Dead! All Dead!

: The Moon Pool

He was sitting, face in hands, on the side of his berth as I entered.

He had taken off his coat.



"Throck," I cried. "What was it? What are you flying from, man?

Where is your wife--and Stanton?"



"Dead!" he replied monotonously. "Dead! All dead!" Then as I

recoiled from him--"All dead. Edith, Stanton, Thora--dead--or worse.

And Edith in the Moon Pool--with them--drawn by what you saw on t e

moon path--that has put its brand upon me--and follows me!"



He ripped open his shirt.



"Look at this," he said. Around his chest, above his heart, the skin

was white as pearl. This whiteness was sharply defined against the

healthy tint of the body. It circled him with an even cincture about

two inches wide.



"Burn it!" he said, and offered me his cigarette. I drew back. He

gestured--peremptorily. I pressed the glowing end of the cigarette

into the ribbon of white flesh. He did not flinch nor was there odour

of burning nor, as I drew the little cylinder away, any mark upon the

whiteness.



"Feel it!" he commanded again. I placed my fingers upon the band. It

was cold--like frozen marble.



He drew his shirt around him.



"Two things you have seen," he said. "It--and its mark. Seeing,

you must believe my story. Goodwin, I tell you again that my wife is

dead--or worse--I do not know; the prey of--what you saw; so, too, is

Stanton; so Thora. How--"



Tears rolled down the seared face.



"Why did God let it conquer us? Why did He let it take my Edith?" he

cried in utter bitterness. "Are there things stronger than God, do you

think, Walter?"



I hesitated.



"Are there? Are there?" His wild eyes searched me.



"I do not know just how you define God," I managed at last through my

astonishment to make answer. "If you mean the will to know, working

through science--"



He waved me aside impatiently.



"Science," he said. "What is our science against--that? Or against

the science of whatever devils that made it--or made the way for it to

enter this world of ours?"



With an effort he regained control.



"Goodwin," he said, "do you know at all of the ruins on the Carolines;

the cyclopean, megalithic cities and harbours of Ponape and Lele, of

Kusaie, of Ruk and Hogolu, and a score of other islets there?

Particularly, do you know of the Nan-Matal and the Metalanim?"



"Of the Metalanim I have heard and seen photographs," I said. "They

call it, don't they, the Lost Venice of the Pacific?"



"Look at this map," said Throckmartin. "That," he went on, "is

Christian's chart of Metalanim harbour and the Nan-Matal. Do you see

the rectangles marked Nan-Tauach?"



"Yes," I said.



"There," he said, "under those walls is the Moon Pool and the seven

gleaming lights that raise the Dweller in the Pool, and the altar and

shrine of the Dweller. And there in the Moon Pool with it lie Edith

and Stanton and Thora."



"The Dweller in the Moon Pool?" I repeated half-incredulously.



"The Thing you saw," said Throckmartin solemnly.



A solid sheet of rain swept the ports, and the Southern Queen began to

roll on the rising swells. Throckmartin drew another deep breath of

relief, and drawing aside a curtain peered out into the night. Its

blackness seemed to reassure him. At any rate, when he sat again he

was entirely calm.



"There are no more wonderful ruins in the world," he began almost

casually. "They take in some fifty islets and cover with their

intersecting canals and lagoons about twelve square miles. Who built

them? None knows. When were they built? Ages before the memory of

present man, that is sure. Ten thousand, twenty thousand, a hundred

thousand years ago--the last more likely.



"All these islets, Walter, are squared, and their shores are frowning

seawalls of gigantic basalt blocks hewn and put in place by the hands

of ancient man. Each inner water-front is faced with a terrace of

those basalt blocks which stand out six feet above the shallow canals

that meander between them. On the islets behind these walls are

time-shattered fortresses, palaces, terraces, pyramids; immense

courtyards strewn with ruins--and all so old that they seem to wither

the eyes of those who look on them.



"There has been a great subsidence. You can stand out of Metalanim

harbour for three miles and look down upon the tops of similar

monolithic structures and walls twenty feet below you in the water.



"And all about, strung on their canals, are the bulwarked islets with

their enigmatic walls peering through the dense growths of

mangroves--dead, deserted for incalculable ages; shunned by those who

live near.



"You as a botanist are familiar with the evidence that a vast shadowy



continent existed in the Pacific--a continent that was not rent

asunder by volcanic forces as was that legendary one of Atlantis in

the Eastern Ocean.[1] My work in Java, in Papua, and in the Ladrones

had set my mind upon this Pacific lost land. Just as the Azores are

believed to be the last high peaks of Atlantis, so hints came to me

steadily that Ponape and Lele and their basalt bulwarked islets were

the last points of the slowly sunken western land clinging still to

the sunlight, and had been the last refuge and sacred places of the

rulers of that race which had lost their immemorial home under the

rising waters of the Pacific.



"I believed that under these ruins I might find the evidence

that I sought.



"My--my wife and I had talked before we were married of making this

our great work. After the honeymoon we prepared for the expedition.

Stanton was as enthusiastic as ourselves. We sailed, as you know, last

May for fulfilment of my dreams.



"At Ponape we selected, not without difficulty, workmen to help

us--diggers. I had to make extraordinary inducements before I could

get together my force. Their beliefs are gloomy, these Ponapeans. They

people their swamps, their forests, their mountains, and shores, with

malignant spirits--ani they call them. And they are afraid--bitterly

afraid of the isles of ruins and what they think the ruins hide. I do

not wonder--now!



"When they were told where they were to go, and how long we expected

to stay, they murmured. Those who, at last, were tempted made what I

thought then merely a superstitious proviso that they were to be

allowed to go away on the three nights of the full moon. Would to God

we had heeded them and gone too!"



"We passed into Metalanim harbour. Off to our left--a mile away arose

a massive quadrangle. Its walls were all of forty feet high and

hundreds of feet on each side. As we drew by, our natives grew very

silent; watched it furtively, fearfully. I knew it for the ruins that

are called Nan-Tauach, the 'place of frowning walls.' And at the

silence of my men I recalled what Christian had written of this place;

of how he had come upon its 'ancient platforms and tetragonal

enclosures of stonework; its wonder of tortuous alleyways and

labyrinth of shallow canals; grim masses of stonework peering out from

behind verdant screens; cyclopean barricades,' and of how, when he had

turned 'into its ghostly shadows, straight-way the merriment of guides

was hushed and conversation died down to whispers.'"



He was silent for a little time.



"Of course I wanted to pitch our camp there," he went on again

quietly, "but I soon gave up that idea. The natives were

panic-stricken--threatened to turn back. 'No,' they said, 'too great

ani there. We go to any other place--but not there.'



"We finally picked for our base the islet called Uschen-Tau. It was

close to the isle of desire, but far enough away from it to satisfy

our men. There was an excellent camping-place and a spring of fresh

water. We pitched our tents, and in a couple of days the work was in

full swing."





[1] For more detailed observations on these points refer to G. Volkens,

Uber die Karolinen Insel Yap, in Verhandlungen Gesellschaft Erdkunde

Berlin, xxvii (1901); J. S. Kubary, Ethnographische Beitrage zur

Kentniss des Karolinen Archipel (Leiden, 1889-1892); De Abrade

Historia del Conflicto de las Carolinas, etc. (Madrid, 1886).--W. T. G.