by Anthology
"All right," he said. "I'll show you." From deep down in his throat came first a low, weird sobbing that mounted steadily into a keening whose mournfulness made my skin creep. And then his hand shot out and gripped my shoulder, and I stiffened like stone in my chair--for from behind us, like an echo, and then taking up the cry, swelled a wail that seemed to hold within it a sublimation of the sorrows of centuries! It gathered itself into one heartbroken, sobbing note and died away! O'Keefe's grip loosened, and he rose swiftly to his feet.
"It's all right, Professor," he said. "It's for me. It found me--all this way from Ireland."
Again the silence was rent by the cry. But now I had located it. It came from my room, and it could mean only one thing--Huldricksson had wakened.
"Forget your banshee!" I gasped, and made a jump for the cabin.
Out of the corner of my eye I noted a look of half-sheepish relief flit over O'Keefe's face, and then he was beside me. Da Costa shouted an order from the wheel, the Cantonese ran up and took it from his hands and the little Portuguese pattered down toward us. My hand on the door, ready to throw it open, I stopped. What if the Dweller were within--what if we had been wrong and it was not dependent for its power upon that full flood of moon ray which Throckmartin had thought essential to draw it from the blue pool!
From within, the sobbing wail began once more to rise. O'Keefe pushed me aside, threw open the door and crouched low within it. I saw an automatic flash dully in his hand; saw it cover the cabin from side to side, following the swift sweep of his eyes around it. Then he straightened and his face, turned toward the berth, was filled with wondering pity.
Through the window streamed a shaft of the moonlight. It fell upon Huldricksson's staring eyes; in them great tears slowly gathered and rolled down his cheeks; from his opened mouth came the woe-laden wailing. I ran to the port and drew the curtains. Da Costa snapped the lights.
The Norseman's dolorous crying stopped as abruptly as though cut. His gaze rolled toward us. And at one bound he broke through the leashes I had buckled round him and faced us, his eyes glaring, his yellow hair almost erect with the force of the rage visibly surging through him. Da Costa shrunk behind me. O'Keefe, coolly watchful, took a quick step that brought him in front of me.
"Where do you take me?" said Huldricksson, and his voice was like the growl of a beast. "Where is my boat?"
I touched O'Keefe gently and stood before the giant.
"Listen, Olaf Huldricksson," I said. "We take you to where the sparkling devil took your Helma and your Freda. We follow the sparkling devil that came down from the moon. Do you hear me?" I spoke slowly, distinctly, striving to pierce the mists that I knew swirled around the strained brain. And the words did pierce.
He thrust out a shaking hand.
"You say you follow?" he asked falteringly. "You know where to follow? Where it took my Helma and my little Freda?"
"Just that, Olaf Huldricksson," I answered. "Just that! I pledge you my life that I know."
Da Costa stepped forward. "He speaks true, Olaf. You go faster on the Suwarna than on the Br-rw-un'ilda, Olaf, yes."
The giant Norseman, still gripping my hand, looked at him. "I know you, Da Costa," he muttered. "You are all right. Ja! You are a fair man. Where is the Brunhilda?"
"She follow be'ind on a big rope, Olaf," soothed the Portuguese. "Soon you see her. But now lie down an' tell us, if you can, why you tie yourself to your wheel an' what it is that happen, Olaf."
"If you'll tell us how the sparkling devil came it will help us all when we get to where it is, Huldricksson," I said.
On O'Keefe's face there was an expression of well-nigh ludicrous doubt and amazement. He glanced from one to the other. The giant shifted his own tense look from me to the Irishman. A gleam of approval lighted in his eyes. He loosed me, and gripped O'Keefe's arm. "Staerk!" he said. "Ja--strong, and with a strong heart. A man--ja! He comes too--we shall need him--ja!"
"I tell," he muttered, and seated himself on the side of the bunk. "It was four nights ago. My Freda"--his voice shook--"Mine Yndling! She loved the moonlight. I was at the wheel and my Freda and my Helma they were behind me. The moon was behind us and the Brunhilda was like a swanboat sailing down with the moonlight sending her, ja.
"I heard my Freda say: 'I see a nisse coming down the track of the moon.' And I hear her mother laugh, low, like a mother does when her Yndling dreams. I was happy--that night--with my Helma and my Freda, and the Brunhilda sailing like a swan-boat, ja. I heard the child say, 'The nisse comes fast!' And then I heard a scream from my Helma, a great scream--like a mare when her foal is torn from her. I spun around fast, ja! I dropped the wheel and spun fast! I saw--" He covered his eyes with his hands.
The Portuguese had crept close to me, and I heard him panting like a frightened dog.
"I saw a white fire spring over the rail," whispered Olaf Huldricksson. "It whirled round and round, and it shone like--like stars in a whirlwind mist. There was a noise in my ears. It sounded like bells--little bells, ja! Like the music you make when you run your finger round goblets. It made me sick and dizzy--the hell noise.
"My Helma was--indeholde--what you say--in the middle of the white fire. She turned her face to me and she turned it on the child, and my Helma's face burned into my heart. Because it was full of fear, and it was full of happiness--of glaede. I tell you that the fear in my Helma's face made me ice here"--he beat his breast with clenched hand--"but the happiness in it burned on me like fire. And I could not move--I could not move.
"I said in here"--he touched his head--"I said, 'It is Loki come out of Helvede. But he cannot take my Helma, for Christ lives and Loki has no power to hurt my Helma or my Freda! Christ lives! Christ lives!' I said. But the sparkling devil did not let my Helma go. It drew her to the rail; half over it. I saw her eyes upon the child and a little she broke away and reached to it. And my Freda jumped into her arms. And the fire wrapped them both and they were gone! A little I saw them whirling on the moon track behind the Brunhilda--and they were gone!
"The sparkling devil took them! Loki was loosed, and he had power. I turned the Brunhilda, and I followed where my Helma and mine Yndling had gone. My boys crept up and asked me to turn again. But I would not. They dropped a boat and left me. I steered straight on the path. I lashed my hands to the wheel that sleep might not loose them. I steered on and on and on--
"Where was the God I prayed when my wife and child were taken?" cried Olaf Huldricksson--and it was as though I heard Throckmartin asking that same bitter question. "I have left Him as He left me, ja! I pray now to Thor and to Odin, who can fetter Loki." He sank back, covering again his eyes.
"Olaf," I said, "what you have called the sparkling devil has taken ones dear to me. I, too, was following it when we found you. You shall go with me to its home, and there we will try to take from it your wife and your child and my friends as well. But now that you may be strong for what is before us, you must sleep again."
Olaf Huldricksson looked upon me and in his eyes was that something which souls must see in the eyes of Him the old Egyptians called the Searcher of Hearts in the Judgment Hall of Osiris.
"You speak truth!" he said at last slowly. "I will do what you say!"
He stretched out an arm at my bidding. I gave him a second injection. He lay back and soon he was sleeping. I turned toward Da Costa. His face was livid and sweating, and he was trembling pitiably. O'Keefe stirred.
"You did that mighty well, Dr. Goodwin," he said. "So well that I almost believed you myself."
"What did you think of his story, Mr. O'Keefe?" I asked.
His answer was almost painfully brief and colloquial.
"Nuts!" he said. I was a little shocked, I admit. "I think he's crazy, Dr. Goodwin," he corrected himself, quickly. "What else could I think?"
I turned to the little Portuguese without answering.
"There's no need for any anxiety tonight, Captain," I said. "Take my word for it. You need some rest yourself. Shall
I give you a sleeping draft?"
"I do wish you would, Dr. Goodwin, sair," he answered gratefully. "Tomorrow, when I feel bettair--I would have a talk with you."
I nodded. He did know something then! I mixed him an opiate of considerable strength. He took it and went to his own cabin.
I locked the door behind him and then, sitting beside the sleeping Norseman, I told O'Keefe my story from end to end. He asked few questions as I spoke. But after I had finished he cross-examined me rather minutely upon my recollections of the radiant phases upon each appearance, checking these with Throckmartin's observations of the same phenomena in the Chamber of the Moon Pool.
"And now what do you think of it all?" I asked.
He sat silent for a while, looking at Huldricksson.
"Not what you seem to think, Dr. Goodwin," he answered at last, gravely. "Let me sleep over it. One thing of course is certain--you and your friend Throckmartin and this man here saw--something. But--" he was silent again and then continued with a kindness that I found vaguely irritating--"but I've noticed that when a scientist gets superstitious it--er--takes very hard!
"Here's a few things I can tell you now though," he went on while I struggled to speak--"I pray in my heart that we'll meet neither the Dolphin nor anything with wireless on board going up. Because, Dr. Goodwin, I'd dearly love to take a crack at your Dweller.
"And another thing," said O'Keefe. "After this--cut out the trimmings, Doc, and call me plain Larry, for whether I think you're crazy or whether I don't, you're there with the nerve, Professor, and I'm for you.
"Good night!" said Larry and took himself out to the deck hammock he had insisted upon having slung for him, refusing the captain's importunities to use his own cabin.
And it was with extremely mixed emotions as to his compliment that I watched him go. Superstitious. I, whose pride was my scientific devotion to fact and fact alone! Superstitious--and this from a man who believed in banshees and ghostly harpers and Irish wood nymphs and no doubt in leprechauns and all their tribe!
Half laughing, half irritated, and wholly happy in even the part promise of Larry O'Keefe's comradeship on my venture, I arranged a couple of pillows, stretched myself out on two chairs and took up my vigil beside Olaf Huldricksson.
CHAPTER IX
A Lost Page of Earth
When I awakened the sun was streaming through the cabin porthole. Outside a fresh voice lilted. I lay on my two chairs and listened. The song was one with the wholesome sunshine and the breeze blowing stiffly and whipping the curtains. It was Larry O'Keefe at his matins:
The little red lark is shaking his wings, Straight from the breast of his love he springs
Larry's voice soared.
His wings and his feathers are sunrise red, He hails the sun and his golden head, Good morning, Doc, you are long abed.
This last was a most irreverent interpolation, I well knew. I opened my door. O'Keefe stood outside laughing. The Suwarna, her engines silent, was making fine headway under all sail, the Brunhilda skipping in her wake cheerfully with half her canvas up.
The sea was crisping and dimpling under the wind. Blue and white was the world as far as the eye could reach. Schools of little silvery green flying fish broke through the water rushing on each side of us; flashed for an instant and were gone. Behind us gulls hovered and dipped. The shadow of mystery had retreated far over the rim of this wide awake and beautiful world and if, subconsciously, I knew that somewhere it was brooding and waiting, for a little while at least I was consciously free of its oppression.
"How's the patient?" asked O'Keefe.
He was answered by Huldricksson himself, who must have risen just as I left the cabin. The Norseman had slipped on a pair of pajamas and, giant torso naked under the sun, he strode out upon us. We all of us looked at him a trifle anxiously. But Olaf's madness had left him. In his eyes was much sorrow, but the berserk rage was gone.
He spoke straight to me: "You said last night we follow?"
I nodded.
"It is where?" he asked again.
"We go first to Ponape and from there to Metalanim Harbour--to the Nan-Matal. You know the place?"
Huldricksson bowed--a white gleam as of ice showing in his blue eyes.
"It is there?" he asked.
"It is there that we must first search," I answered.
"Good!" said Olaf Huldricksson. "It is good!"
He looked at Da Costa inquiringly and the little Portuguese, following his thought, answered his unspoken question.
"We should be at Ponape tomorrow morning early, Olaf."
"Good!" repeated the Norseman. He looked away, his eyes tear-filled.
A restraint fell upon us; the embarrassment all men experience when they feel a great sympathy and a great pity, to neither of which they quite know how to give expression. By silent consent we discussed at breakfast only the most casual topics.
When the meal was over Huldricksson expressed a desire to go aboard the Brunhilda.
The Suwarna hove to and Da Costa and he dropped into the small boat. When they reached the Brunhilda's deck I saw Olaf take the wheel and the two fall into earnest talk. I beckoned to O'Keefe and we stretched ourselves out on the bow hatch under cover of the foresail. He lighted a cigarette, took a couple of leisurely puffs, and looked at me expectantly.
"Well?" I asked.
"Well," said O'Keefe, "suppose you tell me what you think--and then I'll proceed to point out your scientific errors." His eyes twinkled mischievously.
"Larry," I replied, somewhat severely, "you may not know that I have a scientific reputation which, putting aside all modesty, I may say is an enviable one. You used a word last night to which I must interpose serious objection. You more than hinted that I hid--superstitions. Let me inform you, Larry O'Keefe, that I am solely a seeker, observer, analyst, and synthesist of facts. I am not"--and I tried to make my tone as pointed as my words--"I am not a believer in phantoms or spooks, leprechauns, banshees, or ghostly harpers."
O'Keefe leaned back and shouted with laughter.
"Forgive me, Goodwin," he gasped. "But if you could have seen yourself solemnly disclaiming the banshee"--another twinkle showed in his eyes--"and then with all this sunshine and this wide-open world"--he shrugged his shoulders--"it's hard to visualize anything such as you and Huldricksson have described."
"I know how hard it is, Larry," I answered. "And don't think I have any idea that the phenomenon is supernatural in the sense spiritualists and table turners have given that word. I do think it is supernormal; energized by a force unknown to modern science--but that doesn't mean I think it outside the radius of science."
"Tell me your theory, Goodwin," he said. I hesitated--for not yet had I been able to put into form to satisfy myself any explanation of the Dweller.
"I think," I hazarded finally, "it is possible that some members of that race peopling the ancient continent which we know existed here in the Pacific, have survived. We know that many of these islands are honeycombed with caverns and vast subterranean spaces, literally underground lands running in some cases far out beneath the ocean floor. It is possible that for some reason survivors of this race sought refuge in the abysmal spaces, one of whose entrances is on the islet where Throckmartin's party met its end.
"As for their persistence in these caverns--we know they possessed a high science. They may have gone far in the mastery of certain universal forms of energy--especially that we call light. They may have developed a civilization and a science far more advanced than ours. What I call the Dweller may be one of the results of this science. Larry--it may well be that this lost race is planning to emerge again upon earth's surface!"
"And is sending out your Dweller as a messenger, a scientific dove from their Ark?" I chose to overlook the banter in his question.
"Did you ever hear of the Chamats?" I asked him. He shook his head.
"In Papua," I explained, "there is a wide-spread and immeasurably old tradition that 'imprisoned und
er the hills' is a race of giants who once ruled this region 'when it stretched from sun to sun before the moon god drew the waters over it'--I quote from the legend. Not only in Papua but throughout Malaysia you find this story. And, so the tradition runs, these people--the Chamats--will one day break through the hills and rule the world; 'make over the world' is the literal translation of the constant phrase in the tale. It was Herbert Spencer who pointed out that there is a basis of fact in every myth and legend of man. It is possible that these survivors I am discussing form Spencer's fact basis for the Malaysian legend. *1
*1 William Beebe, the famous American naturalist and ornithologist, recently fighting in France with America's air force, called attention to this remarkable belief in an article printed not long ago in the Atlantic Monthly. Still more significant was it that he noted a persistent rumour that the breaking out of the buried race was close.--W.J. B., Pres. I. A. of S.
"This much is sure--the moon door, which is clearly operated by the action of moon rays upon some unknown element or combination and the crystals through which the moon rays pour down upon the pool their prismatic columns, are humanly made mechanisms. So long as they are humanly made, and so long as it is this flood of moonlight from which the Dweller draws its power of materialization, the Dweller itself, if not the product of the human mind, is at least dependent upon the product of the human mind for its appearance."
"Wait a minute, Goodwin," interrupted O'Keefe. "Do you mean to say you think that this thing is made of--well--of moonshine?"
"Moonlight," I replied, "is, of course, reflected sunlight. But the rays which pass back to earth after their impact on the moon's surface are profoundly changed. The spectroscope shows that they lose practically all the slower vibrations we call red and infra-red, while the extremely rapid vibrations we call the violet and ultra-violet are accelerated and altered. Many scientists hold that there is an unknown element in the moon--perhaps that which makes the gigantic luminous trails that radiate in all directions from the lunar crater Tycho--whose energies are absorbed by and carried on the moon rays.