Throckmartin's
supposed fate won only a few lines in the newspapers; my own presence
on the ship and in the city passed unnoticed.

I was fortunate in securing at Melbourne everything I needed except a
set of Becquerel ray condensers--but these were the very keystone of
my equipment. Pursuing my search to Sydney I was doubly fortunate in
finding a firm who were expecting these very articles in a consignment
due them from the States within a fortnight. I settled down in
strictest seclusion to await their arrival.

And now it will occur to you to ask why I did not cable, during this
period of waiting, to the Association; demand aid from it. Or why I
did not call upon members of the University staffs of either Melbourne
or Sydney for assistance. At the least, why I did not gather, as
Throckmartin had hoped to do, a little force of strong men to go with
me to the Nan-Matal.

To the first two questions I answer frankly--I did not dare. And this
reluctance, this inhibition, every man jealous of his scientific
reputation will understand. The story of Throckmartin, the happenings
I had myself witnessed, were incredible, abnormal, outside the facts
of all known science. I shrank from the inevitable disbelief, perhaps
ridicule--nay, perhaps even the graver suspicion that had caused me to
seal my lips while on the ship. Why I myself could only half believe!
How then could I hope to convince others?

And as for the third question--I could not take men into the range of
such a peril without first warning them of what they might encounter;
and if I did warn them--

It was checkmate! If it also was cowardice--well, I have atoned for
it. But I do not hold it so; my conscience is clear.

That fortnight and the greater part of another passed before the ship
I awaited steamed into port. By that time, between my straining
anxiety to be after Throckmartin, the despairing thought that every
moment of delay might be vital to him and his, and my intensely eager
desire to know whether that shining, glorious horror on the moon path
did exist or had been hallucination, I was worn almost to the edge of
madness.

At last the condensers were in my hands. It was more than a week
later, however, before I could secure passage back to Port Moresby and
it was another week still before I started north on the Suwarna, a
swift little sloop with a fifty-horsepower auxiliary, heading straight
for Ponape and the Nan-Matal.

We sighted the Brunhild