The Moon Pool | Page 5

shrine of the Dweller. And there in the Moon Pool with it lie Edith and
Stanton and Thora."
"The Dweller in the Moon Pool?" I repeated half-incredulously.
"The Thing you saw," said Throckmartin solemnly.
A solid sheet of rain swept the ports, and the Southern Queen began to
roll on the rising swells. Throckmartin drew another deep breath of

relief, and drawing aside a curtain peered out into the night. Its
blackness seemed to reassure him. At any rate, when he sat again he
was entirely calm.
"There are no more wonderful ruins in the world," he began almost
casually. "They take in some fifty islets and cover with their
intersecting canals and lagoons about twelve square miles. Who built
them? None knows. When were they built? Ages before the memory of
present man, that is sure. Ten thousand, twenty thousand, a hundred
thousand years ago--the last more likely.
"All these islets, Walter, are squared, and their shores are frowning
seawalls of gigantic basalt blocks hewn and put in place by the hands
of ancient man. Each inner water-front is faced with a terrace of those
basalt blocks which stand out six feet above the shallow canals that
meander between them. On the islets behind these walls are
time-shattered fortresses, palaces, terraces, pyramids; immense
courtyards strewn with ruins--and all so old that they seem to wither the
eyes of those who look on them.
"There has been a great subsidence. You can stand out of Metalanim
harbour for three miles and look down upon the tops of similar
monolithic structures and walls twenty feet below you in the water.
"And all about, strung on their canals, are the bulwarked islets with
their enigmatic walls peering through the dense growths of
mangroves--dead, deserted for incalculable ages; shunned by those who
live near.
"You as a botanist are familiar with the evidence that a vast shadowy
continent existed in the Pacific--a continent that was not rent asunder
by volcanic forces as was that legendary one of Atlantis in the Eastern
Ocean.*1 My work in Java, in Papua, and in the Ladrones had set my
mind upon this Pacific lost land. Just as the Azores are believed to be
the last high peaks of Atlantis, so hints came to me steadily that Ponape
and Lele and their basalt bulwarked islets were the last points of the
slowly sunken western land clinging still to the sunlight, and had been
the last refuge and sacred places of the rulers of that race which had

lost their immemorial home under the rising waters of the Pacific.
*1 For more detailed observations on these points refer to G. Volkens,
Uber die Karolinen Insel Yap, in Verhandlungen Gesellschaft
Erdkunde Berlin, xxvii (1901); J. S. Kubary, Ethnographische Beitrage
zur Kentniss des Karolinen Archipel (Leiden, 1889-1892); De Abrade
Historia del Conflicto de las Carolinas, etc. (Madrid, 1886).--W. T. G.

"I believed that under these ruins I might find the evidence that I
sought.
"My--my wife and I had talked before we were married of making this
our great work. After the honeymoon we prepared for the expedition.
Stanton was as enthusiastic as ourselves. We sailed, as you know, last
May for fulfilment of my dreams.
"At Ponape we selected, not without difficulty, workmen to help
us--diggers. I had to make extraordinary inducements before I could get
together my force. Their beliefs are gloomy, these Ponapeans. They
people their swamps, their forests, their mountains, and shores, with
malignant spirits--ani they call them. And they are afraid--bitterly
afraid of the isles of ruins and what they think the ruins hide. I do not
wonder--now!
"When they were told where they were to go, and how long we
expected to stay, they murmured. Those who, at last, were tempted
made what I thought then merely a superstitious proviso that they were
to be allowed to go away on the three nights of the full moon. Would to
God we had heeded them and gone too!"
"We passed into Metalanim harbour. Off to our left--a mile away arose
a massive quadrangle. Its walls were all of forty feet high and hundreds
of feet on each side. As we drew by, our natives grew very silent;
watched it furtively, fearfully. I knew it for the ruins that are called
Nan-Tauach, the 'place of frowning walls.' And at the silence of my
men I recalled what Christian had written of this place; of how he had

come upon its 'ancient platforms and tetragonal enclosures of
stonework; its wonder of tortuous alleyways and labyrinth of shallow
canals; grim masses of stonework peering out from behind verdant
screens; cyclopean barricades,' and of how, when he had turned 'into its
ghostly shadows, straight-way the merriment of guides was hushed and
conversation died down to whispers.'"
He was silent for a little