The Collected SF & Fantasy Works. Abraham Merritt

take my Helma, for Christ lives and Loki has no power to hurt my Helma or my Freda! Christ lives! Christ lives!’ I said. But the sparkling devil did not let my Helma go. It drew her to the rail; half over it. I saw her eyes upon the child and a little she broke away and reached to it. And my Freda jumped into her arms. And the fire wrapped them both and they were gone! A little I saw them whirling on the moon track behind the Brunhilda — and they were gone!

      “The sparkling devil took them! Loki was loosed, and he had power. I turned the Brunhilda, and I followed where my Helma and mine Yndling had gone. My boys crept up and asked me to turn again. But I would not. They dropped a boat and left me. I steered straight on the path. I lashed my hands to the wheel that sleep might not loose them. I steered on and on and on —

      “Where was the God I prayed when my wife and child were taken?” cried Olaf Huldricksson — and it was as though I heard Throckmartin asking that same bitter question. “I have left Him as He left me, ja! I pray now to Thor and to Odin, who can fetter Loki.” He sank back, covering again his eyes.

      “Olaf,” I said, “what you have called the sparkling devil has taken ones dear to me. I, too, was following it when we found you. You shall go with me to its home, and there we will try to take from it your wife and your child and my friends as well. But now that you may be strong for what is before us, you must sleep again.”

      Olaf Huldricksson looked upon me and in his eyes was that something which souls must see in the eyes of Him the old Egyptians called the Searcher of Hearts in the Judgment Hall of Osiris.

      “You speak truth!” he said at last slowly. “I will do what you say!”

      He stretched out an arm at my bidding. I gave him a second injection. He lay back and soon he was sleeping. I turned toward Da Costa. His face was livid and sweating, and he was trembling pitiably. O’Keefe stirred.

      “You did that mighty well, Dr. Goodwin,” he said. “So well that I almost believed you myself.”

      “What did you think of his story, Mr. O’Keefe?” I asked.

      His answer was almost painfully brief and colloquial.

      “Nuts!” he said. I was a little shocked, I admit. “I think he’s crazy, Dr. Goodwin,” he corrected himself, quickly. “What else could I think?”

      I turned to the little Portuguese without answering.

      “There’s no need for any anxiety tonight, Captain,” I said. “Take my word for it. You need some rest yourself. Shall I give you a sleeping draft?”

      “I do wish you would, Dr. Goodwin, sair,” he answered gratefully. “Tomorrow, when I feel bettair — I would have a talk with you.”

      I nodded. He did know something then! I mixed him an opiate of considerable strength. He took it and went to his own cabin.

      I locked the door behind him and then, sitting beside the sleeping Norseman, I told O’Keefe my story from end to end. He asked few questions as I spoke. But after I had finished he cross-examined me rather minutely upon my recollections of the radiant phases upon each appearance, checking these with Throckmartin’s observations of the same phenomena in the Chamber of the Moon Pool.

      “And now what do you think of it all?” I asked.

      He sat silent for a while, looking at Huldricksson.

      “Not what you seem to think, Dr. Goodwin,” he answered at last, gravely. “Let me sleep over it. One thing of course is certain — you and your friend Throckmartin and this man here saw — something. But —” he was silent again and then continued with a kindness that I found vaguely irritating —“but I’ve noticed that when a scientist gets superstitious it — er — takes very hard!

      “Here’s a few things I can tell you now though,” he went on while I struggled to speak —“I pray in my heart that we’ll meet neither the Dolphin nor anything with wireless on board going up. Because, Dr. Goodwin, I’d dearly love to take a crack at your Dweller.

      “And another thing,” said O’Keefe. “After this — cut out the trimmings, Doc, and call me plain Larry, for whether I think you’re crazy or whether I don’t, you’re there with the nerve, Professor, and I’m for YOU.

      “Good night!” said Larry and took himself out to the deck hammock he had insisted upon having slung for him, refusing the captain’s importunities to use his own cabin.

      And it was with extremely mixed emotions as to his compliment that I watched him go. Superstitious. I, whose pride was my scientific devotion to fact and fact alone! Superstitious — and this from a man who believed in banshees and ghostly harpers and Irish wood nymphs and no doubt in leprechauns and all their tribe!

      Half laughing, half irritated, and wholly happy in even the part promise of Larry O’Keefe’s comradeship on my venture, I arranged a couple of pillows, stretched myself out on two chairs and took up my vigil beside Olaf Huldricksson.

      CHAPTER IX

       A LOST PAGE OF EARTH

       Table of Contents

      When I awakened the sun was streaming through the cabin porthole. Outside a fresh voice lilted. I lay on my two chairs and listened. The song was one with the wholesome sunshine and the breeze blowing stiffly and whipping the curtains. It was Larry O’Keefe at his matins:

      The little red lark is shaking his wings,

       Straight from the breast of his love he springs

      Larry’s voice soared.

      His wings and his feathers are sunrise red,

       He hails the sun and his golden head,

       Good morning, Doc, you are long abed.

      This last was a most irreverent interpolation, I well knew. I opened my door. O’Keefe stood outside laughing. The Suwarna, her engines silent, was making fine headway under all sail, the Brunhilda skipping in her wake cheerfully with half her canvas up.

      The sea was crisping and dimpling under the wind. Blue and white was the world as far as the eye could reach. Schools of little silvery green flying fish broke through the water rushing on each side of us; flashed for an instant and were gone. Behind us gulls hovered and dipped. The shadow of mystery had retreated far over the rim of this wide awake and beautiful world and if, subconsciously, I knew that somewhere it was brooding and waiting, for a little while at least I was consciously free of its oppression.

      “How’s the patient?” asked O’Keefe.

      He was answered by Huldricksson himself, who must have risen just as I left the cabin. The Norseman had slipped on a pair of pajamas and, giant torso naked under the sun, he strode out upon us. We all of us looked at him a trifle anxiously. But Olaf’s madness had left him. In his eyes was much sorrow, but the berserk rage was gone.

      He spoke straight to me: “You said last night we follow?”

      I nodded.

      “It is where?” he asked again.

      “We go first to Ponape and from there to Metalanim Harbour — to the Nan–Matal. You know the place?”

      Huldricksson bowed — a white gleam as of ice showing in his blue eyes.

      “It is there?” he asked.

      “It is there that we must first search,” I answered.

      “Good!” said Olaf Huldricksson. “It is good!”

      He looked at Da Costa inquiringly and the little Portuguese, following his thought, answered his unspoken question.

      “We should be at Ponape tomorrow morning early, Olaf.”

      “Good!” repeated the Norseman. He looked away, his eyes tear-filled.

      A