Читать бесплатно онлайн книгу  The Moon Pool

автор Abraham Merritt

To
Robert H. Davis
In ap­pre­ci­ation, among many other things, for Larry O’Keefe’s faith in the fair­ies.

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, PhD., 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

The Moon Pool

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 shoreline 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.

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 wa­ter­front 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, straight­way 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.”

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 sea­wall, 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 pas­sage­way 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 sea­wall 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 sea­wall, built up of mono­liths—hewn and squared, twenty feet wide at the top. To get to the gate­way in the sea­wall 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 sea­wall 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 hair­line. 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!”

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.

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 porthole. 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!

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 blood­stained 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!