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 had 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 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 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!
