The Moon Pool Part 4

"Thora, bathed in light, was standing at the top of the stairs.

"Sleep took me for its very own--swept me into the heart of oblivion!

"Dawn was breaking when I wakened. Recollection rushed back; I thrust a panic-stricken hand out toward Edith; touched her and my heart gave a great leap of thankfulness. She stirred, sat up, rubbing dazed eyes.

Stanton lay on his side, back toward us, head in arms.

"Edith looked at me laughingly. 'Heavens! What sleep!' she said.

Memory came to her.

"'What happened?' she whispered. 'What made us sleep like that?'

"Stanton awoke.

"'What's the matter!' he exclaimed. 'You look as though you've been seeing ghosts.'

"Edith caught my hands.

"'Where's Thora?' she cried. Before I could answer she had run out into the open, calling.

"'Thora was taken,' was all I could say to Stanton, 'together we went to my wife, now standing beside the great stone steps, looking up fearfully at the gateway into the terraces. There I told them what I had seen before sleep had drowned me. And together then we ran up the stairs, through the court and to the grey rock.

"The slab was closed as it had been the day before, nor was there trace of its having opened. No trace? Even as I thought this Edith dropped to her knees before it and reached toward something lying at its foot. It was a little piece of gay silk. I knew it for part of the kerchief Thora wore about her hair. She lifted the fragment. It had been cut from the kerchief as though by a razor-edge; a few threads ran from it--down toward the base of the slab; ran on to the base of the grey rock and--under it!

"The grey rock was a door! And it had opened and Thora had pa.s.sed through it!

"I think that for the next few minutes we all were a little insane.

We beat upon that portal with our hands, with stones and sticks. At last reason came back to us.

"Goodwin, during the next two hours we tried every way in our power to force entrance through the slab. The rock resisted our drills. We tried explosions at the base with charges covered by rock. They made not the slightest impression on the surface, expending their force, of course, upon the slighter resistance of their coverings.

"Afternoon found us hopeless. Night was coming on and we would have to decide our course of action. I wanted to go to Ponape for help. But Edith objected that this would take hours and after we had reached there it would be impossible to persuade our men to return with us that night, if at all. What then was left? Clearly only one of two choices: to go back to our camp, wait for our men, and on their return try to persuade them to go with us to Nan-Tauach. But this would mean the abandonment of Thora for at least two days. We could not do it; it would have been too cowardly.

"The other choice was to wait where we were for night to come; to wait for the rock to open as it had the night before, and to make a sortie through it for Thora before it could close again.

"Our path lay clear before us. We had to spend that night on Nan-Tauach!

"We had, of course, discussed the sleep phenomena very fully. If our theory that lights, sounds, and Thora's disappearance were linked with secret religious rites of the natives, the logical inference was that the slumber had been produced by them, perhaps by vapours--you know as well as I, what extraordinary knowledge these Pacific peoples have of such things. Or the sleep might have been simply a coincidence and produced by emanations either gaseous or from plants, natural causes which had happened to coincide in their effects with the other manifestations. We made some rough and ready but effective respirators.

"As dusk fell we looked over our weapons. Edith was an excellent shot with both rifle and pistol. We had decided that my wife was to remain in the hiding-place. Stanton would take up a station on the far side of the stairway and I would place myself opposite him on the side near Edith. The place I picked out was less than two hundred feet from her, and I could rea.s.sure myself now and then as to her safety as it looked down upon the hollow wherein she crouched. From our respective stations Stanton and I could command the gateway entrance. His position gave him also a glimpse of the outer courtyard.

"A faint glow in the sky heralded the moon. Stanton and I took our places. The moon dawn increased rapidly; the disk swam up, and in a moment it was s.h.i.+ning in full radiance upon ruins and sea.

"As it rose there came a curious little sighing sound from the inner terrace. Stanton straightened up and stared intently through the gateway, rifle ready.

"'Stanton, what do you see?' I called cautiously. He waved a silencing hand. I turned my head to look at Edith. A shock ran through me. She lay upon her side. Her face, grotesque with its nose and mouth covered by the respirator, was turned full toward the moon. She was again in deepest sleep!

"As I turned again to call to Stanton, my eyes swept the head of the steps and stopped, fascinated. For the moonlight had thickened. It seemed to be--curdled--there; and through it ran little gleams and veins of s.h.i.+mmering white fire. A languor pa.s.sed through me. It was not the ineffable drowsiness of the preceding night. It was a sapping of all will to move. I tried to cry out to Stanton. I had not even the will to move my lips. Goodwin--I could not even move my eyes!

"Stanton was in the range of my fixed vision. I watched him leap up the steps and move toward the gateway. The curdled radiance seemed to await him. He stepped into it--and was lost to my sight.

"For a dozen heart beats there was silence. Then a rain of tinklings that set the pulses racing with joy and at once checked them with tiny fingers of ice--and ringing through them Stanton's voice from the courtyard--a great cry--a scream--filled with ecstasy insupportable and horror unimaginable! And once more there was silence. I strove to burst the bonds that held me. I could not. Even my eyelids were fixed.

Within them my eyes, dry and aching, burned.

"Then Goodwin--I first saw the--inexplicable! The crystalline music swelled. Where I sat I could take in the gateway and its basalt portals, rough and broken, rising to the top of the wall forty feet above, shattered, ruined portals--unclimbable. From this gateway an intenser light began to flow. It grew, it gushed, and out of it walked Stanton.

"Stanton! But--G.o.d! What a vision!"

A deep tremor shook him. I waited--waited.

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 s.h.i.+ning cloud whirled through and around him in radiant swirls, s.h.i.+mmering 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 G.o.d and the hand of Satan, working together and in harmony. You have seen that seal upon my own. But you have never seen it in the degree that Stanton bore it. The eyes were wide open and fixed, as though upon some inward vision of h.e.l.l and heaven!

"The light that filled and surrounded him had a nucleus, a core--something s.h.i.+ftingly human shaped--that dissolved and changed, gathered itself, whirled through and beyond him and back again. And as its s.h.i.+ning nucleus pa.s.sed through him Stanton's whole body pulsed radiance. As the luminescence moved, there moved above it, still and serene always, seven tiny globes of seven colors, like seven little moons.

"Then swiftly Stanton was lifted--levitated--up the unscalable wall and to its top. The glow faded from the moonlight, the tinkling music grew fainter. I tried again to move. The tears were running down now from my rigid lids and they brought relief to my tortured eyes.

"I have said my gaze was fixed. It was. But from the side, peripherally, it took in a part of the far wall of the outer enclosure. Ages seemed to pa.s.s and a radiance stole along it. Soon drifted into sight the figure that was Stanton. Far away he was--on the gigantic wall. But still I could see the s.h.i.+ning spirals whirling jubilantly around and through him; felt rather than saw his tranced face beneath the seven moons. A swirl of crystal notes, and he had pa.s.sed. And all the time, as though from some opened well of light, the courtyard gleamed and sent out silver fires that dimmed the moonrays, yet seemed strangely to be a part of them.

"At last the moon neared the horizon. There came a louder burst of sound; the second, and last, cry of Stanton, like an echo of his first! Again the soft sighing from the inner terrace. Then--utter silence!

"The light faded; the moon was setting and with a rush life and power to move returned to me. I made a leap for the steps, rushed up them, through the gateway and straight to the grey rock. It was closed--as I knew it would be. But did I dream it or did I hear, echoing through it as though from vast distances a triumphant shouting?

"I ran back to Edith. At my touch she wakened; looked at me wanderingly; raised herself on a hand.

"'Dave!' she said, 'I slept--after all.' She saw the despair on my face and leaped to her feet. 'Dave!' she cried. 'What is it? Where's Charles?'

"I lighted a fire before I spoke. Then I told her. And for the balance of that night we sat before the flames, arms around each other--like two frightened children."

Abruptly Throckmartin held his hands out to me appealingly.

"Walter, old friend!" he cried. "Don't look at me as though I were mad. It's truth, absolute truth. Wait--" I comforted him as well as I could. After a little time he took up his story.

"Never," he said, "did man welcome the sun as we did that morning. A soon as it had risen we went back to the courtyard. The walls whereon I had seen Stanton were black and silent. The terraces were as they had been. The grey slab was in its place. In the shallow hollow at its base was--nothing. Nothing--nothing was there anywhere on the islet of Stanton--not a trace.

"What were we to do? Precisely the same arguments that had kept us there the night before held good now--and doubly good. We could not abandon these two; could not go as long as there was the faintest hope of finding them--and yet for love of each other how could we remain? I loved my wife,--how much I never knew until that day; and she loved me as deeply.

"'It takes only one each night,' she pleaded. 'Beloved, let it take me.'

"I wept, Walter. We both wept.

"'We will meet it together,' she said. And it was thus at last that we arranged it."