The Moon Pool
by A. Merritt
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman

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 scan-
dalous suspicions which have threatened to stain the repu-
tations 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 ex-
periences, 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 under-
stood by the layman the stenographic notes of Dr. Good-
win's own report to the Council, supplemented by further
oral reminiscences and comments by Dr. Goodwin; this
transcription, edited and censored by the Executive Coun-
cil 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 reputa-
tion 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 or-
ganization 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 con-
tains, 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

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 sur-
prise, 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 pos-
sible, 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 Swed-
ish woman, Thora Halversen, who had been Edith Throck-
martin's nurse from babyhood, they had set forth for the
Nan-Matal, that extraordinary group of island ruins clus-
tered 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 involun-
tary 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 Throck-
martin'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 de-
liverance 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 dis-
quieting 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 hori-
zon, 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 cigar-
ette 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 ser-
pent 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 bor-
dered 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, un-
familiar 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 be-
tween 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 move-
ment 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 jubi-
lantly--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 trans-
lated 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 irre-
sistible 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 to-
gether. 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 sem-
blance of normality.

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

"Yes," said the mate. "Probably all the way to Mel-
bourne."

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.

*1 For more detailed observations on these points refer to G. Volkens,
Uber die Karolinen Insel Yap, in Verhandlungen Gesellschaft Erd-
kunde 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.

"I believed that under these ruins I might find the evi-
dence 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 induce-
ments 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 super-
stitious 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, fear-
fully. 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 enclo-
sures of stonework; its wonder of tortuous alleyways and
labyrinth of shallow canals; grim masses of stonework peer-
ing 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 con-
versation 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."

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 in-
fected 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 su-
perstitions of the Northland--some of them so strangely akin
to those of this far southern land; beliefs of spirits of moun-
tain 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 doubt-
fully. 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 fes-
tival--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 re-
lief, 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 re-
peated 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, ap-
parently. 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 super-
natural.

"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 ex-
perienced, hearing the unfamiliar sounds. Thora's nervous-
ness, 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 im-
mediately 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 con-
vinced, 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, rec-
tangular, 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 en-
closure 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 treas-
ure-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 no-
ticed was the exquisite nicety with which its edges joined the
blocks about it. Then I realized that its colour was subtly dif-
ferent--tinged with grey and of a smooth, peculiar--dead-
ness.

"'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--de-
scribes 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 hap-
pened 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 con-
vexity, 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 chis-
eled 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 touch-
ing 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 com-
bination 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 some-
thing 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 hu-
man 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--un-
easily, and faced Thora coming through a breach on the ter-
race.

'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 ob-
served 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 what-
ever 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 listen-
ing; and turned toward the gateway. There was infinite des-
pair 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, 'to-
gether we went to my wife, now standing beside the great
stone steps, looking up fearfully at the gateway into the ter-
races. 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 to-
ward 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 re-
sisted 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 disap-
pearance were linked with secret religious rites of the na-
tives, 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 coin-
cidence 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 in-
tently 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 moon-
light 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 un-
imaginable! 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 crys-
talline music swelled. Where I sat I could take in the gate-
way 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 ten-
tacles, 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 un-
scalable wall and to its top. The glow faded from the moon-
light, 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 en-
closure. 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 shin-
ing 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 moon-
rays, 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 ter-
race. 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 bear, 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 appeal-
ingly.

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 inter-
rupted. 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 fol-
low 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 moon-
light in the courtyard. And this glow grew for at least ten
minutes more before the first burst of the crystal notes. In-
deed, 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 what-
ever 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 wave-
lets 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 ab-
ruptly, 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 glimmer-
ing 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 be-
gan 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 bright-
ness 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, glimmer-
ings. 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 sub-
stance. 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 con-
ceal 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 be-
lieved--and yet--

"Over the head of the misty body there sprang suddenly
out seven little lights. Each was the colour of the beam be-
neath 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 crys-
tal 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 bear it, Goodwin--" He
fell upon his berth. I bent over him. Exhaustion and the re-
lief 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 ar-
rangement 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 hap-
pening--to me. And if I lose--you'll come after us, Good-
win, 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 through-
out the ship, for I heard shoutings above.

Throckmartin still stood at the open port. Over his shoul-
der I saw a gleaming pillar racing along the moon path to-
ward 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 black-
ness. 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 Throck-
martin 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 wak-
ing 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? Cer-
tainly 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 deter-
mined 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 ex-
tinguishment. 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, com-
mented 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 Mel-
bourne. 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 Uni-
versity 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 Throck-
martin, the happenings I had myself witnessed, were in-
credible, 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 be-
fore the ship I awaited steamed into port. By that time, be-
tween 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 knowl-
edge 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 crouch-
ing 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 striv-
ing 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 cap-
tain and owner of the Br-rwun'ild. His name Olaf Huldricks-
son, 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 hun-
dred 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 emerg-
ency 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 Hul-
dricksson 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 in-
comprehension. "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 Huldricks-
son, "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 mor-
phine. 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 be-
gan 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 re-
sumed 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 Huldricks-
son'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 with-
out 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 Brun-
hilda, 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 high-
est point of the wreckage sat a tall figure calmly smoking a
cigarette.

We brought the Suwarna to, dropped a boat, and with my-
self 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 ban-
shee 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 per-
fectly 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 soft-
ened 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 laugh-
ing 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 curi-
osity 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 nos-
ing 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 hesi-
tated. "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 under-
take 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 op-
portunity 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 breath-
ing 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 border-
land 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