Dagon

by H. P. Lovecraft

　　

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"Perhaps I should not hope to convey in mere words the unutterable hideousness that can dwell in absolute silence and barren immensity."

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I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight Ishall be no more. Penniless, and at the end of my supply of the drug whichalone, makes life endurable, I can bear the torture no longer; and shall castmyself from this garret window into the squalid street below. Do not think frommy slavery to morphine that I am a weakling or a degenerate. When you have readthese hastily scrawled pages you may guess, though never fully realise, why itis that I must have forgetfulness or death. It was in one of the most open and least frequented parts of the broadPacific that the packet of which I was supercargo fell a victim to the Germansea-raider. The great war was then at its very beginning, and the ocean forcesof the Hun had not completely sunk to their later degradation; so that ourvessel was made a legitimate prize, whilst we of her crew were treated with allthe 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 managedto escape alone in a small boat with water and provisions for a good length oftime.When I finally found myself adrift and free, I had but little idea of mysurroundings. Never a competent navigator, I could only guess vaguely by the sunand stars that I was somewhat south of the equator. Of the longitude I knewnothing, and no island or coastline was in sight. The weather kept fair, and foruncounted days I drifted aimlessly beneath the scorching sun; waiting either forsome passing ship, or to be cast on the shores of some habitable land. Butneither ship nor land appeared, and I began to despair in my solitude upon theheaving vastness of unbroken blue.The change happened whilst I slept. Its details I shall never know; for myslumber, though troubled and dream-infested, was continuous. When at last Iawakened, it was to discover myself half sucked into a slimy expanse of hellishblack mire which extended about me in monotonous undulations as far as I couldsee, and in which my boat lay grounded some distance away.Though one might well imagine that my first sensation would be of wonder atso prodigious and unexpected a transformation of scenery, I was in reality morehorrified than astonished; for there was in the air and in the rotting soil asinister quality which chilled me to the very core. The region was putrid withthe carcasses of decaying fish, and of other less describable things which I sawprotruding from the nasty mud of the unending plain. Perhaps I should not hopeto convey in mere words the unutterable hideousness that can dwell in absolutesilence and barren immensity. There was nothing within hearing, and nothing insight save a vast reach of black slime; yet the very completeness of thestillness and the homogeneity of the landscape oppressed me with a nauseatingfear.The sun was blazing down from a sky which seemed to me almost black in itscloudless cruelty; as though reflecting the inky marsh beneath my feet. As Icrawled into the stranded boat I realised that only one theory could explain myposition. Through some unprecedented volcanic upheaval, a portion of the oceanfloor must have been thrown to the surface, exposing regions which forinnumerable 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 couldnot 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 itsside and afforded a slight shade as the sun moved across the heavens. As the dayprogressed, the ground lost some of its stickiness, and seemed likely to drysufficiently for travelling purposes in a short time. That night I slept butlittle, 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 possiblerescue.On the third morning I found the soil dry enough to walk upon with ease. Theodour of the fish was maddening; but I was too much concerned with graver thingsto mind so slight an evil, and set out boldly for an unknown goal. All day Iforged steadily westward, guided by a far-away hummock which rose higher thanany other elevation on the rolling desert. That night I encamped, and on thefollowing day still travelled toward the hummock, though that object seemedscarcely nearer than when I had first espied it. By the fourth evening Iattained the base of the mound, which turned out to be much higher than it hadappeared from a distance, an intervening valley setting it out in sharper relieffrom the general surface. Too weary to ascend, I slept in the shadow of thehill.I know not why my dreams were so wild that night; but ere the waning andfantastically gibbous moon had risen far above the eastern plain, I was awake ina cold perspiration, determined to sleep no more. Such visions as I hadexperienced were too much for me to endure again. And in the glow of the moon Isaw how unwise I had been to travel by day. Without the glare of the parchingsun, my journey would have cost me less energy; indeed, I now felt quite able toperform the ascent which had deterred me at sunset. Picking up my pack, Istarted for the crest of the eminence.I have said that the unbroken monotony of the rolling plain was a source ofvague horror to me; but I think my horror was greater when I gained the summitof 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 feltmyself on the edge of the world, peering over the rim into a fathomless chaos ofeternal night. Through my terror ran curious reminiscences of Paradise Lost, andSatan'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 thevalley were not quite so perpendicular as I had imagined. Ledges andoutcroppings of rock afforded fairly easy footholds for a descent, whilst aftera drop of a few hundred feet, the declivity became very gradual. Urged on by animpulse which I cannot definitely analyse, I scrambled with difficulty down therocks and stood on the gentler slope beneath, gazing into the Stygian deepswhere no light had yet penetrated.All at once my attention was captured by a vast and singular object on theopposite slope, which rose steeply about a hundred yards ahead of me; an objectthat gleamed whitely in the newly bestowed rays of the ascending moon. That itwas merely a gigantic piece of stone, I soon assured myself; but I was consciousof a distinct impression that its contour and position were not altogether thework of Nature. A closer scrutiny filled me with sensations I cannot express;for despite its enormous magnitude, and its position in an abyss which hadyawned at the bottom of the sea since the world was young, I perceived beyond adoubt that the strange object was a well-shaped monolith whose massive bulk hadknown the workmanship and perhaps the worship of living and thinking creatures.Dazed and frightened, yet not without a certain thrill of the scientist's orarchaeologist's delight, I examined my surroundings more closely. The moon, nownear the zenith, shone weirdly and vividly above the towering steeps that hemmedin the chasm, and revealed the fact that a far-flung body of water flowed at thebottom, winding out of sight in both directions, and almost lapping my feet as Istood on the slope. Across the chasm, the wavelets washed the base of theCyclopean monolith, on whose surface I could now trace both inscriptions andcrude 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 ofconventionalised aquatic symbols such as fishes, eels, octopi, crustaceans,molluscs, whales and the like. Several characters obviously represented marinethings which are unknown to the modern world, but whose decomposing forms I hadobserved 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 sizewas an array of bas-reliefs whose subjects would have excited the envy of aDore. I think that these things were supposed to depict men -- at least, acertain sort of men; though the creatures were shown disporting like fishes inthe waters of some marine grotto, or paying homage at some monolithic shrinewhich appeared to be under the waves as well. Of their faces and forms I darenot speak in detail, for the mere remembrance makes me grow faint. Grotesquebeyond the imagination of a Poe or a Bulwer, they were damnably human in generaloutline despite webbed hands and feet, shockingly wide and flabby lips, glassy,bulging eyes, and other features less pleasant to recall. Curiously enough, theyseemed to have been chiselled badly out of proportion with their scenicbackground; for one of the creatures was shown in the act of killing a whalerepresented as but little larger than himself. I remarked, as I say, theirgrotesqueness and strange size; but in a moment decided that they were merelythe imaginary gods of some primitive fishing or seafaring tribe; some tribewhose last descendant had perished eras before the first ancestor of thePiltdown or Neanderthal Man was born. Awestruck at this unexpected glimpse intoa past beyond the conception of the most daring anthropologist, I stood musingwhilst 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 thesurface, the thing slid into view above the dark waters. Vast, Polyphemus-like,and loathsome, it darted like a stupendous monster of nightmares to themonolith, about which it flung its gigantic scaly arms, the while it bowed itshideous 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 journeyback to the stranded boat, I remember little. I believe I sang a great deal, andlaughed oddly when I was unable to sing. I have indistinct recollections of agreat storm some time after I reached the boat; at any rate, I knew that I heardpeals 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; broughtthither by the captain of the American ship which had picked up my boat inmid-ocean. In my delirium I had said much, but found that my words had beengiven scant attention. Of any land upheaval in the Pacific, my rescuers knewnothing; nor did I deem it necessary to insist upon a thing which I knew theycould not believe. Once I sought out a celebrated ethnologist, and amused himwith peculiar questions regarding the ancient Philistine legend of Dagon, theFish-God; but soon perceiving that he was hopelessly conventional, I did notpress my inquiries.It is at night, especially when the moon is gibbous and waning, that I seethe thing. I tried morphine; but the drug has given only transient surcease, andhas 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 amusementof my fellow-men. Often I ask myself if it could not all have been a purephantasm -- a mere freak of fever as I lay sun-stricken and raving in the openboat after my escape from the German man-of-war. This I ask myself, but everdoes there come before me a hideously vivid vision in reply. I cannot think ofthe deep sea without shuddering at the nameless things that may at this verymoment be crawling and floundering on its slimy bed, worshipping their ancientstone idols and carving their own detestable likenesses on submarine obelisks ofwater-soaked granite. I dream of a day when they may rise above the billows todrag 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 amidstuniversal pandemonium.The end is near. I hear a noise at the door, as of some immense slipperybody lumbering against it. It shall not find me. God, that hand! The window! Thewindow!

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