The Shining Devil Took Them!

: The Moon Pool

My colleagues of the Association, and you others who may read this my

narrative, for what I did and did not when full realization returned I

must offer here, briefly as I can, an explanation; a defense--if you

will.



My first act was to spring to the open port. The coma had lasted

hours, for the moon was now low in the west! I ran to the door to

sound the alarm. It resisted under my frantic hands; would n t open.

Something fell tinkling to the floor. It was the key and I remembered

then that Throckmartin had turned it before we began our vigil. With

memory a hope died that I had not known was in me, the hope that he

had escaped from the cabin, found refuge elsewhere on the ship.



And as I stooped, fumbling with shaking fingers for the key, a thought

came to me that drove again the blood from my heart, held me rigid. I

could sound no alarm on the Southern Queen for Throckmartin!



Conviction of my appalling helplessness was complete. The ensemble of

the vessel from captain to cabin boy was, to put it conservatively,

average. None, I knew, save Throckmartin and myself had seen the first

apparition of the Dweller. Had they witnessed the second? I did not

know, nor could I risk speaking, not knowing. And not seeing, how

could they believe? They would have thought me insane--or worse;

even, it might be, his murderer.



I snapped off the electrics; waited and listened; opened the door with

infinite caution and slipped, unseen, into my own stateroom. The hours

until the dawn were eternities of waking nightmare. Reason, resuming

sway at last, steadied me. Even had I spoken and been believed where

in these wastes after all the hours could we search for Throckmartin?

Certainly the captain would not turn back to Port Moresby. And even if

he did, of what use for me to set forth for the Nan-Matal without the

equipment which Throckmartin himself had decided was necessary if one

hoped to cope with the mystery that lurked there?



There was but one thing to do--follow his instructions; get the

paraphernalia in Melbourne or Sydney if it were possible; if not sail

to America as swiftly as might be, secure it there and as swiftly

return to Ponape. And this I determined to do.



Calmness came back to me after I had made this decision. And when I

went up on deck I knew that I had been right. They had not seen the

Dweller. They were still discussing the darkening of the ship, talking

of dynamos burned out, wires short circuited, a half dozen

explanations of the extinguishment. Not until noon was Throckmartin's

absence discovered. I told the captain that I had left him early in

the evening; that, indeed, I knew him but slightly, after all. It

occurred to none to doubt me, or to question me minutely. Why should

it have? His strangeness had been noted, commented upon; all who had

met him had thought him half mad. I did little to discourage the

impression. And so it came naturally that on the log it was entered

that he had fallen or leaped from the vessel some time during the

night.



A report to this effect was made when we entered Melbourne. I slipped

quietly ashore and in the press of the war news Throckmartin's

supposed fate won only a few lines in the newspapers; my own presence

on the ship and in the city passed unnoticed.



I was fortunate in securing at Melbourne everything I needed except a

set of Becquerel ray condensers--but these were the very keystone of

my equipment. Pursuing my search to Sydney I was doubly fortunate in

finding a firm who were expecting these very articles in a consignment

due them from the States within a fortnight. I settled down in

strictest seclusion to await their arrival.



And now it will occur to you to ask why I did not cable, during this

period of waiting, to the Association; demand aid from it. Or why I

did not call upon members of the University staffs of either Melbourne

or Sydney for assistance. At the least, why I did not gather, as

Throckmartin had hoped to do, a little force of strong men to go with

me to the Nan-Matal.



To the first two questions I answer frankly--I did not dare. And this

reluctance, this inhibition, every man jealous of his scientific

reputation will understand. The story of Throckmartin, the happenings

I had myself witnessed, were incredible, abnormal, outside the facts

of all known science. I shrank from the inevitable disbelief, perhaps

ridicule--nay, perhaps even the graver suspicion that had caused me to

seal my lips while on the ship. Why I myself could only half believe!

How then could I hope to convince others?



And as for the third question--I could not take men into the range of

such a peril without first warning them of what they might encounter;

and if I did warn them--



It was checkmate! If it also was cowardice--well, I have atoned for

it. But I do not hold it so; my conscience is clear.



That fortnight and the greater part of another passed before the ship

I awaited steamed into port. By that time, between my straining

anxiety to be after Throckmartin, the despairing thought that every

moment of delay might be vital to him and his, and my intensely eager

desire to know whether that shining, glorious horror on the moon path

did exist or had been hallucination, I was worn almost to the edge of

madness.



At last the condensers were in my hands. It was more than a week

later, however, before I could secure passage back to Port Moresby and

it was another week still before I started north on the Suwarna, a

swift little sloop with a fifty-horsepower auxiliary, heading straight

for Ponape and the Nan-Matal.



We sighted the Brunhilda some five hundred miles south of the

Carolines. The wind had fallen soon after Papua had dropped astern.

The Suwarna's ability to make her twelve knots an hour without it had

made me very fully forgive her for not being as fragrant as the Javan

flower for which she was named. Da Costa, her captain, was a

garrulous Portuguese; his mate was a Canton man with all the marks of

long and able service on some pirate junk; his engineer was a

half-breed China-Malay who had picked up his knowledge of power

plants, Heaven alone knew where, and, I had reason to believe, had

transferred all his religious impulses to the American built deity of

mechanism he so faithfully served. The crew was made up of six huge,

chattering Tonga boys.



The Suwarna had cut through Finschafen Huon Gulf to the protection of

the Bismarcks. She had threaded the maze of the archipelago

tranquilly, and we were then rolling over the thousand-mile stretch of

open ocean with New Hanover far behind us and our boat's bow pointed

straight toward Nukuor of the Monte Verdes. After we had rounded

Nukuor we should, barring accident, reach Ponape in not more than

sixty hours.



It was late afternoon, and on the demure little breeze that marched

behind us came far-flung sighs of spice-trees and nutmeg flowers. The

slow prodigious swells of the Pacific lifted us in gentle, giant hands

and sent us as gently down the long, blue wave slopes to the next

broad, upward slope. There was a spell of peace over the ocean,

stilling even the Portuguese captain who stood dreamily at the wheel,

slowly swaying to the rhythmic lift and fall of the sloop.



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

over the bow.



"Sail he b'long port side!"



Da Costa straightened and gazed while I raised my glass. The vessel

was a scant mile away, and must have been visible long before the

sleepy watcher had seen her. She was a sloop about the size of the

Suwarna, without power. All sails set, even to a spinnaker she

carried, she was making the best of the little breeze. I tried to read

her name, but the vessel jibed sharply as though the hands of the man

at the wheel had suddenly dropped the helm--and then with equal

abruptness swung back to her course. The stern came in sight, and on

it I read Brunhilda.



I shifted my glasses to the man at wheel. He was crouching down over

the spokes in a helpless, huddled sort of way, and even as I looked

the vessel veered again, abruptly as before. I saw the helmsman

straighten up and bring the wheel about with a vicious jerk.



He stood so for a moment, looking straight ahead, entirely oblivious

of us, and then seemed again to sink down within himself. It came to

me that his was the action of a man striving vainly against a

weariness unutterable. I swept the deck with my glasses. There was no

other sign of life. I turned to find the Portuguese staring intently

and with puzzled air at the sloop, now separated from us by a scant

half mile.



"Something veree wrong I think there, sair," he said in his curious

English. "The man on deck I know. He is captain and owner of the

Br-rwun'ild. His name Olaf Huldricksson, what you say--Norwegian. He

is eithair veree sick or veree tired--but I do not undweerstand where

is the crew and the starb'd boat is gone--"



He shouted an order to the engineer and as he did so the faint breeze

failed and the sails of the Brunhilda flapped down inert. We were now

nearly abreast and a scant hundred yards away. The engine of the

Suwarna died and the Tonga boys leaped to one of the boats.



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

you?"



The man at the wheel turned toward us. He was a giant; his shoulders

enormous, thick chested, strength in every line of him, he towered

like a viking of old at the rudder bar of his shark ship.





I raised the glass again; his face sprang into the lens and never have

I seen a visage lined and marked as though by ages of unsleeping

misery as was that of Olaf Huldricksson!



The Tonga boys had the boat alongside and were waiting at the oars.

The little captain was dropping into it.



"Wait!" I cried. I ran into my cabin, grasped my emergency medical

kit and climbed down the rope ladder. The Tonga boys bent to the oars.

We reached the side and Da Costa and I each seized a lanyard dangling

from the stays and swung ourselves on board. Da Costa approached

Huldricksson softly.



"What's the matter, Olaf?" he began--and then was silent, looking down

at the wheel. The hands of Huldricksson were lashed fast to the spokes

by thongs of thin, strong cord; they were swollen and black and the

thongs had bitten into the sinewy wrists till they were hidden in the

outraged flesh, cutting so deeply that blood fell, slow drop by drop,

at his feet! We sprang toward him, reaching out hands to his fetters

to loose them. Even as we touched them, Huldricksson aimed a vicious

kick at me and then another at Da Costa which sent the Portuguese

tumbling into the scuppers.



"Let be!" croaked Huldricksson; his voice was thick and lifeless as

though forced from a dead throat; his lips were cracked and dry and

his parched tongue was black. "Let be! Go! Let be!"



The Portuguese had picked himself up, whimpering with rage and knife

in hand, but as Huldricksson's voice reached him he stopped.

Amazement crept into his eyes and as he thrust the blade back into

his belt they softened with pity.



"Something veree wrong wit' Olaf," he murmured to me. "I think he

crazee!" And then Olaf Huldricksson began to curse us. He did not

speak--he howled from that hideously dry mouth his imprecations. And

all the time his red eyes roamed the seas and his hands, clenched and

rigid on the wheel, dropped blood.



"I go below," said Da Costa nervously. "His wife, his daughter--" he

darted down the companionway and was gone.



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



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



"There is nobody, nobody," he paused--then--"nobody--nowhere!" His

hands flew out in a gesture of hopeless incomprehension. "I do not

understan'."



Then Olaf Huldricksson opened his dry lips and as he spoke a chill ran

through me, checking my heart.



"The sparkling devil took them!" croaked Olaf Huldricksson, "the

sparkling devil took them! Took my Helma and my little Freda! The

sparkling devil came down from the moon and took them!"



He swayed; tears dripped down his cheeks. Da Costa moved toward him

again and again Huldricksson watched him, alertly, wickedly, from his

bloodshot eyes.



I took a hypodermic from my case and filled it with morphine. I drew

Da Costa to me.



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

toward the wheel.



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



Huldricksson turned his head toward him. "The shining devil took

them," he croaked. "The moon devil that spark--"



A yell broke from him. I had thrust the needle into his arm just

above one swollen wrist and had quickly shot the drug through. He

struggled to release himself and then began to rock drunkenly. The

morphine, taking him in his weakness, worked quickly. Soon over his

face a peace dropped. The pupils of the staring eyes contracted. Once,

twice, he swayed and then, his bleeding, prisoned hands held high and

still gripping the wheel, he crumpled to the deck.



With utmost difficulty we loosed the thongs, but at last it was done.

We rigged a little swing and the Tonga boys slung the great inert body

over the side into the dory. Soon we had Huldricksson in my bunk. Da

Costa sent half his crew over to the sloop in charge of the Cantonese.

They took in all sail, stripping Huldricksson's boat to the masts and

then with the Brunhilda nosing quietly along after us at the end of a

long hawser, one of the Tonga boys at her wheel, we resumed the way so

enigmatically interrupted.



I cleansed and bandaged the Norseman's lacerated wrists and sponged

the blackened, parched mouth with warm water and a mild antiseptic.



Suddenly I was aware of Da Costa's presence and turned. His unease was

manifest and held, it seemed to me, a queer, furtive anxiety.



"What you think of Olaf, sair?" he asked. I shrugged my shoulders.

"You think he killed his woman and his babee?" He went on. "You think

he crazee and killed all?"



"Nonsense, Da Costa," I answered. "You saw the boat was gone. Most

probably his crew mutinied and to torture him tied him up the way you

saw. They did the same thing with Hilton of the Coral Lady; you'll

remember."



"No," he said. "No. The crew did not. Nobody there on board when

Olaf was tied."



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



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



"Wait!" he went on at my incredulous gesture of dissent. "Wait, I show

you." He had been standing with hands behind his back and now I saw

that he held in them the cut thongs that had bound Huldricksson. They

were blood-stained and each ended in a broad leather tip skilfully

spliced into the cord. "Look," he said, pointing to these leather

ends. I looked and saw in them deep indentations of teeth. I snatched

one of the thongs and opened the mouth of the unconscious man on the

bunk. Carefully I placed the leather within it and gently forced the

jaws shut on it. It was true. Those marks were where Olaf

Huldricksson's jaws had gripped.



"Wait!" Da Costa repeated, "I show you." He took other cords and

rested his hands on the supports of a chair back. Rapidly he twisted

one of the thongs around his left hand, drew a loose knot, shifted the

cord up toward his elbow. This left wrist and hand still free and with

them he twisted the other cord around the right wrist; drew a similar

knot. His hands were now in the exact position that Huldricksson's had

been on the Brunhilda but with cords and knots hanging loose. Then Da

Costa reached down his head, took a leather end in his teeth and with

a jerk drew the thong that noosed his left hand tight; similarly he

drew tight the second.



He strained at his fetters. There before my eyes he had pinioned

himself so that without aid he could not release himself. And he was

exactly as Huldricksson had been!



"You will have to cut me loose, sair," he said. "I cannot move them.

It is an old trick on these seas. Sometimes it is necessary that a man

stand at the wheel many hours without help, and he does this so that

if he sleep the wheel wake him, yes, sair."



I looked from him to the man on the bed.



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

hands?"



I looked at him, uneasily.



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



He fidgeted, avoided my eyes, and then rapidly, almost surreptitiously

crossed himself.



"No," he replied. "I know nothing. Some things I have heard--but

they tell many tales on these seas."



He started for the door. Before he reached it he turned. "But this I

do know," he half whispered, "I am damned glad there is no full moon

tonight." And passed out, leaving me staring after him in amazement.

What did the Portuguese know?



I bent over the sleeper. On his face was no trace of that unholy

mingling of opposites the Dweller stamped upon its victims.



And yet--what was it the Norseman had said?



"The sparkling devil took them!" Nay, he had been even more

explicit--"The sparkling devil that came down from the moon!"



Could it be that the Dweller had swept upon the Brunhilda, drawing

down the moon path Olaf Huldricksson's wife and babe even as it had

drawn Throckmartin?



As I sat thinking the cabin grew suddenly dark and from above came a

shouting and patter of feet. Down upon us swept one of the abrupt,

violent squalls that are met with in those latitudes. I lashed

Huldricksson fast in the berth and ran up on deck.



The long, peaceful swells had changed into angry, choppy waves from

the tops of which the spindrift streamed in long stinging lashes.



A half-hour passed; the squall died as quickly as it had arisen. The

sea quieted. Over in the west, from beneath the tattered, flying edge

of the storm, dropped the red globe of the setting sun; dropped slowly

until it touched the sea rim.



I watched it--and rubbed my eyes and stared again. For over its

flaming portal something huge and black moved, like a gigantic

beckoning finger!



Da Costa had seen it, too, and he turned the Suwarna straight toward

the descending orb and its strange shadow. As we approached we saw it

was a little mass of wreckage and that the beckoning finger was a wing

of canvas, sticking up and swaying with the motion of the waves. On

the highest point of the wreckage sat a tall figure calmly smoking a

cigarette.



We brought the Suwarna to, dropped a boat, and with myself as coxswain

pulled toward a wrecked hydroairplane. Its occupant took a long puff

at his cigarette, waved a cheerful hand, shouted a greeting. And just

as he did so a great wave raised itself up behind him, took the

wreckage, tossed it high in a swelter of foam, and passed on. When we

had steadied our boat, where wreck and man had been was--nothing.



There came a tug at the side--, two muscular brown hands gripped it

close to my left, and a sleek, black, wet head showed its top between

them. Two bright, blue eyes that held deep within them a laughing

deviltry looked into mine, and a long, lithe body drew itself gently

over the thwart and seated its dripping self at my feet.



"Much obliged," said this man from the sea. "I knew somebody was sure

to come along when the O'Keefe banshee didn't show up."



"The what?" I asked in amazement.



"The O'Keefe banshee--I'm Larry O'Keefe. It's a far way from Ireland,

but not too far for the O'Keefe banshee to travel if the O'Keefe was

going to click in."



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



"Have you a cigarette? Mine went out," he said with a grin, as he

reached a moist hand out for the little cylinder, took it, lighted it.



I saw a lean, intelligent face whose fighting jaw was softened by the

wistfulness of the clean-cut lips and the honesty that lay side by

side with the deviltry in the laughing blue eyes; nose of a

thoroughbred with the suspicion of a tilt; long, well-knit, slender

figure that I knew must have all the strength of fine steel; the

uniform of a lieutenant in the Royal Flying Corps of Britain's navy.



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



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



I liked Larry O'Keefe from the beginning--but I did not dream as the

Tonga boys pulled us back to the Suwarna bow that liking was to be

forged into man's strong love for man by fires which souls such as his

and mine--and yours who read this--could never dream.



Larry! Larry O'Keefe, where are you now with your leprechauns and

banshee, your heart of a child, your laughing blue eyes, and your

fearless soul? Shall I ever see you again, Larry O'Keefe, dear to me

as some best beloved younger brother? Larry!