Considering what you did for me, I hope I can look him over before the Dolphin shows up." Next morning we raised Ponape, without further incident, and before noon the Suwarna and the Brunhilda had dropped anchor in the harbour.
Upon the excitement and manifest dread of the natives, when we sought among them for carriers and workmen to accompany us, I will not dwell.
It is enough to say that no payment we offered could induce a single one of them to go to the Nan-Matal.

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.

The Suwarna took us around to Metalanim Harbour, and there, with the tops of ancient sea walls deep in the blue water beneath us, and the ruins looming up out of the mangroves, a scant mile from us, left us.
Then with Huldricksson manipulating our small sail, and Larry at the rudder, we rounded the titanic wall that swept down into the depths, and turned at last into the canal that Throckmartin, on his map, had marked as that which, running between frowning Nan-Tauach and its satellite islet, Tau, led straight to the gate of the place of ancient mysteries.
And as we entered that channel we were enveloped by a silence; a silence so intense, so--weighted that it seemed to have substance; an alien silence that clung and stifled and still stood aloof from us--the living.

It was a stillness, such as might follow the long tramping of millions into the grave; it was--paradoxical as it may be--filled with the withdrawal of life.
Standing down in the chambered depths of the Great Pyramid I had known something of such silence--but never such intensity as this.