The A. Merritt Megapack

by Abraham Merritt

  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.

  “I believed that under these ruins I might find the evidence 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 inducements 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 superstitious 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, fearfully. 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 enclosures of stonework; its wonder of tortuous alleyways and labyrinth of shallow canals; grim masses of stonework peering 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 conversation 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-pl
ace 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 infected 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 superstitions of the Northland—some of them so strangely akin to those of this far southern land; beliefs of spirits of mountain 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.

  “I laughed at her then—

  “Two weeks slipped by, and at their end the spokesman for our natives came to us. The next night was the full of the moon, he said. He reminded me of my promise. They would go back to their village in the morning; they would return after the third night, when the moon had begun to wane. They left us sundry charms for our ‘protection,’ and solemnly cautioned us to keep as far away as possible from Nan-Tauach during their absence. Half-exasperated, half-amused I watched them go.

  “No work could be done without them, of course, so we decided to spend the days of their absence junketing about the southern islets of the group. We marked down several spots for subsequent exploration, and on the morning of the third day set forth along the east face of the breakwater for our camp on Uschen-Tau, planning to have everything in readiness for the return of our men the next day.

  “We landed just before dusk, tired and ready for our cots. It was only a little after ten o’clock that Edith awakened me.

  “‘Listen!’ she said. ‘Lean over with your ear close to the ground!’

  “I did so, and seemed to hear, far, far below, as though coming up from great distances, a faint chanting. It gathered strength, died down, ended; began, gathered volume, faded away into silence.

  “‘It’s the waves rolling on rocks somewhere,’ I said. ‘We’re probably over some ledge of rock that carries the sound.’

  “‘It’s the first time I’ve heard it,’ replied my wife doubtfully. We listened again. Then through the dim rhythms, deep beneath us, another sound came. It drifted across the lagoon that lay between us and Nan-Tauach in little tinkling waves. It was music—of a sort; I won’t describe the strange effect it had upon me. You’ve felt it—”

  “You mean on the deck?” I asked. Throckmartin nodded.

  “I went to the flap of the tent,” he continued, “and peered out. As I did so Stanton lifted his flap and walked out into the moonlight, looking over to the other islet and listening. I called to him.

  “‘That’s the queerest sound!’ he said. He listened again. ‘Crystalline! Like little notes of translucent glass. Like the bells of crystal on the sistrums of Isis at Dendarah Temple,’ he added half-dreamily. We gazed intently at the island. Suddenly, on the sea-wall, moving slowly, rhythmically, we saw a little group of lights. Stanton laughed.

  “‘The beggars!’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s why they wanted to get away, is it? Don’t you see, Dave, it’s some sort of a festival—rites of some kind that they hold during the full moon! That’s why they were so eager to have us keep away, too.’

  “The explanation seemed good. I felt a curious sense of relief, although I had not been sensible of any oppression.

  “‘Let’s slip over,’ suggested Stanton—but I would not.

  “‘They’re a difficult lot as it is,’ I said. ‘If we break into one of their religious ceremonies they’ll probably never forgive us. Let’s keep out of any family party where we haven’t been invited.’

  “‘That’s so,’ agreed Stanton.

  “The strange tinkling rose and fell, rose and fell—

  “‘There’s something—something very unsettling about it,’ said Edith at last soberly. ‘I wonder what they make those sounds with. They frighten me half to death, and, at the same time, they make me feel as though some enormous rapture were just around the corner.’

  “‘It’s devilish uncanny!’ broke in Stanton.

  “And as he spoke the flap of Thora’s tent was raised and out into the moonlight strode the old Swede. She was the great Norse type—tall, deep-breasted, moulded on the old Viking lines. Her sixty years had slipped from her. She looked like some ancient priestess of Odin.

  “She stood there, her eyes wide, brilliant, staring. She thrust her head forward toward Nan-Tauach, regarding the moving lights; she listened. Suddenly she raised her arms and made a curious gesture to the moon. It was—an archaic—movement; she seemed to drag it from remote antiquity—yet in it was a strange suggestion of power, Twice she repeated this gesture and—the tinklings died away! She turned to us.

  “‘Go!’ she said, and her voice seemed to come from far distances. ‘Go from here—and quickly! Go while you may. It has called—’ She pointed to the islet. ‘It knows you are here. It waits!’ she wailed. ‘It beckons—the—the—”

  “She fell at Edith’s feet, and over the lagoon came again the tinklings, now with a quicker note of jubilance—almost of triumph.

  “We watched beside her throughout the night. The sounds from Nan-Tauach continued until about an hour before moon-set. In the morning Thora awoke, none the worse, apparently. She had had bad dreams, she said. She could not remember what they were—except that they had warned her of danger. She was oddly sullen, and throughout the morning her gaze returned again and again half-fascinatedly, half-wonderingly to the neighbouring isle.

  “That afternoon the natives returned. And that night on Nan-Tauach the silence was unbroken nor were there lights nor sign of life.

  “You will understand, Goodwin, how the occurrences I have related would excite the scientific curiosity. We rejected immediately, of course, any explanation admitting the supernatural.

  “Our—symptoms let me call them—could all very easily be accounted for. It is unquestionable that the vibrations created by certain musical instruments have definite and sometimes extraordinary effect upon the nervous system. We accepted this as the explanation of the reactions we had experienced, hearing the unfamiliar sounds. Thora’s nervousness, her superstitious apprehensions, had wrought her up to a condition of semi-somnambulistic hysteria. Science could readily explain her part in the night’s scene.

  “We came to the conclusion that there must be a passage-way between Ponape and Nan-Tauach known to the natives—and used by them during their rites. We decided that on the next departure of our labourers we would set forth immediately to Nan-Tauach. We would investigate during the day, and at evening my wife and Thora would go back to camp, leaving Stanton and me to spend the night on the island, observing from some safe hiding-place what might occur.

  “The moon waned; appeared crescent in the west; waxed slowly toward the full. Before the men left us they literally prayed us to accompany them. Their importunities only made us more eager to see what it was that, we were now convinced, they wanted to conceal from us. At least that was true of Stanton and myself. It was not true of Edith. She was thoughtful, abstracted—reluctant.

  “When the men were out of sight around the turn of the harbour, we took our boat and made straight for Nan-Tauach. Soon its mighty sea-wall towered above us. We passed through the water-gate with its gigantic hewn prisms of basalt and landed beside a half-submerged pier. In front of us stretched a series of giant steps leading into a vast court strewn with fragments of fallen pillars. In the centre of the court, beyond the shattered pillars, rose another terrace of basalt blocks, concealing, I knew, still another enclosure.

  “And now, Walter, for the better understanding of what follows—and—and—�
� he hesitated. “Should you decide later to return with me or, if I am taken, to—to—follow us—listen carefully to my description of this place: Nan-Tauach is literally three rectangles. The first rectangle is the sea-wall, built up of monoliths—hewn and squared, twenty feet wide at the top. To get to the gateway in the sea-wall you pass along the canal marked on the map between Nan-Tauach and the islet named Tau. The entrance to the canal is bidden by dense thickets of mangroves; once through these the way is clear. The steps lead up from the landing of the sea-gate through the entrance to the courtyard.

  “This courtyard is surrounded by another basalt wall, rectangular, following with mathematical exactness the march of the outer barricades. The sea-wall is from thirty to forty feet high—originally it must have been much higher, but there has been subsidence in parts. The wall of the first enclosure is fifteen feet across the top and its height varies from twenty to fifty feet—here, too, the gradual sinking of the land has caused portions of it to fall.

  “Within this courtyard is the second enclosure. Its terrace, of the same basalt as the outer walls, is about twenty feet high. Entrance is gained to it by many breaches which time has made in its stonework. This is the inner court, the heart of Nan-Tauach! There lies the great central vault with which is associated the one name of living being that has come to us out of the mists of the past. The natives say it was the treasure-house of Chau-te-leur, a mighty king who reigned long ‘before their fathers.’ As Chan is the ancient Ponapean word both for sun and king, the name means, without doubt, ‘place of the sun king.’ It is a memory of a dynastic name of the race that ruled the Pacific continent, now vanished—just as the rulers of ancient Crete took the name of Minos and the rulers of Egypt the name of Pharaoh.

  “And opposite this place of the sun king is the moon rock that hides the Moon Pool.

  “It was Stanton who discovered the moon rock. We had been inspecting the inner courtyard; Edith and Thora were getting together our lunch. I came out of the vault of Chau-te-leur to find Stanton before a part of the terrace studying it wonderingly.