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 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 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 soard high enough to illuminate. 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
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 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 but 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!
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