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

"'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.
"'Thora was taken,' was all I could say to Stanton. Together we went to my wife,
now standing beside the great stone steps, looking up fearfully at the gateway
into the terraces. There I told them what I had seen before sleep had drowned
me. And together then we ran up the stairs, through the court and to the grey
rock.
'The slab was closed as it had been the day before, nor was there trace of its
having opened. No trace? Even as I thought this Edith dropped to her knees
before it and reached toward something lying at its foot. It was a little piece
of gay silk. I knew it for part of the kerchief Thora wore about her hair. She
lifted the fragment. It had been cut from the kerchief as though by a
razor-edge; a few threads ran from itЧdown toward the base of the slab; ran on
to the base of the grey rock andЧunder it!
"The grey rock was a door! And it had opened and Thora had passed through it!
"I think that for the next few minutes we all were a little insane. We beat upon
that portal with our hands, with stones and sticks. At last reason came back to
us.
"Goodwin, during the next two hours we tried every way in our power to force
entrance through the slab. The rock resisted our drills. We tried explosions at
the base with charges covered by rock. They made not the slightest impression on
the surface, expending their force, of course, upon the slighter resistance of
their coverings.
"Afternoon found us hopeless. Night was coming on and we would have to decide
our course of action. I wanted to go to Ponape for help. But Edith objected that
this would take hours and after we had reached there it would be impossible to
persuade our men to return with us that night, if at all. What then was left?
Clearly only one of two choices: to go back to our camp, wait for our men, and
on their return try to persuade them to go with us to Nan-Tauach. But this would
mean the abandonment of Thora for at least two days. We could not do it; it
would have been too cowardly.
"The other choice was to wait where we were for night to come; to wait for the
rock to open as it had the night before, and to make a sortie through it for
Thora before it could close again.
"Our path lay clear before us. We had to spend that night on Nan-Tauach!
"We had, of course, discussed the sleep phenomena very fully. If our theory that
lights, sounds, and Thora's disappearance were linked with secret religious
rites of the natives, the logical inference was that the slumber had been
produced by them, perhaps by vapoursЧyou know as well as I, what extraordinary
knowledge these Pacific peoples have of such things. Or the sleep might have
been simply a coincidence and produced by emanations either gaseous or from
plants, natural causes which had happened to coincide in their effects with the
other manifestations. We made some rough and ready but effective respirators.
"As dusk fell we looked over our weapons. Edith was an excellent shot with both
rifle and pistol. We had decided that my wife was to remain in the hiding-place.