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"It's all right, Professor," he said. "It's for me. It found me all this way from Ireland." Again the silence was rent by the cry. But now I had located it. It came from my room, and it could mean only one thing Huldricksson had wakened. "Forget your banshee!" I gasped, and made a jump for the cabin.
Nor would they say why. Finally it was agreed that the Brunhilda should be left in charge of a half-breed Chinaman, whom both Da Costa and Huldricksson knew and trusted. We piled her long-boat up with my instruments and food and camping equipment.
You must learn that only the fact is important not you, not me, not this" he pointed to Huldricksson "or its sorrows. Only the fact, whatever it is, is real, yes. But" he turned to me "another time " Huldricksson interrupted him. The big seaman had risen stiffly to his feet and stood with Larry's arm supporting him. He stretched out his hands to me. "I saw her," he whispered.
I felt Marakinoff creep close to me; gripped my nerve and flashed my pocket-light; saw Larry standing, peering, peering ahead, and Huldricksson, one strong arm around his shoulders, bracing him. And then the speed began to slacken. Millions of miles, it seemed, below the sound of the unearthly hurricane I heard Larry's voice, thin and ghostlike, beneath its clamour. "Got it!" shrilled the voice.
He did not speak he howled from that hideously dry mouth his imprecations. And all the time his red eyes roamed the seas and his hands, clenched and rigid on the wheel, dropped blood. "I go below," said Da Costa nervously. "His wife, his daughter " he darted down the companionway and was gone. Huldricksson, silent once more, had slumped down over the wheel.
"If you'll tell us how the sparkling devil came it will help us all when we get to where it is, Huldricksson," I said. On O'Keefe's face there was an expression of well-nigh ludicrous doubt and amazement. He glanced from one to the other. The giant shifted his own tense look from me to the Irishman. A gleam of approval lighted in his eyes. He loosed me, and gripped O'Keefe's arm.
He turned from his quick scrutiny of the sea and addressed O'Keefe. "There's nothing on board to fit you, Lieutenant." "Oh, just give me a sheet to throw around me, Captain," said O'Keefe and followed him. Darkness had fallen, and as the two disappeared into Da Costa's cabin I softly opened the door of my own and listened. Huldricksson was breathing deeply and regularly.
He moved over toward the wheel. "Where is your Helma and Freda, Olaf?" he said. Huldricksson turned his head toward him. "The shining devil took them," he croaked. "The moon devil that spark " A yell broke from him. I had thrust the needle into his arm just above one swollen wrist and had quickly shot the drug through. He struggled to release himself and then began to rock drunkenly.
The Portuguese had picked himself up, whimpering with rage and knife in hand, but as Huldricksson's voice reached him he stopped. Amazement crept into his eyes and as he thrust the blade back into his belt they softened with pity. "Something veree wrong wit' Olaf," he murmured to me. "I think he crazee!" And then Olaf Huldricksson began to curse us.
Swiftly the rays within the condenser began to thicken and increase, and as they did so the seven small circles waxed like stars growing out of the dusk, and with a queer curdled is the best word I can find to define it radiance entirely strange to me. Beneath me I heard a faint, sighing murmur and then the voice of Huldricksson: "It opens the stone turns " I began to climb down the ladder.
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