CHAPTER II
"Dead! All Dead!"
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 Irecoiled from him--"All dead. Edith, Stanton, Thora--dead--or worse.And Edith in the Moon Pool--with them--drawn by what you saw on themoon 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 skinwas white as pearl. This whiteness was sharply defined against thehealthy tint of the body. It circled him with an even cincture abouttwo inches wide.
"Burn it!" he said, and offered me his cigarette. I drew back. Hegestured--peremptorily. I pressed the glowing end of the cigaretteinto the ribbon of white flesh. He did not flinch nor was there odourof burning nor, as I drew the little cylinder away, any mark upon thewhiteness.
"Feel it!" he commanded again. I placed my fingers upon the band. Itwas 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 isdead--or worse--I do not know; the prey of--what you saw; so, too, isStanton; so Thora. How--"
Tears rolled down the seared face.
"Why did God let it conquer us? Why did He let it take my Edith?" hecried in utter bitterness. "Are there things stronger than God, do youthink, 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 myastonishment to make answer. "If you mean the will to know, workingthrough science--"
He waved me aside impatiently.
"Science," he said. "What is our science against--that? Or againstthe science of whatever devils that made it--or made the way for it toenter 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, ofKusaie, 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. "Theycall it, don't they, the Lost Venice of the Pacific?"
"Look at this map," said Throckmartin. "That," he went on, "isChristian's chart of Metalanim harbour and the Nan-Matal. Do you seethe rectangles marked Nan-Tauach?"
"Yes," I said.
"There," he said, "under those walls is the Moon Pool and the sevengleaming lights that raise the Dweller in the Pool, and the altar andshrine of the Dweller. And there in the Moon Pool with it lie Edithand 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 toroll on the rising swells. Throckmartin drew another deep breath ofrelief, and drawing aside a curtain peered out into the night. Itsblackness seemed to reassure him. At any rate, when he sat again hewas entirely calm.
"There are no more wonderful ruins in the world," he began almostcasually. "They take in some fifty islets and cover with theirintersecting canals and lagoons about twelve square miles. Who builtthem? None knows. When were they built? Ages before the memory ofpresent man, that is sure. Ten thousand, twenty thousand, a hundredthousand years ago--the last more likely.
"All these islets, Walter, are squared, and their shores are frowningseawalls of gigantic basalt blocks hewn and put in place by the handsof ancient man. Each inner water-front is faced with a terrace ofthose basalt blocks which stand out six feet above the shallow canalsthat meander between them. On the islets behind these walls aretime-shattered fortresses, palaces, terraces, pyramids; immensecourtyards strewn with ruins--and all so old that they seem to witherthe eyes of those who look on them.
"There has been a great subsidence. You can stand out of Metalanimharbour for three miles and look down upon the tops of similarmonolithic structures and walls twenty feet below you in the water.
"And all about, strung on their canals, are the bulwarked islets withtheir enigmatic walls peering through the dense growths ofmangroves--dead, deserted for incalculable ages; shunned by those wholive near.
"You as a botanist are familiar with the evidence that a vast shadowycontinent existed in the Pacific--a continent that was not rentasunder by volcanic forces as was that legendary one of Atlantis inthe Eastern Ocean.[1] My work in Java, in Papua, and in the Ladroneshad set my mind upon this Pacific lost land. Just as the Azores arebelieved to be the last high peaks of Atlantis, so hints came to mesteadily that Ponape and Lele and their basalt bulwarked islets werethe last points of the slowly sunken western land clinging still tothe sunlight, and had been the last refuge and sacred places of therulers of that race which had lost their immemorial home under therising waters of the Pacific.
"I believed that under these ruins I might find the evidencethat I sought.
"My--my wife and I had talked before we were married of making thisour great work. After the honeymoon we prepared for the expedition.Stanton was as enthusiastic as ourselves. We sailed, as you know, lastMay for fulfilment of my dreams.
"At Ponape we selected, not without difficulty, workmen to helpus--diggers. I had to make extraordinary inducements before I couldget together my force. Their beliefs are gloomy, these Ponapeans. Theypeople their swamps, their forests, their mountains, and shores, withmalignant spirits--ani they call them. And they are afraid--bitterlyafraid of the isles of ruins and what they think the ruins hide. I donot wonder--now!
"When they were told where they were to go, and how long we expectedto stay, they murmured. Those who, at last, were tempted made what Ithought then merely a superstitious proviso that they were to beallowed to go away on the three nights of the full moon. Would to Godwe had heeded them and gone too!"
"We passed into Metalanim harbour. Off to our left--a mile away arosea massive quadrangle. Its walls were all of forty feet high andhundreds of feet on each side. As we drew by, our natives grew verysilent; watched it furtively, fearfully. I knew it for the ruins thatare called Nan-Tauach, the 'place of frowning walls.' And at thesilence of my men I recalled what Christian had written of this place;of how he had come upon its 'ancient platforms and tetragonalenclosures of stonework; its wonder of tortuous alleyways andlabyrinth of shallow canals; grim masses of stonework peering out frombehind verdant screens; cyclopean barricades,' and of how, when he hadturned 'into its ghostly shadows, straight-way the merriment of guideswas 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 againquietly, "but I soon gave up that idea. The natives werepanic-stricken--threatened to turn back. 'No,' they said, 'too greatani there. We go to any other place--but not there.'
"We finally picked for our base the islet called Uschen-Tau. It wasclose to the isle of desire, but far enough away from it to satisfyour men. There was an excellent camping-place and a spring of freshwater. We pitched our tents, and in a couple of days the work was infull swing."
[1] For more detailed observations on these points refer to G. Volkens,Uber die Karolinen Insel Yap, in Verhandlungen Gesellschaft ErdkundeBerlin, xxvii (1901); J. S. Kubary, Ethnographische Beitrage zurKentniss des Karolinen Archipel (Leiden, 1889-1892); De AbradeHistoria del Conflicto de las Carolinas, etc. (Madrid, 1886).--W. T. G.