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 coastline 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 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. When at
last I awakened, 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 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 footholds 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 a 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 was an array of bas-reliefs whose subjects would have
excited the envy of a Dore. I think that these things were supposed to
depict men -- at least, a certain sort of men; though the creatures were
shown 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 shown 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 knew 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! |
