The Moon Pool - A. Merritt (top novels .TXT) 📗

sky. Where was the moon door⁠—which, someway, somehow, I must reach, and quickly.

At dawn of the next day I got together driftwood and bound it together in shape of a rough raft with fallen creepers. Then, with a makeshift paddle, I set forth for Nan-Tauach. Slowly, painfully, I crept up to it. It was late afternoon before I grounded my shaky craft on the little beach between the ruined sea-gates and, creeping up the giant steps, made my way to the inner enclosure.

And at its opening I stopped, and the tears ran streaming down my cheeks while I wept aloud with sorrow and with disappointment and with weariness.

For the great wall in which had been set the pale slab whose threshold we had crossed to the land of the Shining One lay shattered and broken. The monoliths were heaped about; the wall had fallen, and about them shone a film of water, half covering them.

There was no moon door!

Dazed and weeping, I drew closer, climbed upon their outlying fragments. I looked out only upon the sea. There had been a great subsidence, an Earth shock, perhaps, tilting downward all that side⁠—the echo, little doubt, of that cataclysm which had blasted the Dweller’s lair!

The little squared islet called Tau, in which were hidden the seven globes, had entirely disappeared. Upon the waters there was no trace of it.

The moon door was gone; the passage to the Moon Pool was closed to me⁠—its chamber covered by the sea!

There was no road to Larry⁠—nor to Lakla!

And there, for me, the world ended.

Endnotes

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. ↩

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. ↩

Later I was to find that Murian reckoning rested upon the extraordinary increased luminosity of the cliffs at the time of full moon on Earth⁠—this action, to my mind, being linked either with the effect of the light streaming globes upon the Moon Pool, whose source was in the shining cliffs, or else upon some mysterious affinity of their radiant element with the flood of moonlight on Earth⁠—the latter, most probably, because even when the moon must have been clouded above, it made no difference in the phenomenon. Thirteen of these shinings forth constituted a laya, one of them a lat. Ten was sa; ten times ten times ten a said, or thousand; ten times a thousand was a sais. A sais of laya was then literally ten thousand years. What we would call an hour was by them called a va. The whole time system was, of course, a mingling of time as it had been known to their remote, surface-dwelling ancestors, and the peculiar determining factors in the vast cavern. ↩

Unquestionably there is a subtle difference between time as we know it and time in this subterranean land⁠—its progress there being slower. This, however, is only in accord with the well-known doctrine of relativity, which predicates both space and time as necessary inventions of the human mind to orient itself to the conditions under which it finds itself. I tried often to measure this difference, but could never do so to my entire satisfaction. The closest I can come to it is to say that an hour of our time is the equivalent of an hour and five-eighths in Muria. For further information upon this matter of relativity the reader may consult any of the numerous books upon the subject. —⁠W. T. G. ↩

I have no space here even to outline the eschatology of this people, nor to catalogue their pantheon. Siya and Siyana typified worldly love. Their ritual was, however, singularly free from those degrading elements usually found in love-cults. Priests and priestesses of all cults dwelt in the immense seven-terraced structure, of which the jet amphitheatre was the water side. The symbol, icon, representation, of Siya and Siyana⁠—the globe and the up-striving figures⁠—typified earthly love, feet bound to earth, but eyes among the stars. Hell or heaven I never heard formulated, nor their equivalents; unless that existence in the Shining One’s domain could serve for either. Over all this was Thanaroa, remote; unheeding, but still maker and ruler of all⁠—an absentee First Cause personified! Thanaroa seemed to be the one article of belief in the creed of the soldiers⁠—Rador, with his reverence for the Ancient Ones, was an exception. Whatever there was, indeed, of high, truly religious impulse among the Murians, this far, High God had. I found this exceedingly interesting, because it had long been my theory⁠—to put the matter in the shape of a geometrical formula⁠—that the real attractiveness of gods to man increases uniformly according to the square of their distance⁠—W. T. G. ↩

I find that I have neglected to explain the working of these interesting mechanisms that were telephonic, dictaphonic, telegraphic in one. I must assume that my readers are familiar with the receiving apparatus of wireless telegraphy, which must be “tuned” by the operator until its own vibratory quality is in exact harmony with the vibrations⁠—the extremely rapid impacts⁠—of those short electric wavelengths we call Hertzian, and