第26章

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 you.There came to me from Ranaloa last month a man, a Russian, a doctair, like you.His name it was Marakinoff.Itake him to Ponape an' the natives there they will not take him to the Nan-Matal where he wish to go--no! So I take him.We leave in a boat, wit' much instrument carefully tied up.I leave him there wit' the boat an' the food.He tell me to tell no one an' pay me not to.But you are a friend an'

Olaf he depend much upon you an' so I tell you, sair.""You know nothing more than this, Da Costa?" I asked.

"Nothing of another expedition?"

"No," he shook his head vehemently."Nothing more.""Hear the name Throckmartin while you were there?"I persisted.

"No," his eyes were steady as he answered but the pallor had crept again into his face.

I was not so sure.But if he knew more than he had told me why was he afraid to speak? My anxiety deepened and later I sought relief from it by repeating the conversation to O'Keefe.

"A Russian, eh," he said."Well, they can be damned nice, or damned--otherwise.Considering what you did for me, Ihope I can look him over before the Dolphin shows up."Next morning we raised Ponape, without further incident, and before noon the Suwarna and the Brunhilda had dropped anchor in the harbour.Upon the excitement and manifest dread of the natives, when we sought among them for car-riers and workmen to accompany us, I will not dwell.It is enough to say that no payment we offered could induce a single one of them to go to the Nan-Matal.Nor would they say why.

Finally it was agreed that the Brunhilda should be left in charge of a half-breed Chinaman, whom both Da Costa and Huldricksson knew and trusted.We piled her long-boat up with my instruments and food and camping equipment.The Suwarna took us around to Metalanim Harbour, and there, with the tops of ancient sea walls deep in the blue water be-neath us, and the ruins looming up out of the mangroves, a scant mile from us, left us.

Then with Huldricksson manipulating our small sail, and Larry at the rudder, we rounded the titanic wall that swept down into the depths, and turned at last into the canal that Throckmartin, on his map, had marked as that which, run-ning between frowning Nan-Tauach and its satellite islet, Tau, led straight to the gate of the place of ancient mysteries.

And as we entered that channel we were enveloped by a silence; a silence so intense, so--weighted that it seemed to have substance; an alien silence that clung and stifled and still stood aloof from us--the living.It was a stillness, such as might follow the long tramping of millions into the grave;it was--paradoxical as it may be--filled with the withdrawal of life.

Standing down in the chambered depths of the Great Pyramid I had known something of such silence--but never such intensity as this.Larry felt it and I saw him look at me askance.If Olaf, sitting in the bow, felt it, too, he gave no sign; his blue eyes, with again the glint of ice within them, watched the channel before us.

As we passed, there arose upon our left sheer walls of black basalt blocks, cyclopean, towering fifty feet or more, broken here and there by the sinking of their deep founda-tions.

In front of us the mangroves widened out and filled the acanal.On our right the lesser walls of Tau, sombre blocks smoothed and squared and set with a cold, mathematical nicety that filled me with vague awe, slipped by.Through breaks I caught glimpses of dark ruins and of great fallen stones that seemed to crouch and menace us, as we passed.

Somewhere there, hidden, were the seven globes that poured the moon fire down upon the Moon Pool.

Now we were among the mangroves and, sail down, the three of us pushed and pulled the boat through their tangled roots and branches.The noise of our passing split the silence like a profanation, and from the ancient bastions came mur-murs--forbidding, strangely sinister.And now we were through, floating on a little open space of shadow-filled water.Before us lifted the gateway of Nan-Tauach, gigantic, broken, incredibly old; shattered portals through which had passed men and women of earth's dawn; old with a weight of years that pressed leadenly upon the eyes that looked upon it, and yet was in some curious indefinable way--men-acingly defiant.

Beyond the gate, back from the portals, stretched a flight of enormous basalt slabs, a giant's stairway indeed; and from each side of it marched the high walls that were the Dweller's pathway.None of us spoke as we grounded the boat and dragged it upon a half-submerged pier.And when we did speak it was in whispers.

"What next?" asked Larry.

"I think we ought to take a look around," I replied in the same low tones."We'll climb the wall here and take a flash about.The whole place ought to be plain as day from that height."Huldricksson, his blue eyes alert, nodded.With the great-est difficulty we clambered up the broken blocks.

To the east and south of us, set like children's blocks in the midst of the sapphire sea, lay dozens of islets, none of them covering more than two square miles of surface; each of them a perfect square or oblong within its protecting walls.

On none was there sign of life, save for a few great birds that hovered here and there, and gulls dipping in the blue waves beyond.

We turned our gaze down upon the island on which we stood.It was, I estimated, about three-quarters of a mile square.The sea wall enclosed it.it was really an enormous basalt-sided open cube, and within it two other open cubes.