The Moon Pool Part 40

Two great tears rolled from the golden eyes of Lakla.

"Not even the Silent Ones can heal those the s.h.i.+ning One has taken,"

she said. "He asked me--and it was better that I tell him. It is part of the Three's--_punishment_--but of that you will soon learn," she went on hurriedly. "Ask me no questions now of the Silent Ones. I thought it better for Olaf to go with Rador, to busy himself, to give his mind other than sorrow upon which to feed."

Up the path came five of the frog-women, bearing platters and ewers.

Their bracelets and anklets of jewels were tinkling; their middles covered with short kirtles of woven cloth studded with the sparkling ornaments.

And here let me say that if I have given the impression that the _Akka_ are simply magnified frogs, I regret it. Frog-like they are, and hence my phrase for them--but as unlike the frog, as we know it, as man is unlike the chimpanzee. Springing, I hazard, from the stegocephalia, the ancestor of the frogs, these batrachians followed a different line of evolution and acquired the upright position just as man did his from the four-footed folk.

The great staring eyes, the shape of the muzzle were frog-like, but the highly developed brain had set upon the head and shape of it vital differences. The forehead, for instance, was not low, flat, and retreating--its frontal arch was well defined. The head was, in a sense, shapely, and with the females the great h.o.r.n.y carapace that stood over it like a fantastic helmet was much modified, as were the spurs that were so formidable in the male; colouration was different also. The torso was upright; the legs a little bent, giving them their crouching gait--but I wander from my subject.[1]

They set their burdens down. Larry looked at them with interest.

"You surely have those things well trained, Lakla," he said.

"Things!" The handmaiden arose, eyes flas.h.i.+ng with indignation. "You call my _Akka_ things!"

"Well," said Larry, a bit taken aback, "what do you call them?"

"My _Akka_ are a _people_," she retorted. "As much a people as your race or mine. They are good and loyal, and they have speech and arts, and they slay not, save for food or to protect themselves. And I think them beautiful, Larry, _beautiful_!" She stamped her foot. "And you call them--_things_!"

Beautiful! These? Yet, after all, they were, in their grotesque fas.h.i.+on. And to Lakla, surrounded by them, from babyhood, they were not strange, at all. Why shouldn't she think them beautiful? The same thought must have struck O'Keefe, for he flushed guiltily.

"I think them beautiful, too, Lakla," he said remorsefully. "It's my not knowing your tongue too well that traps me. _Truly_, I think them beautiful--I'd tell them so, if I knew their talk."

Lakla dimpled, laughed--spoke to the attendants in that strange speech that was unquestionably a language; they bridled, looked at O'Keefe with fantastic coquetry, cracked and boomed softly among themselves.

"They say they like _you_ better than the men of Muria," laughed Lakla.

"Did I ever think I'd be swapping compliments with lady frogs!" he murmured to me. "Buck up, Larry--keep your eyes on the captive Irish princess!" he muttered to himself.

"Rador goes to meet one of the _ladala_ who is slipping through with news," said the Golden Girl as we addressed ourselves to the food.

"Then, with Nak, he and Olaf go to muster the _Akka_--for there will be battle, and we must prepare. Nak," she added, "is he who went before me when you were dancing with Yolara, Larry." She stole a swift, mischievous glance at him. "He is headman of all the _Akka_."

"Just what forces can we muster against them when they come, darlin'?"

said Larry.

"Darlin'?"--the Golden Girl had caught the caress of the word--"what's that?"

"It's a little word that means Lakla," he answered. "It does--that is, when I say it; when you say it, then it means Larry."

"I like that word," mused Lakla.

"You can even say Larry darlin'!" suggested O'Keefe.

"Larry darlin'!" said Lakla. "When they come we shall have first of all my _Akka_--"

"Can they fight, _mavourneen_?" interrupted Larry.

"Can they fight! My _Akka_!" Again her eyes flashed. "They will fight to the last of them--with the spears that give the swift rotting, covered, as they are, with the jelly of those _Saddu_ there--" She pointed through a rift in the foliage across which, on the surface of the sea, was floating one of the moon globes--and now I know why Rador had warned Larry against a plunge there. "With spears and clubs and with teeth and nails and spurs--they are a strong and brave people, Larry--darlin', and though they hurl the _Keth_ at them, it is slow to work upon them, and they slay even while they are pa.s.sing into the nothingness!"

"And have we none of the _Keth_?" he asked.

"No"--she shook her head--"none of their weapons have we here, although it was--it was the Ancient Ones who shaped them."

"But the Three are of the Ancient Ones?" I cried. "Surely they can tell--"

"No," she said slowly. "No--there is something you must know--and soon; and then the Silent Ones say you will understand. You, especially, Goodwin, who wors.h.i.+p wisdom."

"Then," said Larry, "we have the _Akka_; and we have the four men of us, and among us three guns and about a hundred cartridges--an'--an'

the power of the Three--but what about the s.h.i.+ning One, Fireworks--"

"I do not know." Again the indecision that had been in her eyes when Yolara had launched her defiance crept back. "The s.h.i.+ning One is strong--and he has his--slaves!"

"Well, we'd better get busy good and quick!" the O'Keefe's voice rang.

But Lakla, for some reason of her own, would pursue the matter no further. The trouble fled from her eyes--they danced.

"Larry darlin'?" she murmured. "I like the touch of your lips--"

"You do?" he whispered, all thought flying of anything but the beautiful, provocative face so close to his. "Then, _acushla_, you're goin' to get acquainted with 'em! Turn your head, Doc!" he said.

And I turned it. There was quite a long silence, broken by an interested, soft outburst of gentle boomings from the serving frog-maids. I stole a glance behind me. Lakla's head lay on the Irishman's shoulder, the golden eyes misty sunpools of love and adoration; and the O'Keefe, a new look of power and strength upon his clear-cut features, was gazing down into them with that look which rises only from the heart touched for the first time with that true, all-powerful love, which is the pulse of the universe itself, the real music of the spheres of which Plato dreamed, the love that is stronger than death itself, immortal as the high G.o.ds and the true soul of all that mystery we call life.

Then Lakla raised her hands, pressed down Larry's head, kissed him between the eyes, drew herself with a trembling little laugh from his embrace.

"The future Mrs. Larry O'Keefe, Goodwin," said Larry to me a little unsteadily.

I took their hands--and Lakla kissed me!

She turned to the booming--smiling--frog-maids; gave them some command, for they filed away down the path. Suddenly I felt, well, a little superfluous.

"If you don't mind," I said, "I think I'll go up the path there again and look about."

But they were so engrossed with each other that they did not even hear me--so I walked away, up to the embrasure where Rador had taken me.

The movement of the batrachians over the bridge had ceased. Dimly at the far end I could see the cl.u.s.ter of the garrison. My thoughts flew back to Lakla and to Larry.

What was to be the end?

If we won, if we were able to pa.s.s from this place, could she live in our world? A product of these caverns with their atmosphere and light that seemed in some subtle way to be both food and drink--how would she react to the unfamiliar foods and air and light of outer earth?

Further, here so far as I was able to discover, there were no malignant bacilli--what immunity could Lakla have then to those microscopic evils without, which only long ages of sickness and death have bought for us a modic.u.m of protection? I began to be oppressed.

Surely they had been long enough by themselves. I went down the path.

I heard Larry.

"It's a green land, _mavourneen_. And the sea rocks and dimples around it--blue as the heavens, green as the isle itself, and foam horses toss their white manes, and the great clean winds blow over it, and the sun s.h.i.+nes down on it like your eyes, _acushla_--"

"And are you a king of Ireland, Larry darlin'?" Thus Lakla--

But enough!