 Chapter 7 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 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 Suvarna, and I was forced to curb my curiosity until we reached the deck. "'That thing you saw me sitting on,' he said, after he had thanked the bowing little skipper for his rescue, was all that was left of one of his majesty's best little hydro-airplanes after that cyclone threw it off as excess baggage. And by the way, about where are we?' D'Costa gave him our approximate position from the noon reckoning. O'Keefe whistled. "'A good three hundred miles from where I left the HMS 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 had been yearning for a joy-ride and went up for an alleged scouting trip. Then that blow-shout 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.' "'Doctor Goodwin,' said D'Costa. We could change our course, sir, perhaps.' "'Thanks, but not a bit of it,' broke in O'Keefe. Lord alone knows where the Dolphin is now. Maybe she'll be nosing around looking for me. Anyway, she's just as apt to run into you as you into her. Maybe we'll strike something with a wireless and I'll trouble you to put me aboard.' He hesitated. "'Where are you bound, by the way?' he asked. "'For Ponnape,' I answered. "'No wireless there,' mused O'Keefe. Beasley whole. Stopped a week ago for fruit. O'Keefe seems scared to death at us, or something. What are you going there for?' D'Costa darted a furtive glance at me. It troubled me. O'Keefe noted my hesitation. "'Oh, I beg your pardon,' he said. Maybe I oughtn't to have asked that.' "'It's no secret, Lieutenant,' I replied. I'm about to undertake some exploration work, a little digging among the ruins on the non-Mattal. I looked at the Portuguese sharply as I named the place. A pallor crept beneath his skin, and again he made swiftly the sign of the cross, glancing as he did so fearfully to the north. I made up my mind then to question him when opportunity came. He turned from his quick scrutiny of the sea and addressed O'Keefe. "'There's nothing on board to feed 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 D'Costa's cabin, I softly opened the door of my own and listened. Haldrickson was breathing deeply and regularly. I drew my electric flash and, shielding its rays from my face, looked at him. His sleep was changing from the heavy stupor of the drug into one that was at least on the borderland of the normal. The tongue had lost its arid blackness and the mouth secretions had resumed action. Satisfied as to his condition, I returned to deck. O'Keefe was there, looking like a specter 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, D'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 toe but had asked no questions. You're not the only passenger we picked up to-day, I told him. We found the captain of that sloop lashed to his wheel, nearly dead with exhaustion, and his boat deserted by everyone except himself. What was the matter? asked O'Keefe in astonishment. We don't know, I answered. He fought us and I had to drug him before we could get him loose from his lashings. He's sleeping down in my berth now. His wife and little girl ought to have been on board, the captain here says, but they weren't. Wife and child gone, exclaimed O'Keefe. From the condition of his mouth he must have been alone at the wheel and without water at least two days and nights before we found him, I replied. And as for looking for anyone on these waters after such a time, it's hopeless. That's true, said O'Keefe, but his wife and baby, poor, poor devil! He was silent for a time, and then, at my solicitation, began to tell us more of himself. He had been little more than twenty when he had won his wings and entered the war. He had been seriously wounded at Eep during the third year of the struggle, and when he recovered the war was over. Shortly after that his mother had died. Lonely and restless he had re-entered the air service and had remained in it ever since. And though the war is long over, I get homesick for the Lark's land, with the German planes playing tunes under machine guns and their arches tickling the soles of my feet, he sighed. If you're in love, love to the limit, and if you hate, why hate like the devil, and if it's a fight you're in, get where it's hottest and fight like hell. If you don't, life's not worth the living, sighed he. I watched him as he talked, feeling my liking for him steadily increasing. If I could but have a man like this beside me on the path of unknown peril upon which I had set my feet, I thought wistfully. We sat and smoked a bit, sipping the strong coffee the Portuguese made so well. Tacosta at last relieved the Cantonese at the wheel. O'Keefe and I drew chairs up to the rail. The brighter stars shone out dimly through a hazy sky. Gleams of phosphorescence tipped the crests of the waves, and sparkled with an almost angry brilliance as the bow of the suorna tossed them aside. O'Keefe pulled contentedly at a cigarette. The glowing spark lighted the keen boyish face and the blue eyes, now black and brooding under the spell of the tropic night. Are you American or Irish, O'Keefe? I asked suddenly. Why, he laughed. Because, I answered, from your name and your service I would suppose you Irish, but your command of pure Americanese makes me doubtful. He grinned amiably. I'll tell you how that is, he said. My mother was an American, a grace of Virginia. My father was the O'Keefe of Coloraine, and these two loved each other so well that the heart they gave me is half Irish and half American. My father died when I was sixteen. I used to go to the States with my mother every other year for a month or two. But after my father died we used to go to Ireland every other year. And there you are. I'm as much American as I am Irish. When I'm in love, or excited, or dreaming, or mad, I have the brogue. But for the everyday purpose of life I like the United States talk, and I know Broadway as well as I do Benvenal Lane, and the sound as well as St. Patrick's Channel. Educated a bit at Eaton, a bit at Harvard. Always too much money to have to make any. In love lots of times, and never a heartache after that wasn't a pleasant one, and never a real purpose in life until I took the King's shilling and earned my wings. I'm over thirty, and that's me, Larry O'Keefe. But it was the Irish O'Keefe who sat out there waiting for the Banshee, I laughed. It was that, he said somberly, and I heard the brogue creep over his voice like velvet, and his eyes grew brooding again. Ter's never an OK for these thousand years that has passed without his warning. And twice have I heard the Banshee calling. Once it was when my younger brother died, and once when my father lay waiting to be carried out to the Abtide. He mused a moment, then went on. And once I saw an inner choyle, a girl of the green people, flit like a shade of green fire through the current tougher woods. And once at Duncraig, I slept where the ashes of the Dun of Karmac Macconkabur are mixed with those of Karmac and Ailid the Fair, all burned in the nine flames that sprang from the harping of cravitine, and I heard the echo of his dead harpings. He paused again, and then, softly, with that curiously sweet, high voice that only the Irish seemed to have, he sang, Woman of the white breast-cilid, woman of the gold-brown hair, and lips of the red-red rowan, where is the swan that is whiter, with breast more soft, or to wave on the sea that moved as thou movest, Ailid? I know the psychology of the gale is a curious one, and that deep in all their hearts their ancient traditions and beliefs have strong and living roots. And I was both amused and touched. Here was this soldier, who had faced war in its ugly realities, open-eyed and fearless, picking, indeed, the most dangerous branch of the service for his own, a modern, if ever there was one, appreciative of the most unmystical Broadway, and yet soberly and earnestly attesting to his belief in Banshee, in shadowy people of the woods, and phantom harpers. I wondered what he would think if he could see the dweller, and then, with a pang, that perhaps his superstitions might make him an easy prey. He shook his head half impatiently, and ran a hand over his eyes, turned to me, and grinned. Don't think I'm crack, Professor, he said, I'm not, but it takes me that way now and then. It's the Irish in me, and believe it or not, I'm telling you the truth. I looked eastward, where the moon, now nearly a week past the full, was mounting. It can't make me see what you've seen, Lieutenant, I laughed. But you can make me hear. I've always wondered what kind of a noise a disembodied spirit could make without any vocal cords or breath or any other earthly sound-producing mechanism. How does the banshee sound? O'Keefe looked at me seriously. All right, he said, I'll show you. From deep down in his throat came first a low, weird sobbing that mounted steadily into a keening whose mournfulness made my skin creep. Then his hand shot out and gripped my shoulder, and I stiffened like stone in my chair. For from behind us, like an echo, and then taking up the cry, felt a wail that seemed to hold within it a sublimation of the sorrows of centuries. It gathered itself into one heartbroken, sobbing note and died away. O'Keefe's grip loosened, and he rose swiftly to his feet. It's all right, Professor, he said. It's for me. It found me all this way from Ireland. Again the silence was rent by the cry. But now I had located it. It came from my room, and it could mean only one thing—Haldrickson had wakened. Forget your banshee, I gasped, and made a jump for the cabin. Out of the corner of my eye I noted a look of half-sheepish relief flit over O'Keefe's face, and then he was beside me. Takasta shouted in order from the wheel, the Cantonese ran up and took it from his hands, and the little Portuguese pattered down toward us. My hand on the door, ready to throw it open, I stopped. What if the dweller were within? What if we had been wrong, and it was not dependent for its power upon that full flood of moon-ray which Throckmarten had thought essential to draw it from the blue pool? From within the sobbing wail began once more to rise. O'Keefe pushed me aside, threw open the door, and crouched low within it. I saw an automatic flash dully in his hand. Saw it cover the cabin from side to side, following the swift sweep of his eyes around it. Then he straightened, and his face, turned toward the berth, was filled with wondering pity. Through the window streamed a shaft of the moonlight. It fell upon Haldrickson's staring eyes. In them great tears slowly gathered and rolled down his cheeks. From his open mouth came the woe-laden wailing. I ran to the port and drew the curtains. D'Costa snapped the lights. The Norseman's dullerous crying stopped as abruptly as though cut. His gaze rolled toward us, and at one bound he broke through the leashes I had buckled round him and faced us, his eyes glaring, his yellow hair almost erect with the force of the rage visibly surging through him. D'Costa shrunk behind me. O'Keefe, coolly watchful, took a quick step that brought him in front of me. Where do you take me? said Haldrickson, and his voice was like the growl of a beast. Where is my boat? I touched O'Keefe gently and stood before the giant. Listen, Olaf Haldrickson, I said. We take you to where the sparkling devil took your Helma and your Frida. We followed the sparkling devil that came down from the moon. Do you hear me? I spoke slowly, distinctly, striving to pierce the mists that I knew swirled around the strained brain. And the words did pierce. He thrust out a shaking hand. You say you follow? He asked falteringly. You know where to follow? Where it took my Helma and my little Frida? Just that, Olaf Haldrickson, I answered. Just that. I pledge you my life that I know. D'Costa stepped forward. He speaks true, Olaf. You go faster on the Suvarna than on the Brunhilda, Olaf, yes. The giant Norseman, still gripping my hand, looked at him. I know you, D'Costa, he muttered. You are all right, yeah. You are a fair man. Where is the Brunhilda? She followed behind on a big rope, Olaf, sued the Portuguese. Soon you see her, but now lie down and tell us, if you can, why you tie yourself to your wheel and what it is that happened, Olaf. If you'll tell us how the sparkling devil came, it will help us all when we get to where it is, Haldrickson, I said. On O'Keeffe's face there was an expression of well-nigh ludicrous doubt and amazement. He glanced from one to the other. The giant shifted his own tense look from me to the Irishman. A gleam of approval lighted in his eyes. He loosed me and gripped O'Keeffe's arm. Stark, he said, yeah, strong, and with a strong heart. A man, yeah, he comes to, we shall need him, yeah. I tell, he muttered, and seated himself on the side of the bunk. It was four nights ago. My Frida, his voice shook, mine yinling, she loved the moonlight. I was at the wheel, and my Frida and my Elma, they were behind me. The moon was behind us, and the Brunhilda was like a swan boat sailing down with the moonlight, sending her, yeah. I heard my Frida say, I see Anissa coming down the track of the moon, and I hear her mother laugh, low, like a mother does when her yinling dreams. I was happy, that night, with my Elma and my Frida, and the Brunhilda sailing like a swan boat, yeah. I heard the child say, Anissa comes fast, and then I heard a scream from my Elma, a great scream like a mare when her fold is torn from her. I spun around fast, yeah. I dropped the wheel, and spun fast. I saw... He covered his eyes with his hands. The Portuguese had crept close to me, and I heard him panting like a frightened dog. I saw a white fire spring over the rail, whispered Olaf Haldrickson. It whirled round and round, and it shone like, like stars in a whirlwind mist. There was a noise in my ears. It sounded like bells, little bells, yeah, like the music you make when you run your finger round goblets. It made me sick and dizzy, the hell noise. My Elma was, in de Hulde, what you say, in the middle of the white fire. She turned her face to me, and she turned it on the child, and my Elma's face burned into my heart, because it was full of fear, and it was full of happiness, of glade. I tell you that the fear in my Elma's face made me ice here. He beat his breast with a clenched hand. But the happiness in it burned on me like fire, and I could not move. I could not move. I said, in here, he touched his head. I said, it is Loki come out of hell-bed. But he cannot take my Elma, for Christ leaves, and Loki has no power to hurt my Elma or my Frida. Christ leaves, Christ leaves, I said. But the sparkling devil do not let my Elma go. It drew her to the rail, half over it. I saw her eyes upon the child, and the little she broke away and reached to it. And my Frida jumped into her arms, and the fire wrapped them both, and they were gone. A little I saw them whirling on the moon-track behind the Brunhilde, and they were gone. The sparkling devil took them. Loki was loosed, and he had the power. I turned the Brunhilde, and I followed where my Elma and my Nienling had gone. My boys crept up and asked me to turn again, but I would not. They dropped a boat and left me. I steered straight on the path. I lashed my hands to the wheel, that sleep might not lose them. I steered on, and on, and on. Where was the god I prayed when my wife and child were taken? cried Olaf Haldrickson. And it was as though I heard Throckmarten asking that same bitter question. I have left him, as he left me, ya! I pray now to Tor and to Odin, who can fetch her, Loki!" He sank back, covering again his eyes. "'Olof,' I said, "'what you have called the sparkling devil has taken one's dear to me. I too was following it when we found you. You shall go with me to its home, and there we will try to take from it your wife and your child and my friends as well. But now, that you may be strong for what is before us, you must sleep again.' Olaf Haldrickson looked upon me, and in his eyes was that something which souls must see, in the eyes of him and the old Egyptians called the searcher of hearts in the judgment hall of Osiris. "'You speak a truth,' he said at last, slowly. "'I will do what you say.' He stretched out an arm at my bidding. I gave him a second injection. He lay back, and soon he was sleeping. I turned toward D'Costa. His face was livid and sweating, and he was trembling pitiably. O'Keefe stirred." "'You did that mighty well, Dr. Goodwin,' he said. So well, that I almost believed you, myself.' "'What did you think of his story, Mr. O'Keefe?' I asked. His answer was almost painfully brief and colloquial. "'Nuts,' he said. I was a little shocked, I admit. I think he's crazy, Dr. Goodwin,' he corrected himself quickly. What else could I think?' I turned to the little Portuguese without answering. "'There's no need for any anxiety tonight, Captain,' I said. "'Take my word for it. You need some rest yourself. Shall I give you a sleeping draught?' "'I do wish you would, Dr. Goodwin, sir,' he answered gratefully. "'Tomorrow, when I feel better, I would have a talk with you.' I nodded. He did know something then. I mixed him an opiate of considerable strength. He took it and went to his own cabin. I locked the door behind him, and then, sitting beside the sleeping Norseman, I told O'Keefe my story from end to end. He asked few questions as I spoke. But after I had finished, he cross-examined me rather minutely upon my recollections of the radiant phases upon each appearance, checking these with Throckmarten's observations of the same phenomena in the chamber of the moon-pool. "'And now what do you think of it all?' I asked. He sat silent for a while, looking at Haldricksson. "'Not what you seem to think, Dr. Goodwin,' he answered at last, gravely. "'Let me sleep over it. One thing, of course, is certain. You and your friend Throckmarten and this man here saw something. But...' He was silent again, and then continued with a kindness that I found vaguely irritating. "'But I have noticed that when a scientist gets superstitious, it, er, takes very hard.' "'Here's a few things I can tell you now, though,' he went on while I struggled to speak. "'I pray in my heart that we'll meet neither the dolphin nor anything with wireless on board going up, because, Dr. Goodwin, I dearly love to take a crack at your dweller.' "'And another thing,' said O'Keefe. "'After this, cut out the Trimmins, Doc, and call me plain Larry, for whether I think you're crazy or whether I don't, you're there with the narrow professor, and I'm for you.' "'Goodnight,' said Larry, and took himself out to the deck hammock he had insisted upon having slung for him, refusing the captain's importunities to use his own cabin. And it was with extremely mixed emotions as to his compliment that I watched him go. Superstitious. I, whose pride was my scientific devotion to fact and fact alone. Superstitious. And this from a man who believed in banshees and ghostly harpers, and Irish wood-nymphs, and no doubt in leprechauns and all their tribe. Half laughing, half irritated, and wholly happy, and even the part promise of Larry O'Keefe's comradeship on my venture, I arranged a couple of pillows, stretched myself out on two chairs, and took up my vigil beside Olaf Haldrickson. CHAPTER IX A LOST PAGE OF EARTH When I awakened the sun was streaming through the cabin porthole, outside a fresh voice lilted. I lay on my two chairs and listened. The song was one with the wholesome sunshine and the breeze blowing stiffly and whipping the curtains. It was Larry O'Keefe at his maintenance. The little red lark is shaking his wings, straight from the breast of his love he springs. Larry's voice soared. As wings and his father's are sunrise red, he hails the sun and his golden head. Good morning, doc, you were long a bed. His last was a most irreverent interpolation I well knew. I opened my door. O'Keefe stood outside, laughing. The Suvarna, her engine silent, was making fine headway under all sail, the Brunhilda skipping in her wake cheerfully with half her canvas up. The sea was crisping and dimpling under the wind. Blue and white was the world as far as the eye could reach. Girls of little silvery green flying fish broke through the water rushing on each side of us, flashed for an instant and were gone. Behind us gulls hovered and dipped. The shadow of mystery had retreated far over the rim of this wide awake and beautiful world, and if, subconsciously, I knew that somewhere it was brooding and waiting, for a little while at least, I was consciously free of its oppression. How's the patient? asked O'Keefe. He was answered by Haldricks and himself, who must have risen just as I left the cabin. The Norsemen had slipped on a pair of pajamas, and giant torso naked under the sun he strode out upon us. We all of us looked at him a trifle anxiously. But Olaf's madness had left him. In his eyes was much sorrow, but the berserk rage was gone. He spoke straight to me. You said last night we follow? I nodded. It is where? He asked again. We go first upon a pay, and from there to Metellanum Harbour, to the Nan-Metal. You know the place? Haldricks enboughed, a white gleam of ice showing in his blue eyes. It is there? He asked. It is there, that we must first search, I answered. Good! said Olaf Haldricksen. Eat his good! He looked at Dacosta inquiringly, and the little Portuguese, following his thought, answered his unspoken question. We should be upon a pay tomorrow morning early, Olaf. Good! repeated the Norsemen. He looked away, his eyes tear-filled. A restraint fell upon us. The embarrassment all men experience when they feel a great sympathy and a great pity, to neither of which they quite know how to give expression. By silent consent we discussed at breakfast only the most casual topics. When the meal was over, Haldricksen expressed a desire to go aboard the Brunhilda. The Suvarna Hove, too, and Dacosta and he dropped into the small boat. When they reached the Brunhilda's deck I saw Olaf take the wheel and the two fall into Ernest's talk. I beckoned to O'Keefe, and we stretched ourselves out on the bow hatch under cover of the fossil. He'd lighted a cigarette, took a couple of leisurely puffs, and looked at me expectantly. Well, I asked. Well, said O'Keefe, suppose you tell me what you think, and then I'll proceed to point out your scientific errors. His eyes twinkled mischievously. "'Larry,' I replied, somewhat severely. You may not know that I have a scientific reputation, which, putting aside all modesty, I may say is an enviable one. You used a word last night to which I must interpose serious objection. You more than hinted that I hid, superstitions. Let me inform you, Larry O'Keefe, that I am solely a seeker, observer, analyst, and synthesis of facts. I am not,' and I tried to make my tone as pointed as my words, "'I am not a believer in phantoms or spooks, leprechauns, banshees, or ghostly harpers.' O'Keefe leaned back and shouted with laughter. "'Forgive me, Goodwin,' he gasped, but if you could have seen yourself solemnly disclaiming the banshee,' another twinkle showed in his eyes. "'And then, with all this sunshine and this wide-open world,' he shrugged his shoulders, it's hard to visualize anything such as you and Haldrickson have described.' "'I know how hard it is, Larry,' I answered, and don't think I have any idea that the phenomenon is supernatural, in the sense spiritualists and table-turners have given that word. I do think it is supernormal, energized by a force unknown to modern science, but that doesn't mean I think it's outside the radius of science.' "'Tell me your theory, Goodwin,' he said. I hesitated, for not yet had I been able to put into form to satisfy myself any explanation of the dweller. "'I think,' I hazarded, finally, "'it is possible that some members of that race peopling the ancient continent, which we know existed here in the Pacific, have survived. We know that many of these islands are honeycombed with caverns and vast, subterranean spaces, literally underground lands running in some cases far out beneath the ocean floor. It is possible that for some reason survivors of this race sought refuge in the abysmal spaces, one of whose entrances is on the islet where Throckmarten's party met its end. As for their persistence in these caverns, we know they possessed a high science. They may have gone far in the mastery of certain universal forms of energy, especially that we call light. They may have developed a civilization and a science far more advanced than ours. What I call the dweller may be one of the results of this science. Larry, it may well be that this lost race is planning to emerge again upon the earth's surface. "'And is sending out your dweller as a messenger, a scientific dove from their ark?' I chose to overlook the banter in his question. "'Did you ever hear of the Chamats?' I asked him.' He shook his head. "'In Papua,' I explained, there is a widespread and immeasurably old tradition that, imprisoned under the hills, is a race of giants who once ruled this region, when it stretched from sun to sun before the moon god drew the waters over it. I quote from the legend. Not only in Papua, but throughout Malaysia you find this story. And, so the tradition runs, these people, the Chamats, will one day break through the hills and rule the world. Make over the world is the literal translation of the constant phrase in the tale. It was Herbert Spencer who pointed out that there is a basis of fact in every myth and legend of man. It is possible that these survivors, I am discussing, form Spencer's fact basis for the Malaysian legend. Footnote William Beebe, the famous American naturalist and ornithologist recently fighting in France with America's Air Force, called attention to this remarkable belief in an article printed not long ago in the Atlantic Monthly. Still more significant was it that he noted a persistent rumor that the breaking out of the buried race was close. W. J. B. President I. A. of S. This much is sure. The moon door, which is clearly operated by the action of moon rays upon some unknown element or combination, and the crystals through which the moon rays pour down upon the pool, their prismatic columns, are humanly made mechanisms. So long as they are humanly made, and so long as it is this flood of moonlight from which the dweller draws its power of materialization, the dweller itself, if not the product of the human mind, is at least dependent upon the product of the human mind for its appearance. Wait a minute, Goodwin," interrupted O'Keefe. Do you mean to say, you think that this thing is made of, well, of moonshine? Moonlight, I replied, is, of course, reflected sunlight. But the rays which pass back to Earth after their impact on the moon's surface are profoundly changed. The spectroscope shows that they lose practically all the slower vibrations we call red and infrared, while the extremely rapid vibrations we call the violet and ultraviolet are accelerated and altered. Many scientists whole that there is an unknown element in the moon, perhaps that which makes the gigantic luminous trails that radiate in all directions from the lunar crater Tycho, whose energies are absorbed by and carried on the moon rays. At any rate, whether by the loss of the vibrations of the red or by the addition of this mysterious force, the light of the moon becomes something entirely different from mere modified sunlight. Just as the addition or subtraction of one other chemical in a compound of several makes the product a substance with entirely different energies and potentialities. Now, these rays, Larry, are given perhaps still another mysterious activity by the globes through which Throckmarten said they passed in the chamber of the moon pool. The result is the necessary factor in the formation of the dweller. There would be nothing scientifically improbable in such a process. Kubolsky, the great Russian physicist, produced crystalline forms exhibiting every faculty that we call vital by subjecting certain combinations of chemicals to the action of highly concentrated rays of various colors. Nothing in light and nothing else produced their pseudo-vitality. We do not begin to know how to harness the potentialities of that magnetic vibration of the ether we call light. "'Less and dark,' said Larry earnestly, I'll take everything you say about this last continent, the people who used to live on it and their caverns for granted. But by the sword of Brian Borough you'll never get me to fall for the idea that a bunch of moonshine can handle a big woman such as you say Throckmarten's thorough was, nor a two-fisted man such as you say Throckmarten was, nor Haldrickson's wife. And I'll bet she was one of those strapping big northern women, too. You'll never get me to believe that any bunch of concentrated moonshine could handle them and take them waltzing off along a moon beam back to wherever it goes. No, doc, not on your life. Even Tennessee moonshine couldn't do that. Nix!" "'All right, O' Keefe,' I answered, now very much irritated indeed. What's your theory?' And I could not resist adding, "'Fairies?' "'Professor,' he grinned, "'if that thing's a fairy, it's Irish, and when it sees me, it'll be so glad, there'll be nothing to it. I was lost, strayed, or stolen, Larry Evick, it'll say. And I was so homesick for the old sod, I was desperate, it'll say. And take me back quick, before I do any more harm, it'll tell me. And that's the truth.' "'Now, don't get me wrong. I believe you all saw something all right. But what I think you saw was some kind of a gas. All this region is volcanic, and islands and things are constantly poking up from the sea. That's probably gas, a volcanic emanation, something new to us, and that drives you crazy. Lots of kinds of gas do that.' It hit the Throckmorton party on that island, and they probably were all more or less delirious all the time. Thought they saw things, talked it over, and, collective hallucination, just like the Angels of Mons and other miracles of the war.' Somebody sees something that looks like something else. He points it out to the man next to him. "'Do you see it, as he?' "'Sure, I see it,' says the other. And there you are, collective hallucination. When your friends got it bad, they most likely jumped overboard, one by one. Haldrickson sails into a place where it is, and it hits his wife. She grabs the child and jumps over. Maybe the moon rays make it luminous. I've seen gas on the front under the moon that look like a thousand whirling, dervish devils. Yes, and you could see the devil's faces in it. And if I got into your lungs, nothing could ever make you think you hadn't seen real devils.' For a time I was silent. "'Larry,' I said at last, "'whether you are right, or I am right, I must go to the non-metal. Will you go with me, Larry?' "'God when,' he replied, "'I surely will. I'm as interested as you are. If we don't run across the dolphin, I'll stick.' "'I'll leave word at Ponepe to tell them where I am should they come along. If they repart me dead for a while, there's nobody to care. So that's all right. Only old man, be reasonable. You've thought over this so long, you're going bug, honestly you are.' And again the gladness that I might have Larry O'Keefe with me was so great that I forgot to be angry. CHAPTER X THE MOON POOL Takasta, who had come aboard unnoticed by either of us, now tapped me on the arm. "'Doctor Goodwin,' he said, "'can I see you in my cabin, sir?' At last then he was going to speak. I followed him. "'Doctor,' he said, when we had entered, "'this is a very strange thing that has happened to Olaf. Very strange. And the natives of Ponepe they have been very much excitedly. Of what they fear I know nothing, nothing. Even that quick, furtive crossing of himself. But these I have to tell you. There came to me from Rana Loa last month, a man, a Russian, a doctor like you. His name it was Merkinov. I take him to Ponepe, and the natives there they will not take him to the Nan-Mata where he wished to go, no, so I take him. We leave him in a boat, with much instrument carefully tied up. I leave him there with the boat and the food.' He tell me to tell no one, and pay me not to. But you are a friend, and Olaf he depend much upon you, and so I tell you, sir.' "'You know nothing more than this, D'Costa?' I asked. "'Nothing of another expedition?' "'No,' he shook his head vehemently. "'Nothing more!' "'Hear the name Throckmarten while you were there?' I persisted. "'No!' his eyes were steady, as he answered, but the pallor had crept again into his face. I was not so sure. But if he knew more than he had told me, why was he afraid to speak? My anxiety deepened, and later I sought relief from it by repeating the conversation to O'Keefe. "'A Russian, eh?' he said. "'Well, they can be damn nice, or damned, otherwise. Considering what you did for me, I hope I can look him over before the dolphin shows up. Next morning we raised Ponape without further incident, and before noon the Suvarna and the Brunhilda had dropped anchor in the harbour. Upon the excitement and manifest dread of the natives, when we sought among them for carriers and workmen to accompany us, I will not dwell. It is enough to say that no payment we offered could induce a single one of them to go to the non-metal, nor would they say why. Finally it was agreed that the Brunhilda should be left in charge of a half-breed Chinaman, whom both Dacosta and Haldrickson knew and trusted. We piled her longboat up with my instruments and food and camping equipment. The Suvarna took us around to the Metalanim harbour, and there, with the tops of ancient seawalls deep in the blue water beneath us, and the ruins looming up out of the mangroves, a scant mile from us left us. Then, with Haldrickson manipulating our small sail and Larry at the rudder, we rounded the titanic wall that swept down into the depths and turned at last into the canal that Throckmarten, on his map, had marked as that which, running between the frowning Nantowatch and its satellite islet, Tau, led straight to the gate of the place of ancient mysteries. And as we entered that channel we were enveloped by a silence, a silence so intense, so weighted that it seemed to have substance, an alien silence that clung and stifled and still stood aloof from us, the living. It was a stillness, such as might follow the long tramping of millions into the grave. It was paradoxical, as it may be, filled with the withdrawal of life. Standing down in the chamber depths of the Great Pyramid I had known something of such silence, but never such intensity as this. Larry felt it too, and I saw him look at me ascance. If Olaf, sitting in the bow, felt it too, he gave no sign. His blue eyes, with again the glint of ice within them, watched the channel before us. As we passed there arose upon our left sheer walls of black basalt blocks, Cyclopean, towering fifty feet or more, broken here and there by the sinking of their deep foundations. In front of us the mangroves widened out and filled the canal. On our right the lesser walls of tau, somber blocks smooth and squared and set with a cold, mathematical nicety that filled me with vague awe, slipped by. Through breaks I caught glimpses of dark ruins and of great fallen stones that seemed to crouch and menace us as we passed. Where there, hidden, were the seven globes that poured the moon-fire down upon the moon-pool. Now we were among the mangroves, and, sailed down, the three of us pushed and pulled the boat through their tangled roots and branches. The noise of our passing split the silence like a profanation, and from the ancient bastions came murmurs, forbidding, strangely sinister. And now we were through, floating on a little open space of shadow-filled water. Before us lifted the gateway of Nantouach, gigantic, broken, incredibly old. Shattered portals, the which had passed men and women of earth's dawn, old with a weight of years that pressed leadenly upon the eyes that looked upon it, and yet was in some curious, indefinable way menacingly defiant. Beyond the gate, back from the portals, stretched a flight of enormous basalt slabs, a giant stairway indeed, and from each side of it marched the high walls that were the dweller's pathway. None of us spoke as we grounded the boat and dragged it upon a half submerged pier. And when we did speak it was in whispers. "'What next?' asked Larry. "'I think we ought to take a look around,' I replied in the same low tones. "'We'll climb the wall here and take a flash about. The whole place ought to be plain as day from that height.' Haldrickson, his blue eyes alert, nodded. With the greatest difficulty we clambered up the broken blocks. To the east and south of us, set like children's blocks in the midst of the sapphire sea, laid dozens of islets, none of them covering more than two square miles of surface. Each of them a perfect square or oblong within its protecting walls. On none was there a sign of life, say for a few great birds that hovered here and there, and gulls dipping in the blue waves beyond. We turned our gaze upon the island on which we stood. It was, I estimated, about three-quarters of a mile square. The sea wall enclosed it. It was really an enormous basalt-sided open cube, and within it two other open cubes. The enclosure between the first and second wall was stone-paved, with, here and there, a broken pillar and long stone benches. The hibiscus, the aloe tree, and a number of small shrubs had found place, but seemed only to intensify its stark loneliness. "'Wonder where the Russian can be?' asked Larry. I shook my head. There was no sign of life here. Had Marekinov gone, or had the dweller taken him, too? Whatever had happened, there was no trace of him below us or on any of the islets within our range of vision. We scrambled down the side of the gateway. Olaf looked at me wistfully. "'We start the search now, Olaf,' I said. And first, O'Keeffe, let us see whether the grey stone is really here. After that we will set up camp, and while I unpack you and Olof search the island. It won't take long.' Larry gave a look at his service automatic and grinned. "'Lead on, Macduff,' he said. We made our way up the steps, through the outer enclosures and into the central square. I confessed to a fire of scientific curiosity and eagerness tinged with the dread that O'Keeffe's analysis might be true. Would we find the moving slab, and if so, would it be as Throckmarten had described? If so, then even Larry would have to admit that here was something that the theories of gases and luminous emanations would not explain, and the first test of the whole amazing story would be past. But if not, and there before us, the faintest tinge of grey setting it apart from its neighboring blocks of basalt was the moon-door. There was no mistaking it. This was, in very deed, the portal through which Throckmarten had seen past that glorious dreadful apparition he called the Dweller. At its base was the curious, seemingly polished, cup-like depression within which my lost friend had told me the opening door swung. What was that portal? More enigmatic than was ever Sphinx. And what lay beyond it? What did that smooth stone, whose waned deadness whispered of ages, old corridors of time opening out into alien, unimaginable vistas hide? It had cost the world of science Throckmarten's great brain, as it had cost Throckmarten those he loved. It had drawn me to it in search of Throckmarten, and its shadow had fallen upon the soul of Olaf the Norseman, and upon what thousands upon thousands more I wondered, since the brains that had conceived it had vanished with their secret knowledge. What lay beyond it? I stretched out a shaking hand and touched the surface of the slab. A faint thrill passed through my hand and arm, oddly unfamiliar and as oddly unpleasant, as of electric contact holding the very essence of cold. O'Keefe, watching, imitated my action. As his fingers rested on the stone, his face filled with astonishment. "'It's the door,' he asked. I nodded. There was a low whistle from him, and he pointed up toward the top of the grey stone. I followed the gesture and saw, above the moon-door and on each side of it, two gently curving bosses of rock, perhaps a foot in diameter. The moon-door's keys, I said. "'It begins to look so,' answered Larry. "'If we can find them,' he added. "'There's nothing we can do till moon-rise,' I replied. "'And we've none too much time to prepare as it is. Come.' A little later we were beside our boat. We lighted it, set up the tent, and as it was now but a short hour to sundown I bade them leave me and make their search. They went off together, and I busied myself with opening some of the paraphernalia I had brought with me. First of all, I took out the two becquerel ray condensers that I had bought in Sydney. The lenses would collect and intensify to the fullest extent any light directed upon them. I had found them most useful in making spectroscopic analysis of luminous vapours, and I knew that at Yerke's Observatory splendid results had been obtained from them in collecting the diffused radiance of the nebulae for the same purpose. If my theory of the gray slab's mechanism were correct it was practically certain that with the satellite only a few nights past the full we could concentrate enough light on the bosses to open the rock. And as the ray streams through the seven globes described by Throckmarten would be too weak to energize the pool we could enter the chamber free from any fear of encountering its tenet, make our preliminary observations and go forth before the moon had dropped so far that the concentration in the condensers would fall below that necessary to keep the portal from closing. I took out a small spectroscope and a few other instruments for the analysis of certain light manifestations and the testing of metal and liquid. Finally I put aside my emergency medical kit. I had hardly finished examining and adjusting these before O'Keefe and Haldrickson returned. They reported signs of a camp at least ten days old beside the northern wall of the outer court, but beyond that no evidence of others beyond ourselves on Nantowatch. We prepared supper, ate, and talked a little, but for the most part were silent. Even Larry's high spirits were not in evidence. Half a dozen times I saw him take out his automatic and look it over. He was more thoughtful than I had ever seen him. Once he went into the tent, rummaged about a bit and brought out another revolver which he said he had got from D'Costa and a half dozen clips of cartridges. He passed the gun over to Olof. At last a glow in the southeast heralded the rising moon. I picked up my instruments and the medical kit. Larry and Olof shouldered each short ladder that was part of my equipment, and with our electric flashes pointing the way, walked up the great stairs, through the enclosures, and straight to the gray stone. By this time the moon had risen and its clipped light shone full upon the slab. I saw faint gleams pass over it as a fleeting phosphorescence, but so faint were they that I could not be sure of the truth of my observation. We set the ladders in place. Olof I assigned to stand before the door and watch for the first signs of its opening, if open it should. The becquerels were set within three-inch tripods, whose feet I had equipped with vacuum rings to enable them to hold fast to the rock. I scaled one ladder and fastened a condenser over the boss, descended, sent Larry up to watch it, and, ascending the second ladder, rapidly fixed the other in its place. Then, with O'Keefe watchful on his perch, eye on mine, and Olof's eyes fixed upon the moon-door, we began our vigil. Suddenly there was an exclamation from Larry. "'Savin little lights are beginning to glow on this stone,' he cried. But I had already seen those beneath my lens begin to gleam out with a silvery luster. Swiftly the rays within the condenser began to thicken and increase, and as they did so the seven small circles waxed like stars growing out of the dusk, and with a queer—curdled is the best word I can find to define it—radiance entirely strange to me. Beneath me I heard a faint, sighing murmur, and then the voice of Haldrickson. It opened, the stone turns. I began to climb down the ladder. Again came Olof's voice. The stone, it is open. And then a shriek, a wail of blended anguish and pity, of rage and despair, and the sound of swift footsteps racing through the wall beneath me. I dropped to the ground. The moon-door was wide open, and through it I caught a glimpse of a corridor filled with a faint, pearly, vaporous light like earliest misty dawn. But of Olof I could see nothing, and even as I stood gaping from behind me came the sharp crack of a rifle. The glass of the condenser at Larry's side flew into fragments. He dropped swiftly to the ground. The automatic in his hand flashed once, twice, into the darkness. And the moon-door began to pivot slowly, slowly, back into its place. I rushed toward the turning stone with the wild idea of holding it open. As I thrust my hands against it there came at my back a snarl and an oath, and Larry staggered under the impact of a body that had flung itself straight at his throat. He reeled at the lip of the shallow cup at the base of the slab, slipped upon its polished curve, fell and rolled with that which had attacked him, kicking and writhing, straight through the narrowing portal into the passage. Forgetting all else I sprang to his aid. As I leaped I felt the closing edge of the moon-door graze my side. Then as Larry raised a fist, brought it down upon the temple of the man who had grappled with him, and rose from the twitching body unsteadily to his feet, I heard, shuddering past me, a mournful whisper, spun about as though some giant's hand had whirled me. The end of the corridor no longer opened out into the moonlit square of ruined Nantowatch. It was barred by a solid mass of glimmering stone. The moon-door had closed. O'Keefe took a stumbling step toward the barrier behind us. There was no mark of juncture with the shining walls. The slab fitted into the sides as closely as a mosaic. He had shut all right, said Larry. But if there's a way in, there's a way out. Anyway, Doc, we're right in the pew we've been heading for, so why worry? He grinned at me cheerfully. The man on the floor groaned, and he dropped to his knees beside him. "'Maric, keen off!' he cried. At my exclamation he moved aside, turning the face so I could see it. It was clearly Russian, and just as clearly its possessor was one of unusual force and intellect. The strong, massive brow with orbital ridge unusually developed, the dominant, high bridge nose, the straight lips with their more than suggestion of latent cruelty, and the strong lines of the jaw beneath a black, pointed beard all gave evidence that here was a personality beyond the ordinary. "'Couldn't be anybody else,' said Larry, breaking in on my thoughts. He must have been watching us over there from the shout to Luris Valt all the time. Swiffly he ran practised hands over his body, then stood erect, holding out to me two wicked-looking magazine pistols and a knife. "'They got one of my bullets through his right forearm, too,' he said. Just a flash wound, but it made him drop his rifle. "'Sah, Marcinel, our little Russian scientist, what?' I opened my medical kit. The wound was a slight one, and Larry stood looking on as I bandaged it. "'Got another one of those condensers?' he asked suddenly. "'And do you suppose Olaf would know enough to use it?' "'Larry,' I answered. "'Olaf's not outside. He's in here somewhere.' His jaw dropped. "'To hell you say,' he whispered. "'Did you hear him shriek when the stone opened?' I asked. "'I heard him yell, yes,' he said, but I didn't know what was the matter, and then this wildcat jumped me. He paused, and his eyes widened. "'Which way did he go?' he asked, swiftly. I pointed down the faintly glowing passage. "'There's only one way,' I said. "'Watch that bird close,' hissed O'Keeffe, pointing to Marikinoff, and pistol in hand stretched his long legs and raced away. I looked down at the Russian. His eyes were open, and he reached out a hand to me. I lifted him to his feet. "'I have heard,' he said. "'We follow, quick. If you will take my arm, please. I am shaken yet, yes.' I gripped his shoulder without a word, and the two of us set off down the corridor after O'Keeffe. Marikinoff was gasping, and his weight pressed upon me heavily, but he moved with all the will and strength that were in him. As we ran I took hasty note of the tunnel. Its sides were smooth and polished, and the lights seemed to come not from their surfaces, but from far within them, giving to the walls an elusive aspect of distance and depth, rendering them, in a peculiarly weird way, spacious. The passage turned, twisted, ran down, turned again. It came to me that the light that illumined the tunnel was given out by tiny points deep within the stone, sprang from the points rippingly and spread upon their polished faces. There was a cry from Larry far ahead. Olav! I gripped Marikinoff's arm closer and we sped on. Now we were coming fast to the end of the passage. Before us was a high arch, and through it I glimpsed a dim, shifting luminosity as of mist filled with rainbows. We reached the portal, and I looked into a chamber that might have been transported from that enchanted palace of the Jean King that rises beyond the magic mountains of Kaaf. Before me stood O'Keefe and a dozen feet in front of him, Haldrickson, with something clasped tightly in his arms. The Norseman's feet were at the verge of a shining, silvery lip of stone within whose oval lay a blue pool, and down upon this pool, staring upward like a gigantic eye, fell seven pillars of phantom white, one of them amethyst, one of rose, another of white, a fourth of blue, and three of emerald, of silver, and of amber. They fell each upon the azure surface, and I knew that these were the seven streams of radiance within which the dweller took shape, now but pale ghosts of their brilliancy when the full energy of the moon stream raced through them. Haldrickson bent and placed on the shining silver lip of the pool that which he held, and I saw that it was the body of a child. He set it there so gently, bent over the side, and thrust a hand down into the water, and as he did so he moaned and lurched against the little body that lay before him. Instantly the form moved and slipped over the verge into the blue. Haldrickson threw his body over the stone, hands clutching, arms thrust deep down, and from his lips issued a long, drawn, heart shriveling wail of pain and of anguish that held in it nothing human. Close on its wake came a cry from Marikinov. Catch him, shouted the Russian, drag him back, quick! He leaped forward, but before he could half clear that distance O'Keefe had leaped too, had caught the Norseman by the shoulders and toppled him backward, where he lay whimpering and sobbing. And as I rushed behind Marikinov I saw Larry lean over the lip of the pool and cover his eyes with a shaking hand, saw the Russian peer into it with real pity in his cold eyes. Then I stared down myself into the moon pool, and there, sinking, was a little maid whose dead face and fixed, terror-filled eyes looked straight into mine, and ever sinking slowly, slowly vanished. And I knew that this was Olof's Frida, his beloved yinling. But where was the mother, and where had Olof found his babe? The Russian was first to speak. You have nitroglytherin there, yes, he asked, pointing toward my medical kit that I had gripped unconsciously and carried with me during the mad rush down the passage. I nodded and drew it out. Hypodarmic, he ordered next, curtly, took the syringe, filled it accurately with its one one-hundredth of a grain dosage, and leaned over Haldrickson. He rolled up the sailor's sleeves half-way to the shoulder. The arms were white, with somewhat of that weird semi-translucence that I had seen on Throckmarten's breast where a tendril of the dweller had touched him, and his hands were of the same whiteness, like a baroque pearl, above the line of white Merikinov thrust the needle. He will need all his heart can do, he said to me. Then he reached down into a belt about his waist and drew from it a small, flat flask of what seemed to be lead. He opened it and led a few drops of its contents fall on each arm of the Norwegian. The liquid sparkled, and instantly began to spread over the skin much as oil or gasoline dropped on water does, only far more rapidly. And as it spread, it drew a sparkling film over the marbled flesh and little wisps of vapor rose from it. The Norseman's mighty chest heaved with agony. His hands clenched. The Russian gave a grunt of satisfaction at this, dropped a little more of the liquid, and then, watching closely, grunted again and leaned back. Haldrickson's labored breathing ceased. His head dropped upon Larry's knee, and from his arms and hands the whiteness swiftly withdrew. Merikinov arose and contemplated us, almost benevolently. He will all the right be in five minutes, he said. I know, I do it to pay for that shot of mine, and also because we will need him, yes. He turned to Larry. You have a punch like a mule kick, my young friend, he said. Sometime you pay me for that, too, eh? He smiled, and the quality of the grimace was not exactly reassuring. Larry looked him over quizzically. Yer Merikinov, of course, he said. The Russian nodded, betraying no surprise at the recognition. And you, he asked. Lieutenant O'Cave of the Royal Flying Corps, replied Larry, saluting, and his gentleman is Dr. Walter T. Goodwin. Merikinov's face brightened. The American botanist, he queried, I nodded. Ah! cried Merikinov eagerly. But this is fortunate, long I have desired to meet you. Your work, for an American, is most excellent, surprising. But you are wrong in your theory of the development of the angiosperme from psychododia d'acotensis, da, all the wrong. I was interrupting him with considerable heat, for my conclusions from the fossil psychododia I knew to be my greatest triumph, when Larry broke in upon me rudely. Say, he spluttered, am I crazy, are you? But in damnation kind of a place and time is this to start an argument like that. Angiosperme, is it, exclaimed Larry, hell! Merikinov again regarded him with that irritating air of benevolence. You have not the scientific mind, young friend, he said. The punch, yes, but so has the mule. You must learn that the only fact is important, not you, not me, not this," he pointed to Haldrickson, or its sorrows. The only fact, whatever it is, is the real, yes. But he turned to me, another time. Haldrickson interrupted him. The big seaman had risen stiffly to his feet and stood with Larry's arm supporting him. He stretched out his hands to me. I saw her, he whispered. I saw Mainfrida when the stone swung, and she lay there just at my feet. I picked her up and saw that Mainfrida was dead. But I hoped, and I thought maybe Mainhelma was somewhere here, too, so I ran with Mainyinning here. His voice broke. I thought maybe she was not dead. He went on. And when I saw that... He pointed to the moon-pool. And I thought I would bathe her face, and she might live again, and when I dipped my hands within, the life left them, and the cold, deadly cold ran up through them into my heart. And Mainfrida, she fell. He covered his eyes and dropping his head on O'Keefe's shoulder, stood, cracked by sobs that seemed to tear at his very soul. CHAPTER 11 The Flame-Tipped Shadows Merikinov nodded his head solemnly as Olaf finished. Da, he said. That which comes from here took them both, the woman and the child. Da! They came clasped within it, and the stone shut upon them. But why left the child behind? I do not understand. How do you know that? I cried in amazement. Because I saw it, answered Merikinov simply. Not only did I see it, but hardly had I time to make escape through the entrance before it passed whirling and murmuring, and its battle sounds all joyous. Da! It was what you call this squeak close, that— Wait a moment, I said, stilling Larry with a gesture. Do I understand you to say that you were within this place? Merikinov actually beamed upon me. Da, Dr. Goodwin, he said. I went in when that which comes from it went out. I gaped at him, stricken dumb. Into Larry's bellicose attitude crept a suggestion of grudging respect. Olaf, trembling, watched silently. Dr. Goodwin, and my impetuous young friend, you went on Merikinov after a moment's silence, and I wondered vaguely why he did not include Haldrickson in his address. It is time that we have an understanding. I have a proposal to make to you also. It is this. We are what you call a bad boat, and all of us are in it. Da! We need all hands, is it not so? Let us put together our knowledge and our brains and resources, and even a punch of a mule as a resource—he looked wickedly at O'Keefe—and pulled our boat into quiet waters again. After that. I'll very well, Merikinov, interjected Larry, but I don't feel very safe in any boat with somebody capable of shooting me through the back. Merikinov waved a deprecatory hand. It was natural that, he said, logical, da! Here is a very great secret, perhaps many secrets to my country invaluable. He paused, shaken by some overpowering emotion. The veins in his forehead grew congested. The cold eyes blazed, and the guttural voice harshened. I do not apologize, and I do not explain, rashed Merikinov. But I will tell you, da! Here is my country, sweating blood in that experiment to liberate the world. And here are the other nations ringing us like wolves and waiting to spring at our throats at the least sign of weakness. And here are you, Lieutenant O'Keefe, of the English wolves, and you, Dr. Goodwin, of the Yankee pack. And here in this place maybe that will enable my country to win its war for the worker. What are the lives of you two and this sailor to that? Less than the flies I crush with my hand, less than the midges in the sunbeam. He suddenly gripped himself. But that is not now the important thing, he resumed, almost coldly. Not that, nor my shooting. Let us squarely the situation face. My proposal is so, that we join interests and what you call see it through together. Find our way through this place and those secrets learn of which I have spoken, if we can. And when that is done we will go our ways, to his own land each, and make use of them for our lands as each of us may. On my part I offer my knowledge, and it is very valuable, Dr. Goodwin, and my training. You and Lieutenant O'Keefe do the same, and this man Olaf, what he can do of his strength, for I do not think his usefulness lies in his brains, no. In effect, Goodwin, broke in Larry as I hesitated, the professor's proposition is this. He wants to know what's going on here, but he begins to realize it's no one man's job, and besides we have the drop on him. We're three to his one, and we have all his hardware and cutlery. But also we can do better with him than without him, just as he can do better with us than without us. It's an even break, for a while. But once he gets that information he's looking for, then look out. You and Olaf and I are the wolves and the flies and the midges again, and the strafing will be about due. Nevertheless, with three to one against him, if he can get away with it, he deserves to. I've for taken him up, if you are. There was almost a twinkle in Marikinoff's eyes. It is not just as I would have put it, perhaps, he said, but in its skeleton he has the right, nor will I turn my hand against you while we are still in danger here. I pledge you my honor on this." Larry laughed. Ah, right, Professor, he grinned. I believe you mean every word you say. Nevertheless, I'll just keep the guns. Marikinoff bowed imperturbably. And now, he said, I will tell you what I know. I found a secret of the door mechanism, even as you did, Dr. Goodwin. By carelessness my condensers were broken. I was forced to wait while I sent for others, and the waiting might be for months. I took certain precautions, and on the first night of this full moon I hid myself within the vault of Chateau Lure. An involuntary thrill of admiration for the man went through me at the manifest heroism of this leap in the dark. I could see it reflected in Larry's face. I hid in the vault, continued Marikinoff, and I saw that which comes from here come out. I waited long hours. I last, when the moon was low, it returned ecstatically, with a man, a native, in embrace, enfolded. It passed through the door, and soon then the moon became low and the door closed. The next night more confidence was mine, yes, and after that which comes had gone. I looked through its open door. I said, it will not return for three hours. While it is away, why shall I not into its home go through the door it has left open? So I went, even to here. I looked at the pillars of light, and I tested the liquid on the pool on which they fell. That liquid, Dr. Goodwin, is not water. It is not any fluid known on earth. He handed me a small vial. It's neck held in a long thong. Take this, he said, and see. Wonderingly I took the bottle, dipped it down into the pool. The liquid was extraordinarily light, seemed in fact to give the vial buoyancy. I held it to the light. It was striated, streaked, as though little living pulsing veins ran through it, and its blueness, even in the vial, held an intensity of luminousness. The radioactive, said Merakinov, some liquid that is intensely radioactive. But what it is, I know not at all. Upon the living skin it acts like radium, raised to the ant power, and with an element most mysterious added. The solution with which I treated him, he pointed to Haldrickson, I had prepared before I came here, from certain information I had. It is largely salt of radium, and its base is lobe's formula for the neutralization of radium and x-ray burns. Taking this man at once, before the degeneration had become really active, I could negative it. But after two hours I could have done nothing. He paused a moment. Next I studied the nature of these luminous walls. I concluded that whoever had made them knew the secret of the almighty's manufacture of light from the ether itself. Colossal, da! But the substance of these blocks confines an atomic, how would you say, atomic manipulation, a conscious arrangement of electrons, light emitting, and perhaps indefinitely so. These blocks are lamps in which oil and wick are electrons drawing light waves from the ether itself. A Prometheus indeed this discoverer. I looked at my watch, and that little guardian warned me that it was time to go. I went. That which comes forth returned, this time empty-handed. And the next night I did the same thing. Engrossed in research, I let the moments go by to the Daneser point, and scarcely was I replaced within the vaults when the shining thing raced over the walls and in its grip the woman and child. Then you came, and that is all. And now, what is it you know? Very briefly, I went over my story. His eyes gleamed now and then, but he did not interrupt me. A great secret, a colossal secret, he muttered when I had ended. We cannot leave it hidden. The first thing to do is to try the door, said Larry, matter of fact. There is no use, my young friend, assured Marikinov mildly. Nevertheless we'll try, said Larry. We retraced our way through the winding tunnel to the end, but soon even O'Keefe saw that any idea of moving the slab from within was hopeless. We returned to the chamber of the pool. The pillars of light were fainter, and we knew that the moon was sinking. On the world outside before long dawn we'd be breaking. I began to feel thirst, and the blue semblance of water within the silvery rim seemed to glint mockingly as my eyes rested on it. Da, it was Marikinov, reading my thoughts uncannily. Da, we will be thirsty. And it would be very hard for him of us who loses control and drinks of that, my friend. Da. Larry threw back his shoulders as though shaking a burden from them. This place would give an angel of joy the witties, he said. I suggest that we look around and find something that will take us somewhere. You can bet the people that built it had more ways of getting in than that once-a-month family entrance. Da, you and O'Lough take the left wall. The Professor and I will take the right. He loosened one of his automatics with a suggestive movement. After you, Professor, he bowed politely to the Russian. We parted and set forth. The chamber widened out from the portal in what seemed to be the arc of an immense circle. The shining walls held a perceptible curve, and from this curvature I estimated that the roof was fully three hundred feet above us. The floor was of smooth, mosaic-fitted blocks of a faintly yellow tinge. They were not light-emitting like the blocks that form the walls. The radiance from these ladder, I noted, had the peculiar quality of thickening a few yards from its source, and it was this that produced the effect of the misty, veiled distances. As we walked, the seven columns of ray streaming down from the crystalline globes high above us waned steadily. The globe within the chamber lost its prismatic shimmer and became an even gray tone, somewhat like moonlight in a thin cloud. Now before us, out from the wall, jutted a low terrace. It was all of a pearly rose-colored stone, slender, graceful pillars of the same hue. The face of the terrace was about ten feet high, and all over it ran a ba relief of what looks like short trailing vines, surmounted by five stalks, on the tip of each of which was a flower. We passed along the terrace. It turned in an abrupt curve. I heard a hail, and there, fifty feet away, at the curving end of a wall, identical with that where we stood, were Larry and Marikinov. Obviously, the left side of the chamber was a duplicate of that we had explored. We joined. In front of us, the columned barriers ran back a hundred feet, forming an alcove. The end of this alcove was another wall of the same rose stone, but upon it the design of vines was much heavier. We took a step forward. There was a gasp of awe from the Norseman, a guttural exclamation from Marikinov. For on, rather within, the wall before us, a great oval began to glow, waxed almost to a flame, and then shone steadily out, as though from behind it a light was streaming through the stone itself. And within the roseate oval two flame-tipped shadows appeared, stood for a moment, and then seemed to float out upon its surface. The shadows wavered. The tips of flame that nimbus them with flickering points of vermilion pulsed outward, drew back, darted forth again, and once more withdrew themselves. And as they did so the shadows thickened, and suddenly there before us stood two figures. One was a girl, a girl whose great eyes were golden as the fabled lilies of Kwan Young that were born of the kiss of the sun upon the amber goddess the demons of Lao Tzee carved for him, whose softly curved lips were red as the royal coral, and whose golden brown hair reached to her knees. And the second was a gigantic frog, a woman-frog, head helmeted with carapace of shell, around which a fillet of brilliant yellow jewel shone. Enormous round eyes of blue circled a broad iris of green, monstrous body of banded orange and white girdled with strand upon strand of the flashing yellow gems, six feet high if an inch, and with one webbed paw of its short, powerfully muscled forelegs, resting upon the white shoulder of the golden-eyed girl. Moments must have passed as we stood in stark amazement, gazing at that incredible apparition. The two figures, although as real as any of those who stood beside me, on phantom-like as it is possible to be, had a distinct suggestion of projection. They were there before us, golden-eyed girl and grotesque frog-woman, complete in every line and curve, and still it was as though their bodies passed back through distances. As though, to try to express the well-nigh inexpressible, the two shapes we were looking upon were the end of an infinite number stretching in fine-linked chain far away, of which the eye saw only the nearest, while in the brain some faculty higher than sight recognized and registered the unseen others. The gigantic eyes of the frog-woman took us all in, unwinkingly. Little glints of phosphorescence shone out within the metallic green of the outer iris ring. She stood upright, her great legs bowed. The monstrous slit of a mouth slightly open, revealing a row of white teeth sharp and pointed as lancets. The paw resting on the girl's shoulder, half covering its silken surface, and from its five webbed digits long yellow claws of polished horn glistened against the delicate texture of the flesh. But if the frog-woman regarded us all, not so did the maiden of the rosy wall. Her eyes were fastened upon Larry, drinking him in with extraordinary intentness. She was tall, far over the average of women, almost as tall indeed as O'Keefe himself. Not more than twenty years old, if that, I thought. Abruptly she leaned forward, the gold an eye softened and grew tender. The red lips moved as though she were speaking. He took a quick step, and his face was that of one who after countless births comes at last upon the twin's soul lost to him for ages. The frog-woman turned her eyes upon the girl. Her huge lips moved, and I knew that she was talking. The girl held out a warning hand to O'Keefe and then raised it, resting each finger upon one of the five flowers of the carved vine close beside her. Once, twice, three times, she pressed upon the flower-centers, and I noticed that her hand was curiously long and slender. The digits, like those wonderful tapering ones the painters we call the primitive, gave to their virgins. Three times she pressed the flowers and then looked intently at Larry once more. A slow, sweet smile curved the crimson lips. She stretched both hands out toward him again eagerly. A burning blush rose swiftly over white breasts and flower-like face. Like the clicking out of a cinematograph, the pulsing oval faded, and golden-eyed girl and frog-woman were gone. And thus it was that Lachla, the handmaiden of the silent ones, and Larry O'Keefe first looked into each other's hearts. Larry stood wrapped, gazing at the stone. Elid! I heard him whisper. Elid of the lips like the red, red rowan and the golden-brown hair. Clearly of the rain-the-dye, said Merikinoff. A development of the fossil labyrinthodonce. You saw her teeth, da? Rene de, yes, I answered, but from the stegosophilia of the order Echodara. Never such a complete indignation as was in O'Keefe's voice as he interrupted. What ya mean? Fossos and stegos whatever it is, he asked. She was a girl, a wonder girl, a real girl, and Irish, or I'm not an O'Keefe. We were talking about the frog-woman, Larry, I said conciliatingly. His eyes were wild as he regarded us. Say, he said, if you too had been in the Garden of Eden when Eve took the apple, you wouldn't have had time to give her a look for counting the scales on the snake. He strode swiftly over to the wall. We followed. Larry paused, stretched up his hand to the flowers on which the tapering fingers of the golden-eyed girl had rested. It was here she put up her hand, he murmured. He pressed caressingly the carved calyxes once, twice, a third time, even as she had, and silently and softly the wall began to split. On each side a great stone pivoted slowly, and before us a portal stood, opening into a narrow corridor glowing with the same rosy luster that had gleamed around the flame-tipped shadows. Have ya gone ready, Olaf? said Larry. We follow golden eyes, he said to me. Follow, I echoed stupidly. Follow, he said. She came to show us the way. Follow! I'd follow her through a thousand hells! And with Olaf at one end, O'Keefe at the other, both of them with automatics in hand, and Marikinov and I between them, we stepped over the threshold. At our right, a few feet away, the passage ended abruptly in a square of polished stone, from which came faint rose radiance. The roof of the place was less than two feet over O'Keefe's head. A yard at left of us lifted a four-foot high, gently curved barricade, stretching from wall to wall, and beyond it was blackness, and utter and appalling blackness that seemed to gather itself from infinite depths. The rose glow in which we stood was cut off by the blackness as though it had substance. It shimmered out to meet it, and was checked as though by a blow. Indeed, so strong was the suggestion of sinister, straining force within the rayless opacity that I shrank back, and Marikinov with me. Not so O'Keefe. Olaf beside him, he strode to the wall and peered over. He beckoned us. "'Flash your pocket-light down there,' he said to me, pointing into the thick darkness below us. The little electric circle quivered down as though afraid, and came to rest upon a surface that resembled nothing so much as clear black ice. I ran the light across, here and there. The floor of the corridor was of a substance so smooth, so polished, that no man could have walked upon it. It sloped downward at a slowly increasing angle. "'We'd have to have nonskid chains and brakes on our feet to tackle that,' mused Larry. Abstractly he ran his hands over the edge on which he was leaning. Suddenly they hesitated and then gripped tightly. "'That's a queer one,' he exclaimed. His right palm was resting upon a rounded protuberance, on the side of which were three small circular indentations. "'A queer one,' he repeated, and pressed his fingers upon the circles. There was a sharp click. The slabs that had opened to let us through swung swiftly together, a curiously rapid vibration thrilled through us, a wind arose and passed over our heads, a wind that grew and grew until it became a whistling shriek, then a roar and then a mighty humming to which every atom in our bodies pulsed in rhythm painful almost to disintegration. The rosy wall dwindled in a flash to a point of light and disappeared. Wrapped in the clinging, impenetrable blackness we were racing, dropping, hurling at a frightful speed, where— endeavor, that awful humming of the rushing wind and the lightning cleaving of the tangible dark—so it came to me oddly, must the newly released soul race through the sheer blackness of outer space up to the throne of justice, where God sits high above all sons. I felt Marikinov creep close to me, gripping my nerve and flashing my pocket-light. Saw Larry standing, peering, peering ahead, with Haldricksson, one strong arm around his shoulders bracing him, and then the speed began to slacken. Millions of miles it seemed below the sound of the unearthly hurricane I heard Larry's voice, thin and ghost-like beneath its clamor. Got it! shrilled the voice. Got it! Don't worry! The wind died down to the roar, passed back through the whistling shriek and diminished to a steady whisper. In the comparative quiet O'Keeffe's tones now came in normal volume. Some little shoot-the-shoots, what! he shouted. Say, if they had this at Coney Island or the Crystal Palace. Press all the way in these holes and she goes top-high. Diminish pressure, diminish speed. The curve of this, dash-barred, here sends the wind shooting up over our heads, like a windshield. What's behind you? I flash the light back. The mechanism on which we were ended in another wall exactly similar to that over which O'Keeffe crouched. Well, I can't fall out, anyway, he laughed. Where's to hell I knew where the brakes were. Look out! We dropped dizzily down an abrupt, seemingly endless slope. Fell, fell as into an abyss, then shot abruptly out of the blackness into a throbbing green radiance. O'Keeffe's fingers must have pressed down upon the controls, for we leaped forward almost with the speed of light. I caught a glimpse of luminous immensities on the verge of which we flew. Of depths inconceivable and flitting through the incredible spaces, gigantic shadows as of the wings of Israfel, which are so wide, say the Arabs, the world can cower under them like a nestling, and then again the living blackness. What was that? This from Larry, with the nearest approach to awe that he had yet shown. Turrodom, croaked the voice of Olaf. Chart, this from Erikinov, what a space! Have you considered, Dr. Goodwin, he went on after a pause, a curious thing. We know, or at least, is it not that nine out of ten astronomers believe that the moon was hurled out of this same region we now call the Pacific when the Earth was yet like molasses, almost molten, I should say. And is it not curious that that which comes from the moon chamber needs the moon rays to bring it forth, is it not? And is it not significant again that the stone depends upon the moon for operating? Da! At last, such a space in Mother Earth as we just glimpse! How else could it have been torn but by some gigantic birth, like that of the moon? Da! I do not put forward these as statements of fact, no, but as suggestions. I started. There was so much that this might explain, an unknown element that responded to the moon rays in opening the moon door, the blue pool with its weird radioactivity, and the force within it that reacted to the same light stream. It was not inconceivable that a film had drawn over the world wound, a film of earth flesh which drew itself over that colossal abyss after our planet had borne its satellite. That world womb did not close when her shining child sprang forth. It was impossible. And all that we know of Earth depth is four miles of her eight thousand. What is there at the heart of Earth? What of that radiant, unknown element upon the moon-mount Tycho? And what of that element unknown to us as part of Earth which is seen only in the corona of the sun at eclipse that we call Coronium? Yet the earth is child of the sun as the moon is earth's daughter. And what of that other unknown element we find glowing green in the far-flung nebulae, green as that we had just passed through, and that we call nebulium? Yet the sun is child of the nebulae as the earth is child of the sun and the moon is child of the earth. And what miracles are there in Coronium and nebulium which as the child of nebulae and sun we inherit? Yes, and in Tycho's enigma which came from earth-heart. We were flashing down to earth-heart. And what miracles were hidden there? CHAPTER XII. THE END OF THE MOON POOL. Say, Doc! It was Larry's voice flung back at me. I was thinking about that frog. I think it was her pet. Damn me if I see any difference between a frog and a snake, and one of the nicest women I ever knew had two pet pythons that followed her around like kittens. Not such a devilish lot of choice between a frog and a snake, except on the side of the frog. What? Anyway, any pet that girl wants is hers. I don't care if it's a leaping twelve-toed lobster or a whale-bodied scorpion, get me? By which I knew that our remarks upon the frog-woman were still bothering O'Keefe. He thinks of foolish nothings like the foolish sailor, grunted Marikinov, acid contempt in his words. What are there women to this? He swept out a hand, and as though at a signal the car poised itself for an instant, then dipped, literally dipped down into sheer space, skimmed forward in what was clearly curved flight, rose as upon a sweeping upgrade, and then began swiftly to slacken its fearful speed. Far ahead a point of light showed, grew steadily. We were within it, and softly all movement ceased. How acute had been the strain of our journey I did not realize until I tried to stand and sank back, leg muscles too shaky to bear my weight. The car rested in a slit in the center of a smooth wall chamber, perhaps twenty feet square. The wall facing us was pierced by a low doorway, through which we could see a flight of steps leading downward. The light streamed through a small opening, the base of which was twice a tall man's height from the floor. A curving flight of broad, low steps led up to it. And now it came to my steadying brain that there was something puzzling, peculiar, strangely unfamiliar about this light. It was silvery, shaded faintly with a delicate blue, and flushed lightly with a nacreous rose. But a rose that differed from that of the terraces of the pool chamber, as the rose within the opal differs from that within the pearl. In it were tiny, gleamy points like the moats in a sunbeam, but sparkling white like the dust of diamonds, and with a quality of vibrant vitality. They were as though they were alive. The light cast no shadows. A little breeze came through the oval and played about us. It was laden with what seemed the mingled breath of spice flowers and pines. It was curiously vivifying, and in it the diamonded atoms of light shook and danced. I stepped out of the car, the Russian following, and began to ascend the curved steps toward the opening, at the top of which O'Keefe and Olaf already stood. As they looked out I saw both their faces change. Olaf's with awe, O'Keefe's with incredible amaze. I hurried to their side. At first all that I could see was space, a space filled with the same coruscating effulgence that pulsed about me. I glanced upward, obeying that instinctive impulse of earthfolk that bids them seek within the sky for sources of light. There was no sky, at least no sky such as we know. All was a sparkling nebulosity rising into infinite distances, as the azure above the day world seems to fill all the heavens. Through it ran pulsing waves and flashing javelin rays that were like shining shadows of the aurora. Echoes, octaves lower, of those brilliant arpeggios and cords that played about the poles. My eyes fell beneath its splendor, I stared outward. Miles away gigantic luminous cliffs sprang sheer from the limits of a lake whose waters were of milky opalescence. It was from these cliffs that the spangled radiance came, shimmering out from all their lustrous surfaces. To the left and right, as far as the eye could see, they stretched, and they vanished in the auroral nebulosity on high. "'Look at that!' exclaimed Larry. I followed his pointing finger. On the face of the shining wall, stretched between two colossal columns, hung an incredible veil, prismatic gleaming with all the colors of the spectrum. It was like a web of rainbows woven by the fingers of the daughters of the jing. In front of it, and a little at each side, was a semi-circular pier, or better, a plaza of what appeared to be glistening pale yellow ivory. At each end of its half circle clustered a few low-walled, rose-stone structures, each of them surmounted by a number of high, slender pinnacles. We looked at each other, I think, a bit helplessly, and back again through the opening. We were standing, as I have said, at its base. The wall in which it was set was at least ten feet thick, and so, of course, all that we could see of that which was without, were the distances that revealed themselves above the outer ledge of the oval. "'Let's take a look at what's under us,' said Larry.' He crept out upon the ledge and peered down, the rest of us following. A hundred yards beneath us stretched gardens that must have been like those of many columned iron, which the ancient Adite king had built for his pleasure ages before the deluge, and which Allah, so the Arab legend tells, took and hid from man within the Sahara, beyond all hope of finding. Jealous because they were more beautiful than his in paradise. Within them flowers and groves of laced, fern-like trees, pillared pavilions nestled. The trunks of the trees were emerald of vermilion and of azure blue, and the blossoms whose fragrance was born to us shone like jewels. The graceful pillars were tinted delicately. I noted that the pavilions were double, in a way too storied, and that they were oddly splotched with circles, with squares and with oblongs of opacity. Noted, too, that over many this opacity stretched like a roof. Yet it did not seem material. Rather it was impenetrable shadow. Down through this city of gardens ran a broad shining green thoroughfare, glistening like glass and spanned at regular intervals with graceful arched bridges. The road flashed to a wide square, where rose, from a base of that silvery stone that formed the lip of the moon-pool, a titanic structure of seven terraces, and along it flitted objects that bore a curious resemblance to the shell of a nautilus. Within them were human figures, and upon tree-border promenades on each side walked others. Far to the right we caught the glint of another emerald paved road, and between the two the gardens grew sweetly down to the hither side of that opalescent water, across which were the radiant cliffs and the curtain of mystery. Thus it was that we first saw the city of the dweller, blessed and accursed as no place on earth, or under or above earth has ever been, or that force willing which some call God ever again shall be. Chirt! whispered Merikinov, incredible. Trolldom! gasped Olaf Haldrickson. It is Trolldom. Lesson, Olaf, said Larry. Cut out that Trolldom stuff. There's no Trolldom or fairies outside Ireland. Get that? And this isn't Ireland. And buck up, Professor! This to Merikinov. What you see down there are people, just plain people. And wherever there's people is where I live. Get me? There's no way in but in, and no way out but out, said O'Keefe. And there's the stairway. Eggs are eggs, no matter how they're cooked. And people are just people, fellow travellers, no matter what dish they're in. He concluded. Come on. With the three of us close behind him, he marched toward the entrance. End of Chapter 12