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"It was days after his wife was taken, that the Dweller seized Throckmartin," I cried. "How, if their wills, their life, were indeed gone, how did they find each other mid all that horde? How did they come together in the Dweller's lair?" "I do not know," she answered, slowly. "You say they loved and it is true that love is stronger even than death!"
My first act was to spring to the open port. The coma had lasted hours, for the moon was now low in the west! I ran to the door to sound the alarm. It resisted under my frantic hands; would not open. Something fell tinkling to the floor. It was the key and I remembered then that Throckmartin had turned it before we began our vigil.
Could it be that the Dweller had swept upon the Brunhilda, drawing down the moon path Olaf Huldricksson's wife and babe even as it had drawn Throckmartin? As I sat thinking the cabin grew suddenly dark and from above came a shouting and patter of feet. Down upon us swept one of the abrupt, violent squalls that are met with in those latitudes.
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.
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.
What if the Dweller were within what if we had been wrong and it was not dependent for its power upon that full flood of moon ray which Throckmartin had thought essential to draw it from the blue pool! From within, the sobbing wail began once more to rise. O'Keefe pushed me aside, threw open the door and crouched low within it.
"I lighted a fire before I spoke. Then I told her. And for the balance of that night we sat before the flames, arms around each other like two frightened children." Abruptly Throckmartin held his hands out to me appealingly. "Walter, old friend!" he cried. "Don't look at me as though I were mad. It's truth, absolute truth. Wait " I comforted him as well as I could.
Out of the drifting ruck swam the body of Throckmartin! Throckmartin, my friend, to find whom I had gone to the pallid moon door; my friend whose call I had so laggardly followed. On his face was the Dweller's dreadful stamp; the lips were bloodless; the eyes were wide, lucent, something like pale, phosphorescence gleaming within them and soulless.
Now I found speech to voice the question ever with me, the thing that lay as close to my heart as did the welfare of Larry, indeed the whole object of my quest the fate of Throckmartin and those who had passed with him into the Dweller's lair; yes, and of Olaf's wife, too. "Lakla," I said, "the friend who drew me here and those he loved who went before him can we not save them?"
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.
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