line and curve; and still it was as
though their bodies passed back through distances; as though, to try
to express the wellnigh inexpressible, the two shapes we were looking
upon were the end of an infinite number stretching in fine linked
chain far away, of which the eyes saw only the nearest, while in the
brain some faculty higher than sight recognized and registered the
unseen others.

The gigantic eyes of the frog-woman took us all in--unwinkingly.
Little glints of phosphorescence shone out within the metallic green
of the outer iris ring. She stood upright, her great legs bowed; the
monstrous slit of a mouth slightly open, revealing a row of white
teeth sharp and pointed as lancets; the paw resting on the girl's
shoulder, half covering its silken surface, and from its five webbed
digits long yellow claws of polished horn glistened against the
delicate texture of the flesh.

But if the frog-woman regarded us all, not so did the maiden of the
rosy wall. Her eyes were fastened upon Larry, drinking him in with
extraordinary intentness. She was tall, far over the average of women,
almost as tall, indeed, as O'Keefe himself; not more than twenty years
old, if that, I thought. Abruptly she leaned forward, the golden eyes
softened and grew tender; the red lips moved as though she were
speaking.

Larry took a quick step, and his face was that of one who after
countless births comes at last upon the twin soul lost to him for
ages. The frog-woman turned her eyes upon the girl; her huge lips
moved, and I knew that she was talking! The girl held out a warning
hand to O'Keefe, and then raised it, resting each finger upon one of
the five flowers of the carved vine close beside her. Once, twice,
three times, she pressed upon the flower centres, and I noted that her
hand was curiously long and slender, the digits like those wonderful
tapering ones the painters we call the primitive gave to their
Virgins.

Three times she pressed the flowers, and then looked intently at Larry
once more. A slow, sweet smile curved the crimson lips. She stretched
both hands out toward him again eagerly; a burning blush rose swiftly
over white breasts and flowerlike face.

Like the clicking out of a cinematograph, the pulsing oval faded and
golden-eyed girl and frog-woman were gone!

And thus it was that Lakla, the handmaiden of the Silent Ones, and
Larry O'Keefe first looked into each other's hearts!

Larry stood rapt, gazing at the stone.

"Eilidh," I heard him whisper; "Eilidh of the lips like the red, red
rowan and the golden-brown hair!"

"Clearly of the Ranadae," said Marakinoff, "a development of the
fossil Labyrinthodonts: you saw her teeth, da?"

"Ranadae, yes," I answered.  "But from the Stegocephalia; of the order
Ecaudata--"

Never such a complete indignation as was in O'Keefe's voice as he
interrupted.

"What do you mean--fossils and Stego whatever it is?" he asked.  "She
was a girl, a wonder girl--a real girl, and Irish, or I'm not an
O'Keefe!"

"We were talking about the frog-woman, Larry," I said, conciliatingly.

His eyes were wild as he regarded us.

"Say," he said, "if you two had been in the Garden of Eden when Eve
took the apple, you wouldn't have had time to give her a look for
counting the scales on the snake!"

He strode swiftly over to the wall.  We followed.  Larry paused,
stretched his hand up to the flowers on which the tapering fingers of
the golden-eyed girl had rested.

"It was here she put up her hand," he murmured.  He pressed
caressingly the carved calyxes, once, twice, a third time even as she
had--and silently and softly the wall began to split; on each side a
great stone pivoted slowly, and before us a portal stood, opening into
a narrow corridor glowing with the same rosy lustre that had gleamed
around the flame-tipped shadows!

"Have your gun ready, Olaf!" said Larry.  "We follow Golden Eyes," he
said to me.

"Follow?" I echoed stupidly.

"Follow!" he said.  "She came to show us the way!  Follow? I'd follow
her through a thousand hells!"

And with Olaf at one end, O'Keefe at the other, both of them with
automatics in hand, and Marakinoff and I between them, we stepped over
the threshold.

At our right, a few feet away, the passage ended abruptly in a square
of polished stone, from which came faint rose radiance. The roof of
the place was less than two feet over O'Keefe's head.

A yard at left of us lifted a four-foot high, gently curved barricade,
stretching from wall to wall--and beyond it was blackness; an utter
and appalling blackness that seemed to gather itself from infinite
depths. The rose-glow in which we stood was cut off by the blackness
as though it had substance; it shimmered out to meet it, and was
checked as though by a blow; indeed, so strong was the suggestion of
sinister, straining force within the rayless opacity that I shrank
back, and Marakinoff with me. Not so O'Keefe. Olaf beside him, he
strode to the wall and peered over. He beckoned us.

"Flash your pocket-light down there," he said to me, pointing into the
thick darkness below us. The little electric circle quivered down as
though afraid, and came to rest upon a surface that resembled nothing
so much as clear, black ice. I ran the light across--here and there.
The floor of the corridor was of a substance so smooth, so polished,
that no man could have walked upon it; it sloped downward at a slowly
increasing angle.

"We'd have to have non-skid chains and brakes on our feet to tackle
that," mused Larry. Abstractedly be ran his hands over the edge on
which he was leaning. Suddenly they hesitated and then gripped
tightly.

"That's a queer one!" he exclaimed.  His right palm was resting upon a
rounded protuberance, on the side of which were three small circular
indentations.

"A queer one--" he repeated--and pressed his fingers upon the circles.

There was a sharp click; the slabs that had opened to let us through
swung swiftly together; a curiously rapid vibration thrilled through
us, a wind arose and passed over our heads--a wind that grew and grew
until it became a whistling shriek, then a roar and then a mighty
humming, to which every atom in our bodies pulsed in rhythm painful
almost to disintegration!

The rosy wall dwindled in a flash to a point of light and disappeared!

Wrapped in the clinging, impenetrable blackness we were racing,
dropping, hurling at a frightful speed--where?

And ever that awful humming of the rushing wind and the lightning
cleaving of the tangible dark--so, it came to me oddly, must the newly
released soul race through the sheer blackness of outer space up to
that Throne of Justice, where God sits high above all suns!

I felt Marakinoff creep close to me; gripped my nerve and flashed my
pocket-light; saw Larry standing, peering, peering ahead, and
Huldricksson, one strong arm around his shoulders, bracing him. And
then the speed began to slacken.

Millions of miles, it seemed, below the sound of the unearthly
hurricane I heard Larry's voice, thin and ghostlike, beneath its
clamour.

"Got it!" shrilled the voice.  "Got it!  Don't worry!"

The wind died down to the roar, passed back into the whistling shriek
and diminished to a steady whisper. In the comparative quiet O'Keefe's
tones now came in normal volume.

"Some little shoot-the-chutes, what?" he shouted.  "Say--if they had
this at Coney Island or the Crystal Palace! Press all the way in these
holes and she goes top-high. Diminish pressure--diminish speed. The
curve of this--dashboard--here sends the wind shooting up over our
heads--like a windshield. What's behind you?"

I flashed the light back.  The mechanism on which we were ended in
another wall exactly similar to that over which O'Keefe crouched.

"Well, we can't fall out, anyway," he laughed.  "Wish to hell I knew
where the brakes were! Look out!"

We dropped dizzily down an abrupt, seemingly endless slope; fell--fell
as into an abyss--then shot abruptly out of the blackness into a
throbbing green radiance. O'Keefe's fingers must have pressed down
upon the controls, for we leaped forward almost with the speed of
light. I caught a glimpse of luminous immensities on the verge of
which we flew; of depths inconceivable, and flitting through the
incredible spaces--gigantic shadows as of the wings of Israfel, which
are so wide, say the Arabs, the world can cower under them like a
nestling--and then--again the living blackness!

"What was that?" This from Larry, with the nearest approach to awe
that he had yet shown.

"Trolldom!" croaked the voice of Olaf.

"Chert!"  This from Marakinoff.  "What a space!"

"Have you considered, Dr. Goodwin," he went on after a pause, "a
curious thing? We know, or, at least, is it not that nine out of ten
astronomers believe, that the moon was hurled out of this same region
we now call the Pacific when the earth was yet like molasses; almost
molten, I should say. And is it not curious that that which comes from
the Moon Chamber needs the moon-rays to bring it forth; is it not? And
is it not significant again that the stone depends upon the moon for
operating? Da! And last--such a space in mother earth as we just
glimpsed, how else could it have been torn but by some gigantic
birth--like that of the moon? Da! I do not put forward these as
statements of fact--no! But as suggestions--"

I started; there was so much that this might explain--an unknown
element that responded to the moon-rays in opening the moon door; the
blue Pool with its weird radioactivity, and the force within it that
reacted to the same light stream--

It was not inconceivable that a film had drawn over the world wound, a
film of earth-flesh which drew itself over that colossal abyss after
our planet had borne its satellite--that world womb did not close
when her shining child sprang forth--it was possible; and all that we
know of earth depth is four miles of her eight thousand.

What is there at the heart of earth?  What of that radiant unknown
element upon the moon mount Tycho? What of that element unknown to us
as part of earth which is seen only in the corona of the sun at
eclipse that we call coronium? Yet the earth is child of the sun as
the moon is earth's daughter. And what of that other unknown element
we find glowing green in the far-flung nebulae--green as that we had
just passed through--and that we call nebulium? Yet the sun is child
of the nebulae as the earth is child of the sun and the moon is child
of the earth.

And what miracles are there in coronium and nebulium which, as the
child of nebula and sun, we inherit? Yes--and in Tycho's enigma which
came from earth heart?

We were flashing down to earth heart!  And what miracles were hidden
there?



CHAPTER XII

The End of the Journey

"Say Doc!" It was Larry's voice flung back at me.  "I was thinking
about that frog. I think it was her pet. Damn me if I see any
difference between a frog and a snake, and one of the nicest women I
ever knew had two pet pythons that followed her around like kittens.
Not such a devilish lot of choice between a frog and a snake--except
on the side of the frog? What? Anyway, any pet that girl wants is
hers, I don't care if it's a leaping twelve-toed lobster or a
whale-bodied scorpion. Get me?"

By which I knew that our remarks upon the frog woman were still
bothering O'Keefe.

"He thinks of foolish nothings like the foolish sailor!" grunted
Marakinoff, acid contempt in his words. "What are their women
to--this?" He swept out a hand and as though at a signal the car
poised itself for an instant, then dipped, literally dipped down into
sheer space; skimmed forward in what was clearly curved flight, rose
as upon a sweeping upgrade and then began swiftly to slacken its
fearful speed.

Far ahead a point of light showed; grew steadily; we were within
it--and softly all movement ceased. How acute had been the strain of
our journey I did not realize until I tried to stand--and sank back,
leg-muscles too shaky to bear my weight. The car rested in a slit in
the centre of a smooth walled chamber perhaps twenty feet square. The
wall facing us was pierced by a low doorway through which we could see
a flight of steps leading downward.

The light streamed through a small opening, the base of which was
twice a tall man's height from the floor. A curving flight of broad,
low steps led up to it. And now it came to my steadying brain that
there was something puzzling, peculiar, strangely unfamiliar about
this light. It was silvery, shaded faintly with a delicate blue and
flushed lightly with a nacreous rose; but a rose that differed from
that of the terraces of the Pool Chamber as the rose within the opal
differs from that within the pearl. In it were tiny, gleaming points
like the motes in a sunbeam, but sparkling white like the dust of
diamonds, and with a quality of vibrant vitality; they were as though
they were alive. The light cast no shadows!

A little breeze came through the oval and played about us. It was
laden with what seemed the mingled breath of spice flowers and pines.
It was curiously vivifying, and in it the diamonded atoms of light
shook and danced.

I stepped out of the car, the Russian following, and began to ascend
the curved steps toward the opening, at the top of which O'Keefe and
Olaf already stood. As they looked out I saw both their faces
change--Olaf's with awe, O'Keefe's with incredulous amaze. I hurried
to their side.

At first all that I could see was space--a space filled with the same
coruscating effulgence that pulsed about me. I glanced upward, obeying
that instinctive impulse of earth folk that bids them seek within the
sky for sources of light. There was no sky--at least no sky such as we
know--all was a sparkling nebulosity rising into infinite distances as
the azure above the day-world seems to fill all the heavens--through
it ran pulsing waves and flashing javelin rays that were like shining
shadows of the aurora; echoes, octaves lower, of those brilliant
arpeggios and chords that play about the poles. My eyes fell beneath
its splendour; I stared outward.

Miles away, gigantic luminous cliffs sprang sheer from the limits of a
lake whose waters were of milky opalescence. It was from these cliffs
that the spangled radiance came, shimmering out from all their
lustrous surfaces. To left and to right, as far as the eye could see,
they stretched--and they vanished in the auroral nebulosity on high!

"Look at that!" exclaimed Larry.  I followed his pointing finger.  On
the face of the shining wall, stretched between two colossal columns,
hung an incredible veil; prismatic, gleaming with all the colours of
the spectrum. It was like a web of rainbows woven by the fingers of
the daughters of the Jinn. In front of it and a little at each side
was a semi-circular pier, or, better, a plaza of what appeared to be
glistening, pale-yellow ivory. At each end of its half-circle
clustered a few low-walled, rose-stone structures, each of them
surmounted by a number of high, slender pinnacles.

We looked at each other, I think, a bit helplessly--and back again
through the opening. We were standing, as I have said, at its base.
The wall in which it was set was at least ten feet thick, and so, of
course, all that we could see of that which was without were the
distances that revealed themselves above the outer ledge of the oval.

"Let's take a look at what's under us," said Larry.

He crept out upon the ledge and peered down, the rest of us following.
A hundred yards beneath us stretched gardens that must have been like
those of many-columned Iram, which the ancient Addite King had built
for his pleasure ages before the deluge, and which Allah, so the Arab
legend tells, took and hid from man, within the Sahara, beyond all
hope of finding--jealous because they were more beautiful than his in
paradise. Within them flowers and groves of laced, fernlike trees,
pillared pavilions nestled.

The trunks of the trees were of emerald, of vermilion, and of
azure-blue, and the blossoms, whose fragrance was borne to us, shone
like jewels. The graceful pillars were tinted delicately. I noted that
the pavilions were double--in a way, two-storied--and that they were
oddly splotched with circles, with squares, and with oblongs
of--opacity; noted too that over many this opacity stretched like a
roof; yet it did not seem material; rather was it--impenetrable
shadow!

Down through this city of gardens ran a broad shining green
thoroughfare, glistening like glass and spanned at regular intervals
with graceful, arched bridges. The road flashed to a wide square,
where rose, from a base of that same silvery stone that formed the lip
of the Moon Pool, a titanic structure of seven terraces; and along it
flitted objects that bore a curious resemblance to the shell of the
Nautilus. Within them were--human figures! And upon tree-bordered
promenades on each side walked others!

Far to the right we caught the glint of another emerald-paved road.

And between the two the gardens grew sweetly down to the hither side
of that opalescent water across which were the radiant cliffs and the
curtain of mystery.

Thus it was that we first saw the city of the Dweller; blessed and
accursed as no place on earth, or under or above earth has ever
been--or, that force willing which some call God, ever again shall be!

"Chert!" whispered Marakinoff.  "Incredible!"

"Trolldom!" gasped Olaf Huldricksson.  "It is Trolldom!"

"Listen, Olaf!" said Larry.  "Cut out that Trolldom stuff! There's no
Trolldom, or fairies, outside Ireland. Get that! And this isn't
Ireland. And, buck up, Professor!" This to Marakinoff. "What you see
down there are people--_just plain people_. And wherever there's people
is where I live. Get me?

"There's no way in but in--and no way out but out," said O'Keefe.
"And there's the stairway. Eggs are eggs no matter how they're
cooked--and people are just people, fellow travellers, no matter what
dish they are in," he concluded. "Come on!"

With the three of us close behind him, he marched toward the entrance.



CHAPTER XIII

Yolara, Priestess of the Shining One

"You'd better have this handy, Doc." O'Keefe paused at the head of the
stairway and handed me one of the automatics he had taken from
Marakinoff.

"Shall I not have one also?" rather anxiously asked the latter.

"When you need it you'll get it," answered O'Keefe.  "I'll tell you
frankly, though, Professor, that you'll have to show me before I trust
you with a gun. You shoot too straight--from cover."

The flash of anger in the Russian's eyes turned to a cold
consideration.

"You say always just what is in your mind, Lieutenant O'Keefe," he
mused. "Da--that I shall remember!" Later I was to recall this odd
observation--and Marakinoff was to remember indeed.

In single file, O'Keefe at the head and Olaf bringing up the rear, we
passed through the portal. Before us dropped a circular shaft, into
which the light from the chamber of the oval streamed liquidly; set in
its sides the steps spiralled, and down them we went, cautiously. The
stairway ended in a circular well; silent--with no trace of exit! The
rounded stones joined each other evenly--hermetically. Carved on one
of the slabs was one of the five flowered vines. I pressed my fingers
upon the calyxes, even as Larry had within the Moon Chamber.

A crack--horizontal, four feet wide--appeared on the wall; widened,
and as the sinking slab that made it dropped to the level of our eyes,
we looked through a hundred-feet-long rift in the living rock! The
stone fell steadily--and we saw that it was a Cyclopean wedge set
within the slit of the passageway. It reached the level of our feet
and stopped. At the far end of this tunnel, whose floor was the
polished rock that had, a moment before, fitted hermetically into its
roof, was a low, narrow triangular opening through which light
streamed.

"Nowhere to go but out!" grinned Larry.  "And I'll bet Golden Eyes is
waiting for us with a taxi!" He stepped forward. We followed,
slipping, sliding along the glassy surface; and I, for one, had a
lively apprehension of what our fate would be should that enormous
mass rise before we had emerged! We reached the end; crept out of the
narrow triangle that was its exit.

We stood upon a wide ledge carpeted with a thick yellow moss.  I
looked behind--and clutched O'Keefe's arm. The door through which we
had come had vanished! There was only a precipice of pale rock, on
whose surfaces great patches of the amber moss hung; around whose base
our ledge ran, and whose summits, if summits it had, were hidden, like
the luminous cliffs, in the radiance above us.

"Nowhere to go but ahead--and Golden Eyes hasn't kept her date!"
laughed O'Keefe--but somewhat grimly.

We walked a few yards along the ledge and, rounding a corner, faced
the end of one of the slender bridges. From this vantage point the
oddly shaped vehicles were plain, and we could see they were, indeed,
like the shell of the Nautilus and elfinly beautiful. Their drivers
sat high upon the forward whorl. Their bodies were piled high with
cushions, upon which lay women half-swathed in gay silken webs. From
the pavilioned gardens smaller channels of glistening green ran into
the broad way, much as automobile runways do on earth; and in and out
of them flashed the fairy shells.

There came a shout from one.  Its occupants had glimpsed us. They
pointed; others stopped and stared; one shell turned and sped up a
runway--and quickly over the other side of the bridge came a score of
men. They were dwarfed--none of them more than five feet high,
prodigiously broad of shoulder, clearly enormously powerful.

"Trolde!" muttered Olaf, stepping beside O'Keefe, pistol swinging free
in his hand.

But at the middle of the bridge the leader stopped, waved back his
men, and came toward us alone, palms outstretched in the immemorial,
universal gesture of truce. He paused, scanning us with manifest
wonder; we returned the scrutiny with interest. The dwarf's face was
as white as Olaf's--far whiter than those of the other three of us;
the features clean-cut and noble, almost classical; the wide set eyes
of a curious greenish grey and the black hair curling over his head
like that on some old Greek statue.

Dwarfed though he was, there was no suggestion of deformity about him.
The gigantic shoulders were covered with a loose green tunic that
looked like fine linen. It was caught in at the waist by a broad
girdle studded with what seemed to be amazonites. In it was thrust a
long curved poniard resembling the Malaysian kris. His legs were
swathed in the same green cloth as the upper garment. His feet were
sandalled.

My gaze returned to his face, and in it I found something subtly
disturbing; an expression of half-malicious gaiety that underlay the
wholly prepossessing features like a vague threat; a mocking deviltry
that hinted at entire callousness to suffering or sorrow; something of
the spirit that was vaguely alien and disquieting.

He spoke--and, to my surprise, enough of the words were familiar to
enable me clearly to catch the meaning of the whole. They were
Polynesian, the Polynesian of the Samoans which is its most ancient
form, but in some indefinable way--archaic. Later I was to know that
the tongue bore the same relation to the Polynesian of today as does
_not_ that of Chaucer, but of the Venerable Bede, to modern English.
Nor was this to be so astonishing, when with the knowledge came the
certainty that it was from it the language we call Polynesian sprang.

"From whence do you come, strangers--and how found you your way here?"
said the green dwarf.

I waved my hand toward the cliff behind us.  His eyes narrowed
incredulously; he glanced at its drop, upon which even a mountain goat
could not have made its way, and laughed.

"We came through the rock," I answered his thought. "And we come in
peace," I added.

"And may peace walk with you," he said half-derisively--"if the
Shining One wills it!"

He considered us again.

"Show me, strangers, where you came through the rock," he commanded.
We led the way to where we had emerged from the well of the stairway.

"It was here," I said, tapping the cliff.

"But I see no opening," he said suavely.

"It closed behind us," I answered; and then, for the first time,
realized how incredible the explanation sounded. The derisive gleam
passed through his eyes again. But he drew his poniard and gravely
sounded the rock.

"You give a strange turn to our speech," he said.  "It sounds
strangely, indeed--as strange as your answers." He looked at us
quizzically. "I wonder where you learned it! Well, all that you can
explain to the Afyo Maie." His head bowed and his arms swept out in a
wide salaam. "Be pleased to come with me!" he ended abruptly.

"In peace?" I asked.

"In peace," he replied--then slowly--"with me at least."

"Oh, come on, Doc!" cried Larry.  "As long as we're here let's see the
sights. Allons mon vieux!" he called gaily to the green dwarf. The
latter, understanding the spirit, if not the words, looked at O'Keefe
with a twinkle of approval; turned then to the great Norseman and
scanned him with admiration; reached out and squeezed one of the
immense biceps.

"Lugur will welcome you, at least," he murmured as though to himself.
He stood aside and waved a hand courteously, inviting us to pass. We
crossed. At the base of the span one of the elfin shells was waiting.

Beyond, scores had gathered, their occupants evidently discussing us
in much excitement. The green dwarf waved us to the piles of cushions
and then threw himself beside us. The vehicle started off smoothly,
the now silent throng making way, and swept down the green roadway at
a terrific pace and wholly without vibration, toward the
seven-terraced tower.

As we flew along I tried to discover the source of the power, but I
could not--then. There was no sign of mechanism, but that the shell
responded to some form of energy was certain--the driver grasping a
small lever which seemed to control not only our speed, but our
direction.

We turned abruptly and swept up a runway through one of the gardens,
and stopped softly before a pillared pavilion. I saw now that these
were much larger than I had thought. The structure to which we had
been carried covered, I estimated, fully an acre. Oblong, with its
slender, vari-coloured columns spaced regularly, its walls were like
the sliding screens of the Japanese--shoji.

The green dwarf hurried us up a flight of broad steps flanked by great
carved serpents, winged and scaled. He stamped twice upon mosaicked
stones between two of the pillars, and a screen rolled aside,
revealing an immense hall scattered about with low divans on which
lolled a dozen or more of the dwarfish men, dressed identically as he.

They sauntered up to us leisurely; the surprised interest in their
faces tempered by the same inhumanly gay malice that seemed to be
characteristic of all these people we had as yet seen.

"The Afyo Maie awaits them, Rador," said one.

The green dwarf nodded, beckoned us, and led the way through the great
hall and into a smaller chamber whose far side was covered with the
opacity I had noted from the aerie of the cliff. I examined
the--blackness--with lively interest.

It had neither substance nor texture; it was not matter--and yet it
suggested solidity; an entire cessation, a complete absorption of
light; an ebon veil at once immaterial and palpable. I stretched,
involuntarily, my hand out toward it, and felt it quickly drawn back.

"Do you seek your end so soon?" whispered Rador.  "But I forget--you
do not know," he added. "On your life touch not the blackness, ever.
It--"

He stopped, for abruptly in the density a portal appeared; swinging
out of the shadow like a picture thrown by a lantern upon a screen.
Through it was revealed a chamber filled with a soft rosy glow. Rising
from cushioned couches, a woman and a man regarded us, half leaning
over a long, low table of what seemed polished jet, laden with flowers
and unfamiliar fruits.

About the room--that part of it, at least, that I could see--were a
few oddly shaped chairs of the same substance. On high, silvery
tripods three immense globes stood, and it was from them that the rose
glow emanated. At the side of the woman was a smaller globe whose
roseate gleam was tempered by quivering waves of blue.

"Enter Rador with the strangers!" a clear, sweet voice called.

Rador bowed deeply and stood aside, motioning us to pass.  We entered,
the green dwarf behind us, and out of the corner of my eye I saw the
doorway fade as abruptly as it had appeared and again the dense shadow
fill its place.

"Come closer, strangers.  Be not afraid!" commanded the bell-toned
voice.

We approached.

The woman, sober scientist that I am, made the breath catch in my
throat. Never had I seen a woman so beautiful as was Yolara of the
Dweller's city--and none of so perilous a beauty. Her hair was of the
colour of the young tassels of the corn and coiled in a regal crown
above her broad, white brows; her wide eyes were of grey that could
change to a cornflower blue and in anger deepen to purple; grey or
blue, they had little laughing devils within them, but when the storm
of anger darkened them--they were not laughing, no! The silken webs
that half covered, half revealed her did not hide the ivory whiteness
of her flesh nor the sweet curve of shoulders and breasts. But for all
her amazing beauty, she was--sinister! There was cruelty about the
curving mouth, and in the music of her voice--not conscious cruelty,
but the more terrifying, careless cruelty of nature itself.

The girl of the rose wall had been beautiful, yes!  But her beauty was
human, understandable. You could imagine her with a babe in her
arms--but you could not so imagine this woman. About her loveliness
hovered something unearthly. A sweet feminine echo of the Dweller was
Yolara, the Dweller's priestess--and as gloriously, terrifyingly evil!



CHAPTER XIV

The Justice of Lora

As I looked at her the man arose and made his way round the table
toward us. For the first time my eyes took in Lugur. A few inches
taller than the green dwarf, he was far broader, more filled with the
suggestion of appalling strength.

The tremendous shoulders were four feet wide if an inch, tapering down
to mighty thewed thighs. The muscles of his chest stood out beneath
his tunic of red. Around his forehead shone a chaplet of bright-blue
stones, sparkling among the thick curls of his silver-ash hair.

Upon his face pride and ambition were written large--and power still
larger. All the mockery, the malice, the hint of callous indifference
that I had noted in the other dwarfish men were there, too--but
intensified, touched with the satanic.

The woman spoke again.

"Who are you strangers, and how came you here?"  She turned to Rador.
"Or is it that they do not understand our tongue?"

"One understands and speaks it--but very badly, O Yolara," answered
the green dwarf.

"Speak, then, that one of you," she commanded.

But it was Marakinoff who found his voice first, and I marvelled at
the fluency, so much greater than mine, with which he spoke.

"We came for different purposes.  I to seek knowledge of a kind;
he"--pointing to me "of another. This man"--he looked at Olaf--"to
find a wife and child."

The grey-blue eyes had been regarding O'Keefe steadily and with
plainly increasing interest.

"And why did _you_ come?" she asked him.  "Nay--I would have him speak
for himself, if he can," she stilled Marakinoff peremptorily.

When Larry spoke it was haltingly, in the tongue that was strange to
him, searching for the proper words.

"I came to help these men--and because something I could not then
understand called me, O lady, whose eyes are like forest pools at
dawn," he answered; and even in the unfamiliar words there was a touch
of the Irish brogue, and little merry lights danced in the eyes Larry
had so apostrophized.

"I could find fault with your speech, but none with its burden," she
said. "What forest pools are I know not, and the dawn has not shone
upon the people of Lora these many sais of laya.[1] But I sense what you
mean!"

The eyes deepened to blue as she regarded him.  She smiled.

"Are there many like you in the world from which you come?" she asked
softly. "Well, we soon shall--"

Lugur interrupted her almost rudely and glowering.

"Best we should know how they came hence," he growled.

She darted a quick look at him, and again the little devils danced in
her wondrous eyes.


[Unquestionably there is a subtle difference between time as we know it
and time in this subterranean land--its progress there being slower.
This, however, is only in accord with the well-known doctrine of
relativity, which predicates both space and time as necessary
inventions of the human mind to orient itself to the conditions under
which it finds itself. I tried often to measure this difference, but
could never do so to my entire satisfaction. The closest I can come to
it is to say that an hour of our time is the equivalent of an hour and
five-eighths in Muria. For further information upon this matter of
relativity the reader may consult any of the numerous books upon the
subject.--W. T. G.]


"Yes, that is true," she said.  "How came you here?"

Again it was Marakinoff who answered--slowly, considering every word.

"In the world above," he said, "there are ruins of cities not built by
any of those who now dwell there. To us these places called, and we
sought for knowledge of the wise ones who made them. We found a
passageway. The way led us downward to a door in yonder cliff, and
through it we came here."

"Then have you found what you sought?" spoke she.  "For we are of
those who built the cities. But this gateway in the rock--where is
it?"

"After we passed, it closed upon us; nor could we after find trace of
it," answered Marakinoff.

The incredulity that had shown upon the face of the green dwarf fell
upon theirs; on Lugur's it was clouded with furious anger.

He turned to Rador.

"I could find no opening, lord," said the green dwarf quickly.

And there was so fierce a fire in the eyes of Lugur as he swung back
upon us that O'Keefe's hand slipped stealthily down toward his pistol.

"Best it is to speak truth to Yolara, priestess of the Shining One,
and to Lugur, the Voice," he cried menacingly.

"It is the truth," I interposed.  "We came down the passage.  At its
end was a carved vine, a vine of five flowers"--the fire died from the
red dwarf's eyes, and I could have sworn to a swift pallor. "I rested
a hand upon these flowers, and a door opened. But when we had gone
through it and turned, behind us was nothing but unbroken cliff. The
door had vanished."

I had taken my cue from Marakinoff.  If he had eliminated the episode
of car and Moon Pool, he had good reason, I had no doubt; and I would
be as cautious. And deep within me something cautioned me to say
nothing of my quest; to stifle all thought of Throckmartin--something
that warned, peremptorily, finally, as though it were a message from
Throckmartin himself!

"A vine with five flowers!" exclaimed the red dwarf.  "Was it like
this, say?"

He thrust forward a long arm.  Upon the thumb of the hand was an
immense ring, set with a dull-blue stone. Graven on the face of the
jewel was the symbol of the rosy walls of the Moon Chamber that had
opened to us their two portals. But cut over the vine were seven
circles, one about each of the flowers and two larger ones covering,
intersecting them.

"This is the same," I said; "but these were not there"--I indicated
the circles.

The woman drew a deep breath and looked deep into Lugur's eyes.

"The sign of the Silent Ones!" he half whispered.

It was the woman who first recovered herself.

"The strangers are weary, Lugur," she said.  "When they are rested
they shall show where the rocks opened."

I sensed a subtle change in their attitude toward us; a new
intentness; a doubt plainly tinged with apprehension. What was it they
feared? Why had the symbol of the vine wrought the change? And who or
what were the Silent Ones?

Yolara's eyes turned to Olaf, hardened, and grew cold grey.
Subconsciously I had noticed that from the first the Norseman had been
absorbed in his regard of the pair; had, indeed, never taken his gaze
from them; had noticed, too, the priestess dart swift glances toward
him.

He returned her scrutiny fearlessly, a touch of contempt in the clear
eyes--like a child watching a snake which he did not dread, but whose
danger be well knew.

Under that look Yolara stirred impatiently, sensing, I know, its
meaning.

"Why do you look at me so?" she cried.

An expression of bewilderment passed over Olaf's face.

"I do not understand," he said in English.

I caught a quickly repressed gleam in O'Keefe's eyes.  He knew, as I
knew, that Olaf must have understood. But did Marakinoff?

Apparently he did not.  But why was Olaf feigning ignorance?

"This man is a sailor from what we call the North," thus Larry
haltingly. "He is crazed, I think. He tells a strange tale of a
something of cold fire that took his wife and babe. We found him
wandering where we were. And because he is strong we brought him with
us. That is all, O lady, whose voice is sweeter than the honey of the
wild bees!"

"A shape of cold fire?" she repeated.

"A shape of cold fire that whirled beneath the moon, with the sound of
little bells," answered Larry, watching her intently.

She looked at Lugur and laughed.

"Then he, too, is fortunate," she said.  "For he has come to the place
of his something of cold fire--and tell him that he shall join his
wife and child, in time; that I promise him."

Upon the Norseman's face there was no hint of comprehension, and at
that moment I formed an entirely new opinion of Olaf's intelligence;
for certainly it must have been a prodigious effort of the will,
indeed, that enabled him, understanding, to control himself.

"What does she say?" he asked.

Larry repeated.

"Good!" said Olaf.  "Good!"

He looked at Yolara with well-assumed gratitude.  Lugur, who had been
scanning his bulk, drew close. He felt the giant muscles which
Huldricksson accommodatingly flexed for him.

"But he shall meet Valdor and Tahola before he sees those kin of his,"
he laughed mockingly. "And if he bests them--for reward--his wife and
babe!"

A shudder, quickly repressed, shook the seaman's frame. The woman bent
her supremely beautiful head.

"These two," she said, pointing to the Russian and to me, "seem to be
men of learning. They may be useful. As for this man,"--she smiled at
Larry--"I would have him explain to me some things." She hesitated.
"What 'hon-ey of 'e wild bees-s' is." Larry had spoken the words in
English, and she was trying to repeat them. "As for this man, the
sailor, do as you please with him, Lugur; always remembering that I
have given my word that he shall join that wife and babe of his!" She
laughed sweetly, sinisterly. "And now--take them, Rador--give them
food and drink and let them rest till we shall call them again."

She stretched out a hand toward O'Keefe.  The Irishman bowed low over
it, raised it softly to his lips. There was a vicious hiss from Lugur;
but Yolara regarded Larry with eyes now all tender blue.

"You please me," she whispered.

And the face of Lugur grew darker.

We turned to go.  The rosy, azure-shot globe at her side suddenly
dulled. From it came a faint bell sound as of chimes far away. She
bent over it. It vibrated, and then its surface ran with little waves
of dull colour; from it came a whispering so low that I could not
distinguish the words--if words they were.

She spoke to the red dwarf.

"They have brought the three who blasphemed the Shining One," she said
slowly. "Now it is in my mind to show these strangers the justice of
Lora. What say you, Lugur?"

The red dwarf nodded, his eyes sparkling with a malicious
anticipation.

The woman spoke again to the globe.  "Bring them here!"

And again it ran swiftly with its film of colours, darkened, and shone
rosy once more. From without there came a rustle of many feet upon the
rugs. Yolara pressed a slender hand upon the base of the pedestal of
the globe beside her. Abruptly the light faded from all, and on the
same instant the four walls of blackness vanished, revealing on two
sides the lovely, unfamiliar garden through the guarding rows of
pillars; at our backs soft draperies hid what lay beyond; before us,
flanked by flowered screens, was the corridor through which we had
entered, crowded now by the green dwarfs of the great hall.

The dwarfs advanced.  Each, I now noted, had the same clustering black

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