Thursday's Serial: "The Moon Pool" by A. Merritt (in English) II

CHAPTER IV - The First Vanishings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                "Stanton awoke.

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

                "Edith caught my hands.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                A deep tremor shook him. I waited - waited.

               

CHAPTER V - Into the Moon Pool

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                Abruptly Throckmartin held his hands out to me appealingly.

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

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

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

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

                "I wept, Walter. We both wept.

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

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

                "You do believe then?" he exclaimed.

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

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

                I promised.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                "And out from the Inexplicable swept a shining spiral.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                And again I promised.

                A little later he complained of increasing sleepiness.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                But of Throckmartin there was no trace!

CHAPTER VI - "The Shining Devil Took Them!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                "Sail he b'long port side!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                I looked from him to the man on the bed.

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

                I looked at him, uneasily.

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

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

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

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

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

                And yet - what was it the Norseman had said?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                "The what?" I asked in amazement.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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