The Moon Pool | Page 7

soberly. 'I wonder what they make those sounds with. They
frighten me half to death, and, at the same time, they make me feel as
though some enormous rapture were just around the corner.'
"'It's devilish uncanny!' broke in Stanton.
"And as he spoke the flap of Thora's tent was raised and out into the
moonlight strode the old Swede. She was the great Norse type--tall,
deep-breasted, moulded on the old Viking lines. Her sixty years had

slipped from her. She looked like some ancient priestess of Odin.
"She stood there, her eyes wide, brilliant, staring. She thrust her head
forward toward Nan-Tauach, regarding the moving lights; she listened.
Suddenly she raised her arms and made a curious gesture to the moon.
It was--an archaic--movement; she seemed to drag it from remote
antiquity--yet in it was a strange suggestion of power, Twice she
repeated this gesture and--the tinklings died away! She turned to us.
"'Go!' she said, and her voice seemed to come from far distances. 'Go
from here--and quickly! Go while you may. It has called--' She pointed
to the islet. 'It knows you are here. It waits!' she wailed. 'It
beckons--the--the--"
"She fell at Edith's feet, and over the lagoon came again the tinklings,
now with a quicker note of jubilance--almost of triumph.
"We watched beside her throughout the night. The sounds from
Nan-Tauach continued until about an hour before moon-set. In the
morning Thora awoke, none the worse, apparently. She had had bad
dreams, she said. She could not remember what they were--except that
they had warned her of danger. She was oddly sullen, and throughout
the morning her gaze returned again and again half-fascinatedly,
half-wonderingly to the neighbouring isle.
"That afternoon the natives returned. And that night on Nan-Tauach the
silence was unbroken nor were there lights nor sign of life.
"You will understand, Goodwin, how the occurrences I have related
would excite the scientific curiosity. We rejected immediately, of
course, any explanation admitting the supernatural.
"Our--symptoms let me call them--could all very easily be accounted
for. It is unquestionable that the vibrations created by certain musical
instruments have definite and sometimes extraordinary effect upon the
nervous system. We accepted this as the explanation of the reactions
we had experienced, hearing the unfamiliar sounds. Thora's
nervousness, her superstitious apprehensions, had wrought her up to a

condition of semi-somnambulistic hysteria. Science could readily
explain her part in the night's scene.
"We came to the conclusion that there must be a passage-way between
Ponape and Nan-Tauach known to the natives--and used by them
during their rites. We decided that on the next departure of our
labourers we would set forth immediately to Nan-Tauach. We would
investigate during the day, and at evening my wife and Thora would go
back to camp, leaving Stanton and me to spend the night on the island,
observing from some safe hiding-place what might occur.
"The moon waned; appeared crescent in the west; waxed slowly toward
the full. Before the men left us they literally prayed us to accompany
them. Their importunities only made us more eager to see what it was
that, we were now convinced, they wanted to conceal from us. At least
that was true of Stanton and myself. It was not true of Edith. She was
thoughtful, abstracted--reluctant.
"When the men were out of sight around the turn of the harbour, we
took our boat and made straight for Nan-Tauach. Soon its mighty
sea-wall towered above us. We passed through the water-gate with its
gigantic hewn prisms of basalt and landed beside a half-submerged pier.
In front of us stretched a series of giant steps leading into a vast court
strewn with fragments of fallen pillars. In the centre of the court,
beyond the shattered pillars, rose another terrace of basalt blocks,
concealing, I knew, still another enclosure.
"And now, Walter, for the better understanding of what
follows--and--and--" he hesitated. "Should you decide later to return
with me or, if I am taken, to--to--follow us--listen carefully to my
description of this place: Nan-Tauach is literally three rectangles. The
first rectangle is the sea-wall, built up of monoliths--hewn and squared,
twenty feet wide at the top. To get to the gateway in the sea-wall you
pass along the canal marked on the map between Nan-Tauach and the
islet named Tau. The entrance to the canal is bidden by dense thickets
of mangroves; once through these the way is clear. The steps lead up
from the landing of the sea-gate through the entrance to the courtyard.

"This courtyard is surrounded by another basalt wall, rectangular,
following with mathematical exactness the march of the outer
barricades. The sea-wall is from thirty to forty feet high--originally it
must have been much higher, but there has been subsidence in parts.
The wall of the first enclosure is