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 in her sombrest, most baleful mood. The sky was
smouldering ochre. Over the island brooded a spirit sullen,
alien, implacable, filled with the threat of latent, malefic
forces waiting to be unleashed. It seemed an emanation out
of the untamed, sinister heart of Papua herself - sinister even
when she smiles. And now and then, on the wind, came a
breath from virgin jungles, laden with unfamiliar odours,
mysterious and menacing.
It is on such mornings that Papua whispers to you of her
immemorial ancientness and of her power. And, as every
white man must, I fought against her spell. While I struggled
I saw a tall figure striding down the pier; a Kapa-Kapa boy
followed swinging a new valise. There was something
familiar about the tall man. As he reached the gangplank he
looked up straight into my eyes, stared for a moment, then
waved his hand.
And now I knew him. It was Dr. David Throckmartin -
"Throck" he was to me always, one of my oldest friends
and, as well, a mind of the first water whose power and
achievements were for me a constant inspiration as they
were, I know, for scores other.
Coincidentally with my recognition came a shock of surprise, definitely - unpleasant. It was Throckmartin - but
about him was something disturbingly unlike the man I
had known long so well and to whom and to whose little
party I had bidden farewell less than a month before I
myself had sailed for these seas. He had married only a
few weeks before, Edith, the daughter of Professor William
Frazier, younger by at least a decade than he but at one
with him in his ideals and as much in love, if it were possible, as Throckmartin. By virtue of her father's training
a wonderful assistant, by virtue of her own sweet, sound
heart a - I use the word in its olden sense - lover. With his
equally youthful associate Dr. Charles Stanton and a Swedish woman, Thora Halversen, who had been Edith Throckmartin's nurse from babyhood, they had set forth for the
Nan-Matal, that extraordinary group of island ruins clustered along the eastern shore of Ponape in the Carolines.
I knew that he had planned to spend at least a year
among these ruins, not only of Ponape but of Lele - twin
centres of a colossal riddle of humanity, a weird flower of
civilization that blossomed ages before the seeds of Egypt
were sown; of whose arts we know little enough and of
whose science nothing. He had carried with him unusually
complete equipment for the work he had expected to do
and which, he hoped, would be his monument.
What then had brought Throckmartin to Port Moresby,
and what was that change I had sensed in him?
Hurrying down to the lower deck I found him with the
purser. As I spoke he turned, thrust out to me an eager
hand - and then I saw what was that difference that had so
moved me. He knew, of course by my silence and involuntary shrinking the shock my closer look had given me. His
eyes filled; he turned brusquely from the purser, hesitated
- then hurried off to his stateroom.
"'E looks rather queer - eh?" said the purser. "Know 'im
well, sir? Seems to 'ave given you quite a start."
I made some reply and went slowly up to my chair. There
I sat, composed my mind and tried to define what it was
that had shaken me so. Now it came to me. The old
Throckmartin was on the eve of his venture just turned
forty, lithe, erect, muscular; his controlling expression one
of enthusiasm, of intellectual keenness, of - what shall I say
- expectant search. His always questioning brain had
stamped its vigor upon his face.
But the Throckmartin I had seen below was one who had
borne some scaring shock of mingled rapture and horror;
some soul cataclysm that in its climax had remoulded,
deep from within, his face, setting on it seal of wedded
ecstasy and despair; as though indeed these two had come
to him hand in hand, taken possession of him and departing
left behind, ineradicably, their linked shadows!
Yes - it was that which appalled. For how could rapture
and horror, Heaven and Hell mix, clasp hands - kiss?
Yet these were what in closest embrace lay on Throckmartin's face!
Deep in thought, subconsciously with relief, I watched
the shore line sink behind; welcomed the touch of the wind
of the free seas. I had hoped, and within the hope was an
inexplicable shrinking that I would meet Throckmartin at
lunch. He did not come down, and I was sensible of deliverance within my disappointment. All that afternoon I
lounged about uneasily but still he kept to his cabin - and
within me was no strength to summon him. Nor did he
appear at dinner.
Dusk and night fell swiftly. I was warm and went back to
my deck-chair. The Southern Queen was rolling to a disquieting swell and I had the place to myself.
Over the heavens was a canopy of cloud, glowing faintly
and testifying to the moon riding behind it. There was much
phosphorescence. Fitfully before the ship and at her sides
arose those stranger little swirls of mist that swirl up from
the Southern Ocean like breath of sea monsters, whirl for an
instant and disappear.
Suddenly the deck door opened and through it came
Throckmartin. He paused uncertainly, looked up at the sky
with a curiously eager, intent gaze, hesitated, then closed
the door behind him.
"Throck," I called. "Come! It's Goodwin."
He made his way to me.
"Throck," I said, wasting no time in preliminaries.
"What's wrong? Can I help you?"
I felt his body grow tense.
"I'm going to Melbourne, Goodwin," he answered. "I
need a few things - need them urgently. And more men -
white men - "
He stopped abruptly; rose from his chair, gazed intently
toward the north. I followed his gaze. Far, far away the
moon had broken through the clouds. Almost on the horizon, you could see the faint luminescence of it upon the
smooth sea. The distant patch of light quivered and shook.
The clouds thickened again and it was gone. The ship raced
on southward, swiftly.
Throckmartin dropped into his chair. He lighted a cigarette with a hand that trembled; then turned to me with
abrupt resolution.
"Goodwin," he said. "I do need help. If ever man needed
it, I do. Goodwin - can you imagine yourself in another
world, alien, unfamiliar, a world of terror, whose unknown
joy is its greatest terror of all; you all alone there, a
stranger! As such a man would need help, so I need - "
He paused abruptly and arose; the cigarette dropped from
his fingers. The moon had again broken through the clouds,
and this time much nearer. Not a mile away was the patch
of light that it threw upon the waves. Back of it, to the rim
of the sea was a lane of moonlight; a gigantic gleaming serpent racing over the edge of the world straight and surely
toward the ship.
Throckmartin stiffened to it as a pointer does to a hidden
covey. To me from him pulsed a thrill of horror - but
horror tinged with an unfamiliar, an infernal joy. It came
to me and passed away - leaving me trembling with its
shock of bitter sweet.
He bent forward, all his soul in his eyes. The moon path
swept closer, closer still. It was now less than half a mile
away. From it the ship fled - almost as though pursued.
Down upon it, swift and straight, a radiant torrent cleaving
the waves, raced the moon stream.
"Good God!" breathed Throckmartin, and if ever the
words were a prayer and an invocation they were.
And then, for the first time - I saw - IT!
The moon path stretched to the horizon and was bordered by darkness. It was as though the clouds above had
been parted to form a lane-drawn aside like curtains or as
the waters of the Red Sea were held back to let the hosts
of Israel through. On each side of the stream was the black
shadow cast by the folds of the high canopies And straight
as a road between the opaque walls gleamed, shimmered,
and danced the shining, racing, rapids of the moonlight
Far, it seemed immeasurably far, along this stream of
silver fire I sensed, rather than saw, something coming. It
drew first into sight as a deeper glow within the light. On
and on it swept toward us - an opalescent mistiness that
sped with the suggestion of some winged creature in
arrowed flight. Dimly there crept into my mind memory of
the Dyak legend of the winged messenger of Buddha -
the Akla bird whose feathers are woven of the moon rays,
whose heart is a living opal, whose wings in flight echo the
crystal clear music of the white stars - but whose beak is
of frozen flame and shreds the souls of unbelievers.
Closer it drew and now there came to me sweet, insistent
tinklings - like pizzicati on violins of glass; crystal clear;
diamonds melting into sounds!
Now the Thing was close to the end of the white path;
close up to the barrier of darkness still between the ship
and the sparkling head of the moon stream. Now it beat up
against that barrier as a bird against the bars of its cage. It
whirled with shimmering plumes, with swirls of lacy light,
with spirals of living vapour. It held within it odd, unfamiliar gleams as of shifting mother-of-pearl. Coruscations
and glittering atoms drifted through it as though it drew
them from the rays that bathed it.
Nearer and nearer it came, borne on the sparkling waves,
and ever thinner shrank the protecting wall of shadow between it and us. Within the mistiness was a core, a nucleus
of intenser light - veined, opaline, effulgent, intensely alive.
And above it, tangled in the plumes and spirals that
throbbed and whirled were seven glowing lights.
Through all the incessant but strangely ordered movement of the - THING - these lights held firm and steady. They
were seven - like seven little moons. One was of a pearly
pink, one of a delicate nacreous blue, one of lambent
saffron, one of the emerald you see in the shallow waters
of tropic isles; a deathly white; a ghostly amethyst; and
one of the silver that is seen only when the flying fish leap
beneath the moon.
The tinkling music was louder still. It pierced the ears
with a shower of tiny lances; it made the heart beat jubilantly - and checked it dolorously. It closed the throat with
a throb of rapture and gripped it tight with the hand of
infinite sorrow!
Came to me now a murmuring cry, stilling the crystal
notes. It was articulate - but as though from something
utterly foreign to this world. The ear took the cry and translated with conscious labour into the sounds of earth. And
even as it compassed, the brain shrank from it irresistibly,
and simultaneously it seemed reached toward it with irresistible eagerness.
Throckmartin strode toward the front of the deck,
straight toward the vision, now but a few yards away from
the stern. His face had lost all human semblance. Utter
agony and utter ecstasy - there they were side by side, not
resisting each other; unholy inhuman companions blending
into a look that none of God's creatures should wear -
and deep, deep as his soul! A devil and a God dwelling
harmoniously side by side! So must Satan, newly fallen,
still divine, seeing heaven and contemplating hell, have
appeared.
And then - swiftly the moon path faded! The clouds
swept over the sky as though a hand had drawn them together. Up from the south came a roaring squall. As the
moon vanished what I had seen vanished with it - blotted
out as an image on a magic lantern; the tinkling ceased
abruptly - leaving a silence like that which follows an
abrupt thunder clap. There was nothing about us but silence
and blackness!
Through me passed a trembling as one who has stood on
the very verge of the gulf wherein the men of the Louisades
says lurks the fisher of the souls of men, and has been
plucked back by sheerest chance.
Throckmartin passed an arm around me.
"It is as I thought," he said. In his voice was a new note;
the calm certainty that has swept aside a waiting terror of
the unknown. "Now I know! Come with me to my cabin,
old friend. For now that you too have seen I can tell you" -
he hesitated - "what it was you saw," he ended.
As we passed through the door we met the ship's first
officer. Throckmartin composed his face into at least a semblance of normality.
"Going to have much of a storm?" he asked.
"Yes," said the mate. "Probably all the way to Melbourne."
Throckmartin straightened as though with a new thought.
He gripped the officer's sleeve eagerly.
"You mean at least cloudy weather - for" - he hesitated
- "for the next three nights, say?"
"And for three more," replied the mate.
"Thank God!" cried Throckmartin, and I think I never
heard such relief and hope as was in his voice.
The sailor stood amazed. "Thank God?" he repeated.
"Thank - what d'ye mean?"
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.
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