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 abed.
This last was a most irreverent interpolation, I well knew.
I opened my door. O'Keefe stood outside laughing. The
Suwarna, her engines silent, was making fine headway under
all sail, the Brunhilda skipping in her wake cheerfully with
half her canvas up.
The sea was crisping and dimpling under the wind. Blue
and white was the world as far as the eye could reach.
Schools of little silvery green flying fish broke through the
water rushing on each side of us; flashed for an instant and
were gone. Behind us gulls hovered and dipped. The shadow
of mystery had retreated far over the rim of this wide awake
and beautiful world and if, subconsciously, I knew that somewhere it was brooding and waiting, for a little while at least
I was consciously free of its oppression.
"How's the patient?" asked O'Keefe.
He was answered by Huldricksson himself, who must have
risen just as I left the cabin. The Norseman had slipped on a
pair of pajamas and, giant torso naked under the sun, he
strode out upon us. We all of us looked at him a trifle anxiously. But Olaf's madness had left him. In his eyes was
much sorrow, but the berserk rage was gone.
He spoke straight to me: "You said last night we follow?"
I nodded.
"It is where?" he asked again.
"We go first to Ponape and from there to Metalanim Harbour - to the Nan-Matal. You know the place?"
Huldricksson bowed - a white gleam as of ice showing in
his blue eyes.
"It is there?" he asked.
"It is there that we must first search," I answered.
"Good!" said Olaf Huldricksson. "It is good!"
He looked at Da Costa inquiringly and the little Portuguese, following his thought, answered his unspoken question.
"We should be at Ponape tomorrow morning early, Olaf."
"Good!" repeated the Norseman. He looked away, his eyes
tear-filled.
A restraint fell upon us; the embarrassment all men experience when they feel a great sympathy and a great pity,
to neither of which they quite know how to give expression.
By silent consent we discussed at breakfast only the most
casual topics.
When the meal was over Huldricksson expressed a desire
to go aboard the Brunhilda.
The Suwarna hove to and Da Costa and he dropped into
the small boat. When they reached the Brunhilda's deck I
saw Olaf take the wheel and the two fall into earnest talk. I
beckoned to O'Keefe and we stretched ourselves out on the
bow hatch under cover of the foresail. He lighted a cigarette,
took a couple of leisurely puffs, and looked at me expectantly.
"Well?" I asked.
"Well," said O'Keefe, "suppose you tell me what you
think - and then I'll proceed to point out your scientific
errors." His eyes twinkled mischievously.
"Larry," I replied, somewhat severely, "you may not know
that I have a scientific reputation which, putting aside all
modesty, I may say is an enviable one. You used a word last
night to which I must interpose serious objection. You more
than hinted that I hid - superstitions. Let me inform you,
Larry O'Keefe, that I am solely a seeker, observer, analyst,
and synthesist of facts. I am not" - and I tried to make my
tone as pointed as my words - "I am not a believer in phantoms or spooks, leprechauns, banshees, or ghostly harpers."
O'Keefe leaned back and shouted with laughter.
"Forgive me, Goodwin," he gasped. "But if you could
have seen yourself solemnly disclaiming the banshee" -
another twinkle showed in his eyes - "and then with all this
sunshine and this wide-open world" - he shrugged his
shoulders - "it's hard to visualize anything such as you and
Huldricksson have described."
"I know how hard it is, Larry," I answered. "And don't
think I have any idea that the phenomenon is supernatural
in the sense spiritualists and table turners have given that
word. I do think it is supernormal; energized by a force unknown to modern science - but that doesn't mean I think it
outside the radius of science."
"Tell me your theory, Goodwin," he said. I hesitated -
for not yet had I been able to put into form to satisfy myself
any explanation of the Dweller.
"I think," I hazarded finally, "it is possible that some
members of that race peopling the ancient continent which
we know existed here in the Pacific, have survived. We know
that many of these islands are honeycombed with caverns
and vast subterranean spaces, literally underground lands
running in some cases far out beneath the ocean floor. It is
possible that for some reason survivors of this race sought
refuge in the abysmal spaces, one of whose entrances is on
the islet where Throckmartin's party met its end.
"As for their persistence in these caverns - we know they
possessed a high science. They may have gone far in the
mastery of certain universal forms of energy - especially
that we call light. They may have developed a civilization
and a science far more advanced than ours. What I call the
Dweller may be one of the results of this science. Larry - it
may well be that this lost race is planning to emerge again
upon earth's surface!"
"And is sending out your Dweller as a messenger, a scientific dove from their Ark?" I chose to overlook the banter
in his question.
"Did you ever hear of the Chamats?" I asked him. He
shook his head.
"In Papua," I explained, "there is a wide-spread and immeasurably old tradition that 'imprisoned under the hills' is
a race of giants who once ruled this region 'when it stretched
from sun to sun before the moon god drew the waters over
it' - I quote from the legend. Not only in Papua but throughout Malaysia you find this story. And, so the tradition runs,
these people - the Chamats - will one day break through the
hills and rule the world; 'make over the world' is the literal
translation of the constant phrase in the tale. It was Herbert
Spencer who pointed out that there is a basis of fact in every
myth and legend of man. It is possible that these survivors I
am discussing form Spencer's fact basis for the Malaysian legend.1
1 William Beebe, the famous American naturalist and ornithologist,
recently fighting in France with America's air force, called attention
to this remarkable belief in an article printed not long ago in the
Atlantic Monthly. Still more significant was it that he noted a persistent rumour that the breaking out of the buried race was close. -
W.J. B., Pres. I. A. of S.
"This much is sure - the moon door, which is clearly
operated by the action of moon rays upon some unknown
element or combination and the crystals through which the
moon rays pour down upon the pool their prismatic columns,
are humanly made mechanisms. So long as they are humanly
made, and so long as it IS this flood of moonlight from which
the Dweller draws its power of materialization, the Dweller
itself, if not the product of the human mind, is at least dependent upon the product of the human mind for its appearance."
"Wait a minute, Goodwin," interrupted O'Keefe. "Do
you mean to say you think that this thing is made of - well
- of moonshine?"
"Moonlight," I replied, "is, of course, reflected sunlight.
But the rays which pass back to earth after their impact on
the moon's surface are profoundly changed. The spectroscope shows that they lose practically all the slower vibrations we call red and infra-red, while the extremely rapid
vibrations we call the violet and ultra-violet are accelerated
and altered. Many scientists hold that there is an unknown
element in the moon - perhaps that which makes the gigantic
luminous trails that radiate in all directions from the lunar
crater Tycho - whose energies are absorbed by and carried
on the moon rays.
"At any rate, whether by the loss of the vibrations of the
red or by the addition of this mysterious force, the light of
the moon becomes something entirely different from mere
modified sunlight - just as the addition or subtraction of one
other chemical in a compound of several makes the product
a substance with entirely different energies and potentialities.
"Now these rays, Larry, are given perhaps still another
mysterious activity by the globes through which Throckmartin said they passed in the Chamber of the Moon Pool.
The result is the necessary factor in the formation of the
Dweller. There would be nothing scientifically improbable
in such a process. Kubalski, the great Russian physicist, produced crystalline forms exhibiting every faculty that we call
vital by subjecting certain combinations of chemicals to the
action of highly concentrated rays of various colours. Something in light and nothing else produced their pseudo-vitality.
We do not begin to know how to harness the potentialities of
that magnetic vibration of the ether we call light."
"Listen, Doc," said Larry earnestly, "I'll take everything
you say about this lost continent, the people who used to live
on it, and their caverns, for granted. But by the sword of
Brian Boru, you'll never get me to fall for the idea that a
bunch of moonshine can handle a big woman such as you
say Throckmartin's Thora was, nor a two-fisted man such as
you say Throckmartin was, nor Huldricksson's wife - and
I'll bet she was one of those strapping big northern women
too - you'll never get me to believe that any bunch of concentrated moonshine could handle them and take them
waltzing off along a moonbeam back to wherever it goes.
No, Doc, not on your life, even Tennessee moonshine
couldn't do that - nix!"
"All right, O'Keefe," I answered, now very much irritated
indeed. "What's your theory?" And I could not resist adding: "Fairies?"
"Professor," he grinned, "if that Thing's a fairy it's Irish
and when it sees me it'll be so glad there'll be nothing to it.
'I was lost, strayed, or stolen, Larry avick,' it'll say, 'an' I
was so homesick for the old sod I was desp'rit,' it'll say, an'
'take me back quick before I do any more har-rm!' it'll tell
me - an' that's the truth.
"Now don't get me wrong. I believe you all saw something
all right. But what I think you saw was some kind of gas.
All this region is volcanic and islands and things are constantly poking up from the sea. It's probably gas; a volcanic
emanation; something new to us and that drives you crazy
- lots of kinds of gas do that. It hit the Throckmartin party
on that island and they probably were all more or less delirious all the time; thought they saw things; talked it over
and - collective hallucination - just like the Angels of Mons
and other miracles of the war. Somebody sees something
that looks like something else. He points it out to the man
next him. 'Do you see it?' asks he. 'Sure I see it,' says the
other. And there you are - collective hallucination.
"When your friends got it bad they most likely jumped
overboard one by one. Huldricksson sails into a place where
it is and it hits his wife. She grabs the child and jumps over.
Maybe the moon rays make it luminous! I've seen gas on the
front under the moon that looked like a thousand whirling
dervish devils. Yes, and you could see the devil's faces in it.
And if it got into your lungs nothing could ever make you
think you hadn't seen real devils."
For a time I was silent.
"Larry," I said at last, "whether you are right or I am
right, I must go to the Nan-Matal. Will you go with me,
Larry?"
"Goodwin," he replied, "I surely will. I'm as interested as
you are. If we don't run across the Dolphin I'll stick. I'll
leave word at Ponape, to tell them where I am should they
come along. If they report me dead for a while there's nobody to care. So that's all right. Only old man, be reasonable.
You've thought over this so long, you're going bug, honestly
you are."
And again, the gladness that I might have Larry O'Keefe
with me, was so great that I forgot to be angry.
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