The Moon Pool Page 7

  CHAPTER VII

  Larry O'Keefe

  Pressing back the questions I longed to ask, I introduced myself.Oddly enough, I found that he knew me, or rather my work. He hadbought, it appeared, my volume upon the peculiar vegetation whosehabitat is disintegrating lava rock and volcanic ash, that I hadentitled, somewhat loosely, I could now perceive, Flora of theCraters. For he explained naively that he had picked it up, thinkingit an entirely different sort of a book, a novel in fact--somethinglike Meredith's Diana of the Crossways, which he liked greatly.

  He had hardly finished this explanation when we touched the side ofthe Suwarna, and I was forced to curb my curiosity until we reachedthe deck.

  "That thing you saw me sitting on," he said, after he had thanked thebowing little skipper for his rescue, "was all that was left of one ofhis Majesty's best little hydroairplanes after that cyclone threw itoff as excess baggage. And by the way, about where are we?"

  Da Costa gave him our approximate position from the noon reckoning.

  O'Keefe whistled. "A good three hundred miles from where I left theH.M.S. Dolphin about four hours ago," he said. "That squall I rode inon was some whizzer!

  "The Dolphin," he went on, calmly divesting himself of his soakeduniform, "was on her way to Melbourne. I'd been yearning for a joyride and went up for an alleged scouting trip. Then that blow shot outof nowhere, picked me up, and insisted that I go with it.

  "About an hour ago I thought I saw a chance to zoom up and out of it,I turned, and _blick_ went my right wing, and down I dropped."

  "I don't know how we can notify your ship, Lieutenant O'Keefe," Isaid. "We have no wireless."

  "Doctair Goodwin," said Da Costa, "we could change our course,sair--perhaps--"

  "Thanks--but not a bit of it," broke in O'Keefe. "Lord alone knowswhere the Dolphin is now. Fancy she'll be nosing around looking forme. Anyway, she's just as apt to run into you as you into her. Maybewe'll strike something with a wireless, and I'll trouble you to put meaboard." He hesitated. "Where are you bound, by the way?" he asked.

  "For Ponape," I answered.

  "No wireless there," mused O'Keefe. "Beastly hole. Stopped a week agofor fruit. Natives seemed scared to death at us--or something. Whatare you going there for?"

  Da Costa darted a furtive glance at me. It troubled me.

  O'Keefe noted my hesitation.

  "Oh, I beg your pardon," he said. "Maybe I oughn't to have askedthat?"

  "It's no secret, Lieutenant," I replied. "I'm about to undertake someexploration work--a little digging among the ruins on the Nan-Matal."

  I looked at the Portuguese sharply as I named the place. A pallorcrept beneath his skin and again he made swiftly the sign of thecross, glancing as he did so fearfully to the north. I made up my mindthen to question him when opportunity came. He turned from his quickscrutiny 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'Keefeand followed him. Darkness had fallen, and as the two disappeared intoDa Costa's cabin I softly opened the door of my own and listened.Huldricksson was breathing deeply and regularly.

  I drew my electric-flash, and shielding its rays from my face, lookedat him. His sleep was changing from the heavy stupor of the drug intoone that was at least on the borderland of the normal. The tongue hadlost its arid blackness and the mouth secretions had resumed action.Satisfied as to his condition I returned to deck.

  O'Keefe was there, looking like a spectre in the cotton sheet he hadwrapped about him. A deck table had been cleated down and one of theTonga boys was setting it for our dinner. Soon the very creditablelarder of the Suwarna dressed the board, and O'Keefe, Da Costa, and Iattacked it. The night had grown close and oppressive. Behind us theforward light of the Brunhilda glided and the binnacle lamp threw up afaint glow in which her black helmsman's face stood out mistily.O'Keefe had looked curiously a number of times at our tow, but hadasked no questions.

  "You're not the only passenger we picked up today," I told him. "Wefound the captain of that sloop, lashed to his wheel, nearly dead withexhaustion, and his boat deserted by everyone except himself."

  "What was the matter?" asked O'Keefe in astonishment.

  "We don't know," I answered. "He fought us, and I had to drug himbefore we could get him loose from his lashings. He's sleeping down inmy berth now. His wife and little girl ought to have been on board,the captain here says, but--they weren't."

  "Wife and child gone!" exclaimed O'Keefe.

  "From the condition of his mouth he must have been alone at the wheeland without water at least two days and nights before we found him," Ireplied. "And as for looking for anyone on these waters after such atime--it's hopeless."

  "That's true," said O'Keefe. "But his wife and baby! Poor, poordevil!"

  He was silent for a time, and then, at my solicitation, began to tellus more of himself. He had been little more than twenty when he hadwon his wings and entered the war. He had been seriously wounded atYpres during the third year of the struggle, and when he recovered thewar was over. Shortly after that his mother had died. Lonely andrestless, he had re-entered the Air Service, and had remained in itever since.

  "And though the war's long over, I get homesick for the lark's landwith the German planes playing tunes on their machine guns and theirArchies tickling the soles of my feet," he sighed. "If you're in love,love to the limit; and if you hate, why hate like the devil and ifit's a fight you're in, get where it's hottest and fight like hell--ifyou don't life's not worth the living," sighed he.

  I watched him as he talked, feeling my liking for him steadilyincreasing. If I could but have a man like this beside me on the pathof unknown peril upon which I had set my feet I thought, wistfully. Wesat and smoked a bit, sipping the strong coffee the Portuguese made sowell.

  Da Costa at last relieved the Cantonese at the wheel. O'Keefe and Idrew chairs up to the rail. The brighter stars shone out dimly througha hazy sky; gleams of phosphorescence tipped the crests of the wavesand sparkled with an almost angry brilliance as the bow of the Suwarnatossed them aside. O'Keefe pulled contentedly at a cigarette. Theglowing spark lighted the keen, boyish face and the blue eyes, nowblack and brooding under the spell of the tropic night.

  "Are you American or Irish, O'Keefe?" I asked suddenly.

  "Why?" he laughed.

  "Because," I answered, "from your name and your service I wouldsuppose you Irish--but your command of pure Americanese makes medoubtful."

  He grinned amiably.

  "I'll tell you how that is," he said. "My mother was an American--aGrace, of Virginia. My father was the O'Keefe, of Coleraine. And thesetwo loved each other so well that the heart they gave me is half Irishand half American. My father died when I was sixteen. I used to go tothe States with my mother every other year for a month or two. Butafter my father died we used to go to Ireland every other year. Andthere you are--I'm as much American as I am Irish.

  "When I'm in love, or excited, or dreaming, or mad I have the brogue.But for the everyday purpose of life I like the United States talk,and I know Broadway as well as I do Binevenagh Lane, and the Sound aswell as St. Patrick's Channel; educated a bit at Eton, a bit atHarvard; always too much money to have to make any; in love lots oftimes, and never a heartache after that wasn't a pleasant one, andnever a real purpose in life until I took the king's shilling andearned my wings; something over thirty--and that's me--LarryO'Keefe."

  "But it was the Irish O'Keefe who sat out there waiting for thebanshee," I laughed.

  "It was that," he said somberly, and I heard the brogue creep over hisvoice like velvet and his eyes grew brooding again. "There's never anO'Keefe for these thousand years that has passed without his warning.An' twice have I heard the banshee calling--once it was when myyounger brother died an' once when my father lay waiting to be carriedout on the ebb tide."

  He mused a moment, then went on: "An' once I saw an Annir Choi
lle, agirl of the green people, flit like a shade of green fire throughCarntogher woods, an' once at Dunchraig I slept where the ashes of theDun of Cormac MacConcobar are mixed with those of Cormac an' Eilidhthe Fair, all burned in the nine flames that sprang from the harpingof Cravetheen, an' I heard the echo of his dead harpings--"

  He paused again and then, softly, with that curiously sweet, highvoice that only the Irish seem to have, he sang:

  Woman of the white breasts, Eilidh; Woman of the gold-brown hair, and lips of the red, red rowan, Where is the swan that is whiter, with breast more soft, Or the wave on the sea that moves as thou movest, Eilidh.