The Moon Rock

: The Moon Pool

"I do not intend to tell you now," Throckmartin continued, "the

results of the next two weeks, nor of what we found. Later--if I am

allowed, I will lay all that before you. It is sufficient to say that

at the end of those two weeks I had found confirmation for many of my

theories.



"The place, for all its decay and desolation, had not infected us with

any touch of morbidity--that is not Edith, Stanton, or
yself. But

Thora was very unhappy. She was a Swede, as you know, and in her blood

ran the beliefs and superstitions of the Northland--some of them so

strangely akin to those of this far southern land; beliefs of spirits

of mountain and forest and water werewolves and beings malign. From

the first she showed a curious sensitivity to what, I suppose, may be

called the 'influences' of the place. She said it 'smelled' of ghosts

and warlocks.



"I laughed at her then--



"Two weeks slipped by, and at their end the spokesman for our natives

came to us. The next night was the full of the moon, he said. He

reminded me of my promise. They would go back to their village in the

morning; they would return after the third night, when the moon had

begun to wane. They left us sundry charms for our 'protection,' and

solemnly cautioned us to keep as far away as possible from Nan-Tauach

during their absence. Half-exasperated, half-amused I watched them go.



"No work could be done without them, of course, so we decided to spend

the days of their absence junketing about the southern islets of the

group. We marked down several spots for subsequent exploration, and on

the morning of the third day set forth along the east face of the

breakwater for our camp on Uschen-Tau, planning to have everything in

readiness for the return of our men the next day.



"We landed just before dusk, tired and ready for our cots.

It was only a little after ten o'clock that Edith awakened me.



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



"I did so, and seemed to hear, far, far below, as though coming up

from great distances, a faint chanting. It gathered strength, died

down, ended; began, gathered volume, faded away into silence.



"'It's the waves rolling on rocks somewhere,' I said. 'We're probably

over some ledge of rock that carries the sound.'



"'It's the first time I've heard it,' replied my wife doubtfully. We

listened again. Then through the dim rhythms, deep beneath us, another

sound came. It drifted across the lagoon that lay between us and

Nan-Tauach in little tinkling waves. It was music--of a sort; I won't

describe the strange effect it had upon me. You've felt it--"



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



"I went to the flap of the tent," he continued, "and peered out.

As I did so Stanton lifted his flap and walked out into the moonlight,

looking over to the other islet and listening. I called to him.



"'That's the queerest sound!' he said. He listened again.

'Crystalline! Like little notes of translucent glass. Like the bells

of crystal on the sistrums of Isis at Dendarah Temple,' he added

half-dreamily. We gazed intently at the island. Suddenly, on the

sea-wall, moving slowly, rhythmically, we saw a little group of

lights. Stanton laughed.



"'The beggars!' he exclaimed. 'That's why they wanted to get away, is

it? Don't you see, Dave, it's some sort of a festival--rites of some

kind that they hold during the full moon! That's why they were so

eager to have us keep away, too.'



"The explanation seemed good. I felt a curious sense of relief,

although I had not been sensible of any oppression.



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



"'They're a difficult lot as it is,' I said. 'If we break into one of

their religious ceremonies they'll probably never forgive us. Let's

keep out of any family party where we haven't been invited.'



"'That's so,' agreed Stanton.



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



"'There's something--something very unsettling about it,' said Edith

at last soberly. 'I wonder what they make those sounds with. They

frighten me half to death, and, at the same time, they make me feel as

though some enormous rapture were just around the corner.'



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



"And as he spoke the flap of Thora's tent was raised and out into the

moonlight strode the old Swede. She was the great Norse type--tall,

deep-breasted, moulded on the old Viking lines. Her sixty years had

slipped from her. She looked like some ancient priestess of Odin.



"She stood there, her eyes wide, brilliant, staring. She thrust her

head forward toward Nan-Tauach, regarding the moving lights; she

listened. Suddenly she raised her arms and made a curious gesture to

the moon. It was--an archaic--movement; she seemed to drag it from

remote antiquity--yet in it was a strange suggestion of power, Twice

she repeated this gesture and--the tinklings died away! She turned to

us.



"'Go!' she said, and her voice seemed to come from far distances. 'Go

from here--and quickly! Go while you may. It has called--' She pointed

to the islet. 'It knows you are here. It waits!' she wailed. 'It

beckons--the--the--"



"She fell at Edith's feet, and over the lagoon came again the

tinklings, now with a quicker note of jubilance--almost of triumph.



"We watched beside her throughout the night. The sounds from

Nan-Tauach continued until about an hour before moon-set. In the

morning Thora awoke, none the worse, apparently. She had had bad

dreams, she said. She could not remember what they were--except that

they had warned her of danger. She was oddly sullen, and throughout

the morning her gaze returned again and again half-fascinatedly,

half-wonderingly to the neighbouring isle.



"That afternoon the natives returned. And that night on Nan-Tauach

the silence was unbroken nor were there lights nor sign of life.



"You will understand, Goodwin, how the occurrences I have related

would excite the scientific curiosity. We rejected immediately, of

course, any explanation admitting the supernatural.



"Our--symptoms let me call them--could all very easily be accounted

for. It is unquestionable that the vibrations created by certain

musical instruments have definite and sometimes extraordinary effect

upon the nervous system. We accepted this as the explanation of the

reactions we had experienced, hearing the unfamiliar sounds. Thora's

nervousness, her superstitious apprehensions, had wrought her up to a

condition of semi-somnambulistic hysteria. Science could readily

explain her part in the night's scene.



"We came to the conclusion that there must be a passage-way between

Ponape and Nan-Tauach known to the natives--and used by them during

their rites. We decided that on the next departure of our labourers we

would set forth immediately to Nan-Tauach. We would investigate during

the day, and at evening my wife and Thora would go back to camp,

leaving Stanton and me to spend the night on the island, observing

from some safe hiding-place what might occur.



"The moon waned; appeared crescent in the west; waxed slowly toward

the full. Before the men left us they literally prayed us to accompany

them. Their importunities only made us more eager to see what it was

that, we were now convinced, they wanted to conceal from us. At least

that was true of Stanton and myself. It was not true of Edith. She was

thoughtful, abstracted--reluctant.



"When the men were out of sight around the turn of the harbour, we

took our boat and made straight for Nan-Tauach. Soon its mighty

sea-wall towered above us. We passed through the water-gate with its

gigantic hewn prisms of basalt and landed beside a half-submerged

pier. In front of us stretched a series of giant steps leading into a

vast court strewn with fragments of fallen pillars. In the centre of

the court, beyond the shattered pillars, rose another terrace of

basalt blocks, concealing, I knew, still another enclosure.



"And now, Walter, for the better understanding of what

follows--and--and--" he hesitated. "Should you decide later to return

with me or, if I am taken, to--to--follow us--listen carefully to my

description of this place: Nan-Tauach is literally three rectangles.

The first rectangle is the sea-wall, built up of monoliths--hewn and

squared, twenty feet wide at the top. To get to the gateway in the

sea-wall you pass along the canal marked on the map between Nan-Tauach

and the islet named Tau. The entrance to the canal is bidden by dense

thickets of mangroves; once through these the way is clear. The steps

lead up from the landing of the sea-gate through the entrance to the

courtyard.



"This courtyard is surrounded by another basalt wall, rectangular,

following with mathematical exactness the march of the outer

barricades. The sea-wall is from thirty to forty feet high--originally

it must have been much higher, but there has been subsidence in parts.

The wall of the first enclosure is fifteen feet across the top and its

height varies from twenty to fifty feet--here, too, the gradual

sinking of the land has caused portions of it to fall.



"Within this courtyard is the second enclosure. Its terrace, of the

same basalt as the outer walls, is about twenty feet high. Entrance is

gained to it by many breaches which time has made in its stonework.

This is the inner court, the heart of Nan-Tauach! There lies the great

central vault with which is associated the one name of living being

that has come to us out of the mists of the past. The natives say it

was the treasure-house of Chau-te-leur, a mighty king who reigned long

'before their fathers.' As Chan is the ancient Ponapean word both for

sun and king, the name means, without doubt, 'place of the sun king.'

It is a memory of a dynastic name of the race that ruled the Pacific

continent, now vanished--just as the rulers of ancient Crete took the

name of Minos and the rulers of Egypt the name of Pharaoh.



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

the Moon Pool.



"It was Stanton who discovered the moon rock. We had been inspecting

the inner courtyard; Edith and Thora were getting together our lunch.

I came out of the vault of Chau-te-leur to find Stanton before a part

of the terrace studying it wonderingly.



"'What do you make of this?' he asked me as I came up. He pointed to

the wall. I followed his finger and saw a slab of stone about fifteen

feet high and ten wide. At first all I noticed was the exquisite

nicety with which its edges joined the blocks about it. Then I

realized that its colour was subtly different--tinged with grey and of

a smooth, peculiar--deadness.



"'Looks more like calcite than basalt,' I said. I touched it and

withdrew my hand quickly for at the contact every nerve in my arm

tingled as though a shock of frozen electricity had passed through it.

It was not cold as we know cold. It was a chill force--the phrase I

have used--frozen electricity--describes it better than anything else.

Stanton looked at me oddly.



"'So you felt it too,' he said. 'I was wondering whether I was

developing hallucinations like Thora. Notice, by the way, that the

blocks beside it are quite warm beneath the sun.'



"We examined the slab eagerly. Its edges were cut as though by an

engraver of jewels. They fitted against the neighbouring blocks in

almost a hair-line. Its base was slightly curved, and fitted as

closely as top and sides upon the huge stones on which it rested. And

then we noted that these stones had been hollowed to follow the line

of the grey stone's foot. There was a semicircular depression running

from one side of the slab to the other. It was as though the grey rock

stood in the centre of a shallow cup--revealing half, covering half.

Something about this hollow attracted me. I reached down and felt it.

Goodwin, although the balance of the stones that formed it, like all

the stones of the courtyard, were rough and age-worn--this was as

smooth, as even surfaced as though it had just left the hands of the

polisher.



"'It's a door!' exclaimed Stanton. 'It swings around in that little

cup. That's what makes the hollow so smooth.'



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



"We went over the slab again--pressing upon its edges, thrusting

against its sides. During one of those efforts I happened to look

up--and cried out. A foot above and on each side of the corner of the

grey rock's lintel was a slight convexity, visible only from the angle

at which my gaze struck it.



"We carried with us a small scaling-ladder and up this I went. The

bosses were apparently nothing more than chiseled curvatures in the

stone. I laid my hand on the one I was examining, and drew it back

sharply. In my palm, at the base of my thumb, I had felt the same

shock that I had in touching the slab below. I put my hand back. The

impression came from a spot not more than an inch wide. I went

carefully over the entire convexity, and six times more the chill ran

through my arm. There were seven circles an inch wide in the curved

place, each of which communicated the precise sensation I have

described. The convexity on the opposite side of the slab gave exactly

the same results. But no amount of touching or of pressing these spots

singly or in any combination gave the slightest promise of motion to

the slab itself.



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



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



"'I--don't know,' he answered hesitatingly. 'But something tells me

so. Throck,' he went on half earnestly, half laughingly, 'the purely

scientific part of me is fighting the purely human part of me. The

scientific part is urging me to find some way to get that slab either

down or open. The human part is just as strongly urging me to do

nothing of the sort and get away while I can!'



"He laughed again--shamefacedly.



"'Which shall it be?' he asked--and I thought that in his tone the

human side of him was ascendant.



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



"'I thought of that,' he answered, 'and I wouldn't dare,' he added

soberly enough. And even as I had spoken there came to me the same

feeling that he had expressed. It was as though something passed out

of the grey rock that struck my heart as a hand strikes an impious

lip. We turned away--uneasily, and faced Thora coming through a breach

on the terrace.



"'Miss Edith wants you quick,' she began--and stopped. Her eyes went

past me to the grey rock. Her body grew rigid; she took a few stiff

steps forward and then ran straight to it. She cast herself upon its

breast, hands and face pressed against it; we heard her scream as

though her very soul were being drawn from her--and watched her fall

at its foot. As we picked her up I saw steal from her face the look I

had observed when first we heard the crystal music of

Nan-Tauach--that unhuman mingling of opposites!"



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