I am writing this under depreciable 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 his Garret window into the squalid street below do not think from my slavery to morphing that I am a weakling or degenerate once you have read these hastily scrawled pages you may guess they’ll never fully realize why it is I must have forgetfulness or death it was in one of the most open and least frequented parts for the broad Pacific at the packet of which I was super cargo fell victim to the German sea Raider the Great War then was at its very beginning and the ocean forces of the Hun had not completely sunk to their later degradation so that our vessel was a legitimate prize whilst we offer crew were treated of all of the fairness and consideration do us as naval prisoners so liberal indeed was a 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 in the Stars that I was somewhere south of the equator of the longitude I knew nothing when no island or coastline was in sight and the weather kept fair and for uncounted days I drifted aimlessly beneath the scorching Sun waiting either for some part in ship or to be cast unto the shores or some habitable land but neither ship nor land appeared and I began to despair my solitude upon the heathen vastness 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 well at last I awaked it was to discover myself sucked into a slimy expanse of hellish black mire which extended about me monotonous undulations as far as I could see and in which my boat lay grounded some distance away the one might well imagine that my first sensation would be of wonder.
I had so prodigious an unexpected transformation of scenery I was in reality more horrified than astonished for those in the air and the rotting soil a sinister quality that chilled me to the very core the region was putrid of the carcasses of decaying fish and 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 of insight save a 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 cloudiness and Kranti as there reflect in the inky marsh beneath my feet as I crawled into the stranded boat I realized 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 the 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 surgeon ocean strain my ears as I might normally NEC fell to prey upon the dead things for several hours I sat there thinking or brooded in the boat which lay upon its side and afforded a slight shade as the Sun moved across the heaven as the day progressed the ground lost some of its stickiness and seemed likely to dry sufficiently for travelin purposes in a short time that night.
I slept but a little and the next day I made 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 odor of the fish was maddening but I was too much concerned with graver things to mine such a slight evil and set out boldly for an unknown goal all day I forged steadily westward guided by a faraway hummock which rose higher than any other elevation on the roll in desert that night I encamped and on the following day still traveled towards the hammock though the object seemed scarcely nearer than when I first aspired it and by the fourth evening I attained the base of the mountain which turned out to be much higher than it appeared from a distance an intervening valley setting 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 are so wild that night but either way kneeling fantastically gibbous moon had risen so far above the eastern plain I was awaking cold perspiration determined to sleep no more such visions that I had experienced were too much for me to endure once again and in the glow of the moon I saw how unwise I had been to travel by day without the glare of the Parchin 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 eminence I have said that the unbroken monotony of the rolling plain was a vague source of horror to me but I think my horror was greater when I gained the summit of the mound and looked down on the other side into an immeasurable pit or Canyon who’s black recesses the moon had not yet soared high enough to loom I felt myself on the edge of the world peering over the rim into the fathomless chaos of eternal night through my terror and curious reminiscences of Paradise Lost and of Satan’s hideous climb through the unfashionable ooon 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 a four did for fairly easy footholds for a descent whilst after a drop of a few hundred feet the declivity became very gradual merged on by an impulse that I cannot definitely analyse I scrambled of difficulty down the rocks and stood on the gentle slope beneath gazing into the Stygian deeps were no light had yet penetrated all at once my attention was capped goodbye avast singular object on the opposite slope which rose steeply about a hundred yards ahead of me an object that gleamed Whitely in a newly bestowed rays of the ascending moon that it was merely a gigantic piece of stone my soon assured myself but I was conscious of a distinct impression that his contour and positioning were not altogether the work of nature a closer scrutiny filled me sensations that 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 wall shaped monolith whose massive bulk had known workmanship and perhaps the worship of living in thinking creatures dazed and frightened yet not of a certain thrill of a scientists or an archaeologists delight I examine my surroundings more closely the moon now near the zenith shone weirdly and vividly above the tower and steeps had hemmed in the chasm and availed the fact that a far-flung body of water flowed at the bottom winding out of sight in both directions an almost lapping at my feet as I stood on the slope across the chasm the wavelets washed the base of the cyclopean monolith on her 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’d ever seen in books consistent for the most part of conventionalized aquatic symbols such as fishes eels octopi crustaceans molluscs and whales several characters obviously represented marine things which were unknown to the modern world but whose decomposing forms I had observed on the ocean risen plane it was the pictorial carving however that did most to hold me spellbound plainly visible across the intervening water on accounts of their enormous size were an array of Bath’s reliefs whose subjects have excited the envy of dory I think that these things were supposed to depict men at least a certain sort of men though the creatures were shown to sportin like fishes in the waters of some marine grotto or paying homage to someone on a thick shrine which appeared to be under the waves as well of the faces and forms I dare not speak in detail for the mere remembrance makes me grow faint grotesque beyond the imagination of a pole or a bowl though they were damnably human in general outline despite webbed feet and hands shaaka knee wide and flabby lips glossy and bulging eyes and other features far less pleasant to recall curiously enough they seemed to have been chiseled badly out of proportion of their scenic background for one of the creatures were shown in the act of killing a whale represented as but little larger than himself I remarked as I say the grotesqueness and strange size but in a moment decided that they were merely the imaginary gods of some primitive or seafaring tried some tribe whose last descendant had perished IRA’s before the first ancestor of the Piltdown or the Neanderthal man was born or struck at this unexpected glimpse into the past beyond the conception of the most daring anthropologist I stood there musing whilst the moon cast queer reflections on a silent Channel before me then suddenly I saw it with only a slight turn in to mosque its rise to the surface the thing slid into view above the dark waters vast polymethyl I can loosen it darted like a stupendous monster to the monolith about which it flung his gigantic scaly arms all the while bound 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 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 the wildest moods when I came out of the shadows I was in a San Francisco Hospital bought thither by captain of an American ship which had picked up the boat in the middle in my delirium I had said much but found that my words were given scant attention I’ve only learned upheaval in the Pacific my rescuers knew nothing nor did I seem it necessary to insist upon a thing which I knew they could not believe once I sort out a celebrated ethnologist and amused him of particular 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 me only transient surcease and has drawn me into its clutches as a hopeless slave so now I am to end it all I have been written a full account for the information or the contemptuous amusement of my fellow man often I ask myself if it could not have been pure fantasy ism and their freak of fever As I Lay son stricken and Raven in the open boat after my escape from the German man of war this I asked myself but ever does they come before me a hideously vivid vision in reply I cannot think of the deep sea of out shuddering are the nameless things I may at this very moment to be crawlin and floundering on its slimy bed worship in their ancient stone idols and carving their own detestable likeness on submarine obelisks and water soaked granite I dream of a day when they may rise above the billows to drag down in their Rican talents a remnants of puny war exhausted mankind over they when a land shall sink in the dark ocean floor shall ascend emits universal pandemonium and 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 and will not let it God that hand the window yes the window.
