I am writing this under an appreciable mental
strain, since by tonight I shall be no more.
Penniless, and at the end of my supply of
the drug which alone makes life endurable,
I can bear the torture no longer; and shall
cast myself from this garret window into the
squalid street below. Do not think from my
slavery to morphine that I am a weakling or
a degenerate. When you have read these hastily
scrawled pages you may guess, though never
fully realise, why it is that I must have
forgetfulness or death.
It was in one of the most open and least frequented
parts of the broad Pacific that the packet
of which I was supercargo fell a victim to
the German sea-raider. The great war was then
at its very beginning, and the ocean forces
of the Hun had not completely sunk to their
later degradation; so that our vessel was
made a legitimate prize, whilst we of her
crew were treated with all the fairness and
consideration due us as naval prisoners. So
liberal, indeed, was the discipline of our
captors, that five days after we were taken
I managed to escape alone in a small boat
with water and provisions for a good length
of time.
When I finally found myself adrift and free,
I had but little idea of my surroundings.
Never a competent navigator, I could only
guess vaguely by the sun and stars that I
was somewhat south of the equator. Of the
longitude I knew nothing, and no island or
coast-line was in sight. The weather kept
fair, and for uncounted days I drifted aimlessly
beneath the scorching sun; waiting either
for some passing ship, or to be cast on the
shores of some habitable land. But neither
ship nor land appeared, and I began to despair
in my solitude upon the heaving vastnesses
of unbroken blue.
The change happened whilst I slept. Its details
I shall never know; for my slumber, though
troubled and dream-infested, was continuous.
When at last I awaked, it was to discover
myself half sucked into a slimy expanse of
hellish black mire which extended about me
in monotonous undulations as far as I could
see, and in which my boat lay grounded some
distance away.
Though one might well imagine that my first
sensation would be of wonder at so prodigious
and unexpected a transformation of scenery,
I was in reality more horrified than astonished;
for there was in the air and in the rotting
soil a sinister quality which chilled me to
the very core. The region was putrid with
the carcasses of decaying fish, and of other
less describable things which I saw protruding
from the nasty mud of the unending plain.
Perhaps I should not hope to convey in mere
words the unutterable hideousness that can
dwell in absolute silence and barren immensity.
There was nothing within hearing, and nothing
in sight save a vast reach of black slime;
yet the very completeness of the stillness
and the homogeneity of the landscape oppressed
me with a nauseating fear.
The sun was blazing down from a sky which
seemed to me almost black in its cloudless
cruelty; as though reflecting the inky marsh
beneath my feet. As I crawled into the stranded
boat I realised that only one theory could
explain my position. Through some unprecedented
volcanic upheaval, a portion of the ocean
floor must have been thrown to the surface,
exposing regions which for innumerable millions
of years had lain hidden under unfathomable
watery depths. So great was the extent of
the new land which had risen beneath me, that
I could not detect the faintest noise of the
surging ocean, strain my ears as I might.
Nor were there any sea-fowl to prey upon the
dead things.
For several hours I sat thinking or brooding
in the boat, which lay upon its side and afforded
a slight shade as the sun moved across the
heavens. As the day progressed, the ground
lost some of its stickiness, and seemed likely
to dry sufficiently for travelling purposes
in a short time. That night I slept but little,
and the next day I made for myself a pack
containing food and water, preparatory to
an overland journey in search of the vanished
sea and possible rescue.
On the third morning I found the soil dry
enough to walk upon with ease. The odour of
the fish was maddening; but I was too much
concerned with graver things to mind so slight
an evil, and set out boldly for an unknown
goal. All day I forged steadily westward,
guided by a far-away hummock which rose higher
than any other elevation on the rolling desert.
That night I encamped, and on the following
day still travelled toward the hummock, though
that object seemed scarcely nearer than when
I had first espied it. By the fourth evening
I attained the base of the mound, which turned
out to be much higher than it had appeared
from a distance; an intervening valley setting
it out in sharper relief from the general
surface. Too weary to ascend, I slept in the
shadow of the hill.
I know not why my dreams were so wild that
night; but ere the waning and fantastically
gibbous moon had risen far above the eastern
plain, I was awake in a cold perspiration,
determined to sleep no more. Such visions
as I had experienced were too much for me
to endure again. And in the glow of the moon
I saw how unwise I had been to travel by day.
Without the glare of the parching sun, my
journey would have cost me less energy; indeed,
I now felt quite able to perform the ascent
which had deterred me at sunset. Picking up
my pack, I started for the crest of the eminence.
I have said that the unbroken monotony of
the rolling plain was a source of vague horror
to me; but I think my horror was greater when
I gained the summit of the mound and looked
down the other side into an immeasurable pit
or canyon, whose black recesses the moon had
not yet soared high enough to illumine. I
felt myself on the edge of the world; peering
over the rim into a fathomless chaos of eternal
night. Through my terror ran curious reminiscences
of Paradise Lost, and of Satan’s hideous
climb through the unfashioned realms of darkness.
As the moon climbed higher in the sky, I began
to see that the slopes of the valley were
not quite so perpendicular as I had imagined.
Ledges and outcroppings of rock afforded fairly
easy foot-holds for a descent, whilst after
a drop of a few hundred feet, the declivity
became very gradual. Urged on by an impulse
which I cannot definitely analyse, I scrambled
with difficulty down the rocks and stood on
the gentler slope beneath, gazing into the
Stygian deeps where no light had yet penetrated.
All at once my attention was captured by a
vast and singular object on the opposite slope,
which rose steeply about an hundred yards
ahead of me; an object that gleamed whitely
in the newly bestowed rays of the ascending
moon. That it was merely a gigantic piece
of stone, I soon assured myself; but I was
conscious of a distinct impression that its
contour and position were not altogether the
work of Nature. A closer scrutiny filled me
with sensations I cannot express; for despite
its enormous magnitude, and its position in
an abyss which had yawned at the bottom of
the sea since the world was young, I perceived
beyond a doubt that the strange object was
a well-shaped monolith whose massive bulk
had known the workmanship and perhaps the
worship of living and thinking creatures.
Dazed and frightened, yet not without a certain
thrill of the scientist’s or archaeologist’s
delight, I examined my surroundings more closely.
The moon, now near the zenith, shone weirdly
and vividly above the towering steeps that
hemmed in the chasm, and revealed the fact
that a far-flung body of water flowed at the
bottom, winding out of sight in both directions,
and almost lapping my feet as I stood on the
slope. Across the chasm, the wavelets washed
the base of the Cyclopean monolith; on whose
surface I could now trace both inscriptions
and crude sculptures. The writing was in a
system of hieroglyphics unknown to me, and
unlike anything I had ever seen in books;
consisting for the most part of conventionalised
aquatic symbols such as fishes, eels, octopi,
crustaceans, molluscs, whales, and the like.
Several characters obviously represented marine
things which are unknown to the modern world,
but whose decomposing forms I had observed
on the ocean-risen plain.
It was the pictorial carving, however, that
did most to hold me spellbound. Plainly visible
across the intervening water on account of
their enormous size, were an array of bas-reliefs
whose subjects would have excited the envy
of a Doré. I think that these things were
supposed to depict men—at least, a certain
sort of men; though the creatures were shewn
disporting like fishes in the waters of some
marine grotto, or paying homage at some monolithic
shrine which appeared to be under the waves
as well. Of their faces and forms I dare not
speak in detail; for the mere remembrance
makes me grow faint. Grotesque beyond the
imagination of a Poe or a Bulwer, they were
damnably human in general outline despite
webbed hands and feet, shockingly wide and
flabby lips, glassy, bulging eyes, and other
features less pleasant to recall. Curiously
enough, they seemed to have been chiselled
badly out of proportion with their scenic
background; for one of the creatures was shewn
in the act of killing a whale represented
as bu
t
little larger than himself. I remarked, as
I say, their grotesqueness and strange size;
but in a moment decided that they were merely
the imaginary gods of some primitive fishing
or seafaring tribe; some tribe whose last
descendant had perished eras before the first
ancestor of the Piltdown or Neanderthal Man
was born. Awestruck at this unexpected glimpse
into a past beyond the conception of the most
daring anthropologist, I stood musing whilst
the moon cast queer reflections on the silent
channel before me.
Then suddenly I saw it. With only a slight
churning to mark its rise to the surface,
the thing slid into view above the dark waters.
Vast, Polyphemus-like, and loathsome, it darted
like a stupendous monster of nightmares to
the monolith, about which it flung its gigantic
scaly arms, the while it bowed its hideous
head and gave vent to certain measured sounds.
I think I went mad then.
Of my frantic ascent of the slope and cliff,
and of my delirious journey back to the stranded
boat, I remember little. I believe I sang
a great deal, and laughed oddly when I was
unable to sing. I have indistinct recollections
of a great storm some time after I reached
the boat; at any rate, I know that I heard
peals of thunder and other tones which Nature
utters only in her wildest moods.
When I came out of the shadows I was in a
San Francisco hospital; brought thither by
the captain of the American ship which had
picked up my boat in mid-ocean. In my delirium
I had said much, but found that my words had
been given scant attention. Of any land upheaval
in the Pacific, my rescuers knew nothing;
nor did I deem it necessary to insist upon
a thing which I knew they could not believe.
Once I sought out a celebrated ethnologist,
and amused him with peculiar questions regarding
the ancient Philistine legend of Dagon, the
Fish-God; but soon perceiving that he was
hopelessly conventional, I did not press my
inquiries.
It is at night, especially when the moon is
gibbous and waning, that I see the thing.
I tried morphine; but the drug has given only
transient surcease, and has drawn me into
its clutches as a hopeless slave. So now I
am to end it all, having written a full account
for the information or the contemptuous amusement
of my fellow-men. Often I ask myself if it
could not all have been a pure phantasm—a
mere freak of fever as I lay sun-stricken
and raving in the open boat after my escape
from the German man-of-war. This I ask myself,
but ever does there come before me a hideously
vivid vision in reply. I cannot think of the
deep sea without shuddering at the nameless
things that may at this very moment be crawling
and floundering on its slimy bed, worshipping
their ancient stone idols and carving their
own detestable likenesses on submarine obelisks
of water-soaked granite. I dream of a day
when they may rise above the billows to drag
down in their reeking talons the remnants
of puny, war-exhausted mankind—of a day
when the land shall sink, and the dark ocean
floor shall ascend amidst universal pandemonium.
The end is near. I hear a noise at the door,
as of some immense slippery body lumbering
against it. It shall not find me. God, that
hand! The window! The window!
