CHAPTER VI
"The Shining Devil Took Them!"
My colleagues of the Association, and you others who may read this mynarrative, for what I did and did not when full realization returned Imust offer here, briefly as I can, an explanation; a defense--if youwill.
My first act was to spring to the open port. The coma had lastedhours, for the moon was now low in the west! I ran to the door tosound the alarm. It resisted under my frantic hands; would not open.Something fell tinkling to the floor. It was the key and I rememberedthen that Throckmartin had turned it before we began our vigil. Withmemory a hope died that I had not known was in me, the hope that hehad escaped from the cabin, found refuge elsewhere on the ship.
And as I stooped, fumbling with shaking fingers for the key, a thoughtcame to me that drove again the blood from my heart, held me rigid. Icould sound no alarm on the Southern Queen for Throckmartin!
Conviction of my appalling helplessness was complete. The ensemble ofthe vessel from captain to cabin boy was, to put it conservatively,average. None, I knew, save Throckmartin and myself had seen the firstapparition of the Dweller. Had they witnessed the second? I did notknow, nor could I risk speaking, not knowing. And not seeing, howcould 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 withinfinite caution and slipped, unseen, into my own stateroom. The hoursuntil the dawn were eternities of waking nightmare. Reason, resumingsway at last, steadied me. Even had I spoken and been believed wherein these wastes after all the hours could we search for Throckmartin?Certainly the captain would not turn back to Port Moresby. And even ifhe did, of what use for me to set forth for the Nan-Matal without theequipment which Throckmartin himself had decided was necessary if onehoped to cope with the mystery that lurked there?
There was but one thing to do--follow his instructions; get theparaphernalia in Melbourne or Sydney if it were possible; if not sailto America as swiftly as might be, secure it there and as swiftlyreturn to Ponape. And this I determined to do.
Calmness came back to me after I had made this decision. And when Iwent up on deck I knew that I had been right. They had not seen theDweller. They were still discussing the darkening of the ship, talkingof dynamos burned out, wires short circuited, a half dozenexplanations of the extinguishment. Not until noon was Throckmartin'sabsence discovered. I told the captain that I had left him early inthe evening; that, indeed, I knew him but slightly, after all. Itoccurred to none to doubt me, or to question me minutely. Why shouldit have? His strangeness had been noted, commented upon; all who hadmet him had thought him half mad. I did little to discourage theimpression. And so it came naturally that on the log it was enteredthat he had fallen or leaped from the vessel some time during thenight.
A report to this effect was made when we entered Melbourne. I slippedquietly ashore and in the press of the war news Throckmartin'ssupposed fate won only a few lines in the newspapers; my own presenceon the ship and in the city passed unnoticed.
I was fortunate in securing at Melbourne everything I needed except aset of Becquerel ray condensers--but these were the very keystone ofmy equipment. Pursuing my search to Sydney I was doubly fortunate infinding a firm who were expecting these very articles in a consignmentdue them from the States within a fortnight. I settled down instrictest seclusion to await their arrival.
And now it will occur to you to ask why I did not cable, during thisperiod of waiting, to the Association; demand aid from it. Or why Idid not call upon members of the University staffs of either Melbourneor Sydney for assistance. At the least, why I did not gather, asThrockmartin had hoped to do, a little force of strong men to go withme to the Nan-Matal.
To the first two questions I answer frankly--I did not dare. And thisreluctance, this inhibition, every man jealous of his scientificreputation will understand. The story of Throckmartin, the happeningsI had myself witnessed, were incredible, abnormal, outside the factsof all known science. I shrank from the inevitable disbelief, perhapsridicule--nay, perhaps even the graver suspicion that had caused me toseal 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 ofsuch 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 forit. But I do not hold it so; my conscience is clear.
That fortnight and the greater part of another passed before the shipI awaited steamed into port. By that time, between my straininganxiety to be after Throckmartin, the despairing thought that everymoment of delay might be vital to him and his, and my intensely eagerdesire to know whether that shining, glorious horror on the moon pathdid exist or had been hallucination, I was worn almost to the edge ofmadness.
At last the condensers were in my hands. It was more than a weeklater, however, before I could secure passage back to Port Moresby andit was another week still before I started north on the Suwarna, aswift little sloop with a fifty-horsepower auxiliary, heading straightfor Ponape and the Nan-Matal.
We sighted the Brunhilda some five hundred miles south of theCarolines. The wind had fallen soon after Papua had dropped astern.The Suwarna's ability to make her twelve knots an hour without it hadmade me very fully forgive her for not being as fragrant as the Javanflower for which she was named. Da Costa, her captain, was agarrulous Portuguese; his mate was a Canton man with all the marks oflong and able service on some pirate junk; his engineer was ahalf-breed China-Malay who had picked up his knowledge of powerplants, Heaven alone knew where, and, I had reason to believe, hadtransferred all his religious impulses to the American built deity ofmechanism 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 ofthe Bismarcks. She had threaded the maze of the archipelagotranquilly, and we were then rolling over the thousand-mile stretch ofopen ocean with New Hanover far behind us and our boat's bow pointedstraight toward Nukuor of the Monte Verdes. After we had roundedNukuor we should, barring accident, reach Ponape in not more thansixty hours.
It was late afternoon, and on the demure little breeze that marchedbehind us came far-flung sighs of spice-trees and nutmeg flowers. Theslow prodigious swells of the Pacific lifted us in gentle, giant handsand sent us as gently down the long, blue wave slopes to the nextbroad, 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 lazilyover the bow.
"Sail he b'long port side!"
Da Costa straightened and gazed while I raised my glass. The vesselwas a scant mile away, and must have been visible long before thesleepy watcher had seen her. She was a sloop about the size of theSuwarna, without power. All sails set, even to a spinnaker shecarried, she was making the best of the little breeze. I tried to readher name, but the vessel jibed sharply as though the hands of the manat the wheel had suddenly dropped the helm--and then with equalabruptness swung back to her course. The stern came in sight, and onit I read Brunhilda.
I shifted my glasses to the man at wheel. He was crouching down overthe spokes in a helpless, huddled sort of way, and even as I lookedthe vessel veered again, abruptly as before. I saw the helmsmanstraighten up and bring the wheel about with a vicious jerk.
He stood so for a moment, looking straight ahead, entirely obliviousof us, and then seemed again to sink down within himself. It came tome that his was the action of a man striving vainly against aweariness unutterable. I swept the deck with my glasses. There was noother sign of life. I turned to find the Portuguese staring intentlyand with puzzled air at the sloop, now separated from us by a scanthalf mile.
"Something veree wrong I think there, sair," he
said in his curiousEnglish. "The man on deck I know. He is captain and owner of theBr-rwun'ild. His name Olaf Huldricksson, what you say--Norwegian. Heis eithair veree sick or veree tired--but I do not undweerstand whereis the crew and the starb'd boat is gone--"
He shouted an order to the engineer and as he did so the faint breezefailed and the sails of the Brunhilda flapped down inert. We were nownearly abreast and a scant hundred yards away. The engine of theSuwarna 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 shouldersenormous, thick chested, strength in every line of him, he toweredlike 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 haveI seen a visage lined and marked as though by ages of unsleepingmisery 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 medicalkit 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 danglingfrom the stays and swung ourselves on board. Da Costa approachedHuldricksson softly.
"What's the matter, Olaf?" he began--and then was silent, looking downat the wheel. The hands of Huldricksson were lashed fast to the spokesby thongs of thin, strong cord; they were swollen and black and thethongs had bitten into the sinewy wrists till they were hidden in theoutraged flesh, cutting so deeply that blood fell, slow drop by drop,at his feet! We sprang toward him, reaching out hands to his fettersto loose them. Even as we touched them, Huldricksson aimed a viciouskick at me and then another at Da Costa which sent the Portuguesetumbling into the scuppers.
"Let be!" croaked Huldricksson; his voice was thick and lifeless asthough forced from a dead throat; his lips were cracked and dry andhis parched tongue was black. "Let be! Go! Let be!"
The Portuguese had picked himself up, whimpering with rage and knifein hand, but as Huldricksson's voice reached him he stopped.Amazement crept into his eyes and as he thrust the blade back intohis belt they softened with pity.
"Something veree wrong wit' Olaf," he murmured to me. "I think hecrazee!" And then Olaf Huldricksson began to curse us. He did notspeak--he howled from that hideously dry mouth his imprecations. Andall the time his red eyes roamed the seas and his hands, clenched andrigid on the wheel, dropped blood.
"I go below," said Da Costa nervously. "His wife, his daughter--" hedarted 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!" Hishands flew out in a gesture of hopeless incomprehension. "I do notunderstan'."
Then Olaf Huldricksson opened his dry lips and as he spoke a chill ranthrough me, checking my heart.
"The sparkling devil took them!" croaked Olaf Huldricksson, "thesparkling devil took them! Took my Helma and my little Freda! Thesparkling devil came down from the moon and took them!"
He swayed; tears dripped down his cheeks. Da Costa moved toward himagain and again Huldricksson watched him, alertly, wickedly, from hisbloodshot eyes.
I took a hypodermic from my case and filled it with morphine. I drewDa Costa to me.
"Get to the side of him," I whispered, "talk to him." He moved overtoward the wheel.
"Where is your Helma and Freda, Olaf?" he said.
Huldricksson turned his head toward him. "The shining devil tookthem," he croaked. "The moon devil that spark--"
A yell broke from him. I had thrust the needle into his arm justabove one swollen wrist and had quickly shot the drug through. Hestruggled to release himself and then began to rock drunkenly. Themorphine, taking him in his weakness, worked quickly. Soon over hisface a peace dropped. The pupils of the staring eyes contracted. Once,twice, he swayed and then, his bleeding, prisoned hands held high andstill 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 bodyover the side into the dory. Soon we had Huldricksson in my bunk. DaCosta 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 andthen with the Brunhilda nosing quietly along after us at the end of along hawser, one of the Tonga boys at her wheel, we resumed the way soenigmatically interrupted.
I cleansed and bandaged the Norseman's lacerated wrists and spongedthe blackened, parched mouth with warm water and a mild antiseptic.
Suddenly I was aware of Da Costa's presence and turned. His unease wasmanifest 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 thinkhe crazee and killed all?"
"Nonsense, Da Costa," I answered. "You saw the boat was gone. Mostprobably his crew mutinied and to torture him tied him up the way yousaw. They did the same thing with Hilton of the Coral Lady; you'llremember."
"No," he said. "No. The crew did not. Nobody there on board whenOlaf 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 showyou." He had been standing with hands behind his back and now I sawthat he held in them the cut thongs that had bound Huldricksson. Theywere blood-stained and each ended in a broad leather tip skilfullyspliced into the cord. "Look," he said, pointing to these leatherends. I looked and saw in them deep indentations of teeth. I snatchedone of the thongs and opened the mouth of the unconscious man on thebunk. Carefully I placed the leather within it and gently forced thejaws shut on it. It was true. Those marks were where OlafHuldricksson's jaws had gripped.
"Wait!" Da Costa repeated, "I show you." He took other cords andrested his hands on the supports of a chair back. Rapidly he twistedone of the thongs around his left hand, drew a loose knot, shifted thecord up toward his elbow. This left wrist and hand still free and withthem he twisted the other cord around the right wrist; drew a similarknot. His hands were now in the exact position that Huldricksson's hadbeen on the Brunhilda but with cords and knots hanging loose. Then DaCosta reached down his head, took a leather end in his teeth and witha jerk drew the thong that noosed his left hand tight; similarly hedrew tight the second.
He strained at his fetters. There before my eyes he had pinionedhimself so that without aid he could not release himself. And he wasexactly 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 manstand at the wheel many hours without help, and he does this so thatif 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 hishands?"
I looked at him, uneasily.
"I don't know," I answered. "Do you?"
He fidgeted, avoided my eyes, and then rapidly, almost surreptitiouslycrossed himself.
"No," he replied. "I know nothing. Some things I have heard--butthey tell many tales on these seas."
He started for the door. Before he reached it he turned. "But this Ido know," he half whispered, "I am damned glad there is no full moontonight." 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 unholymingling 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 moreexplicit--"The sparkling devil that came do
wn from the moon!"
Could it be that the Dweller had swept upon the Brunhilda, drawingdown the moon path Olaf Huldricksson's wife and babe even as it haddrawn Throckmartin?
As I sat thinking the cabin grew suddenly dark and from above came ashouting and patter of feet. Down upon us swept one of the abrupt,violent squalls that are met with in those latitudes. I lashedHuldricksson fast in the berth and ran up on deck.
The long, peaceful swells had changed into angry, choppy waves fromthe tops of which the spindrift streamed in long stinging lashes.
A half-hour passed; the squall died as quickly as it had arisen. Thesea quieted. Over in the west, from beneath the tattered, flying edgeof the storm, dropped the red globe of the setting sun; dropped slowlyuntil it touched the sea rim.
I watched it--and rubbed my eyes and stared again. For over itsflaming portal something huge and black moved, like a giganticbeckoning finger!
Da Costa had seen it, too, and he turned the Suwarna straight towardthe descending orb and its strange shadow. As we approached we saw itwas a little mass of wreckage and that the beckoning finger was a wingof canvas, sticking up and swaying with the motion of the waves. Onthe highest point of the wreckage sat a tall figure calmly smoking acigarette.
We brought the Suwarna to, dropped a boat, and with myself as coxswainpulled toward a wrecked hydroairplane. Its occupant took a long puffat his cigarette, waved a cheerful hand, shouted a greeting. And justas he did so a great wave raised itself up behind him, took thewreckage, tossed it high in a swelter of foam, and passed on. When wehad steadied our boat, where wreck and man had been was--nothing.
There came a tug at the side--, two muscular brown hands gripped itclose to my left, and a sleek, black, wet head showed its top betweenthem. Two bright, blue eyes that held deep within them a laughingdeviltry looked into mine, and a long, lithe body drew itself gentlyover the thwart and seated its dripping self at my feet.
"Much obliged," said this man from the sea. "I knew somebody was sureto 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 wasgoing 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 hereached a moist hand out for the little cylinder, took it, lighted it.
I saw a lean, intelligent face whose fighting jaw was softened by thewistfulness of the clean-cut lips and the honesty that lay side byside with the deviltry in the laughing blue eyes; nose of athoroughbred with the suspicion of a tilt; long, well-knit, slenderfigure that I knew must have all the strength of fine steel; theuniform 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 theTonga boys pulled us back to the Suwarna bow that liking was to beforged into man's strong love for man by fires which souls such as hisand mine--and yours who read this--could never dream.
Larry! Larry O'Keefe, where are you now with your leprechauns andbanshee, your heart of a child, your laughing blue eyes, and yourfearless soul? Shall I ever see you again, Larry O'Keefe, dear to meas some best beloved younger brother? Larry!