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- Herausgeber: Musaicum Books
- Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
- Sprache: Englisch
Abraham Merritt's 'The Collected SF & Fantasy Works' is a compilation of the author's groundbreaking science fiction and fantasy tales, spanning a wide range of themes from cosmic horror to explorations of alien worlds. Merritt's literary style is characterized by vivid imagery, detailed world-building, and a sense of mystery that keeps readers captivated till the very end. His works, written in the early 20th century, have had a lasting impact on the genre, influencing notable authors such as H.P. Lovecraft and Ray Bradbury. This collection showcases Merritt's unique storytelling abilities and his ability to transport readers to otherworldly realms. Abraham Merritt, a former journalist and editor, was known for his vivid imagination and fascination with the unknown. His interest in ancient civilizations, mysticism, and the supernatural greatly influenced his work, making him a pioneer in the speculative fiction genre. Merritt's background in journalism also allowed him to craft compelling narratives that resonated with readers of his time and continue to enthrall modern audiences. Fans of classic science fiction and fantasy literature will appreciate Abraham Merritt's 'The Collected SF & Fantasy Works' for its timeless tales that continue to inspire and entertain. This compilation serves as a valuable addition to any reader's library, offering a glimpse into the imaginative mind of one of the genre's most influential authors. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A comprehensive Introduction outlines these selected works' unifying features, themes, or stylistic evolutions. - A Historical Context section situates the works in their broader era—social currents, cultural trends, and key events that underpin their creation. - A concise Synopsis (Selection) offers an accessible overview of the included texts, helping readers navigate plotlines and main ideas without revealing critical twists. - A unified Analysis examines recurring motifs and stylistic hallmarks across the collection, tying the stories together while spotlighting the different work's strengths. - Reflection questions inspire deeper contemplation of the author's overarching message, inviting readers to draw connections among different texts and relate them to modern contexts. - Lastly, our hand‐picked Memorable Quotes distill pivotal lines and turning points, serving as touchstones for the collection's central themes.
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The Collected SF & Fantasy Works
Published by
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Table of Contents
Introduction
This collection assembles the core imaginative achievements of Abraham Merritt, bringing together all eight of his major novels and a representative selection of short stories. Conceived as a single-author gathering of science fiction and fantasy, it offers readers an orderly way to traverse the breadth of Merritt’s career in long and short form. The novels are presented alongside tales that reflect his shifting concerns and recurring obsessions, helping to frame each larger narrative in the company of related miniatures. Rather than offering exhaustive miscellany, the volume seeks coherence and depth, emphasizing the motifs and modes that defined Merritt’s enduring contribution.
Spanning the interlocked territories of science fantasy, lost-world romance, and weird fiction, Merritt’s work emerged from and helped shape the thriving pulp magazines of the early twentieth century. His novels and tales typically unite rational inquiry with archaic survivals, marrying expeditions, laboratories, and urban streets to temples, abysses, and ritual. The result is neither strictly scientific romance nor pure mythic fantasy, but an elastic mode that treats speculative science and wonder as complementary. Readers will find in these pages two principal text types—novels and short stories—each a distinct vehicle for his imagination, and together charting the range of his fantastic narratives.
In The Moon Pool and The Metal Monster, modern investigators confront phenomena that strain the limits of explanation: a passage to an underworld shrouded in radiance, and a remote fastness where matter itself appears animate and purposeful. The Ship of Ishtar turns from expedition to enchantment, drawing a man aboard a timeless vessel locked in ancient enmities. Seven Footprints to Satan pivots to contemporary menace, as a protagonist is drawn into a labyrinth of tests and coercion. The Face in the Abyss and Dwellers in the Mirage explore hidden realms and resurgent cults, while Burn, Witch, Burn! and Creep, Shadow! press occult terror into city streets.
The short stories gathered here illuminate Merritt’s shorter-range effects and experimental angles. The People of the Pit frames a survivor’s tale of subterranean dread; The Women of the Wood contemplates an enchanted forest and its jealous guardians; Through the Dragon Glass plays with mirror-bound passage; The Pool of the Stone God circles a forbidden basin and its influence. The Fox Woman and The White Road suggest shape-shifting and fatal journeys, while Three Lines of Old French turns on a cryptic text. The Drone and The Last Poet and the Robots imagine technology’s pressures on human spirit, and When Old Gods Wake resumes his theme of revenant powers.
Across these works run unifying ideas: thresholds and portals; survivals of forgotten civilizations; autonomous, nonhuman agencies; and the moral gravity of encountering the unknown. Merritt repeatedly stages confrontations between disciplined skepticism and experiences that demand new categories. His explorers, physicians, and scholars often begin as careful observers and become, without surrendering reason, witnesses to realities that exceed conventional knowledge. The topographies—pools, abysses, mirror panes, ship decks, white roads—function as emblems of passage, translating metaphysical questions into tangible geographies. Violence and awe are never far apart; the sublime shimmers with peril, and the fearful often reveals an order not immediately visible.
Stylistically, Merritt is notable for opulent description and a sculptor’s attention to form, light, and texture. Metallic sheen, gemlike color, carved stone, and living architecture crowd his pages, producing a sensuous register that heightens menace and wonder alike. He modulates breathless pursuit with reflective pauses, letting cosmological speculation and ethical hesitation accompany adventure. The diction often draws on the archaic without becoming inert, enabling a cadence suited to rites, invocations, and discoveries. Crucially, he builds his marvels with a reporter’s eye for detail, giving even the most extravagant visions the tactile coherence of something witnessed rather than merely imagined.
Read together, the novels and stories trace a continuous argument for the imaginative enterprise itself: that speculative art can test the borders of reason without repudiating it, and that myth and science may illuminate each other. They also preserve the pulse of their moment, when magazines popularized audacious ideas and narrative speed. Yet their central energies remain current—ethical choice under pressure, the alien as intelligible but not tame, the insistence that wonder carries cost. This collection invites navigation by theme or chronology, but above all by curiosity, revealing an author whose singular designs still unsettle, enthrall, and reward attentive reading.
Historical Context
Abraham Merritt (1884–1943) emerged from New York’s bustling newspaper world, joining William Randolph Hearst’s The American Weekly in 1912 and rising to senior editorship by the late 1930s. His fiction, appearing chiefly in the Munsey pulps All-Story Weekly and Argosy between 1918 and 1934, reflected the serial rhythms those magazines demanded: expeditionary openings, cliffhangers, and grand revelations. Editors like Robert H. Davis fostered popular adventure amid a competitive mass market that also featured Edgar Rice Burroughs and Sax Rohmer. Within that arena, Merritt fused romance, archaeology, and speculative science, establishing the tonal palette for novels such as The Moon Pool and The Metal Monster.
World archaeology’s headline discoveries supplied a ready frame for Merritt’s lost-world imagination. Hiram Bingham’s 1911 reports on Machu Picchu, Howard Carter’s 1922 opening of Tutankhamun’s tomb, and C. Leonard Woolley’s excavations at Ur from 1922 to 1934 filled newspapers with images of buried splendor and ancient gods. Those revelations helped normalize fiction in which hidden civilizations persisted beneath modernity, a premise visible from The People of the Pit to The Face in the Abyss and The Ship of Ishtar. By anchoring wonders in named regions—the Andes, Mesopotamia, the Arctic—Merritt echoed the era’s museum culture and readers’ appetite for armchair exploration.
The 1890s–1920s occult revival furnished Merritt with a vocabulary of ritual, hieratic symbols, and forbidden knowledge. Theosophy, founded in New York in 1875 by Helena Blavatsky, and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, established in London in 1887, popularized syncretic esotericism across the Atlantic world. Simultaneously, public controversies—Harry Houdini’s denunciations of spirit mediums in the mid-1920s, and Arthur Conan Doyle’s fervent Spiritualism—kept belief and skepticism in the headlines. In that climate, stories like The Women of the Wood, When Old Gods Wake, and novels such as Burn, Witch, Burn! explore collisions between modern rationality and resurgent, archaic cult power.
Between new physics and new media, the period’s science permeated Merritt’s romances. Radio broadcasting began in 1920 with KDKA in Pittsburgh, while Victor Hess’s 1912 discovery of cosmic rays and popularizations of X‑rays, radium, and Einstein’s relativity fostered talk of unseen energies. Hugo Gernsback’s term scientifiction entered print in 1926, yet Merritt kept one foot in romantic fantasy. The Metal Monster and The Moon Pool rely on radiant forces and dimensional thresholds, not laboratory detail. Elsewhere, Capek’s 1920 coinage robot resonated through The Last Poet and the Robots and The Drone, which register fascination with mechanization and its dehumanizing undertow.
Global mobility and American expansion framed Merritt’s geographies. The Panama Canal opened in 1914, shortening routes to the Pacific while U.S. capital and universities mounted expeditions across Latin America and Asia. As a Hearst journalist, Merritt traveled widely to Mexico, the Caribbean, and Europe, filing lush features that trained his eye on landscape and ritual. His fiction channels that reportage: The People of the Pit draws on northern frontiers; The Face in the Abyss locates marvels in the Andes; The Ship of Ishtar dreams Mesopotamia. These vistas often carry the Orientalist assumptions of their day, even as they celebrate cultural splendor.
Rapid urbanization and Prohibition reshaped American fears. The Volstead Act took effect in 1920, ushering in speakeasies, racketeering, and sensational crime coverage in cities like New York and Chicago. Simultaneously, institutions professionalized detection: the FBI Laboratory opened in 1932, and forensic psychiatry entered courtrooms. Merritt’s 1930s occult thrillers stage this contest between modern expertise and invisible menace. Burn, Witch, Burn! pits physicians, police, and rational inquiry against malign ritual; Creep, Shadow! probes psychological suggestion at the edge of the supernatural. The result mirrors a culture negotiating between scientific authority and lingering dread of curses, possession, and irrational violence.
The economic shock after 1929 intensified demand for cheap escapism while darkening tone. Pulp print runs swelled as magazines chased Depression-era readers; simultaneously, cinema popularized spectacular fantasy and horror. Universal’s Dracula and Frankenstein arrived in 1931, and King Kong in 1933. Merritt’s brand of exotic peril fit the moment, and Seven Footprints to Satan reached screens in 1929 under director Benjamin Christensen, extending his visibility beyond the pulps. Within this multimedia marketplace, vivid set pieces, menacing deities, and hypnotic villains aligned with contemporary appetite for thrills that were distant from breadlines yet haunted by anxiety, fate, and retribution.
Merritt’s critical standing shifted with genre institutionalization. H. P. Lovecraft praised his jeweled imagination in letters and in Supernatural Horror in Literature (first published 1927), while later editors revived his novels for new audiences. The Ship of Ishtar reappeared in Ballantine’s Adult Fantasy line in 1968 under Lin Carter, and mid-century paperback houses kept The Moon Pool and Dwellers in the Mirage in circulation. In gaming culture, Gary Gygax listed Merritt in Appendix N for Dungeons & Dragons (1979), confirming his influence on weird adventure. Together these afterlives situate the collection within a century-long conversation about wonder, terror, and myth.
Synopsis (Selection)
Early Weird-Science Epics: The Moon Pool; The Metal Monster
Explorers in remote ruins and mountains confront radiant, inhuman intelligences whose beauty and terror blur science with myth.
The tone is rhapsodic and awestruck, staging moral tests amid cosmic-scale phenomena and jeweled, hallucinatory imagery.
The Ship of Ishtar
A modern man is drawn aboard an ancient, enchanted vessel locked in an endless divine feud, where desire and duty shape a drifting war.
Lush romance and sword-and-sorcery spectacle intertwine with themes of fate, devotion, and the seductive pull of the past.
Occult Crime and Weird Menace Novels: Seven Footprints to Satan; Burn, Witch, Burn!; Creep, Shadow!
Urban thrillers pit skeptical investigators and hard-edged operators against secret cults, sinister impresarios, and uncanny forces that weaponize fear.
The pacing is pulp-tight yet laced with eerie set pieces, probing the porous boundary between stagecraft, psychology, and true sorcery.
Lost Worlds and Abysses: The Face in the Abyss; Dwellers in the Mirage; The People of the Pit
Hidden valleys and chasms unveil antique civilizations and predatory deities that recast conquest and love as perilous bargains.
Visionary topographies and hazard-laden quests carry a mood of fatal wonder, weighing allegiance, temptation, and the costs of awakening ancient powers.
Enchanted Forests and Folkloric Spirits: The Women of the Wood; The Fox Woman; When Old Gods Wake
Nature itself becomes protagonist as wood-wives, fox spirits, and old gods test wanderers with beauty, memory, and vengeance.
These tales are lyrical and elegiac, exploring ecological enchantment, cultural myth, and the consequences of trespass upon the sacred.
Portals, Pools, and White Roads: Through the Dragon Glass; The White Road; The Pool of the Stone God
Mirrors, sacred pools, and mountain paths open thresholds to otherworlds whose brilliance invites both revelation and ruin.
The mood is crystalline and perilous, tracing rite-of-passage adventures that balance curiosity and honor against the price of crossing borders.
Mechanism and Modernity: The Last Poet and the Robots; The Drone
Late-leaning SF parables measure art, empathy, and individuality against automation, control systems, and utilitarian logics.
A cooler, analytical unease counters Merritt’s lush wonder, asking what humanism survives when precision supplants song.
Haunted Words and Occult Echoes: Three Lines of Old French
A cryptic fragment from the past stirs latent identities and supernatural correspondences that bind lovers across time.
Quietly uncanny rather than spectacular, it meditates on memory’s spell and the way language can reopen sealed destinies.
Signatures and Shifts
Across the collection, Merritt blends travelogue adventure with baroque wonder, staging collisions between modern skepticism and archaic power.
Over time the focus tilts from lost-world grandeur to urban occult puzzles and speculative fables, yet recurring motifs—enchanted thresholds, hypnotic beauty, and sacrificial choice—remain constant.
The Collected SF & Fantasy Works
Novels
The Moon Pool
The Moon Pool
FOREWORD
The publication of the following narrative of Dr. Walter T. Goodwin has been authorized by the Executive Council of the International Association of Science.
First:
To end officially what is beginning to be called the Throckmartin Mystery and to kill the innuendo and scandalous suspicions which have threatened to stain the reputations of Dr. David Throckmartin, his youthful wife, and equally youthful associate Dr. Charles Stanton ever since a tardy despatch from Melbourne, Australia, reported the disappearance of the first from a ship sailing to that port, and the subsequent reports of the disappearance of his wife and associate from the camp of their expedition in the Caroline Islands.
Second:
Because the Executive Council have concluded that Dr. Goodwin’s experiences in his wholly heroic effort to save the three, and the lessons and warnings within those experiences, are too important to humanity as a whole to be hidden away in scientific papers understandable only to the technically educated; or to be presented through the newspaper press in the abridged and fragmentary form which the space limitations of that vehicle make necessary.
For these reasons the Executive Council commissioned Mr. A. Merritt to transcribe into form to be readily understood by the layman the stenographic notes of Dr. Goodwin’s own report to the Council, supplemented by further oral reminiscences and comments by Dr. Goodwin; this transcription, edited and censored by the Executive Council of the Association, forms the contents of this book.
Himself a member of the Council, Dr. Walter T. Goodwin, Ph.D., F.R.G.S. etc., is without cavil the foremost of American botanists, an observer of international reputation and the author of several epochal treaties upon his chosen branch of science. His story, amazing in the best sense of that word as it may be, is fully supported by proofs brought forward by him and accepted by the organization of which I have the honor to be president. What matter has been elided from this popular presentation — because of the excessively menacing potentialities it contains, which unrestricted dissemination might develop — will be dealt with in purely scientific pamphlets of carefully guarded circulation.
THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SCIENCE Per J. B. K., President
CHAPTER I THE THING ON THE MOON PATH
For two months I had been on the d’Entrecasteaux Islands gathering data for the concluding chapters of my book upon the flora of the volcanic islands 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 on the upper deck I thought, with homesick mind, of the long leagues between me and Melbourne, and the longer ones between Melbourne and New York.
It was one of Papua’s yellow mornings when she shows herself in her sombrest, most baleful mood. The sky was smouldering ochre. Over the island brooded a spirit sullen, 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 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. As he reached the gangplank he looked up straight into my eyes, stared for a moment, then waved his hand.
And now I knew him. It was Dr. David Throckmartin —“Throck” he was to me always, one of my oldest friends and, as well, a mind of the first water whose power and achievements were for me a constant inspiration as they were, I know, for scores other.
Coincidentally with my recognition came a shock of surprise, definitely — unpleasant. It was Throckmartin — but about him was something disturbingly unlike the man I had known long so well and to whom and to whose little party I had bidden farewell less than a month before I myself had sailed for these seas. He had married 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 word in its olden sense — lover. With his equally youthful associate Dr. Charles Stanton and a Swedish woman, Thora Halversen, who had been Edith Throckmartin’s nurse from babyhood, they had set forth for the Nan–Matal, that extraordinary group of island ruins clustered along the eastern shore of Ponape in the Carolines.
I knew that he had planned to spend at least a year among these ruins, not only of Ponape but of Lele — twin centres of a colossal riddle of humanity, 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 science nothing. He had carried with him unusually complete equipment for the work he had expected to do and which, he hoped, would be his monument.
What then had brought Throckmartin to Port Moresby, and what was that change I had sensed in him?
Hurrying down to the lower deck I found him with the purser. As I spoke he turned, thrust out to me an eager hand — and then I saw what was that difference that had so moved me. He knew, of course by my silence and involuntary shrinking the shock my closer look had given me. His eyes filled; he turned brusquely from the purser, hesitated — then hurried off to his stateroom.
“‘E looks rather queer — eh?” said the purser. “Know ’im well, sir? Seems to ‘ave given you quite a start.”
I made some reply and went slowly up to my chair. There I sat, composed my mind and tried to define what it was that had shaken me so. Now it came to me. The old Throckmartin was on the eve of his venture just turned forty, lithe, erect, muscular; his controlling expression one of enthusiasm, of intellectual keenness, of — what shall I say — expectant search. His always questioning brain had stamped its vigor upon his face.
But the Throckmartin I had seen below was one who had borne some scaring shock of mingled rapture and horror; some soul cataclysm that in its climax had remoulded, deep from within, his face, setting on it seal of wedded ecstasy and despair; as though indeed these two had come to him hand in hand, taken possession of him and departing left behind, ineradicably, their linked shadows!
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 shore line 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 did not come down, and I was sensible of deliverance within my disappointment. All that afternoon I lounged about uneasily but still he kept to his cabin — and within me was no strength to summon him. Nor did he appear at dinner.
Dusk and night fell swiftly. I was warm and went back to my deck-chair. The Southern Queen was rolling to a disquieting swell and I had the place to myself.
Over the heavens was a canopy of cloud, glowing faintly and testifying to the moon riding behind it. There was much phosphorescence. Fitfully before the ship and at her sides arose those stranger little swirls of mist that swirl up from the Southern Ocean like breath of sea monsters, whirl for an instant and disappear.
Suddenly the deck door opened and through it came Throckmartin. He paused uncertainly, looked up at the sky with a curiously eager, intent gaze, hesitated, then closed the door behind him.
“Throck,” I called. “Come! It’s Goodwin.”
He made his way to me.
“Throck,” I said, wasting no time in preliminaries. “What’s wrong? Can I help you?”
I felt his body grow tense.
“I’m going to Melbourne, Goodwin,” he answered. “I need a few things — need them urgently. And more men — white men —”
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.
Throckmartin dropped into his chair. He lighted a cigarette with a hand that trembled; then turned to me with abrupt resolution.
“Goodwin,” he said. “I do need help. If ever man needed it, I do. Goodwin — can you imagine yourself in another world, alien, unfamiliar, a world of terror, whose unknown joy is its greatest terror of all; you all alone there, a stranger! As such a man would need help, so I need —”
He paused abruptly and arose; the cigarette dropped from his fingers. The moon had again broken through the clouds, and this 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 was a lane of moonlight; a gigantic gleaming serpent racing over the edge of the world straight and surely toward the ship.
Throckmartin stiffened to it as a pointer does to a hidden covey. To me from him pulsed a thrill of horror — but horror tinged with an unfamiliar, an infernal joy. It came to me and passed away — leaving me trembling with its shock of bitter sweet.
He bent forward, all his soul in his eyes. The moon path swept closer, closer still. It was now less than half a mile away. From it the ship fled — almost as though pursued. Down upon it, swift and straight, a radiant torrent cleaving the waves, raced the moon stream.
“Good God!” breathed Throckmartin, and if ever the words were a prayer and an invocation they were.
And then, for the first time — I saw — IT!
The moon path stretched to the horizon and was bordered by darkness. It was as though the clouds above had been parted to form a lane-drawn aside like 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 folds of the high canopies And straight as a road between the opaque walls gleamed, shimmered, and danced the shining, racing, rapids of the moonlight.
Far, it seemed immeasurably far, along this stream of silver fire I sensed, rather than saw, something coming. It drew first into sight as a deeper glow within the light. On and on it swept toward us — an opalescent 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 feathers are woven of the moon rays, whose heart is a living opal, whose wings in flight echo the crystal clear music of the white stars — but whose beak is of frozen flame and shreds the souls of unbelievers.
Closer it drew and now there came to me sweet, insistent tinklings — like pizzicati on violins of glass; crystal clear; diamonds melting into sounds!
Now the Thing was close to the end of the white path; close up to the barrier of darkness still between the ship and the sparkling head of the moon stream. Now it beat 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 within it odd, unfamiliar gleams as of shifting mother-of-pearl. Coruscations and glittering atoms drifted through it as though it drew them from the rays that bathed it.
Nearer and nearer it came, borne on the sparkling waves, and ever thinner shrank the protecting wall of shadow between it and us. Within the mistiness was a core, a nucleus of intenser light — veined, opaline, effulgent, intensely alive. And above it, tangled in the plumes and spirals that throbbed and whirled were seven glowing lights.
Through all the incessant but strangely ordered movement of the — THING— these lights held firm and steady. They were seven — like seven little 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 waters of tropic isles; a deathly white; a ghostly amethyst; and one of the silver that is seen only when the flying fish leap beneath the moon.
The tinkling music was louder still. It pierced the ears with a shower of tiny lances; it made the heart beat jubilantly — and checked it dolorously. It closed the throat with a throb of rapture and gripped it tight with the hand of infinite sorrow!
Came to me now a murmuring cry, stilling the crystal notes. It was articulate — but as though from something utterly foreign to this world. The ear took the cry and translated with conscious labour into the sounds of earth. And even as it compassed, the brain shrank from it irresistibly, and simultaneously it seemed reached toward it with irresistible eagerness.
Throckmartin strode toward the front of the deck, straight toward the vision, now but a few yards away from the stern. 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.
And then — swiftly the moon path faded! The clouds swept over the sky as though a hand had drawn them together. Up from the south came 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 ceased abruptly — leaving a silence like that which follows an abrupt thunder clap. There was nothing about us but silence and blackness!
Through me passed a trembling as one who has stood on the very verge of the gulf wherein the men of the Louisades says lurks the fisher of the souls of men, and has been plucked back by sheerest chance.
Throckmartin passed an arm around me.
“It is as I thought,” he said. In his voice was a new note; the calm certainty that has swept aside a waiting terror of the unknown. “Now I know! Come with me to my cabin, old friend. For now that you too have seen I can tell you”— he hesitated —“what it was you saw,” he ended.
As we passed through the door we met the ship’s first officer. Throckmartin composed his face into at least a semblance of normality.
“Going to have much of a storm?” he asked.
“Yes,” said the mate. “Probably all the way to Melbourne.”
Throckmartin straightened as though with a new thought. He gripped the officer’s sleeve eagerly.
“You mean at least cloudy weather — for”— he hesitated —“for the next three nights, say?”
“And for three more,” replied the mate.
“Thank God!” cried Throckmartin, and I think I never heard such relief and hope as was in his voice.
The sailor stood amazed. “Thank God?” he repeated. “Thank — what d’ye mean?”
But Throckmartin was moving onward to his cabin. I started to follow. The first officer stopped me.
“Your friend,” he said, “is he ill?”
“The sea!” I answered hurriedly. “He’s not used to it. I am going to look after him.”
Doubt and disbelief were plain in the seaman’s eyes but I hurried on. For I knew now that Throckmartin was ill indeed — but with a sickness the ship’s doctor nor any other could heal.
CHAPTER II “DEAD! ALL DEAD!”
He was sitting, face in hands, on the side of his berth as I entered. He had taken off his coat.
“Throck,” I cried. “What was it? What are you flying from, man? Where is your wife — and Stanton?”
“Dead!” he replied monotonously. “Dead! All dead!” Then as I recoiled from him —“All dead. Edith, Stanton, Thora — dead — or worse. And Edith in the Moon Pool — with them — drawn by what you saw on the moon path — that has put its brand upon me — and follows me!”
He ripped open his shirt.
“Look at this,” he said. Around his chest, above his heart, the skin was white as pearl. This whiteness was sharply defined against the healthy tint of the body. It circled him with an even cincture about two inches wide.
“Burn it!” he said, and offered me his cigarette. I drew back. He gestured — peremptorily. I pressed the glowing end of the cigarette into the ribbon of white flesh. He did not flinch nor was there odour of burning nor, as I drew the little cylinder away, any mark upon the whiteness.
“Feel it!” he commanded again. I placed my fingers upon the band. It was cold — like frozen marble.
He drew his shirt around him.
“Two things you have seen,” he said. “IT— and its mark. Seeing, you must believe my story. Goodwin, I tell you again that my wife is dead — or worse — I do not know; the prey of — what you saw; so, too, is Stanton; so Thora. How —”
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?”
I hesitated.
“Are there? Are there?” His wild eyes searched me.
“I do not know just how you define God,” I managed at last through my astonishment to make answer. “If you mean the will to know, working through science —”
He waved me aside impatiently.
“Science,” he said. “What is our science against — that? Or against the science of whatever devils that made it — or made the way for it to enter this world of ours?”
With an effort he regained control.
“Goodwin,” he said, “do you know at all of the ruins on the Carolines; the cyclopean, megalithic cities and harbours of Ponape and Lele, of Kusaie, of Ruk and Hogolu, and a score of other islets there? Particularly, do you know of the Nan–Matal and the Metalanim?”
“Of the Metalanim I have heard and seen photographs,” I said. “They call it, don’t they, the Lost Venice of the Pacific?”
“Look at this map,” said Throckmartin. “That,” he went on, “is Christian’s chart of Metalanim harbour and the Nan–Matal. Do you see the rectangles marked Nan–Tauach?”
“Yes,” I said.
“There,” he said, “under those walls is the Moon Pool and the seven gleaming lights that raise the Dweller in the Pool, and the altar and 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.
“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 time.
“Of course I wanted to pitch our camp there,” he went on again quietly, “but I soon gave up that idea. The natives were panic-stricken — threatened to turn back. ‘No,’ they said, ‘too great ani there. We go to any other place — but not there.’
“We finally picked for our base the islet called Uschen–Tau. It was close to the isle of desire, but far enough away from it to satisfy our men. There was an excellent camping-place and a spring of fresh water. We pitched our tents, and in a couple of days the work was in full swing.”
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.
CHAPTER III THE MOON ROCK
“I do not intend to tell you now,” Throckmartin continued, “the results of the next two weeks, nor of what we found. Later — if I am allowed, I will lay all that before you. It is sufficient to say that at the end of those two weeks I had found confirmation for many of my theories.
“The place, for all its decay and desolation, had not infected us with any touch of morbidity — that is not Edith, Stanton, or myself. But Thora was very unhappy. She was a Swede, as you know, and in her blood ran the beliefs and superstitions of the Northland — some of them so strangely akin to those of this far southern land; beliefs of spirits of mountain and forest and water werewolves and beings malign. From the first she showed a curious sensitivity to what, I suppose, may be called the ‘influences’ of the place. She said it ‘smelled’ of ghosts and warlocks.
“I laughed at her then —
“Two weeks slipped by, and at their end the spokesman for our natives came to us. The next night was the full of the moon, he said. He reminded me of my promise. They would go back to their village in the morning; they would return after the third night, when the moon had begun to wane. They left us sundry charms for our ‘protection,’ and solemnly cautioned us to keep as far away as possible from Nan–Tauach during their absence. Half-exasperated, half-amused I watched them go.
“No work could be done without them, of course, so we decided to spend the days of their absence junketing about the southern islets of the group. We marked down several spots for subsequent exploration, and on the morning of the third day set forth along the east face of the breakwater for our camp on Uschen–Tau, planning to have everything in readiness for the return of our men the next day.
“We landed just before dusk, tired and ready for our cots. It was only a little after ten o’clock that Edith awakened me.
“‘Listen!’ she said. ‘Lean over with your ear close to the ground!’
“I did so, and seemed to hear, far, far below, as though coming up from great distances, a faint chanting. It gathered strength, died down, ended; began, gathered volume, faded away into silence.
“‘It’s the waves rolling on rocks somewhere,’ I said. ‘We’re probably over some ledge of rock that carries the sound.’
“‘It’s the first time I’ve heard it,’ replied my wife doubtfully. We listened again. Then through the dim rhythms, deep beneath us, another sound came. It drifted across the lagoon that lay between us and Nan–Tauach in little tinkling waves. It was music — of a sort; I won’t describe the strange effect it had upon me. You’ve felt it —”
“You mean on the deck?” I asked. Throckmartin nodded.
“I went to the flap of the tent,” he continued, “and peered out. As I did so Stanton lifted his flap and walked out into the moonlight, looking over to the other islet and listening. I called to him.
“‘That’s the queerest sound!’ he said. He listened again. ‘Crystalline! Like little notes of translucent glass. Like the bells of crystal on the sistrums of Isis at Dendarah Temple,’ he added half-dreamily. We gazed intently at the island. Suddenly, on the sea-wall, moving slowly, rhythmically, we saw a little group of lights. Stanton laughed.
“‘The beggars!’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s why they wanted to get away, is it? Don’t you see, Dave, it’s some sort of a festival — rites of some kind that they hold during the full moon! That’s why they were so eager to have us KEEP away, too.’
“The explanation seemed good. I felt a curious sense of relief, although I had not been sensible of any oppression.
“‘Let’s slip over,’ suggested Stanton — but I would not.
“‘They’re a difficult lot as it is,’ I said. ‘If we break into one of their religious ceremonies they’ll probably never forgive us. Let’s keep out of any family party where we haven’t been invited.’
“‘That’s so,’ agreed Stanton.
“The strange tinkling rose and fell, rose and fell —
“‘There’s something — something very unsettling about it,’ said Edith at last 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 fifteen feet across the top and its height varies from twenty to fifty feet — here, too, the gradual sinking of the land has caused portions of it to fall.
“Within this courtyard is the second enclosure. Its terrace, of the same basalt as the outer walls, is about twenty feet high. Entrance is gained to it by many breaches which time has made in its stonework. This is the inner court, the heart of Nan–Tauach! There lies the great central vault with which is associated the one name of living being that has come to us out of the mists of the past. The natives say it was the treasure-house of Chau-te-leur, a mighty king who reigned long ‘before their fathers.’ As Chan is the ancient Ponapean word both for sun and king, the name means, without doubt, ‘place of the sun king.’ It is a memory of a dynastic name of the race that ruled the Pacific continent, now vanished — just as the rulers of ancient Crete took the name of Minos and the rulers of Egypt the name of Pharaoh.
“And opposite this place of the sun king is the moon rock that hides the Moon Pool.
“It was Stanton who discovered the moon rock. We had been inspecting the inner courtyard; Edith and Thora were getting together our lunch. I came out of the vault of Chau-te-leur to find Stanton before a part of the terrace studying it wonderingly.
“‘What do you make of this?’ he asked me as I came up. He pointed to the wall. I followed his finger and saw a slab of stone about fifteen feet high and ten wide. At first all I noticed was the exquisite nicety with which its edges joined the blocks about it. Then I realized that its colour was subtly different — tinged with grey and of a smooth, peculiar — deadness.
“‘Looks more like calcite than basalt,’ I said. I touched it and withdrew my hand quickly for at the contact every nerve in my arm tingled as though a shock of frozen electricity had passed through it. It was not cold as we know cold. It was a chill force — the phrase I have used — frozen electricity — describes it better than anything else. Stanton looked at me oddly.
“‘So you felt it too,’ he said. ‘I was wondering whether I was developing hallucinations like Thora. Notice, by the way, that the blocks beside it are quite warm beneath the sun.’
“We examined the slab eagerly. Its edges were cut as though by an engraver of jewels. They fitted against the neighbouring blocks in almost a hair-line. Its base was slightly curved, and fitted as closely as top and sides upon the huge stones on which it rested. And then we noted that these stones had been hollowed to follow the line of the grey stone’s foot. There was a semicircular depression running from one side of the slab to the other. It was as though the grey rock stood in the centre of a shallow cup — revealing half, covering half. Something about this hollow attracted me. I reached down and felt it. Goodwin, although the balance of the stones that formed it, like all the stones of the courtyard, were rough and age-worn — this was as smooth, as even surfaced as though it had just left the hands of the polisher.
“‘It’s a door!’ exclaimed Stanton. ‘It swings around in that little cup. That’s what makes the hollow so smooth.’
“‘Maybe you’re right,’ I replied. ‘But how the devil can we open it?’
“We went over the slab again — pressing upon its edges, thrusting against its sides. During one of those efforts I happened to look up — and cried out. A foot above and on each side of the corner of the grey rock’s lintel was a slight convexity, visible only from the angle at which my gaze struck it.
“We carried with us a small scaling-ladder and up this I went. The bosses were apparently nothing more than chiseled curvatures in the stone. I laid my hand on the one I was examining, and drew it back sharply. In my palm, at the base of my thumb, I had felt the same shock that I had in touching the slab below. I put my hand back. The impression came from a spot not more than an inch wide. I went carefully over the entire convexity, and six times more the chill ran through my arm. There were seven circles an inch wide in the curved place, each of which communicated the precise sensation I have described. The convexity on the opposite side of the slab gave exactly the same results. But no amount of touching or of pressing these spots singly or in any combination gave the slightest promise of motion to the slab itself.
“‘And yet — they’re what open it,’ said Stanton positively.
“‘Why do you say that?’ I asked.
“‘I— don’t know,’ he answered hesitatingly. ‘But something tells me so. Throck,’ he went on half earnestly, half laughingly, ‘the purely scientific part of me is fighting the purely human part of me. The scientific part is urging me to find some way to get that slab either down or open. The human part is just as strongly urging me to do nothing of the sort and get away while I can!’
“He laughed again — shamefacedly.
“‘Which shall it be?’ he asked — and I thought that in his tone the human side of him was ascendant.
“‘It will probably stay as it is — unless we blow it to bits,’ I said.
“‘I thought of that,’ he answered, ‘and I wouldn’t dare,’ he added soberly enough. And even as I had spoken there came to me the same feeling that he had expressed. It was as though something passed out of the grey rock that struck my heart as a hand strikes an impious lip. We turned away — uneasily, and faced Thora coming through a breach on the terrace.
“‘Miss Edith wants you quick,’ she began — and stopped. Her eyes went past me to the grey rock. Her body grew rigid; she took a few stiff steps forward and then ran straight to it. She cast herself upon its breast, hands and face pressed against it; we heard her scream as though her very soul were being drawn from her — and watched her fall at its foot. As we picked her up I saw steal from her face the look I had observed when first we heard the crystal music of Nan–Tauach — that unhuman mingling of opposites!”
CHAPTER IV THE FIRST VANISHINGS
“We carried Thora back, down to where Edith was waiting. We told her what had happened and what we had found. She listened gravely, and as we finished Thora sighed and opened her eyes.
“‘I would like to see the stone,’ she said. ‘Charles, you stay here with Thora.’ We passed through the outer court silently — and stood before the rock. She touched it, drew back her hand as I had; thrust it forward again resolutely and held it there. She seemed to be listening. Then she turned to me.
“‘David,’ said my wife, and the wistfulness in her voice hurt me —‘David, would you be very, very disappointed if we went from here — without trying to find out any more about it — would you?’
“Walter, I never wanted anything so much in my life as I wanted to learn what that rock concealed. Nevertheless, I tried to master my desire, and I answered —‘Edith, not a bit if you want us to do it.’
“She read my struggle in my eyes. She turned back toward the grey rock. I saw a shiver pass through her. I felt a tinge of remorse and pity!
“‘Edith,’ I exclaimed, ‘we’ll go!’
“She looked at me again. ‘Science is a jealous mistress,’ she quoted. ‘No, after all it may be just fancy. At any rate, you can’t run away. No! But, Dave, I’m going to stay too!’
“And there was no changing her decision. As we neared the others she laid a hand on my arm.
“‘Dave,’ she said, ‘if there should be something — well — inexplicable tonight — something that seems — too dangerous — will you promise to go back to our own islet tomorrow, if we can — and wait until the natives return?’
“I promised eagerly — the desire to stay and see what came with the night was like a fire within me.
“We picked a place about five hundred feet away from the steps leading into the outer court.
“The spot we had selected was well hidden. We could not be seen, and yet we had a clear view of the stairs and the gateway. We settled down just before dusk to wait for whatever might come. I was nearest the giant steps; next me Edith; then Thora, and last Stanton.
“Night fell. After a time the eastern sky began to lighten, and we knew that the moon was rising; grew lighter still, and the orb peeped over the sea; swam into full sight. I glanced at Edith and then at Thora. My wife was intently listening. Thora sat, as she had since we had placed ourselves, elbows on knees, her hands covering her face.
“And then from the moonlight flooding us there dripped down on me a great drowsiness. Sleep seemed to seep from the rays and fall upon my eyes, closing them — closing them inexorably. Edith’s hand in mine relaxed. Stanton’s head fell upon his breast and his body swayed drunkenly. I tried to rise — to fight against the profound desire for slumber that pressed on me.
“And as I fought, Thora raised her head as though listening; and turned toward the gateway. There was infinite despair in her face — and expectancy. I tried again to rise — and a surge of sleep rushed over me. Dimly, as I sank within it, I heard a crystalline chiming; raised my lids once more with a supreme effort.
“Thora, bathed in light, was standing at the top of the stairs.
“Sleep took me for its very own — swept me into the heart of oblivion!
“Dawn was breaking when I wakened. Recollection rushed back; I thrust a panic-stricken hand out toward Edith; touched her and my heart gave a great leap of thankfulness. She stirred, sat up, rubbing dazed eyes. Stanton lay on his side, back toward us, head in arms.
“Edith looked at me laughingly. ‘Heavens! What sleep!’ she said. Memory came to her.
“‘What happened?’ she whispered. ‘What made us sleep like that?’
“Stanton awoke.
“‘What’s the matter!’ he exclaimed. ‘You look as though you’ve been seeing ghosts.’
“Edith caught my hands.
“‘Where’s Thora?’ she cried. Before I could answer she had run out into the open, calling.
