The Moon Pool quotes

It seemed an emanation out of the untamed, sinister heart of Papua herself—sinister even when she smiles. And now and then, on the wind, came a breath from virgin jungles, laden with unfamiliar odours, mysterious and menacing.

It is on such mornings that Papua whispers to you of her immemorial ancientness and of her power.

And, as every white man must, I fought against 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 something familiar about the tall man.

Yes—it was that which appalled.

For how could rapture and horror, Heaven and Hell mix, clasp hands⁠—kiss?

Yet these were what in closest embrace lay on Throckmartin’s face!

Yes—it was that which appalled. For how could rapture and horror, Heaven and Hell mix, clasp hands—kiss?

Yet these were what in closest embrace lay on Throckmartin’s face!

Deep in thought, subconsciously with relief, I watched the shoreline sink behind; welcomed the touch of the wind of the free seas. I had hoped, and within the hope was an inexplicable shrinking that I would meet Throckmartin at lunch.

He stopped abruptly; rose from his chair, gazed intently toward the north. I followed his gaze.

Far, far away the moon had broken through the clouds.

Almost on the horizon, you could see the faint luminescence of it upon the smooth sea. The distant patch of light quivered and shook. The clouds thickened again and it was gone. The ship raced on southward, swiftly.

His face had lost all human semblance. Utter agony 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 deep, deep as his soul!

A devil and a God dwelling harmoniously side by side!

So must Satan, newly fallen, still divine, seeing heaven and contemplating hell, have appeared.

Tears rolled down the seared face.

“Why did God let it conquer us? Why did He let it take my Edith?” he cried in utter bitterness. “Are there things stronger than God, do you think, Walter?”

“Are there? Are there?” His wild eyes searched me.

Then Olaf Huldricksson opened his dry lips and as he spoke a chill ran through me, checking my heart.

“The sparkling devil took them!” croaked Olaf Huldricksson, “the sparkling devil took them! Took my Helma and my little Freda! The sparkling devil came down from the moon and took them!”

He swayed; tears dripped down his cheeks. Da Costa moved toward him again and again Huldricksson watched him, alertly, wickedly, from his bloodshot eyes.

I looked from him to the man on the bed.

“But why, sair,” said Da Costa slowly, “did Olaf have to tie his hands?”

I looked at him, uneasily.

He started for the door. Before he reached it he turned.

“But this I do know,” he half whispered, “I am damned glad there is no full moon tonight.”

And passed out, leaving me staring after him in amazement. What did the Portuguese know?

Two bright, blue eyes that held deep within them a laughing deviltry looked into mine, and a long, lithe body drew itself gently over the thwart and seated its dripping self at my feet.

“Much obliged,” said this man from the sea. “I knew somebody was sure to come along when the O’Keefe banshee didn’t show up.”

“The what?” I asked in amazement.

“And though the war’s long over, I get homesick for the lark’s land with the German planes playing tunes on their machine guns and their Archies tickling the soles of my feet,” he sighed.

“If you’re in love, love to the limit; and if you hate, why hate like the devil and if it’s a fight you’re in, get where it’s hottest and fight like hell⁠—if you don’t life’s not worth the living,” sighed he.

I watched him as he talked, feeling my liking for him steadily increasing. If I could but have a man like this beside me on the path of unknown peril upon which I had set my feet I thought, wistfully.

… titanic wall that swept down into the depths, and turned at last into the canal that Throckmartin, on his map, had marked as that which, running between frowning Nan-Tauach and its satellite islet, Tau, led straight to the gate of the place of ancient mysteries.

And as we entered that channel we were enveloped by a silence; a silence so intense, so⁠—weighted that it seemed to have substance;

an alien silence that clung and stifled and still stood aloof from us—the living. It was a stillness, such as might follow the long tramping of millions into the grave; it was—paradoxical as it may be—filled with the withdrawal of life.

His eyes were wild as he regarded us.

“Say,” he said, “if you two had been in the Garden of Eden when Eve took the apple, you wouldn’t have had time to give her a look for counting the scales on the snake!”

He strode swiftly over to the wall. We followed. Larry paused, stretched his hand up to the flowers on which the tapering fingers of the golden-eyed girl had rested.

“Have your gun ready, Olaf!” said Larry. “We follow Golden Eyes,” he said to me.

“Follow!” he said. “She came to show us the way! Follow? I’d follow her through a thousand hells!”

And with Olaf at one end, O’Keefe at the other, both of them with automatics in hand, and Marakinoff and I between them, we stepped over the threshold.

The silken webs that half covered, half revealed her did not hide the ivory whiteness of her flesh nor the sweet curve of shoulders and breasts.

But for all her amazing beauty, she was⁠—sinister!

There was cruelty about the curving mouth, and in the music of her voice—not conscious cruelty, but the more terrifying, careless cruelty of nature itself.

The girl of the rose wall had been beautiful, yes! But her beauty was human, understandable. You could imagine her with a babe in her arms—but you could not so imagine this woman. About her loveliness hovered something unearthly.

A sweet feminine echo of the Dweller was Yolara, the Dweller’s priestess⁠—and as gloriously, terrifyingly evil!

She stretched out a hand toward O’Keefe. The Irishman bowed low over it, raised it softly to his lips. There was a vicious hiss from Lugur; but Yolara regarded Larry with eyes now all tender blue.

“You please me,” she whispered.

And the face of Lugur grew darker.

The glowing shadow vanished, the sparkling atoms were still for a moment—and shot away, joining those dancing others.

Where the gnomelike form had been but a few seconds before⁠—there was nothing!

O’Keefe drew a long breath, and I was sensible of a prickling along my scalp.

And as for me, at that moment my last doubt of Larry O’Keefe vanished, I saw that he did believe, really believed, in his banshees, his leprechauns and all the old dreams of the Gael—but only within the limits of Ireland.

In one drawer of his mind was packed all his superstition, his mysticism, and what of weakness it might carry.

But face him with any peril or problem and the drawer closed instantaneously leaving a mind that was utterly fearless, incredulous, and ingenious; swept clean of all cobwebs by as fine a skeptic broom as ever brushed a brain.

“Some giddy wonder!” exclaimed Larry, looking at me and placing a hand over his heart. “

Put her on a New York roof and she’d empty Broadway.

Take the cue from me, Doc.”

“Do you have goddesses?” she asked.

“Every woman in Ireland and America, is a goddess”; thus Larry.

“Now that I do not believe.” There was both anger and mockery in her eyes. “I know women, Larree—and if that were so there would be no peace for men.”

“Every woman in Ireland and America, is a goddess”; thus Larry.

“Now that I do not believe.” There was both anger and mockery in her eyes. “I know women, Larree⁠—and if that were so there would be no peace for men.”

“There isn’t!” replied he. The anger died out and she laughed, sweetly, understandingly.

“Now that I do not believe.” There was both anger and mockery in her eyes. “I know women, Larree—and if that were so there would be no peace for men.”

“There isn’t!” replied he.

The anger died out and she laughed, sweetly, understandingly.

And lively as my interest, my scientific curiosity, were—I was conscious suddenly of acute depression.

Beautiful, wondrously beautiful this place was⁠—and yet in its wonder dwelt a keen edge of menace, of unease⁠—of inexplicable, inhuman woe

; as though in a secret garden of God a soul should sense upon it the gaze of some lurking spirit of evil which some way, somehow, had crept into the sanctuary and only bided its time to spring.

“

Hell’s brewing here all right,

” he said at last, stopping before me. “I can’t make out just the particular brand—that’s all that bothers me. We’re going to have a stiff fight, that’s sure. What I want to do quick is to find the Golden Girl, Doc.

So they spun, interlaced—and there began to pulse from them life, vitality, as though the very essence of nature was filling us. Dimly I recognized that what I was beholding was vampirism inconceivable! The banked tiers chanted. The mighty sounds pealed forth!

It was a Saturnalia of demigods!

Then, whirling, bell-notes storming, the Shining One withdrew slowly from the dais down the ramp, still embracing, still interwoven with those who had thrown themselves into its spirals. They drifted with it as though half-carried in dreadful dance;

“The ladala are awake!” he said. “So much for what two brave men can do!” He paused thoughtfully. “

Bones and dust jostle not each other for place against the grave wall!

” he added oddly. “But if bones and dust have revealed to them that they still—live—”

She held out hands to Larry, and on her face was passion—unashamed, unhiding.

She was Circe⁠—but Circe conquered.

Webs of filmiest white clung to the rose-leaf body. Twisted through the corn-silk hair a threaded circlet of pale sapphires shone; but they were pale beside Yolara’s eyes. O’Keefe bent, kissed her hands, something more than mere admiration flaming from him.

But, Yolara, see you on that heart and strength you have sworn by that they come to no harm—else that which you have invoked shall come upon you swiftly indeed—and that I promise you,” she added.

Their eyes met, clashed, burned into each other⁠—black flame from Abaddon and golden flame from Paradise.

“Remember!” said Lakla, and passed through the portal. The gigantic frog-man boomed a thunderous note of command, his grotesque guards turned and slowly followed their mistress; and last of all passed out the monster with the mace.

“Listen to me, Goodwin,” He took up his walk impatiently. “I’ve all the love and admiration for you in the world; but this place has got your nerve.

Hereafter one Larry O’Keefe, of Ireland and the little old U.S.A., leads this party.

Nix on the tremolo stop, nix on the superstition! I’m the works. Get me?”

O’Keefe drew a long breath.

“Uncle,” he remarked casually in English, “meet the man who’s going to be your nephew!”

And thereafter he never addressed the green dwarf except by the avuncular title, which Rador, humorously enough, apparently conceived to be one of respectful endearment.

The Englishman, Wells, wrote an imaginative and very entertaining book concerning an invasion of Earth by Martians, and he made his Martians enormously specialized cuttlefish. There was nothing inherently improbable in Wells’ choice.

Man is the ruling animal of Earth today solely by reason of a series of accidents; under another series spiders or ants, or even elephants, could have become the dominant race.

“I think,” I said, even more cautiously, “that the race to which the Three belong never appeared on Earth’s surface; that their development took place here, unhindered through aeons.

“Darlin’?”—the Golden Girl had caught the caress of the word—“what’s that?”

“It’s a little word that means Lakla,” he answered. “It does⁠—that is, when I say it; when you say it, then it means Larry.”

“I like that word,” mused Lakla.

“Well, we’d better get busy good and quick!” the O’Keefe’s voice rang. But Lakla, for some reason of her own, would pursue the matter no further. The trouble fled from her eyes—they danced.

“Larry darlin’?” she murmured. “I like the touch of your lips⁠—”

“You do?” he whispered, all thought flying of anything but the beautiful, provocative face so close to his. “Then, acushla, you’re goin’ to get acquainted with ’em! Turn your head, Doc!” he said.

“I think you must have been very—pleasant!” was all she said—and leaning, kissed him forgivingly straight on the lips.

An extremely direct maiden was Lakla, with a truly sovereign contempt for anything she might consider non-essentials

; and at this moment I decided she was wiser even than I had thought her.

I realize, of course, that it is not true logic to argue—“The world is not as we think it is—therefore everything we think impossible is possible in it.” Even if it be different, it is governed by law.

The truly impossible is that which is outside law, and as nothing can be outside law, the impossible cannot exist.

The crux of the matter then becomes our determination whether what we think is impossible may or may not be possible under laws still beyond our knowledge.

white faces of our own Westerners—men and women and children—drifting, eddying—each stamped with that mingled horror and rapture, eyes filled with ecstasy and terror entwined, marked by God and devil in embrace—the seal of the Shining One—the dead-alive; the lost ones!

The loot of the Dweller!

Soul-sick, I gazed. They lifted to us visages of dread; they swept down toward us, glaring upward—a bank against which other and still other waves of faces rolled, were checked, paused;

The Dweller paused beneath us.

Out of the drifting ruck swam the body of Throckmartin!

Throckmartin, my friend, to find whom I had gone to the pallid moon door; my friend whose call I had so laggardly followed. On his face was the Dweller’s dreadful stamp; the lips were bloodless;

“I do not know,” she answered, slowly.

“You say they loved⁠—and it is true that love is stronger even than death!”

“One thing I don’t understand”—this was Larry again—“is why a girl like you keeps coming out of the black-haired crowd; so frequently and one might say, so regularly, Lakla. Aren’t there ever any redheaded boys—and if they are what becomes of them?”

“Needed the rest!” groaned Larry. “Look here, Lakla, what do you think I am?”

“You’re all I have,” said that maiden firmly, “and I’m going to take care of you, Larry⁠—darlin’! Don’t you ever think anything else.”

“Well, pulse of my heart, considering my delicate health and general fragility, would it hurt me, do you think, to be told what’s going on?” he asked.

At his exclamation she gathered herself together; gave a shaky little laugh.

“It’s because I love you so that fear has power to plague me,” she told him.

Without another word he bent and kissed her; in silence we passed on, his arm still about her girdled waist, golden head and black close together. Soon we stood before the crimson slab that was the door to the sanctuary of the Silent Ones.

“What do you say, mavourneen?” asked Larry gently. The handmaiden hung her head; trembled.

“Your words shall be mine, O one I love,” she whispered. “So going or staying, I am beside you.”

“And you, Goodwin?” he turned to me. I shrugged my shoulders—after all I had no one to care.

I squeezed his hands desperately. Then out of my balance-shaking woe a strange comfort was born.

“Maybe it’s not goodbye, Larry!” I cried. “The banshee has not cried!”

A flash of hope passed over his face; the old reckless grin shone forth.

It seemed to watch them apprehensively. A silence fell upon us all, a thick silence, brooding, ominous, palpable. Now the pair were face to face with the child of the Three—so near that with one of its misty tentacles it could have enfolded them.

And the Shining One drew back!

Yes, drew back—and back with it stepped Yolara, the doubt in her eyes deepening. Onward paced the handmaiden and the O’Keefe—and step by step, as they advanced, the Dweller withdrew; its bell notes chiming out, puzzled questioning—half fearful!