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Foreword
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 scandalous suspicions which have threatened to stain the reputations of Dr. David Throckmartin, his youthful wife, and equally youthful associate Dr. Charles Stanton ever since a tardy despatch from Melbourne, Australia, reported th
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CHAPTER I The Thing on the Moon Path
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
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CHAPTER II "Dead! All Dead!"
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. Arou
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CHAPTER III The Moon Rock
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 bel
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CHAPTER IV The First Vanishings
CHAPTER IV The First Vanishings
"We carried Thora back, down to where Edith was waiting. We told her what had happened and what we had found. She listened gravely, and as we finished Thora sighed and opened her eyes. "'I would like to see the stone,' she said. 'Charles, you stay here with Thora.' We passed through the outer court silently—and stood before the rock. She touched it, drew back her hand as I had; thrust it forward again resolutely and held it there. She seemed to be listening. Then she turned to me. "'David,' said
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CHAPTER V Into the Moon Pool
CHAPTER V Into the Moon Pool
"Goodwin," Throckmartin went on at last, "I can describe him only as a thing of living light. He radiated light; was filled with light; overflowed with it. A shining cloud whirled through and around him in radiant swirls, shimmering tentacles, luminescent, coruscating spirals. "His face shone with a rapture too great to be borne by living man, and was shadowed with insuperable misery. It was as though it had been remoulded by the hand of God and the hand of Satan, working together and in harmony
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CHAPTER VI "The Shining Devil Took Them!"
CHAPTER VI "The Shining Devil Took Them!"
My colleagues of the Association, and you others who may read this my narrative, for what I did and did not when full realization returned I must offer here, briefly as I can, an explanation; a defense—if you will. My first act was to spring to the open port. The coma had lasted hours, for the moon was now low in the west! I ran to the door to sound the alarm. It resisted under my frantic hands; would not open. Something fell tinkling to the floor. It was the key and I remembered then that Throc
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CHAPTER VII Larry O'Keefe
CHAPTER VII Larry O'Keefe
Pressing back the questions I longed to ask, I introduced myself. Oddly enough, I found that he knew me, or rather my work. He had bought, it appeared, my volume upon the peculiar vegetation whose habitat is disintegrating lava rock and volcanic ash, that I had entitled, somewhat loosely, I could now perceive, Flora of the Craters. For he explained naively that he had picked it up, thinking it an entirely different sort of a book, a novel in fact—something like Meredith's Diana of the Crossways,
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CHAPTER VIII Olaf's Story
CHAPTER VIII Olaf's Story
There was a little silence. I looked upon him with wonder. Clearly he was in deepest earnest. I know the psychology of the Gael is a curious one and that deep in all their hearts their ancient traditions and beliefs have strong and living roots. And I was both amused and touched. Here was this soldier, who had faced war and its ugly realities open-eyed and fearless, picking, indeed, the most dangerous branch of service for his own, a modern if ever there was one, appreciative of most unmystical
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CHAPTER IX A Lost Page of Earth
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 ab
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CHAPTER X The Moon Pool
CHAPTER X The Moon Pool
Da Costa, who had come aboard unnoticed by either of us, now tapped me on the arm. "Doctair Goodwin," he said, "can I see you in my cabin, sair?" At last, then, he was going to speak. I followed him. "Doctair," he said, when we had entered, "this is a veree strange thing that has happened to Olaf. Veree strange. An' the natives of Ponape, they have been very much excite' lately. "Of what they fear I know nothing, nothing!" Again that quick, furtive crossing of himself. "But this I have to tell y
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CHAPTER XI The Flame-Tipped Shadows
CHAPTER XI The Flame-Tipped Shadows
Marakinoff nodded his head solemnly as Olaf finished. "Da!" he said. "That which comes from here took them both—the woman and the child. Da! They came clasped within it and the stone shut upon them. But why it left the child behind I do not understand." "How do you know that?" I cried in amazement. "Because I saw it," answered Marakinoff simply. "Not only did I see it, but hardly had I time to make escape through the entrance before it passed whirling and murmuring and its bell sounds all joyous
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CHAPTER XII The End of the Journey
CHAPTER XII The End of the Journey
"Say Doc!" It was Larry's voice flung back at me. "I was thinking about that frog. I think it was her pet. Damn me if I see any difference between a frog and a snake, and one of the nicest women I ever knew had two pet pythons that followed her around like kittens. Not such a devilish lot of choice between a frog and a snake—except on the side of the frog? What? Anyway, any pet that girl wants is hers, I don't care if it's a leaping twelve-toed lobster or a whale-bodied scorpion. Get me?" By whi
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CHAPTER XIII Yolara, Priestess of the Shining One
CHAPTER XIII Yolara, Priestess of the Shining One
"You'd better have this handy, Doc." O'Keefe paused at the head of the stairway and handed me one of the automatics he had taken from Marakinoff. "Shall I not have one also?" rather anxiously asked the latter. "When you need it you'll get it," answered O'Keefe. "I'll tell you frankly, though, Professor, that you'll have to show me before I trust you with a gun. You shoot too straight—from cover." The flash of anger in the Russian's eyes turned to a cold consideration. "You say always just what i
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CHAPTER XIV The Justice of Lora
CHAPTER XIV The Justice of Lora
As I looked at her the man arose and made his way round the table toward us. For the first time my eyes took in Lugur. A few inches taller than the green dwarf, he was far broader, more filled with the suggestion of appalling strength. The tremendous shoulders were four feet wide if an inch, tapering down to mighty thewed thighs. The muscles of his chest stood out beneath his tunic of red. Around his forehead shone a chaplet of bright-blue stones, sparkling among the thick curls of his silver-as
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CHAPTER XV The Angry, Whispering Globe
CHAPTER XV The Angry, Whispering Globe
Our way led along a winding path between banked masses of softly radiant blooms, groups of feathery ferns whose plumes were starred with fragrant white and blue flowerets, slender creepers swinging from the branches of the strangely trunked trees, bearing along their threads orchid-like blossoms both delicately frail and gorgeously flamboyant. The path we trod was an exquisite mosaic—pastel greens and pinks upon a soft grey base, garlands of nimbused forms like the flaming rose of the Rosicrucia
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CHAPTER XVI Yolara of Muria vs. the O'Keefe
CHAPTER XVI Yolara of Muria vs. the O'Keefe
I awakened with all the familiar, homely sensation of a shade having been pulled up in a darkened room. I thrilled with a wonderful sense of deep rest and restored resiliency. The ebon shadow had vanished from above and down into the room was pouring the silvery light. From the fountain pool came a mighty splashing and shouts of laughter. I jumped and drew the curtain. O'Keefe and Rador were swimming a wild race; the dwarf like an otter, out-distancing and playing around the Irishman at will. Ha
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CHAPTER XVII The Leprechaun
CHAPTER XVII The Leprechaun
The shell carried us straight back to the house of Yolara. Larry was awaiting me. We stood again before the tenebrous wall where first we had faced the priestess and the Voice. And as we stood, again the portal appeared with all its disconcerting, magical abruptness. But now the scene was changed. Around the jet table were grouped a number of figures—Lugur, Yolara beside him; seven others—all of them fair-haired and all men save one who sat at the left of the priestess—an old, old woman, how old
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CHAPTER XVIII The Amphitheatre of Jet
CHAPTER XVIII The Amphitheatre of Jet
For hours the black-haired folk had been streaming across the bridges, flowing along the promenade by scores and by hundreds, drifting down toward the gigantic seven-terraced temple whose interior I had never as yet seen, and from whose towering exterior, indeed, I had always been kept far enough away—unobtrusively, but none the less decisively—to prevent any real observation. The structure, I had estimated, nevertheless, could not reach less than a thousand feet above its silvery base, and the
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CHAPTER XIX The Madness of Olaf
CHAPTER XIX The Madness of Olaf
Yolara threw her white arms high. From the mountainous tiers came a mighty sigh; a rippling ran through them. And upon the moment, before Yolara's arms fell, there issued, apparently from the air around us, a peal of sound that might have been the shouting of some playful god hurling great suns through the net of stars. It was like the deepest notes of all the organs in the world combined in one; summoning, majestic, cosmic! It held within it the thunder of the spheres rolling through the infini
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CHAPTER XX The Tempting of Larry
CHAPTER XX The Tempting of Larry
We paused before thick curtains, through which came the faint murmur of many voices. They parted; out came two—ushers, I suppose, they were—in cuirasses and kilts that reminded me somewhat of chain-mail—the first armour of any kind here that I had seen. They held open the folds. The chamber, on whose threshold we stood, was far larger than either anteroom or hall of audience. Not less than three hundred feet long and half that in depth, from end to end of it ran two huge semi-circular tables, pa
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CHAPTER XXI Larry's Defiance
CHAPTER XXI Larry's Defiance
A clamour arose from all the chambers; stilled in an instant by a motion of Yolara's hand. She stood silent, regarding O'Keefe with something other now than blind wrath; something half regretful, half beseeching. But the Irishman's control was gone. "Yolara,"—his voice shook with rage, and he threw caution to the wind—"now hear me . I go where I will and when I will. Here shall we stay until the time she named is come. And then we follow her, whether you will or not. And if any should have thoug
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CHAPTER XXII The Casting of the Shadow
CHAPTER XXII The Casting of the Shadow
Now we were racing down toward that last span whose ancientness had set it apart from all the other soaring arches. The shell's speed slackened; we approached warily. "We pass there?" asked O'Keefe. The green dwarf nodded, pointing to the right where the bridge ended in a broad platform held high upon two gigantic piers, between which ran a spur from the glistening road. Platform and bridge were swarming with men-at-arms; they crowded the parapets, looking down upon us curiously but with no evid
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CHAPTER XXIII Dragon Worm and Moss Death
CHAPTER XXIII Dragon Worm and Moss Death
For a small eternity—to me at least—we waited. Then as silent as ever the green dwarf returned. "It is well," he said, some of the strain gone from his voice. "Grip hands again, and follow." "Wait a bit, Rador," this was Larry. "Does Lugur know this side entrance? If he does, why not let Olaf and me go back to the opening and pick them off as they come in? We could hold the lot—and in the meantime you and Goodwin could go after Lakla for help." "Lugur knows the secret of the Portal—if he dare us
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CHAPTER XXIV The Crimson Sea
CHAPTER XXIV The Crimson Sea
I was in the heart of a rose pearl, swinging, swinging; no, I was in a rosy dawn cloud, pendulous in space. Consciousness flooded me, in reality I was in the arms of one of the man frogs, carrying me as though I were a babe, and we were passing through some place suffused with glow enough like heart of pearl or dawn cloud to justify my awakening vagaries. Just ahead walked Lakla in earnest talk with Rador, and content enough was I for a time to watch her. She had thrown off the metallic robes; h
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CHAPTER XXV The Three Silent Ones
CHAPTER XXV The Three Silent Ones
The arch was closer—and in my awe I forgot for the moment Larry and aught else. For this was no rainbow, no thing born of light and mist, no Bifrost Bridge of myth—no! It was a flying arch of stone, stained with flares of Tyrian purples, of royal scarlets, of blues dark as the Gulf Stream's ribbon, sapphires soft as midday May skies, splashes of chromes and greens—a palette of giantry, a bridge of wizardry; a hundred, nay, a thousand, times greater than that of Utah which the Navaho call Nonnego
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CHAPTER XXVI The Wooing of Lakla
CHAPTER XXVI The Wooing of Lakla
I had slept soundly and dreamlessly; I wakened quietly in the great chamber into which Rador had ushered O'Keefe and myself after that culminating experience of crowded, nerve-racking hours—the facing of the Three. Now, lying gazing upward at the high-vaulted ceiling, I heard Larry's voice: "They look like birds." Evidently he was thinking of the Three; a silence—then: "Yes, they look like birds —and they look, and it's meaning no disrespect to them I am at all, they look like lizards "—and anot
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CHAPTER XXVII The Coming of Yolara
CHAPTER XXVII The Coming of Yolara
"Never was there such a girl!" Thus Larry, dreamily, leaning head in hand on one of the wide divans of the chamber where Lakla had left us, pleading service to the Silent Ones. "An', by the faith and the honour of the O'Keefes, an' by my dead mother's soul may God do with me as I do by her!" he whispered fervently. He relapsed into open-eyed dreaming. I walked about the room, examining it—the first opportunity I had gained to inspect carefully any of the rooms in the abode of the Three. It was o
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CHAPTER XXVIII In the Lair of the Dweller
CHAPTER XXVIII In the Lair of the Dweller
It is with marked hesitation that I begin this chapter, because in it I must deal with an experience so contrary to every known law of physics as to seem impossible. Until this time, barring, of course, the mystery of the Dweller, I had encountered nothing that was not susceptible of naturalistic explanation; nothing, in a word, outside the domain of science itself; nothing that I would have felt hesitancy in reciting to my colleagues of the International Association of Science. Amazing, unfamil
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CHAPTER XXIX The Shaping of the Shining One
CHAPTER XXIX The Shaping of the Shining One
We reached what I knew to be Lakla's own boudoir, if I may so call it. Smaller than any of the other chambers of the domed castle in which we had been, its intimacy was revealed not only by its faint fragrance but by its high mirrors of polished silver and various oddly wrought articles of the feminine toilet that lay here and there; things I afterward knew to be the work of the artisans of the Akka —and no mean metal workers were they. One of the window slits dropped almost to the floor, and at
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CHAPTER XXX The Building of the Moon Pool
CHAPTER XXX The Building of the Moon Pool
She paused, running her long fingers through her own bronze-flecked ringlets. Selective breeding this, with a vengeance, I thought; an ancient experiment in heredity which of course would in time result in the stamping out of the tendency to depart from type that lies in all organisms; resulting, obviously, at last, in three fixed forms of black-haired, ruddy-haired, and silver-haired—but this, with a shock of realization it came to me, was also an accurate description of the dark-polled ladala
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CHAPTER XXXI Larry and the Frog-Men
CHAPTER XXXI Larry and the Frog-Men
Long had been her tale in the telling, and too long, perhaps, have I been in the repeating—but not every day are the mists rolled away to reveal undreamed secrets of earth-youth. And I have set it down here, adding nothing, taking nothing from it; translating liberally, it is true, but constantly striving, while putting it into idea-forms and phraseology to be readily understood by my readers, to keep accurately to the spirit. And this, I must repeat, I have done throughout my narrative, whereve
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CHAPTER XXXII "Your Love; Your Lives; Your Souls!"
CHAPTER XXXII "Your Love; Your Lives; Your Souls!"
Lakla had taken no part in the talk since we had reached her bower. She had seated herself close to the O'Keefe. Glancing at her I had seen steal over her face that brooding, listening look that was hers whenever in that mysterious communion with the Three. It vanished; swiftly she arose; interrupted the Irishman without ceremony. "Larry darlin'," said the handmaiden. "The Silent Ones summon us!" "When do we go?" I asked; Larry's face grew bright with interest. "The time is now," she said—and he
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CHAPTER XXXIII The Meeting of Titans
CHAPTER XXXIII The Meeting of Titans
It is not my intention, nor is it possible no matter how interesting to me, to set down ad seriatim the happenings of the next twelve hours. But a few will not be denied recital. O'Keefe regained cheerfulness. "After all, Doc," he said to me, "it's a beautiful scrap we're going to have. At the worst the worst is no more than the leprechaun warned about. I would have told the Taitha De about the banshee raid he promised me; but I was a bit taken off my feet at the time. The old girl an' all the c
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CHAPTER XXXIV The Coming of the Shining One
CHAPTER XXXIV The Coming of the Shining One
The Norseman turned toward us. There was now no madness in his eyes; only a great weariness. And there was peace on the once tortured face. "Helma," he whispered, "I go a little before! Soon you will come to me—to me and the Yndling who will await you—Helma, meine liebe! " Blood gushed from his mouth; he swayed, fell. And thus died Olaf Huldricksson. We looked down upon him; nor did Lakla, nor Larry, nor I try to hide our tears. And as we stood the Akka brought to us that other mighty fighter, R
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CHAPTER XXXV "Larry—Farewell!"
CHAPTER XXXV "Larry—Farewell!"
"My heart, Larry—" It was the handmaiden's murmur. "My heart feels like a bird that is flying from a nest of sorrow." We were pacing down the length of the bridge, guards of the Akka beside us, others following with those companies of ladala that had rushed to aid us; in front of us the bandaged Rador swung gently within a litter; beside him, in another, lay Nak, the frog-king—much less of him than there had been before the battle began, but living. Hours had passed since the terror I have just
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