The Moon Pool

g on the

nds 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

ullen, 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 P

inst 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 some

e of my oldest friends and, as well, a mind of the first water whose power and ach

ed 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

ity, 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 sc

in to Port Moresby, and what was

saw what was that difference that had so moved me. He knew, of course by my silence and involuntary shrinking the shock my

e purser. "Know 'im well, sir? Seem

came to me. The old Throckmartin was on the eve of his venture just turned forty, lithe, erect, muscular; his controlling expression one of

m that in its climax had remoulded, deep from within, his face, setting on it seal of wedded ecstasy and despair; as though inde

r how could rapture and horror, He

closest embrace lay o

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 disappoi

k to my deck-chair. The Southern Queen was rolling t

was much phosphorescence. Fitfully before the ship and at her sides arose those stranger little swirls of

. He paused uncertainly, looked up at the sky with a curiously

alled. "Come!

his wa

o time in preliminaries. "W

s body gr

answered. "I need a few things-need

d broken through the clouds. Almost on the horizon, you could see the faint luminescence of it upon the smooth sea. The d

ghted a cigarette with a hand that tremble

rself in another world, alien, unfamiliar, a world of terror, whose unknown joy is its greate

s 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

pulsed a thrill of horror-but horror tinged with an unfamiliar, an infernal joy.

was now less than half a mile away. From it the ship fled-almost as though pursued. Down

, and if ever the words were a pr

r the first

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

alescent 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 fe

sistent tinklings-like pizzicati on violins of gl

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 w

etween it and us. Within the mistiness was a core, a nucleus of intenser light-veined, opaline, effulgent, inten

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 water

ces; it made the heart beat jubilantly-and checked it dolorously. It closed the th

gn to this world. The ear took the cry and translated with conscious labour into the sounds of earth. And even as it com

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 de

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 ce

e of the gulf wherein the men of the Louisades says lurks the fishe

passed an a

t aside a waiting terror of the unknown. "Now I know! Come with me to my cabin, old friend.

p's first officer. Throckmartin composed his

much of a sto

e. "Probably all th

ugh with a new thought. He gripp

ather-for"-he hesitated-"for

e more," repl

and I think I never heard such re

"Thank God?" he repeate

d to his cabin. I started to foll

," he said,

dly. "He's not used to it. I

rried on. For I knew now that Throckmartin was ill indeed-bu