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

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 agoЧthe 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 ruinsЧand 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 mangrovesЧdead, 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 PacificЧa 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.
[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).Ч W. T. G. ]
"I believed that under these ruins I might find the evidence that I sought.
"MyЧmy 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