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The Moon Pool

A >> A. Merritt >> The Moon Pool



The Moon Pool

A. MERRITT




Foreword


The publication of the following narrative of Dr. Walter
T. Goodwin has been authorized by the Executive Council
of the International Association of Science.

First:

To end officially what is beginning to be called the
Throckmartin Mystery and to kill the innuendo and scan-
dalous suspicions which have threatened to stain the repu-
tations of Dr. David Throckmartin, his youthful wife, and
equally youthful associate Dr. Charles Stanton ever since
a tardy despatch from Melbourne, Australia, reported the
disappearance of the first from a ship sailing to that port,
and the subsequent reports of the disappearance of his wife
and associate from the camp of their expedition in the
Caroline Islands.

Second:

Because the Executive Council have concluded that Dr.
Goodwin's experiences in his wholly heroic effort to save
the three, and the lessons and warnings within those ex-
periences, are too important to humanity as a whole to be
hidden away in scientific papers understandable only to
the technically educated; or to be presented through the
newspaper press in the abridged and fragmentary form
which the space limitations of that vehicle make necessary.

For these reasons the Executive Council commissioned
Mr. A. Merritt to transcribe into form to be readily under-
stood by the layman the stenographic notes of Dr. Good-
win's own report to the Council, supplemented by further
oral reminiscences and comments by Dr. Goodwin; this
transcription, edited and censored by the Executive Coun-
cil of the Association, forms the contents of this book.

Himself a member of the Council, Dr. Walter T. Goodwin,
Ph.D., F.R.G.S. etc., is without cavil the foremost of
American botanists, an observer of international reputa-
tion and the author of several epochal treaties upon his
chosen branch of science. His story, amazing in the best
sense of that word as it may be, is fully supported by
proofs brought forward by him and accepted by the or-
ganization of which I have the honor to be president. What
matter has been elided from this popular presentation--
because of the excessively menacing potentialities it con-
tains, which unrestricted dissemination might develop--will
be dealt with in purely scientific pamphlets of carefully
guarded circulation.

THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SCIENCE
Per J. B. K., President




CHAPTER I

The Thing on the Moon Path


FOR two months I had been on the d'Entrecasteaux Islands
gathering data for the concluding chapters of my book
upon the flora of the volcanic islands of the South Pacific.
The day before I had reached Port Moresby and had seen
my specimens safely stored on board the Southern Queen.
As I sat on the upper deck I thought, with homesick mind,
of the long leagues between me and Melbourne, and the
longer ones between Melbourne and New York.

It was one of Papua's yellow mornings when she shows
herself in her sombrest, most baleful mood. The sky was
smouldering ochre. Over the island brooded a spirit sullen,
alien, implacable, filled with the threat of latent, malefic
forces waiting to be unleashed. It seemed an emanation out
of the untamed, sinister heart of Papua herself--sinister even
when she smiles. And now and then, on the wind, came a
breath from virgin jungles, laden with unfamiliar odours,
mysterious and menacing.

It is on such mornings that Papua whispers to you of her
immemorial ancientness and of her power. And, as every
white man must, I fought against her spell. While I struggled
I saw a tall figure striding down the pier; a Kapa-Kapa boy
followed swinging a new valise. There was something
familiar about the tall man. As he reached the gangplank he
looked up straight into my eyes, stared for a moment, then
waved his hand.

And now I knew him. It was Dr. David Throckmartin--
"Throck" he was to me always, one of my oldest friends
and, as well, a mind of the first water whose power and
achievements were for me a constant inspiration as they
were, I know, for scores other.

Coincidentally with my recognition came a shock of sur-
prise, definitely--unpleasant. It was Throckmartin--but
about him was something disturbingly unlike the man I
had known long so well and to whom and to whose little
party I had bidden farewell less than a month before I
myself had sailed for these seas. He had married only a
few weeks before, Edith, the daughter of Professor William
Frazier, younger by at least a decade than he but at one
with him in his ideals and as much in love, if it were pos-
sible, as Throckmartin. By virtue of her father's training
a wonderful assistant, by virtue of her own sweet, sound
heart a--I use the word in its olden sense--lover. With his
equally youthful associate Dr. Charles Stanton and a Swed-
ish woman, Thora Halversen, who had been Edith Throck-
martin's nurse from babyhood, they had set forth for the
Nan-Matal, that extraordinary group of island ruins clus-
tered along the eastern shore of Ponape in the Carolines.

I knew that he had planned to spend at least a year
among these ruins, not only of Ponape but of Lele--twin
centres of a colossal riddle of humanity, a weird flower of
civilization that blossomed ages before the seeds of Egypt
were sown; of whose arts we know little enough and of
whose science nothing. He had carried with him unusually
complete equipment for the work he had expected to do
and which, he hoped, would be his monument.

What then had brought Throckmartin to Port Moresby,
and what was that change I had sensed in him?

Hurrying down to the lower deck I found him with the
purser. As I spoke he turned, thrust out to me an eager
hand--and then I saw what was that difference that had so
moved me. He knew, of course by my silence and involun-
tary shrinking the shock my closer look had given me. His
eyes filled; he turned brusquely from the purser, hesitated
--then hurried off to his stateroom.

"'E looks rather queer--eh?" said the purser. "Know 'im
well, sir? Seems to 'ave given you quite a start."

I made some reply and went slowly up to my chair. There
I sat, composed my mind and tried to define what it was
that had shaken me so. Now it came to me. The old
Throckmartin was on the eve of his venture just turned
forty, lithe, erect, muscular; his controlling expression one
of enthusiasm, of intellectual keenness, of--what shall I say
--expectant search. His always questioning brain had
stamped its vigor upon his face.

But the Throckmartin I had seen below was one who had
borne some scaring shock of mingled rapture and horror;
some soul cataclysm that in its climax had remoulded,
deep from within, his face, setting on it seal of wedded
ecstasy and despair; as though indeed these two had come
to him hand in hand, taken possession of him and departing
left behind, ineradicably, their linked shadows!

Yes--it was that which appalled. For how could rapture
and horror, Heaven and Hell mix, clasp hands--kiss?

Yet these were what in closest embrace lay on Throck-
martin's face!

Deep in thought, subconsciously with relief, I watched
the shore line sink behind; welcomed the touch of the wind
of the free seas. I had hoped, and within the hope was an
inexplicable shrinking that I would meet Throckmartin at
lunch. He did not come down, and I was sensible of de-
liverance within my disappointment. All that afternoon I
lounged about uneasily but still he kept to his cabin--and
within me was no strength to summon him. Nor did he
appear at dinner.

Dusk and night fell swiftly. I was warm and went back to
my deck-chair. The Southern Queen was rolling to a dis-
quieting swell and I had the place to myself.

Over the heavens was a canopy of cloud, glowing faintly
and testifying to the moon riding behind it. There was much
phosphorescence. Fitfully before the ship and at her sides
arose those stranger little swirls of mist that swirl up from
the Southern Ocean like breath of sea monsters, whirl for an
instant and disappear.

Suddenly the deck door opened and through it came
Throckmartin. He paused uncertainly, looked up at the sky
with a curiously eager, intent gaze, hesitated, then closed
the door behind him.

"Throck," I called. "Come! It's Goodwin."

He made his way to me.

"Throck," I said, wasting no time in preliminaries.
"What's wrong? Can I help you?"

I felt his body grow tense.

"I'm going to Melbourne, Goodwin," he answered. "I
need a few things--need them urgently. And more men--
white men--"

He stopped abruptly; rose from his chair, gazed intently
toward the north. I followed his gaze. Far, far away the
moon had broken through the clouds. Almost on the hori-
zon, you could see the faint luminescence of it upon the
smooth sea. The distant patch of light quivered and shook.
The clouds thickened again and it was gone. The ship raced
on southward, swiftly.

Throckmartin dropped into his chair. He lighted a cigar-
ette with a hand that trembled; then turned to me with
abrupt resolution.

"Goodwin," he said. "I do need help. If ever man needed
it, I do. Goodwin--can you imagine yourself in another
world, alien, unfamiliar, a world of terror, whose unknown
joy is its greatest terror of all; you all alone there, a
stranger! As such a man would need help, so I need--"

He paused abruptly and arose; the cigarette dropped from
his fingers. The moon had again broken through the clouds,
and this time much nearer. Not a mile away was the patch
of light that it threw upon the waves. Back of it, to the rim
of the sea was a lane of moonlight; a gigantic gleaming ser-
pent racing over the edge of the world straight and surely
toward the ship.

Throckmartin stiffened to it as a pointer does to a hidden
covey. To me from him pulsed a thrill of horror--but
horror tinged with an unfamiliar, an infernal joy. It came
to me and passed away--leaving me trembling with its
shock of bitter sweet.

He bent forward, all his soul in his eyes. The moon path
swept closer, closer still. It was now less than half a mile
away. From it the ship fled--almost as though pursued.
Down upon it, swift and straight, a radiant torrent cleaving
the waves, raced the moon stream.

"Good God!" breathed Throckmartin, and if ever the
words were a prayer and an invocation they were.

And then, for the first time--I saw--IT!

The moon path stretched to the horizon and was bor-
dered by darkness. It was as though the clouds above had
been parted to form a lane-drawn aside like curtains or as
the waters of the Red Sea were held back to let the hosts
of Israel through. On each side of the stream was the black
shadow cast by the folds of the high canopies And straight
as a road between the opaque walls gleamed, shimmered,
and danced the shining, racing, rapids of the moonlight

Far, it seemed immeasurably far, along this stream of
silver fire I sensed, rather than saw, something coming. It
drew first into sight as a deeper glow within the light. On
and on it swept toward us--an opalescent mistiness that
sped with the suggestion of some winged creature in
arrowed flight. Dimly there crept into my mind memory of
the Dyak legend of the winged messenger of Buddha--
the Akla bird whose feathers are woven of the moon rays,
whose heart is a living opal, whose wings in flight echo the
crystal clear music of the white stars--but whose beak is
of frozen flame and shreds the souls of unbelievers.

Closer it drew and now there came to me sweet, insistent
tinklings--like pizzicati on violins of glass; crystal clear;
diamonds melting into sounds!

Now the Thing was close to the end of the white path;
close up to the barrier of darkness still between the ship
and the sparkling head of the moon stream. Now it beat up
against that barrier as a bird against the bars of its cage. It
whirled with shimmering plumes, with swirls of lacy light,
with spirals of living vapour. It held within it odd, un-
familiar gleams as of shifting mother-of-pearl. Coruscations
and glittering atoms drifted through it as though it drew
them from the rays that bathed it.

Nearer and nearer it came, borne on the sparkling waves,
and ever thinner shrank the protecting wall of shadow be-
tween it and us. Within the mistiness was a core, a nucleus
of intenser light--veined, opaline, effulgent, intensely alive.
And above it, tangled in the plumes and spirals that
throbbed and whirled were seven glowing lights.

Through all the incessant but strangely ordered move-
ment of the--THING--these lights held firm and steady. They
were seven--like seven little moons. One was of a pearly
pink, one of a delicate nacreous blue, one of lambent
saffron, one of the emerald you see in the shallow waters
of tropic isles; a deathly white; a ghostly amethyst; and
one of the silver that is seen only when the flying fish leap
beneath the moon.

The tinkling music was louder still. It pierced the ears
with a shower of tiny lances; it made the heart beat jubi-
lantly--and checked it dolorously. It closed the throat with
a throb of rapture and gripped it tight with the hand of
infinite sorrow!

Came to me now a murmuring cry, stilling the crystal
notes. It was articulate--but as though from something
utterly foreign to this world. The ear took the cry and trans-
lated with conscious labour into the sounds of earth. And
even as it compassed, the brain shrank from it irresistibly,
and simultaneously it seemed reached toward it with irre-
sistible eagerness.

Throckmartin strode toward the front of the deck,
straight toward the vision, now but a few yards away from
the stern. His face had lost all human semblance. Utter
agony and utter ecstasy--there they were side by side, not
resisting each other; unholy inhuman companions blending
into a look that none of God's creatures should wear--
and deep, deep as his soul! A devil and a God dwelling
harmoniously side by side! So must Satan, newly fallen,
still divine, seeing heaven and contemplating hell, have
appeared.

And then--swiftly the moon path faded! The clouds
swept over the sky as though a hand had drawn them to-
gether. Up from the south came a roaring squall. As the
moon vanished what I had seen vanished with it--blotted
out as an image on a magic lantern; the tinkling ceased
abruptly--leaving a silence like that which follows an
abrupt thunder clap. There was nothing about us but silence
and blackness!

Through me passed a trembling as one who has stood on
the very verge of the gulf wherein the men of the Louisades
says lurks the fisher of the souls of men, and has been
plucked back by sheerest chance.

Throckmartin passed an arm around me.

"It is as I thought," he said. In his voice was a new note;
the calm certainty that has swept aside a waiting terror of
the unknown. "Now I know! Come with me to my cabin,
old friend. For now that you too have seen I can tell you"--
he hesitated--"what it was you saw," he ended.

As we passed through the door we met the ship's first
officer. Throckmartin composed his face into at least a sem-
blance of normality.

"Going to have much of a storm?" he asked.

"Yes," said the mate. "Probably all the way to Mel-
bourne."

Throckmartin straightened as though with a new thought.
He gripped the officer's sleeve eagerly.

"You mean at least cloudy weather--for"--he hesitated
--"for the next three nights, say?"

"And for three more," replied the mate.

"Thank God!" cried Throckmartin, and I think I never
heard such relief and hope as was in his voice.

The sailor stood amazed. "Thank God?" he repeated.
"Thank--what d'ye mean?"

But Throckmartin was moving onward to his cabin. I
started to follow. The first officer stopped me.

"Your friend," he said, "is he ill?"

"The sea!" I answered hurriedly. "He's not used to it. I
am going to look after him."

Doubt and disbelief were plain in the seaman's eyes but
I hurried on. For I knew now that Throckmartin was ill
indeed--but with a sickness the ship's doctor nor any other
could heal.





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 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 the 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.


*1 For more detailed observations on these points refer to G. Volkens,
Uber die Karolinen Insel Yap, in Verhandlungen Gesellschaft Erd-
kunde 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.



"I believed that under these ruins I might find the evi-
dence 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 induce-
ments 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 super-
stitious 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, fear-
fully. 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 enclo-
sures of stonework; its wonder of tortuous alleyways and
labyrinth of shallow canals; grim masses of stonework peer-
ing 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 con-
versation 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."





CHAPTER III

The Moon Rock

"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 in-
fected us with any touch of morbidity--that is not Edith,
Stanton, or myself. But Thora was very unhappy. She was a
Swede, as you know, and in her blood ran the beliefs and su-
perstitions of the Northland--some of them so strangely akin
to those of this far southern land; beliefs of spirits of moun-
tain 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.

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