"A. E. Merritt - The Moon Pool" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merritt A. E)

The Moon Pool,
by A. Merritt, 1919


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 herselfЧsinister 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 ThrockmartinЧЧ"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,
definitelyЧunpleasant. It was ThrockmartinЧbut 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 aЧI use the word in its olden senseЧlover. 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 LeleЧtwin 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?