The Shadow Over Innsmouth

by H. P. Lovecraft

Written Nov? - 3 Dec 1931

Published 1936 in The Shadow over Innsmouth, Everett, PA: Visionary Publishing
Co., p. 13-158.

During the winter of 1927-28 officials of the Federal government made a strange
and secret investigation of certain conditions in the ancient Massachusetts seaport
of Innsmouth. The public first learned of it in February, when a vast series of raids
and arrests occurred, followed by the deliberate burning and dynamiting - under
suitable precautions - of an enormous number of crumbling, worm-eaten, and
supposedly empty houses along the abandoned waterfront. Uninquiring souls let
this occurrence pass as one of the major clashes in a spasmodic war on liquor.

Keener news-followers, however, wondered at the prodigious number of arrests, the

abnormally large force of men used in making them, and the secrecy surrounding
the disposal of the prisoners. No trials, or even definite charges were reported; nor
were any of the captives seen thereafter in the regular gaols of the nation. There
were vague statements about disease and concentration camps, and later about
dispersal in various naval and military prisons, but nothing positive ever
developed. Innsmouth itself was left almost depopulated, and it is even now only
beginning to show signs of a sluggishly revived existence.

Complaints from many liberal organizations were met with long confidential
discussions, and representatives were taken on trips to certain camps and prisons.
As a result, these societies became surprisingly passive and reticent. Newspaper
men were harder to manage, but seemed largely to cooperate with the government
in the end. Only one paper - a tabloid always discounted because of its wild policy
- mentioned the deep diving submarine that discharged torpedoes downward in the
marine abyss just beyond Devil Reef. That item, gathered by chance in a haunt of
sailors, seemed indeed rather far-fetched; since the low, black reef lay a full mile
and a half out from Innsmouth Harbour.

People around the country and in the nearby towns muttered a great deal among
themselves, but said very little to the outer world. They had talked about dying and
half-deserted Innsmouth for nearly a century, and nothing new could be wilder or
more hideous than what they had whispered and hinted at years before. Many
things had taught them secretiveness, and there was no need to exert pressure on
them. Besides, they really knew little; for wide salt marshes, desolate and
unpeopled, kept neighbors off from Innsmouth on the landward side.

But at last I am going to defy the ban on speech about this thing. Results, I am
certain, are so thorough that no public harm save a shock of repulsion could ever
accrue from a hinting of what was found by those horrified men at Innsmouth.
Besides, what was found might possibly have more than one explanation. I do not
know just how much of the whole tale has been told even to me, and I have many
reasons for not wishing to probe deeper. For my contact with this affair has been
closer than that of any other layman, and I have carried away impressions which are
yet to drive me to drastic measures.

It was I who fled frantically out of Innsmouth in the early morning hours of July 16,
1927, and whose frightened appeals for government inquiry and action brought on
the whole reported episode. I was willing enough to stay mute while the affair was
fresh and uncertain; but now that it is an old story, with public interest and
curiosity gone, I have an odd craving to whisper about those few frightful hours in
that ill-rumored and evilly-shadowed seaport of death and blasphemous
abnormality. The mere telling helps me to restore confidence in my own faculties;
to reassure myself that I was not the first to succumb to a contagious nightmare
hallucination. It helps me, too, in making up my mind regarding a certain terrible
step which lies ahead of me.

I never heard of Innsmouth till the day before I saw it for the first and - so far - last
time. I was celebrating my coming of age by a tour of New England - sightseeing,
antiquarian, and genealogical - and had planned to go directly from ancient
Newburyport to Arkham, whence my mother's family was derived. I had no car, but
was travelling by train, trolley and motor-coach, always seeking the cheapest
possible route. In Newburyport they told me that the steam train was the thing to
take to Arkham; and it was only at the station ticket-office, when I demurred at the
high fare, that I learned about Innsmouth. The stout, shrewd-faced agent, whose
speech shewed him to be no local man, seemed sympathetic toward my efforts at
economy, and made a suggestion that none of my other informants had offered.

"You could take that old bus, I suppose," he said with a certain hesitation, "but it
ain't thought much of hereabouts. It goes through Innsmouth - you may have heard
about that - and so the people don't like it. Run by an Innsmouth fellow - Joe
Sargent - but never gets any custom from here, or Arkham either, I guess. Wonder it
keeps running at all. I s'pose it's cheap enough, but I never see mor'n two or three
people in it - nobody but those Innsmouth folk. Leaves the square - front of
Hammond's Drug Store - at 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. unless they've changed lately. Looks
like a terrible rattletrap - I've never been on it."

That was the first I ever heard of shadowed Innsmouth. Any reference to a town not
shown on common maps or listed in recent guidebooks would have interested me,
and the agent's odd manner of allusion roused something like real curiosity. A town
able to inspire such dislike in it its neighbors, I thought, must be at least rather
unusual, and worthy of a tourist's attention. If it came before Arkham I would stop
off there and so I asked the agent to tell me something about it. He was very
deliberate, and spoke with an air of feeling slightly superior to what he said.

"Innsmouth? Well, it's a queer kind of a town down at the mouth of the Manuxet.
Used to be almost a city - quite a port before the War of 1812 - but all gone to
pieces in the last hundred years or so. No railroad now - B. and M. never went
through, and the branch line from Rowley was given up years ago.

"More empty houses than there are people, I guess, and no business to speak of
except fishing and lobstering. Everybody trades mostly either here or in Arkham or
Ipswich. Once they had quite a few mills, but nothing's left now except one gold
refinery running on the leanest kind of part time.

"That refinery, though, used to he a big thing, and old man Marsh, who owns it,
must be richer'n Croesus. Queer old duck, though, and sticks mighty close in his
home. He's supposed to have developed some skin disease or deformity late in life
that makes him keep out of sight. Grandson of Captain Obed Marsh, who founded
the business. His mother seems to've been some kind of foreigner - they say a South
Sea islander - so everybody raised Cain when he married an Ipswich girl fifty years
ago. They always do that about Innsmouth people, and folks here and hereabouts
always try to cover up any Innsmouth blood they have in 'em. But Marsh's children
and grandchildren look just like anyone else far's I can see. I've had 'em pointed out
to me here - though, come to think of it, the elder children don't seem to be around
lately. Never saw the old man.

"And why is everybody so down on Innsmouth? Well, young fellow, you mustn't
take too much stock in what people here say. They're hard to get started, but once
they do get started they never let up. They've been telling things about Innsmouth -
whispering 'em, mostly - for the last hundred years, I guess, and I gather they're
more scared than anything else. Some of the stories would make you laugh - about
old Captain Marsh driving bargains with the devil and bringing imps out of hell to
live in Innsmouth, or about some kind of devil-worship and awful sacrifices in
some place near the wharves that people stumbled on around 1845 or thereabouts -
but I come from Panton, Vermont, and that kind of story don't go down with me.

"You ought to hear, though, what some of the old-timers tell about the black reef
off the coast - Devil Reef, they call it. It's well above water a good part of the time,
and never much below it, but at that you could hardly call it an island. The story is
that there's a whole legion of devils seen sometimes on that reef - sprawled about,
or darting in and out of some kind of caves near the top. It's a rugged, uneven thing,
a good bit over a mile out, and toward the end of shipping days sailors used to
make big detours just to avoid it.

"That is, sailors that didn't hail from Innsmouth. One of the things they had against
old Captain Marsh was that he was supposed to land on it sometimes at night when
the tide was right. Maybe he did, for I dare say the rock formation was interesting,
and it's just barely possible he was looking for pirate loot and maybe finding it; but
there was talk of his dealing with demons there. Fact is, I guess on the whole it was
really the Captain that gave the bad reputation to the reef.

"That was before the big epidemic of 1846, when over half the folks in Innsmouth
was carried off. They never did quite figure out what the trouble was, but it was
probably some foreign kind of disease brought from China or somewhere by the
shipping. It surely was bad enough - there was riots over it, and all sorts of ghastly
doings that I don't believe ever got outside of town - and it left the place in awful
shape. Never came back - there can't be more'n 300 or 400 people living there now.

"But the real thing behind the way folks feel is simply race prejudice - and I don't
say I'm blaming those that hold it. I hate those Innsmouth folks myself, and I
wouldn't care to go to their town. I s'pose you know - though I can see you're a
Westerner by your talk - what a lot our New England ships - used to have to do with
queer ports in Africa, Asia, the South Seas, and everywhere else, and what queer
kinds of people they sometimes brought back with 'em. You've probably heard
about the Salem man that came home with a Chinese wife, and maybe you know
there's still a bunch of Fiji Islanders somewhere around Cape Cod.

"Well, there must be something like that back of the Innsmouth people. The place
always was badly cut off from the rest of the country by marshes and creeks and we
can't be sure about the ins and outs of the matter; but it's pretty clear that old
Captain Marsh must have brought home some odd specimens when he had all three
of his ships in commission back in the twenties and thirties. There certainly is a
strange kind of streak in the Innsmouth folks today - I don't know how to explain it
but it sort of makes you crawl. You'll notice a little in Sargent if you take his bus.
Some of 'em have queer narrow heads with flat noses and bulgy, starry eyes that
never seem to shut, and their skin ain't quite right. Rough and scabby, and the sides
of the necks are all shriveled or creased up. Get bald, too, very young. The older
fellows look the worst - fact is, I don't believe I've ever seen a very old chap of that
kind. Guess they must die of looking in the glass! Animals hate 'em - they used to
have lots of horse trouble before the autos came in.

"Nobody around here or in Arkham or Ipswich will have anything to do with 'em,
and they act kind of offish themselves when they come to town or when anyone
tries to fish on their grounds. Queer how fish are always thick off Innsmouth
Harbour when there ain't any anywhere else around - but just try to fish there
yourself and see how the folks chase you off! Those people used to come here on
the railroad - walking and taking the train at Rowley after the branch was dropped -
but now they use that bus.

"Yes, there's a hotel in Innsmouth - called the Gilman House - but I don't believe it
can amount to much. I wouldn't advise you to try it. Better stay over here and take
the ten o'clock bus tomorrow morning; then you can get an evening bus there for
Arkham at eight o'clock. There was a factory inspector who stopped at the Gilman a
couple of years ago and he had a lot of unpleasant hints about the place. Seems
they get a queer crowd there, for this fellow heard voices in other rooms - though
most of 'em was empty - that gave him the shivers. It was foreign talk he thought,
but he said the bad thing about it was the kind of voice that sometimes spoke. It
sounded so unnatural - slopping like, he said - that he didn't dare undress and go to
sleep. Just waited up and lit out the first thing in the morning. The talk went on
most all night.

"This fellow - Casey, his name was - had a lot to say about how the Innsmouth folk,
watched him and seemed kind of on guard. He found the Marsh refinery a queer
place - it's in an old mill on the lower falls of the Manuxet. What he said tallied up
with what I'd heard. Books in bad shape, and no clear account of any kind of
dealings. You know it's always been a kind of mystery where the Marshes get the
gold they refine. They've never seemed to do much buying in that line, but years
ago they shipped out an enormous lot of ingots.

"Used to be talk of a queer foreign kind of jewelry that the sailors and refinery men
sometimes sold on the sly, or that was seen once or twice on some of the Marsh
women-folks. People allowed maybe old Captain Obed traded for it in some
heathen port, especially since he always ordered stacks of glass beads and trinkets
such as seafaring men used to get for native trade. Others thought and still think
he'd found an old pirate cache out on Devil Reef. But here's a funny thing. The old
Captain's been dead these sixty years, and there's ain't been a good-sized ship out
of the place since the Civil War; but just the same the Marshes still keep on buying
a few of those native trade things - mostly glass and rubber gewgaws, they tell me.
Maybe the Innsmouth folks like 'em to look at themselves - Gawd knows they've
gotten to be about as bad as South Sea cannibals and Guinea savages.

"That plague of '46 must have taken off the best blood in the place. Anyway,
they're a doubtful lot now, and the Marshes and other rich folks are as bad as any.
As I told you, there probably ain't more'n 400 people in the whole town in spite of
all the streets they say there are. I guess they're what they call 'white trash' down
South - lawless and sly, and full of secret things. They get a lot of fish and lobsters
and do exporting by truck. Queer how the fish swarm right there and nowhere else.

"Nobody can ever keep track of these people, and state school officials and census
men have a devil of a time. You can bet that prying strangers ain't welcome around
Innsmouth. I've heard personally of more'n one business or government man that's
disappeared there, and there's loose talk of one who went crazy and is out at
Danvers now. They must have fixed up some awful scare for that fellow.

"That's why I wouldn't go at night if I was you. I've never been there and have no
wish to go, but I guess a daytime trip couldn't hurt you - even though the people
hereabouts will advise you not to make it. If you're just sightseeing, and looking
for old-time stuff, Innsmouth ought to be quite a place for you."

And so I spent part of that evening at the Newburyport Public Library looking up
data about Innsmouth. When I had tried to question the natives in the shops, the
lunchroom, the garages, and the fire station, I had found them even harder to get
started than the ticket agent had predicted; and realized that I could not spare the
time to overcome their first instinctive reticence. They had a kind of obscure
suspiciousness, as if there were something amiss with anyone too much interested
in Innsmouth. At the Y. M. C. A., where I was stopping, the clerk merely
discouraged my going to such a dismal, decadent place; and the people at the
library shewed much the same attitude. Clearly, in the eyes of the educated,
Innsmouth was merely an exaggerated case of civic degeneration.

The Essex County histories on the library shelves had very little to say, except that
the town was founded in 1643, noted for shipbuilding before the Revolution, a seat
of great marine prosperity in the early 19th century, and later a minor factory center
using the Manuxet as power. The epidemic and riots of 1846 were very sparsely
treated, as if they formed a discredit to the county.

References to decline were few, though the significance of the later record was
unmistakable. After the Civil War all industrial life was confined to the Marsh
Refining Company, and the marketing of gold ingots formed the only remaining
bit of major commerce aside from the eternal fishing. That fishing paid less and less
as the price of the commodity fell and large-scale corporations offered competition,
but there was never a dearth of fish around Innsmouth Harbour. Foreigners seldom
settled there, and there was some discreetly veiled evidence that a number of Poles
and Portuguese who had tried it had been scattered in a peculiarly drastic fashion.

Most interesting of all was a glancing reference to the strange jewelry vaguely
associated with Innsmouth. It had evidently impressed the whole countryside more
than a little, for mention was made of specimens in the museum of Miskatonic
University at Arkham, and in the display room of the Newburyport Historical
Society. The fragmentary descriptions of these things were bald and prosaic, but
they hinted to me an undercurrent of persistent strangeness. Something about them
seemed so odd and provocative that I could not put them out of my mind, and
despite the relative lateness of the hour I resolved to see the local sample - said to
be a large, queerly-proportioned thing evidently meant for a tiara - if it could
possibly be arranged.

The librarian gave me a note of introduction to the curator of the Society, a Miss
Anna Tilton, who lived nearby, and after a brief explanation that ancient
gentlewoman was kind enough to pilot me into the closed building, since the hour
was not outrageously late. The collection was a notable one indeed, but in my
present mood I had eyes for nothing but the bizarre object which glistened in a
corner cupboard under the electric lights.

It took no excessive sensitiveness to beauty to make me literally gasp at the

strange, unearthly splendour of the alien, opulent phantasy that rested there on a
purple velvet cushion. Even now I can hardly describe what I saw, though it was
clearly enough a sort of tiara, as the description had said. It was tall in front, and
with a very large and curiously irregular periphery, as if designed for a head of
almost freakishly elliptical outline. The material seemed to be predominantly gold,
though a weird lighter lustrousness hinted at some strange alloy with an equally
beautiful and scarcely identifiable metal. Its condition was almost perfect, and one
could have spent hours in studying the striking and puzzlingly untraditional
designs - some simply geometrical, and some plainly marine - chased or moulded
in high relief on its surface with a craftsmanship of incredible skill and grace.

The longer I looked, the more the thing fascinated me; and in this fascination there
was a curiously disturbing element hardly to be classified or accounted for. At first I
decided that it was the queer other-worldly quality of the art which made me
uneasy. All other art objects I had ever seen either belonged to some known racial
or national stream, or else were consciously modernistic defiances of every
recognized stream. This tiara was neither. It clearly belonged to some settled
technique of infinite maturity and perfection, yet that technique was utterly remote
from any - Eastern or Western, ancient or modern - which I had ever heard of or seen
exemplified. It was as if the workmanship were that of another planet.

However, I soon saw that my uneasiness had a second and perhaps equally potent
source residing in the pictorial and mathematical suggestion of the strange designs.
The patterns all hinted of remote secrets and unimaginable abysses in time and
space, and the monotonously aquatic nature of the reliefs became almost sinister.
Among these reliefs were fabulous monsters of abhorrent grotesqueness and
malignity - half ichthyic and half batrachian in suggestion - which one could not
dissociate from a certain haunting and uncomfortable sense of pseudomemory, as if
they called up some image from deep cells and tissues whose retentive functions
are wholly primal and awesomely ancestral. At times I fancied that every contour of
these blasphemous fish-frogs was over-flowing with the ultimate quintessence of
unknown and inhuman evil.

In odd contrast to the tiara's aspect was its brief and prosy history as related by Miss
Tilton. It had been pawned for a ridiculous sum at a shop in State Street in 1873, by
a drunken Innsmouth man shortly afterward killed in a brawl. The Society had
acquired it directly from the pawnbroker, at once giving it a display worthy of its
quality. It was labeled as of probable East-Indian or Indochinese provenance,
though the attribution was frankly tentative.

Miss Tilton, comparing all possible hypotheses regarding its origin and its
presence in New England, was inclined to believe that it formed part of some exotic
pirate hoard discovered by old Captain Obed Marsh. This view was surely not
weakened by the insistent offers of purchase at a high price which the Marshes
began to make as soon as they knew of its presence, and which they repeated to this
day despite the Society's unvarying determination not to sell.

As the good lady shewed me out of the building she made it clear that the pirate
theory of the Marsh fortune was a popular one among the intelligent people of the
region. Her own attitude toward shadowed Innsmouth - which she never seen - was
one of disgust at a community slipping far down the cultural scale, and she assured
me that the rumours of devil-worship were partly justified by a peculiar secret cult
which had gained force there and engulfed all the orthodox churches.

It was called, she said, "The Esoteric Order of Dagon", and was undoubtedly a
debased, quasi-pagan thing imported from the East a century before, at a time when
the Innsmouth fisheries seemed to be going barren. Its persistence among a simple
people was quite natural in view of the sudden and permanent return of abundantly
fine fishing, and it soon came to be the greatest influence in the town, replacing
Freemasonry altogether and taking up headquarters in the old Masonic Hall on
New Church Green.

All this, to the pious Miss Tilton, formed an excellent reason for shunning the
ancient town of decay and desolation; but to me it was merely a fresh incentive. To
my architectural and historical anticipations was now added an acute
anthropological zeal, and I could scarcely sleep in my small room at the "Y" as the
night wore away.

II

Shortly before ten the next morning I stood with one small valise in front of
Hammond's Drug Store in old Market Square waiting for the Innsmouth bus. As the
hour for its arrival drew near I noticed a general drift of the loungers to other places
up the street, or to the Ideal Lunch across the square. Evidently the ticket-agent had
not exaggerated the dislike which local People bore toward Innsmouth and its
denizens. In a few moments a small motor-coach of extreme decrepitude and dirty
grey colour rattled down State Street, made a turn, and drew up at the curb beside
me. I felt immediately that it was the right one; a guess which the half-illegible sign
on the windshield - Arkham-Innsmouth-Newburyport - soon verified.

There were only three passengers - dark, unkempt men of sullen visage and
somewhat youthful cast - and when the vehicle stopped they clumsily shambled
out and began walking up State Street in a silent, almost furtive fashion. The driver
also alighted, and I watched him as he went into the drug store to make some
purchase. This, I reflected, must be the Joe Sargent mentioned by the ticket-agent;
and even before I noticed any details there spread over me a wave of spontaneous
aversion which could be neither checked nor explained. It suddenly struck me as
very natural that the local people should not wish to ride on a bus owned and
driven by this man, or to visit any oftener than possible the habitat of such a man
and his kinsfolk.

When the driver came out of the store I looked at him more carefully and tried to
determine the source of my evil impression. He was a thin, stoop-shouldered man
not much under six feet tall, dressed in shabby blue civilian clothes and wearing a
frayed golf cap. His age was perhaps thirty-five, but the odd, deep creases in the
sides of his neck made him seem older when one did not study his dull,
expressionless face. He had a narrow head, bulging, watery-blue eyes that seemed
never to wink, a flat nose, a receding forehead and chin, and singularly
undeveloped ears. His long thick lip and coarse-pored, greyish cheeks seemed
almost beardless except for some sparse yellow hairs that straggled and curled in
irregular patches; and in places the surface seemed queerly irregular, as if peeling
from some cutaneous disease. His hands were large and heavily veined, and had a
very unusual greyish-blue tinge. The fingers were strikingly short in proportion to
the rest of the structure, and seemed to have a tendency to curl closely into the
huge palm. As he walked toward the bus I observed his peculiarly shambling gait
and saw that his feet were inordinately immense. The more I studied them the more
I wondered how he could buy any shoes to fit them.

A certain greasiness about the fellow increased my dislike. He was evidently given
to working or lounging around the fish docks, and carried with him much of their
characteristic smell. Just what foreign blood was in him I could not even guess. His
oddities certainly did not look Asiatic, Polynesian, Levantine or negroid, yet I
could see why the people found him alien. I myself would have thought of
biological degeneration rather than alienage.

I was sorry when I saw there would be no other passengers on the bus. Somehow I
did not like the idea of riding alone with this driver. But as leaving time obviously
approached I conquered my qualms and followed the man aboard, extending him a
dollar bill and murmuring the single word "Innsmouth." He looked curiously at me
for a second as he returned forty cents change without speaking. I took a seat far
behind him, but on the same side of the bus, since I wished to watch the shore
during the journey.

At length the decrepit vehicle stared with a jerk, and rattled noisily past the old
brick buildings of State Street amidst a cloud of vapour from the exhaust. Glancing
at the people on the sidewalks, I thought I detected in them a curious wish to avoid
looking at the bus - or at least a wish to avoid seeming to look at it. Then we turned
to the left into High Street, where the going was smoother; flying by stately old
mansions of the early republic and still older colonial farmhouses, passing the
Lower Green and Parker River, and finally emerging into a long, monotonous
stretch of open shore country.

The day was warm and sunny, but the landscape of sand and sedge-grass, and
stunted shrubbery became more and desolate as we proceeded. Out the window I
could see the blue water and the sandy line of Plum Island, and we presently drew
very near the beach as our narrow road veered off from the main highway to
Rowley and Ipswich. There were no visible houses, and I could tell by the state of
the road that traffic was very light hereabouts. The weather-worn telephone poles
carried only two wires. Now and then we crossed crude wooden bridges over tidal
creeks that wound far inland and promoted the general isolation of the region.

Once in a while I noticed dead stumps and crumbling foundation-walls above the
drifting sand, and recalled the old tradition quoted in one of the histories I had
read, that this was once a fertile and thickly-settled countryside. The change, it was
said, came simultaneously with the Innsmouth epidemic of l846, and was thought
by simple folk to have a dark connection with hidden forces of evil. Actually, it
was caused by the unwise cutting of woodlands near the shore, which robbed the
soil of the best protection and opened the way for waves of wind-blown sand.

At last we lost sight of Plum Island and saw the vast expanse of the open Atlantic
on our left. Our narrow course began to climb steeply, and I felt a singular sense of
disquiet in looking at the lonely crest ahead where the rutted road-way met the sky.
It was as if the bus were about to keep on in its ascent, leaving the sane earth
altogether and merging with the unknown arcana of upper air and cryptical sky.
The smell of the sea took on ominous implications, and the silent driver's bent,
rigid back and narrow head became more and more hateful. As I looked at him I saw
that the back of his head was almost as hairless as his face, having only a few
straggling yellow strands upon a grey scabrous surface.

Then we reached the crest and beheld the outspread valley beyond, where the
Manuxet joins the sea just north of the long line of cliffs that culminate in
Kingsport Head and veer off toward Cape Ann. On the far misty horizon I could just
make out the dizzy profile of the Head, topped by the queer ancient house of which
so many legends are told; but for the moment all my attention was captured by the
nearer panorama just below me. I had, I realized, come face to face with rumour-
shadowed Innsmouth.

It was a town of wide extent and dense construction, yet one with a portentous
dearth of visible life. From the tangle of chimney-pots scarcely a wisp of smoke
came, and the three tall steeples loomed stark and unpainted against the seaward
horizon. One of them was crumbling down at the top, and in that and another there
were only black gaping holes where clock-dials should have been. The vast huddle
of sagging gambrel roofs and peaked gables conveyed with offensive clearness the
idea of wormy decay, and as we approached along the now descending road I could
see that many roofs had wholly caved in. There were some large square Georgian
houses, too, with hipped roofs, cupolas, and railed "widow's walks." These were
mostly well back from the water, and one or two seemed to be in moderately sound
condition. Stretching inland from among them I saw the rusted, grass-grown line of
the abandoned railway, with leaning telegraph-poles now devoid of wires, and the
half-obscured lines of the old carriage roads to Rowley and Ipswich.

The decay was worst close to the waterfront, though in its very midst I could spy
the white belfry of a fairly well preserved brick structure which looked like a small
factory. The harbour, long clogged with sand, was enclosed by an ancient stone
breakwater; on which I could begin to discern the minute forms of a few seated
fishermen, and at whose end were what looked like the foundations of a bygone
lighthouse. A sandy tongue had formed inside this barrier and upon it I saw a few
decrepit cabins, moored dories, and scattered lobster-pots. The only deep water
seemed to be where the river poured out past the belfried structure and turned
southward to join the ocean at the breakwater's end.

Here and there the ruins of wharves jutted out from the shore to end in
indeterminate rottenness, those farthest south seeming the most decayed. And far
out at sea, despite a high tide, I glimpsed a long, black line scarcely rising above
the water yet carrying a suggestion of odd latent malignancy. This, I knew, must be
Devil Reef. As I looked, a subtle, curious sense of beckoning seemed superadded to
the grim repulsion; and oddly enough, I found this overtone more disturbing than
the primary impression.

We met no one on the road, but presently began to pass deserted farms in varying
stages of ruin. Then I noticed a few inhabited houses with rags stuffed in the broken
windows and shells and dead fish lying about the littered yards. Once or twice I saw
listless-looking people working in barren gardens or digging clams on the fishy-
smelling beach below, and groups of dirty, simian-visaged children playing around
weed-grown doorsteps. Somehow these people seemed more disquieting than the
dismal buildings, for almost every one had certain peculiarities of face and motions
which I instinctively disliked without being able to define or comprehend them.
For a second I thought this typical physique suggested some picture I had seen,
perhaps in a book, under circumstances of particular horror or melancholy; but this
pseudo-recollection passed very quickly.

As the bus reached a lower level I began to catch the steady note of a waterfall
through the unnatural stillness, The leaning, unpainted houses grew thicker, lined
both sides of the road, and displayed more urban tendencies than did those we were
leaving behind, The panorama ahead had contracted to a street scene, and in spots I
could see where a cobblestone pavement and stretches of brick sidewalk had
formerly existed. All the houses were apparently deserted, and there were
occasional gaps where tumbledown chimneys and cellar walls told of buildings
that had collapsed. Pervading everything was the most nauseous fishy odour
imaginable.

Soon cross streets and junctions began to appear; those on the left leading to
shoreward realms of unpaved squalor and decay, while those on the right shewed
vistas of departed grandeur. So far I had seen no people in the town, but there now
came signs of a sparse habitation - curtained windows here and there, and an
occasional battered motorcar at the curb. Pavement and sidewalks were
increasingly well-defined, and though most of the houses were quite old - wood
and brick structures of the early 19th century - they were obviously kept fit for
habitation. As an amateur antiquarian I almost lost my olfactory disgust and my
feeling of menace and repulsion amidst this rich, unaltered survival from the past.

But I was not to reach my destination without one very strong impression of
poignantly disagreeable quality. The bus had come to a sort of open concourse or
radial point with churches on two sides and the bedraggled remains of a circular
green in the centre, and I was looking at a large pillared hall on the right-hand
junction ahead. The structure's once white paint was now gray and peeling and the
black and gold sign on the pediment was so faded that I could only with difficulty
make out the words "Esoteric Order of Dagon". This, then was the former Masonic
Hall now given over to a degraded cult. As I strained to decipher this inscription
my notice was distracted by the raucous tones of a cracked bell across the street,
and I quickly turned to look out the window on my side of the coach.

The sound came from a squat stone church of manifestly later date than most of the
houses, built in a clumsy Gothic fashion and having a disproportionately high
basement with shuttered windows. Though the hands of its clock were missing on
the side I glimpsed, I knew that those hoarse strokes were tolling the hour of
eleven. Then suddenly all thoughts of time were blotted out by an onrushing image
of sharp intensity and unaccountable horror which had seized me before I knew
what it really was. The door of the church basement was open, revealing a rectangle
of blackness inside. And as I looked, a certain object crossed or seemed to cross
that dark rectangle; burning into my brain a momentary conception of nightmare
which was all the more maddening because analysis could not shew a single
nightmarish quality in it.

It was a living object - the first except the driver that I had seen since entering the
compact part of the town - and had I been in a steadier mood I would have found
nothing whatever of terror in it. Clearly, as I realised a moment later, it was the
pastor; clad in some peculiar vestments doubtless introduced since the Order of
Dagon had modified the ritual of the local churches. The thing which had probably
caught my first subconscious glance and supplied the touch of bizarre horror was
the tall tiara he wore; an almost exact duplicate of the one Miss Tilton had shown
me the previous evening. This, acting on my imagination, had supplied namelessly
sinister qualities to the indeterminate face and robed, shambling form beneath it.
There was not, I soon decided, any reason why I should have felt that shuddering
touch of evil pseudo-memory. Was it not natural that a local mystery cult should
adopt among its regimentals an unique type of head-dress made familiar to the
community in some strange way - perhaps as treasure-trove?

A very thin sprinkling of repellent-looking youngish people now became visible

on the sidewalks - lone individuals, and silent knots of two or three. The lower
floors of the crumbling houses sometimes harboured small shops with dingy signs,
and I noticed a parked truck or two as we rattled along. The sound of waterfalls
became more and more distinct, and presently I saw a fairly deep river-gorge ahead,
spanned by a wide, iron-railed highway bridge beyond which a large square
opened out. As we clanked over the bridge I looked out on both sides and observed
some factory buildings on the edge of the grassy bluff or part way down. The water
far below was very abundant, and I could see two vigorous sets of falls upstream on
my right and at least one downstream on my left. From this point the noise was
quite deafening. Then we rolled into the large semicircular square across the river
and drew up on the right-hand side in front of a tall, cupola crowned building with
remnants of yellow paint and with a half-effaced sign proclaiming it to be the
Gilman House.

I was glad to get out of that bus, and at once proceeded to check my valise in the
shabby hotel lobby. There was only one person in sight - an elderly man without
what I had come to call the "Innsmouth look" - and I decided not to ask him any of
the questions which bothered me; remembering that odd things had been noticed
in this hotel. Instead, I strolled out on the square, from which the bus had already
gone, and studied the scene minutely and appraisingly.

One side of the cobblestoned open space was the straight line of the river; the other
was a semicircle of slant-roofed brick buildings of about the 1800 period, from
which several streets radiated away to the southeast, south, and southwest. Lamps
were depressingly few and small - all low-powered incandescents - and I was glad
that my plans called for departure before dark, even though I knew the moon would
be bright. The buildings were all in fair condition, and included perhaps a dozen
shops in current operation; of which one was a grocery of the First National chain,
others a dismal restaurant, a drug store, and a wholesale fish-dealer's office, and still
another, at the eastward extremity of the square near the river an office of the town's
only industry - the Marsh Refining Company. There were perhaps ten people
visible, and four or five automobiles and motor trucks stood scattered about. I did
not need to be told that this was the civic centre of Innsmouth. Eastward I could
catch blue glimpses of the harbour, against which rose the decaying remains of
three once beautiful Georgian steeples. And toward the shore on the opposite bank
of the river I saw the white belfry surmounting what I took to be the Marsh refinery.

For some reason or other I chose to make my first inquiries at the chain grocery,
whose personnel was not likely to be native to Innsmouth. I found a solitary boy of
about seventeen in charge, and was pleased to note the brightness and affability
which promised cheerful information. He seemed exceptionally eager to talk, and I
soon gathered that he did not like the place, its fishy smell, or its furtive people. A
word with any outsider was a relief to him. He hailed from Arkham, boarded with a
family who came from Ipswich, and went back whenever he got a moment off. His
family did not like him to work in Innsmouth, but the chain had transferred him
there and he did not wish to give up his job.

There was, he said, no public library or chamber of commerce in Innsmouth, but I

could probably find my way about. The street I had come down was Federal. West
of that were the fine old residence streets - Broad, Washington, Lafayette, and
Adams - and east of it were the shoreward slums. It was in these slums - along Main
Street - that I would find the old Georgian churches, but they were all long
abandoned. It would be well not to make oneself too conspicuous in such
neighbourhoods - especially north of the river since the people were sullen and
hostile. Some strangers had even disappeared.

Certain spots were almost forbidden territory, as he had learned at considerable

cost. One must not, for example, linger much around the Marsh refinery, or around
any of the still used churches, or around the pillared Order of Dagon Hall at New
Church Green. Those churches were very odd - all violently disavowed by their
respective denominations elsewhere, and apparently using the queerest kind of
ceremonials and clerical vestments. Their creeds were heterodox and mysterious,
involving hints of certain marvelous transformations leading to bodily immortality
- of a sort - on this earth. The youth's own pastor - Dr. Wallace of Asbury M. E.
Church in Arkham - had gravely urged him not to join any church in Innsmouth.

As for the Innsmouth people - the youth hardly knew what to make of them. They
were as furtive and seldom seen as animals that live in burrows, and one could
hardly imagine how they passed the time apart from their desultory fishing. Perhaps
- judging from the quantities of bootleg liquor they consumed - they lay for most of
the daylight hours in an alcoholic stupor. They seemed sullenly banded together in
some sort of fellowship and understanding - despising the world as if they had
access to other and preferable spheres of entity. Their appearance - especially those
staring, unwinking eyes which one never saw shut - was certainly shocking
enough; and their voices were disgusting. It was awful to hear them chanting in
their churches at night, and especially during their main festivals or revivals, which
fell twice a year on April 30th and October 31st.

They were very fond of the water, and swam a great deal in both river and harbour.
Swimming races out to Devil Reef were very common, and everyone in sight
seemed well able to share in this arduous sport. When one came to think of it, it was
generally only rather young people who were seen about in public, and of these the
oldest were apt to be the most tainted-looking. When exceptions did occur, they
were mostly persons with no trace of aberrancy, like the old clerk at the hotel. One
wondered what became of the bulk of the older folk, and whether the "Innsmouth
look" were not a strange and insidious disease-phenomenon which increased its
hold as years advanced.

Only a very rare affliction, of course, could bring about such vast and radical
anatomical changes in a single individual after maturity - changes invoking
osseous factors as basic as the shape of the skull - but then, even this aspect was no
more baffling and unheard-of than the visible features of the malady as a whole. It
would be hard, the youth implied, to form any real conclusions regarding such a
matter; since one never came to know the natives personally no matter how long
one might live in Innsmouth.

The youth was certain that many specimens even worse than the worst visible ones
were kept locked indoors in some places. People sometimes heard the queerest kind
of sounds. The tottering waterfront hovels north of the river were reputedly
connected by hidden tunnels, being thus a veritable warren of unseen
abnormalities. What kind of foreign blood - if any - these beings had, it was
impossible to tell. They sometimes kept certain especially repulsive characters out
of sight when government and others from the outside world came to town.

It would be of no use, my informant said, to ask the natives anything about the
place. The only one who would talk was a very aged but normal looking man who
lived at the poorhouse on the north rim of the town and spent his time walking
about or lounging around the fire station. This hoary character, Zadok Allen, was
96 years old and somewhat touched in the head, besides being the town drunkard.
He was a strange, furtive creature who constantly looked over his shoulder as if
afraid of something, and when sober could not be persuaded to talk at all with
strangers. He was, however, unable to resist any offer of his favorite poison; and
once drunk would furnish the most astonishing fragments of whispered
reminiscence.
After all, though, little useful data could be gained from him; since his stories were
all insane, incomplete hints of impossible marvels and horrors which could have no
source save in his own disordered fancy. Nobody ever believed him, but the natives
did not like him to drink and talk with strangers; and it was not always safe to be
seen questioning him. It was probably from him that some of the wildest popular
whispers and delusions were derived.

Several non-native residents had reported monstrous glimpses from time to time,
but between old Zadok's tales and the malformed inhabitants it was no wonder such
illusions were current. None of the non-natives ever stayed out late at night, there
being a widespread impression that it was not wise to do so. Besides, the streets
were loathsomely dark.

As for business - the abundance of fish was certainly almost uncanny, but the
natives were taking less and less advantage of it. Moreover, prices were falling and
competition was growing. Of course the town's real business was the refinery, whose
commercial office was on the square only a few doors east of where we stood. Old
Man Marsh was never seen, but sometimes went to the works in a closed, curtained
car.

There were all sorts of rumors about how Marsh had come to look. He had once
been a great dandy; and people said he still wore the frock-coated finery of the
Edwardian age curiously adapted to certain deformities. His son had formerly
conducted the office in the square, but latterly they had been keeping out of sight a
good deal and leaving the brunt of affairs to the younger generation. The sons and
their sisters had come to look very queer, especially the elder ones; and it was said
that their health was failing.

One of the Marsh daughters was a repellent, reptilian-looking woman who wore an
excess of weird jewellery clearly of the same exotic tradition as that to which the
strange tiara belonged. My informant had noticed it many times, and had heard it
spoken of as coming from some secret hoard, either of pirates or of demons. The
clergymen - or priests, or whatever they were called nowadays - also wore this kind
of ornament as a headdress; but one seldom caught glimpses of them. Other
specimens the youth had not seen, though many were rumoured to exist around
Innsmouth.

The Marshes, together with the other three gently bred families of the town - the
Waites, the Gilmans, and the Eliots - were all very retiring. They lived in immense
houses along Washington Street, and several were reputed to harbour in
concealment certain living kinsfolk whose personal aspect forbade public view,
and whose deaths had been reported and recorded.

Warning me that many of the street signs were down, the youth drew for my benefit
a rough but ample and painstaking sketch map of the town's salient features. After a
moment's study I felt sure that it would be of great help, and pocketed it with
profuse thanks. Disliking the dinginess of the single restaurant I had seen, I bought
a fair supply of cheese crackers and ginger wafers to serve as a lunch later on. My
program, I decided, would be to thread the principal streets, talk with any non-
natives I might encounter, and catch the eight o'clock coach for Arkham. The town,
I could see, formed a significant and exaggerated example of communal decay; but
being no sociologist I would limit my serious observations to the field of
architecture.

Thus I began my systematic though half-bewildered tour of Innsmouth's narrow,

shadow-blighted ways. Crossing the bridge and turning toward the roar of the lower
falls, I passed close to the Marsh refinery, which seemed to be oddly free from the
noise of industry. The building stood on the steep river bluff near a bridge and an
open confluence of streets which I took to be the earliest civic center, displaced
after the Revolution by the present Town Square.

Re-crossing the gorge on the Main Street bridge, I struck a region of utter desertion
which somehow made me shudder. Collapsing huddles of gambrel roofs formed a
jagged and fantastic skyline, above which rose the ghoulish, decapitated steeple of
an ancient church. Some houses along Main Street were tenanted, but most were
tightly boarded up. Down unpaved side streets I saw the black, gaping windows of
deserted hovels, many of which leaned at perilous and incredible angles through
the sinking of part of the foundations. Those windows stared so spectrally that it
took courage to turn eastward toward the waterfront. Certainly, the terror of a
deserted house swells in geometrical rather than arithmetical progression as houses
multiply to form a city of stark desolation. The sight of such endless avenues of
fishy-eyed vacancy and death, and the thought of such linked infinities of black,
brooding compartments given over to cob-webs and memories and the conqueror
worm, start up vestigial fears and aversions that not even the stoutest philosophy
can disperse.

Fish Street was as deserted as Main, though it differed in having many brick and
stone warehouses still in excellent shape. Water Street was almost its duplicate,
save that there were great seaward gaps where wharves had been. Not a living thing
did I see except for the scattered fishermen on the distant break-water, and not a
sound did I hear save the lapping of the harbour tides and the roar of the falls in the
Manuxet. The town was getting more and more on my nerves, and I looked behind
me furtively as I picked my way back over the tottering Water Street bridge. The
Fish Street bridge, according to the sketch, was in ruins.

North of the river there were traces of squalid life - active fish-packing houses in
Water Street, smoking chimneys and patched roofs here and there, occasional
sounds from indeterminate sources, and infrequent shambling forms in the dismal
streets and unpaved lanes - but I seemed to find this even more oppressive than the
southerly desertion. For one thing, the people were more hideous and abnormal
than those near the centre of the town; so that I was several times evilly reminded
of something utterly fantastic which I could not quite place. Undoubtedly the alien
strain in the Innsmouth folk was stronger here than farther inland - unless, indeed,
the "Innsmouth look" were a disease rather than a blood stain, in which case this
district might be held to harbour the more advanced cases.

One detail that annoyed me was the distribution of the few faint sounds I heard.
They ought naturally to have come wholly from the visibly inhabited houses, yet
in reality were often strongest inside the most rigidly boarded-up facades. There
were creakings, scurryings, and hoarse doubtful noises; and I thought
uncomfortably about the hidden tunnels suggested by the grocery boy. Suddenly I
found myself wondering what the voices of those denizens would be like. I had
heard no speech so far in this quarter, and was unaccountably anxious not to do so.

Pausing only long enough to look at two fine but ruinous old churches at Main and
Church Streets, I hastened out of that vile waterfront slum. My next logical goal
was New Church Green, but somehow or other I could not bear to repass the church
in whose basement I had glimpsed the inexplicably frightening form of that
strangely diademmed priest or pastor. Besides, the grocery youth had told me that
churches, as well as the Order of Dagon Hall, were not advisable neighbourhoods
for strangers.

Accordingly I kept north along Main to Martin, then turning inland, crossing
Federal Street safely north of the Green, and entering the decayed patrician
neighbourhood of northern Broad, Washington, Lafayette, and Adams Streets.
Though these stately old avenues were ill-surfaced and unkempt, their elm-shaded
dignity had not entirely departed. Mansion after mansion claimed my gaze, most of
them decrepit and boarded up amidst neglected grounds, but one or two in each
street shewing signs of occupancy. In Washington Street there was a row of four or
five in excellent repair and with finely-tended lawns and gardens. The most
sumptuous of these - with wide terraced parterres extending back the whole way to
Lafayette Street - I took to be the home of Old Man Marsh, the afflicted refinery
owner.

In all these streets no living thing was visible, and I wondered at the complete
absence of cats and dogs from Innsmouth. Another thing which puzzled and
disturbed me, even in some of the best-preserved mansions, was the tightly
shuttered condition of many third-story and attic windows. Furtiveness and
secretiveness seemed universal in this hushed city of alienage and death, and I
could not escape the sensation of being watched from ambush on every hand by
sly, staring eyes that never shut.
I shivered as the cracked stroke of three sounded from a belfry on my left. Too well
did I recall the squat church from which those notes came. Following Washington
street toward the river, I now faced a new zone of former industry and commerce;
noting the ruins of a factory ahead, and seeing others, with the traces of an old
railway station and covered railway bridge beyond, up the gorge on my right.

The uncertain bridge now before me was posted with a warning sign, but I took the
risk and crossed again to the south bank where traces of life reappeared. Furtive,
shambling creatures stared cryptically in my direction, and more normal faces eyed
me coldly and curiously. Innsmouth was rapidly becoming intolerable, and I turned
down Paine Street toward the Square in the hope of getting some vehicle to take me
to Arkham before the still-distant starting-time of that sinister bus.

It was then that I saw the tumbledown fire station on my left, and noticed the red
faced, bushy-bearded, watery eyed old man in nondescript rags who sat on a bench
in front of it talking with a pair of unkempt but not abnormal looking firemen. This,
of course, must be Zadok Allen, the half-crazed, liquorish nonagenarian whose
tales of old Innsmouth and its shadow were so hideous and incredible.

III

It must have been some imp of the perverse - or some sardonic pull from dark,
hidden sources - which made me change my plans as I did. I had long before
resolved to limit my observations to architecture alone, and I was even then
hurrying toward the Square in an effort to get quick transportation out of this
festering city of death and decay; but the sight of old Zadok Allen set up new
currents in my mind and made me slacken my pace uncertainly.

I had been assured that the old man could do nothing but hint at wild, disjointed,
and incredible legends, and I had been warned that the natives made it unsafe to be
seen talking with him; yet the thought of this aged witness to the town's decay,
with memories going back to the early days of ships and factories, was a lure that
no amount of reason could make me resist. After all, the strangest and maddest of
myths are often merely symbols or allegories based upon truth - and old Zadok
must have seen everything which went on around Innsmouth for the last ninety
years. Curiosity flared up beyond sense and caution, and in my youthful egotism I
fancied I might be able to sift a nucleus of real history from the confused,
extravagant outpouring I would probably extract with the aid of raw whiskey.

I knew that I could not accost him then and there, for the firemen would surely
notice and object. Instead, I reflected, I would prepare by getting some bootleg
liquor at a place where the grocery boy had told me it was plentiful. Then I would
loaf near the fire station in apparent casualness, and fall in with old Zadok after he
had started on one of his frequent rambles. The youth had said that he was very
restless, seldom sitting around the station for more than an hour or two at a time.

A quart bottle of whiskey was easily, though not cheaply, obtained in the rear of a
dingy variety-store just off the Square in Eliot Street. The dirty-looking fellow who
waited on me had a touch of the staring "Innsmouth look", but was quite civil in his
way; being perhaps used to the custom of such convivial strangers - truckmen,
gold-buyers, and the like - as were occasionally in town.

Reentering the Square I saw that luck was with me; for - shuffling out of Paine street
around the corner of the Gilman House - I glimpsed nothing less than the tall, lean,
tattered form of old Zadok Allen himself. In accordance with my plan, I attracted
his attention by brandishing my newly-purchased bottle: and soon realised that he
had begun to shuffle wistfully after me as I turned into Waite Street on my way to
the most deserted region I could think of.

I was steering my course by the map the grocery boy had prepared, and was aiming
for the wholly abandoned stretch of southern waterfront which I had previously
visited. The only people in sight there had been the fishermen on the distant
breakwater; and by going a few squares south I could get beyond the range of
these, finding a pair of seats on some abandoned wharf and being free to question
old Zadok unobserved for an indefinite time. Before I reached Main Street I could
hear a faint and wheezy "Hey, Mister!" behind me and I presently allowed the old
man to catch up and take copious pulls from the quart bottle.

I began putting out feelers as we walked amidst the omnipresent desolation and
crazily tilted ruins, but found that the aged tongue did not loosen as quickly as I
had expected. At length I saw a grass-grown opening toward the sea between
crumbling brick walls, with the weedy length of an earth-and-masonry wharf
projecting beyond. Piles of moss-covered stones near the water promised tolerable
seats, and the scene was sheltered from all possible view by a ruined warehouse on
the north. Here, I thought was the ideal place for a long secret colloquy; so I guided
my companion down the lane and picked out spots to sit in among the mossy
stones. The air of death and desertion was ghoulish, and the smell of fish almost
insufferable; but I was resolved to let nothing deter me.

About four hours remained for conversation if I were to catch the eight o'clock
coach for Arkham, and I began to dole out more liquor to the ancient tippler;
meanwhile eating my own frugal lunch. In my donations I was careful not to
overshoot the mark, for I did not wish Zadok's vinous garrulousness to pass into a
stupor. After an hour his furtive taciturnity shewed signs of disappearing, but much
to my disappointment he still sidetracked my questions about Innsmouth and its
shadow-haunted past. He would babble of current topics, revealing a wide
acquaintance with newspapers and a great tendency to philosophise in a
sententious village fashion.

Toward the end of the second hour I feared my quart of whiskey would not be
enough to produce results, and was wondering whether I had better leave old
Zadok and go back for more. Just then, however, chance made the opening which
my questions had been unable to make; and the wheezing ancient's rambling took
a turn that caused me to lean forward and listen alertly. My back was toward the
fishy-smelling sea, but he was facing it and something or other had caused his
wandering gaze to light on the low, distant line of Devil Reef, then showing
plainly and almost fascinatingly above the waves. The sight seemed to displease
him, for he began a series of weak curses which ended in a confidential whisper and
a knowing leer. He bent toward me, took hold of my coat lapel, and hissed out
some hints that could not be mistaken.

"Thar's whar it all begun - that cursed place of all wickedness whar the deep water
starts. Gate o' hell - sheer drop daown to a bottom no saoundin'-line kin tech. Ol'
Cap'n Obed done it - him that faound aout more'n was good fer him in the Saouth
Sea islands.

"Everybody was in a bad way them days. Trade fallin' off, mills losin' business -
even the new ones - an' the best of our menfolks kilt aprivateerin' in the War of
1812 or lost with the Elizy brig an' the Ranger scow - both on 'em Gilman venters.
Obed Marsh he had three ships afloat - brigantine Columby, brig Hefty, an' barque
Sumatry Queen. He was the only one as kep' on with the East-Injy an' Pacific trade,
though Esdras Martin's barkentine Malay Bride made a venter as late as twenty-
eight.

"Never was nobody like Cap'n Obed - old limb o' Satan! Heh, heh! I kin mind him
a-tellin' abaout furren parts, an' callin' all the folks stupid for goin' to Christian
meetin' an' bearin' their burdns meek an' lowly. Says they'd orter git better gods like
some o' the folks in the Injies - gods as ud bring 'em good fishin' in return for their
sacrifices, an' ud reely answer folks's prayers.

"Matt Eliot his fust mate, talked a lot too, only he was again' folks's doin' any
heathen things. Told abaout an island east of Othaheite whar they was a lot o' stone
ruins older'n anybody knew anying abaout, kind o' like them on Ponape, in the
Carolines, but with carven's of faces that looked like the big statues on Easter
Island. Thar was a little volcanic island near thar, too, whar they was other ruins
with diff'rent carvin' - ruins all wore away like they'd ben under the sea onct, an'
with picters of awful monsters all over 'em.

"Wal, Sir, Matt he says the natives anound thar had all the fish they cud ketch, an'
sported bracelets an' armlets an' head rigs made aout o' a queer kind o' gold an'
covered with picters o' monsters jest like the ones carved over the ruins on the little
island - sorter fish-like frogs or froglike fishes that was drawed in all kinds o'
positions likes they was human bein's. Nobody cud get aout o' them whar they got
all the stuff, an' all the other natives wondered haow they managed to find fish in
plenty even when the very next island had lean pickin's. Matt he got to wonderon'
too an' so did Cap'n Obed. Obed he notices, besides, that lots of the hn'some young
folks ud drop aout o' sight fer good from year to year, an' that they wan't many old
folks around. Also, he thinks some of the folks looked dinned queer even for
Kanakys.

"It took Obed to git the truth aout o' them heathen. I dun't know haow he done it,
but be begun by tradin' fer the gold-like things they wore. Ast 'em whar they come
from, an' ef they cud git more, an' finally wormed the story aout o' the old chief --
Walakea, they called him. Nobody but Obed ud ever a believed the old yeller
devil, but the Cap'n cud read folks like they was books. Heh, heh! Nobody never
believes me naow when I tell 'em, an' I dun't s'pose you will, young feller - though
come to look at ye, ye hev kind o' got them sharp-readin' eyes like Obed had."

The old man's whisper grew fainter, and I found myself shuddering at the terrible
and sincere portentousness of his intonation, even though I knew his tale could be
nothing but drunken phantasy.

"Wal, Sir, Obed he 'lart that they's things on this arth as most folks never heerd
about - an' wouldn't believe ef they did hear. lt seems these Kanakys was sacrificin'
heaps o' their young men an' maidens to some kind o' god-things that lived under
the sea, an' gittin' all kinds o' favour in return. They met the things on the little islet
with the queer ruins, an' it seems them awful picters o' frog-fish monsters was
supposed to be picters o' these things. Mebbe they was the kind o' critters as got all
the mermaid stories an' sech started.

"They had all kinds a' cities on the sea-bottom, an' this island was heaved up from
thar. Seem they was some of the things alive in the stone buildin's when the island
come up sudden to the surface, That's how the Kanakys got wind they was daown
thar. Made sign-talk as soon as they got over bein' skeert, an' pieced up a bargain
afore long.

"Them things liked human sacrifices. Had had 'em ages afore, but lost track o' the
upper world after a time. What they done to the victims it ain't fer me to say, an' I
guess Obed was'n't none too sharp abaout askin'. But it was all right with the
heathens, because they'd ben havin' a hard time an' was desp'rate abaout
everything. They give a sarten number o' young folks to the sea-things twice every
year - May-Eve an' Hallawe'en - reg'lar as cud be. Also give some a' the carved
knick-knacks they made. What the things agreed to give in return was plenty a' fish
- they druv 'em in from all over the sea - an' a few gold like things naow an' then.
"Wal, as I says, the natives met the things on the little volcanic islet - goin' thar in
canoes with the sacrifices et cet'ry, and bringin' back any of the gold-like jools as
was comin' to 'em. At fust the things didn't never go onto the main island, but arter
a time they come to want to. Seems they hankered arter mixin' with the folks, an'
havin' j'int ceremonies on the big days - May-Eve an' Hallowe'en. Ye see, they was
able to live both in ant aout o' water - what they call amphibians, I guess. The
Kanakys told 'em as haow folks from the other islands might wanta wipe 'an out if
they got wind o' their bein' thar, but they says they dun't keer much, because they
cud wipe aout the hull brood o' humans ef they was willin' to bother - that is, any as
didn't be, sarten signs sech as was used onct by the lost Old Ones, whoever they
was. But not wantin' to bother, they'd lay low when anybody visited the island.

"When it come to matin' with them toad-lookin' fishes, the Kanakys kind o' balked,
but finally they larnt something as put a new face on the matter. Seems that human
folks has got a kind a' relation to sech water-beasts - that everything alive come
aout o' the water onct an' only needs a little change to go back agin. Them things
told the Kanakys that ef they mixed bloods there'd be children as ud look human at
fust, but later turn more'n more like the things, till finally they'd take to the water
an' jine the main lot o' things daown har. An' this is the important part, young feller
- them as turned into fish things an' went into the water wouldn't never die. Them
things never died excep' they was kilt violent.

"Wal, Sir, it seems by the time Obed knowed them islanders they was all full o' fish
blood from them deep water things. When they got old an' begun to shew it, they
was kep' hid until they felt like takin' to the water an' quittin' the place. Some was
more teched than others, an' some never did change quite enough to take to the
water; but mosily they turned out jest the way them things said. Them as was born
more like the things changed arly, but them as was nearly human sometimes stayed
on the island till they was past seventy, though they'd usually go daown under for
trial trips afore that. Folks as had took to the water gen'rally come back a good deal
to visit, so's a man ud often be a'talkin' to his own five-times-great-grandfather
who'd left the dry land a couple o' hundred years or so afore.

"Everybody got aout o' the idee o' dyin' - excep' in canoe wars with the other
islanders, or as sacrifices to the sea-gods daown below, or from snakebite or plague
or sharp gallopin' ailments or somethin' afore they cud take to the water - but
simply looked forrad to a kind o' change that wa'n't a bit horrible artet a while.
They thought what they'd got was well wuth all they'd had to give up - an' I guess
Obed kind o' come to think the same hisself when he'd chewed over old Walakea's
story a bit. Walakea, though, was one of the few as hadn't got none of the fish blood
- bein' of a royal line that intermarried with royal lines on other islands.

"Walakea he shewed Obed a lot o' rites an' incantations as had to do with the sea
things, an' let him see some o' the folks in the village as had changed a lot from
human shape. Somehaow or other, though, he never would let him see one of the
reg'lar things from right aout o' the water. In the end he give him a funny kind o'
thingumajig made aout o' lead or something, that he said ud bring up the fish
things from any place in the water whar they might be a nest o' 'em. The idee was to
drop it daown with the right kind o' prayers an' sech. Walakea allowed as the things
was scattered all over the world, so's anybody that looked abaout cud find a nest an'
bring 'em up ef they was wanted.

"Matt he didn't like this business at all, an' wanted Obed shud keep away from the
island; but the Cap'n was sharp fer gain, an' faound he cud get them gold-like
things so cheap it ud pay him to make a specialty of them. Things went on that way
for years an' Obed got enough o' that gold-like stuff to make him start the refinery
in Waite's old run-daown fullin' mill. He didn't dass sell the pieces like they was, for
folks ud be all the time askin' questions. All the same his crews ud get a piece an'
dispose of it naow and then, even though they was swore to keep quiet; an' he let
his women-folks wear some o' the pieces as was more human-like than most.

"Well, come abaout thutty-eight - when I was seven year' old - Obed he faound the
island people all wiped aout between v'yages. Seems the other islanders had got
wind o' what was goin' on, and had took matters into their own hands. S'pose they
must a had, after all, them old magic signs as the sea things says was the only
things they was afeard of. No tellin' what any o' them Kanakys will chance to git a
holt of when the sea-bottom throws up some island with ruins older'n the deluge.
Pious cusses, these was - they didn't leave nothin' standin' on either the main island
or the little volcanic islet excep' what parts of the ruins was too big to knock
daown. In some places they was little stones strewed abaout - like charms - with
somethin' on 'em like what ye call a swastika naowadays. Prob'ly them was the Old
Ones' signs. Folks all wiped aout no trace o' no gold-like things an' none the nearby
Kanakys ud breathe a word abaout the matter. Wouldn't even admit they'd ever ben
any people on that island.

"That naturally hit Obed pretty hard, seein' as his normal trade was doin' very poor.
It hit the whole of Innsmouth, too, because in seafarint days what profited the
master of a ship gen'lly profited the crew proportionate. Most of the folks araound
the taown took the hard times kind o' sheep-like an' resigned, but they was in bad
shape because the fishin' was peterin' aout an' the mills wan't doin' none too well.

"Then's the time Obed he begun a-cursin' at the folks fer bein' dull sheep an' prayin'
to a Christian heaven as didn't help 'em none. He told 'em he'd knowed o' folks as
prayed to gods that give somethin' ye reely need, an' says ef a good bunch o' men
ud stand by him, he cud mebbe get a holt o' sarten paowers as ud bring plenty o'
fish an' quite a bit of gold. O' course them as sarved on the Sumatry Queen, an' seed
the island knowed what he meant, an' wa'n't none too anxious to get clost to sea-
things like they'd heard tell on, but them as didn't know what 'twas all abaout got
kind o' swayed by what Obed had to say, and begun to ast him what he cud do to sit
'em on the way to the faith as ud bring 'em results."

Here the old man faltered, mumbled, and lapsed into a moody and apprehensive
silence; glancing nervously over his shoulder and then turning back to stare
fascinatedly at the distant black reef. When I spoke to him he did not answer, so I
knew I would have to let him finish the bottle. The insane yarn I was hearing
interested me profoundly, for I fancied there was contained within it a sort of crude
allegory based upon the strangeness of Innsmouth and elaborated by an
imagination at once creative and full of scraps of exotic legend. Not for a moment
did I believe that the tale had any really substantial foundation; but none the less
the account held a hint of genuine terror if only because it brought in references to
strange jewels clearly akin to the malign tiara I had seen at Newburyport. Perhaps
the ornaments had, after all, come from some strange island; and possibly the wild
stories were lies of the bygone Obed himself rather than of this antique toper.

I handed Zadok the bottle, and he drained it to the last drop. It was curious how he
could stand so much whiskey, for not even a trace of thickness had come into his
high, wheezy voice. He licked the nose of the bottle and slipped it into his pocket,
then beginning to nod and whisper softly to himself. I bent close to catch any
articulate words he might utter, and thought I saw a sardonic smile behind the
stained bushy whiskers. Yes - he was really forming words, and I could grasp a fair
proportion of them.

"Poor Matt - Matt he allus was agin it - tried to line up the folks on his side, an' had
long talks with the preachers - no use - they run the Congregational parson aout o'
taown, an' the Methodist feller quit - never did see Resolved Babcock, the Baptist
parson, agin - Wrath O' Jehovy - I was a mightly little critter, but I heerd what I
heerd an, seen what I seen - Dagon an' Ashtoreth - Belial an' Beelzebub - Golden
Caff an' the idols o' Canaan an' the Philistines - Babylonish abominations - Mene,
mene, tekel, upharisn - -."

He stopped again, and from the look in his watery blue eyes I feared he was close to
a stupor after all. But when I gently shook his shoulder he turned on me with
astonishing alertness and snapped out some more obscure phrases.

"Dun't believe me, hey? Hey, heh, heh - then jest tell me, young feller, why Cap'n
Obed an' twenty odd other folks used to row aout to Devil Reef in the dead o' night
an' chant things so laoud ye cud hear 'em all over taown when the wind was right?
Tell me that, hey? An' tell me why Obed was allus droppin' heavy things daown
into the deep water t'other side o' the reef whar the bottom shoots daown like a cliff
lower'n ye kin saound? Tell me what he done with that funny-shaped lead
thingumajig as Walakea give him? Hey, boy? An' what did they all haowl on May-
Eve, an, agin the next Hallowe'en? An' why'd the new church parsons - fellers as
used to he sailors - wear them queer robes an' cover their-selves with them gold-like
things Obed brung? Hey?"

The watery blue eyes were almost savage and maniacal now, and the dirty white
beard bristled electrically. Old Zadok probably saw me shrink back, for he began to
cackle evilly.

"Heh, heh, heh, heh! Beginni'n to see hey? Mebbe ye'd like to a ben me in them
days, when I seed things at night aout to sea from the cupalo top o' my haouse. Oh,
I kin tell ye' little pitchers hev big ears, an' I wa'n't missin' nothin' o' what was
gossiped abaout Cap'n Obed an' the folks aout to the reef! Heh, heh, heh! Haow
abaout the night I took my pa's ship's glass up to the cupalo an' seed the reef a-
bristlin' thick with shapes that dove off quick soon's the moon riz?

"Obed an' the folks was in a dory, but them shapes dove off the far side into the
deep water an' never come up ...

"Haow'd ye like to be a little shaver alone up in a cupola a-watchin' shapes as wa'n't

human shapes? ...Heh? ... Heh, heh, heh ..."

The old man was getting hysterical, and I began to shiver with a nameless alarm. He
laid a gnarled claw on my shoulder, and it seemed to me that its shaking was not
altogether that of mirth.

"S'pose one night ye seed somethin' heavy heaved offen Obed's dory beyond the
reef' and then learned next day a young feller was missin' from home. Hey! Did
anybody ever see hide or hair o' Hiram Gilman agin. Did they? An' Nick Pierce, an'
Luelly Waite, an' Adoniram Saouthwick, an' Henry Garrison Hey? Heh, heh, heh,
heh ... Shapes talkin' sign language with their hands ... them as had reel hands ...

"Wal, Sir, that was the time Obed begun to git on his feet agin. Folks see his three
darters a-wearin' gold-like things as nobody'd never see on 'em afore, an' smoke
stared comin' aout o' the refin'ry chimbly. Other folks was prosp'rin, too - fish begun
to swarm into the harbour fit to kill' an' heaven knows what sized cargoes we begun
to ship aout to Newb'ryport, Arkham, an' Boston. T'was then Obed got the ol'
branch railrud put through. Some Kingsport fishermen heerd abaout the ketch an'
come up in sloops, but they was all lost. Nobody never see 'em agin. An' jest then
our folk organised the Esoteric Order 0' Dagon, an' bought Masoic Hall offen
Calvary Commandery for it ... heh, heh, heh! Matt Eliot was a Mason an' agin the
sellin', but he dropped aout o' sight jest then.

"Remember, I ain't sayin' Obed was set on hevin' things jest like they was on that
Kanaky isle. I dun't think he aimed at fust to do no mixin', nor raise no younguns to
take to the water an' turn into fishes with eternal life. He wanted them gold things,
an' was willin' to pay heavy, an' I guess the others was satisfied fer a while ...

"Come in' forty-six the taown done some lookin' an' thinkin' fer itself. Too many
folks missin' - too much wild preachin' at meetin' of a Sunday - too much talk
abaout that reef. I guess I done a bit by tellin' Selectman Mowry what I see from the
cupalo. They was a party one night as follered Obed's craowd aout to the reef, an' I
heerd shots betwixt the dories. Nex' day Obed and thutty-two others was in gaol,
with everybody a-wonderin' jest what was afoot and jest what charge agin 'em cud
he got to holt. God, ef anybody'd look'd ahead ... a couple o' weeks later, when
nothin' had ben throwed into the sea fer thet long ..."

Zadok was shewing sings of fright and exhaustion, and I let him keep silence for a
while, though glancing apprehensively at my watch. The tide had turned and was
coming in now, and the sound of the waves seemed to arouse him. I was glad of that
tide, for at high water the fishy smell might not be so bad. Again I strained to catch
his whispers.

"That awful night ... I seed 'em. I was up in the cupalo ... hordes of 'em ... swarms of
'em ... all over the reef an' swimmin' up the harbour into the Manuxet ... God, what
happened in the streets of Innsmouth that night ... they rattled our door, but pa
wouldn't open ... then he clumb aout the kitchen winder with his musket to find
Selecman Mowry an' see what he cud do ... Maounds o' the dead an' the dyin' ...
shots and screams ... shaoutin' in Ol Squar an' Taown Squar an' New Church Green -
gaol throwed open ... - proclamation ... treason ... called it the plague when folks
come in an' faoud haff our people missin' ... nobody left but them as ud jine in with
Obed an' them things or else keep quiet ... never heard o' my pa no more... "

The old man was panting and perspiring profusely. His grip on my shoulder
tightened.

"Everything cleaned up in the mornin' - but they was traces ... Obed he kinder takes
charge an' says things is goin' to be changed ... others'll worship with us at meetin'-
time, an' sarten haouses hez got to entertin guests ... they wanted to mix like they
done with the Kanakys, an' he for one didn't feel baound to stop 'em. Far gone, was
Obed ... jest like a crazy man on the subjeck. He says they brung us fish an' treasure,
an' shud hev what they hankered after ..."

"Nothin' was to be diff'runt on the aoutsid; only we was to keep shy o' strangers ef
we knowed what was good fer us.

"We all hed to take the Oath o' Dagon, an' later on they was secon' an' third oaths
that some o' us took. Them as ud help special, ud git special rewards - gold an' sech
- No use balkin', fer they was millions of 'em daown thar. They'd ruther not start
risin' an' wipin' aout human-kind, but ef they was gave away an' forced to, they cud
do a lot toward jest that. We didn't hev them old charms to cut 'em off like folks in
the Saouth Sea did, an' them Kanakys wudu't never give away their secrets.

"Yield up enough sacrifices an' savage knick-knacks an' harbourage in the taown
when they wanted it, an' they'd let well enough alone. Wudn't bother no strangers
as might bear tales aoutside - that is, withaout they got pryin'. All in the band of the
faithful - Order 0' Dagon - an' the children shud never die, but go back to the
Mother Hydra an' Father Dagon what we all come from onct ... Ia! Ia! Cthulhu
fhtagn! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah-nagl fhtaga - "

Old Zadok was fast lapsing into stark raving, and I held my breath. Poor old soul -
to what pitiful depths of hallucination had his liquor, plus his hatred of the decay,
alienage, and disease around him, brought that fertile, imaginative brain? He began
to moan now, and tears were coursing down his channelled checks into the depths
of his beard.

"God, what I seen senct I was fifteen year' old - Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin! - the
folks as was missin', and them as kilt theirselves - them as told things in Arkham or
Ipswich or sech places was all called crazy, like you're callin' me right naow - but
God, what I seen - They'd a kilt me long ago fer' what I know, only I'd took the fust
an' secon' Oaths o' Dago offen Obed, so was pertected unlessen a jury of 'em proved
I told things knowin' an' delib'rit ... but I wudn't take the third Oath - I'd a died
ruther'n take that -

"It got wuss araound Civil War time, when children born senct 'forty-six begun to
grow up - some 'em, that is. I was afeared - never did no pryin' arter that awful night,
an' never see one o' - them - clost to in all my life. That is, never no full-blooded
one. I went to the war, an' ef I'd a had any guts or sense I'd a never come back, but
settled away from here. But folks wrote me things wa'n't so bad. That, I s'pose, was
because gov'munt draft men was in taown arter 'sixty-three. Arter the war it was jest
as bad agin. People begun to fall off - mills an' shops shet daown - shippin' stopped
an' the harbour choked up - railrud give up - but they ... they never stopped
swimmin' in an' aout o' the river from that cursed reef o' Satan - an' more an' more
attic winders got a-boarded up, an' more an' more noises was heerd in haouses as
wa'n't s'posed to hev nobody in 'em...

"Folks aoutside hev their stories abaout us - s'pose you've heerd a plenty on 'em,
seein' what questions ye ast - stories abaout things they've seed naow an' then, an'
abaout that queer joolry as still comes in from somewhars an' ain't quite all melted
up - but nothin' never gits def'nite. Nobody'll believe nothin'. They call them gold-
like things pirate loot, an' allaow the Innsmouth folks hez furren blood or is dis-
tempered or somethin'. Beside, them that lives here shoo off as many strangers as
they kin, an' encourage the rest not to git very cur'ous, specially raound night time.
Beasts balk at the critters - hosses wuss'n mules - but when they got autos that was
all right.

"In 'forty-six Cap'n Obed took a second wife that nobody in the taown never see -
some says he didn't want to, but was made to by them as he'd called in - had three
children by her - two as disappeared young, but one gal as looked like anybody
else an' was eddicated in Europe. Obed finally got her married off by a trick to an
Arkham feller as didn't suspect nothin'. But nobody aoutside'll hav nothin' to do
with Innsmouth folks naow. Barnabas Marsh that runs the refin'ry now is Obed's
grandson by his fust wife - son of Onesiphorus, his eldest son, but his mother was
another o' them as wa'n't never seen aoutdoors.

"Right naow Barnabas is abaout changed. Can't shet his eyes no more, an' is all
aout o' shape. They say he still wears clothes, but he'll take to the water soon.
Mebbe he's tried it already - they do sometimes go daown for little spells afore they
go daown for good. Ain't ben seed abaout in public fer nigh on ten year'. Dun't
know haow his poor wife kin feel - she come from Ipiwich, an' they nigh lynched
Barnabas when he courted her fifty odd year' ago. Obed he died in 'seventy-eight
an' all the next gen'ration is gone naow - the fust wife's children dead, and the rest ...
God knows ..."

The sound of the incoming tide was now very insistent, and little by little it seemed
to change the old man's mood from maudlin tearfulness to watchful fear. He would
pause now and then to renew those nervous glances over his shoulder or out toward
the reef, and despite the wild absurdity of his tale, I could not help beginning to
share his apprehensiveness. Zadok now grew shriller, seemed to be trying to whip
up his courage with louder speech.

"Hey, yew, why dun't ye say somethin'? Haow'd ye like to he livin' in a taown like
this, with everything a-rottin' an' dyin', an' boarded-up monsters crawlin' an' bleatin'
an' barkin' an' hoppin' araoun' black cellars an' attics every way ye turn? Hey?
Haow'd ye like to hear the haowlin' night arter night from the churches an' Order 0'
Dagon Hall, an' know what's doin' part o' the haowlin'? Haow'd ye like to hear what
comes from that awful reef every May-Eve an' Hallowmass? Hey? Think the old
man's crazy, eh? Wal, Sir, let me tell ye that ain't the wust!"

Zadok was really screaming now, and the mad frenzy of his voice disturbed me
more than I care to own.

"Curse ye, dun't set thar a'starin' at me with them eyes - I tell Obed Marsh he's in
hell, an, hez got to stay thar! Heh, heh ... in hell, I says! Can't git me - I hain't done
nothin' nor told nobody nothin' - -

"Oh, you, young feller? Wal, even ef I hain't told nobody nothin' yet, I'm a'goin' to
naow! Yew jest set still an' listen to me, boy - this is what I ain't never told
nobody... I says I didn't get to do pryin' arter that night - but I faound things about
jest the same!"

"Yew want to know what the reel horror is, hey? Wal, it's this - it ain't what them
fish devils hez done, but what they're a-goin' to do! They're a-bringin' things up
aout o' whar they come from into the taown - been doin' it fer years, an' slackenin'
up lately. Them haouses north o' the river be-twixt Water an' Main Streets is full of
'em - them devils an' what they brung - an' when they git ready ... I say, when they
git... ever hear tell of a shoggoth?

"Hey, d'ye hear me? I tell ye I know what them things be - I seen 'em one night
when ... eh-ahhh-ah! e'yahhh ... "

The hideous suddenness and inhuman frightfulness of the old man's shriek almost
made me faint. His eyes, looking past me toward the malodorous sea, were
positively starting from his head; while his face was a mask of fear worthy of Greek
tragedy. His bony claw dug monstrously into my shoulder, and he made no motion
as I turned my head to look at whatever he had glimpsed.

There was nothing that I could see. Only the incoming tide, with perhaps one set of
ripples more local than the long-flung line of breakers. But now Zadok was shaking
me, and I turned back to watch the melting of that fear-frozen face into a chaos of
twitching eyelids and mumbling gums. Presently his voice came back - albeit as a
trembling whisper.

"Git aout o' here! Get aout o' here! They seen us - git aout fer your life! Dun't wait
fer nothin' - they know naow - Run fer it - quick - aout o' this taown - -"

Another heavy wave dashed against the loosing masonry of the bygone wharf, and
changed the mad ancient's whisper to another inhuman and blood-curdling scream.
"E-yaahhhh! ... Yheaaaaaa!..."

Before I could recover my scattered wits he had relaxed his clutch on my shoulder
and dashed wildly inland toward the street, reeling northward around the ruined
warehouse wall.

I glanced back at the sea, but there was nothing there. And when I reached Water
Street and looked along it toward the north there was no remaining trace of Zadok
Allen.

IV

I can hardly describe the mood in which I was left by this harrowing episode - an
episode at once mad and pitiful, grotesque and terrifying. The grocery boy had
prepared me for it, yet the reality left me none the less bewildered and disturbed.
Puerile though the story was, old Zadok's insane earnestness and horror had
communicated to me a mounting unrest which joined with my earlier sense of
loathing for the town and its blight of intangible shadow.

Later I might sift the tale and extract some nucleus of historic allegory; just now I
wished to put it out of my head. The hour grown perilously late - my watch said
7:15, and the Arkham bus left Town Square at eight - so I tried to give my thoughts
as neutral and practical a cast as possible, meanwhile walking rapidly through the
deserted streets of gaping roofs and leaning houses toward the hotel where I had
checked my valise and would find my bus.

Though the golden light of late afternoon gave the ancient roofs and decrepit
chimneys an air of mystic loveliness and peace, I could not help glancing over my
shoulder now and then. I would surely be very glad to get out of malodorous and
fear-shadowed Innsmouth, and wished there were some other vehicle than the bus
driven by that sinister-looking fellow Sargent. Yet I did not hurry too precipitately,
for there were architectural details worth viewing at every silent corner; and I could
easily, I calculated, cover the necessary distance in a half-hour.

Studying the grocery youth's map and seeking a route I had not traversed before, I
chose Marsh Street instead of State for my approach to Town Square. Near the
corner of Fall street I began to see scattered groups of furtive whisperers, and when I
finally reached the Square I saw that almost all the loiterers were congregated
around the door of the Gilman House. It seemed as if many bulging, watery,
unwinking eyes looked oddly at me as I claimed my valise in the lobby, and I
hoped that none of these unpleasant creatures would be my fellow-passengers on
the coach.

The bus, rather early, rattled in with three passengers somewhat before eight, and an
evil-looking fellow on the sidewalk muttered a few indistinguishable words to the
driver. Sargent threw out a mail-bag and a roll of newspapers, and entered the hotel;
while the passengers - the same men whom I had seen arriving in Newburyport that
morning - shambled to the sidewalk and exchanged some faint guttural words with
a loafer in a language I could have sworn was not English. I boarded the empty
coach and took the seat I had taken before, but was hardly settled before Sargent re-
appeared and began mumbling in a throaty voice of peculiar repulsiveness.

I was, it appeared, in very bad luck. There had been something wrong with the
engine, despite the excellent time made from Newburyport, and the bus could not
complete the journey to Arkham. No, it could not possibly be repaired that night,
nor was there any other way of getting transportation out of Innsmouth either to
Arkham or elsewhere. Sargent was sorry, but I would have to stop over at the
Gilman. Probably the clerk would make the price easy for me, but there was
nothing else to do. Almost dazed by this sudden obstacle, and violently dreading
the fall of night in this decaying and half-unlighted town, I left the bus and
reentered the hotel lobby; where the sullen queer-looking night clerk told me I
could have Room 428 on next the top floor - large, but without running water - for
a dollar.

Despite what I had heard of this hotel in Newburyport, I signed the register, paid
my dollar, let the clerk take my valise, and followed that sour, solitary attendant up
three creaking flights of stairs past dusty corridors which seemed wholly devoid of
life. My room was a dismal rear one with two windows and bare, cheap furnishings,
overlooked a dingy court-yard otherwise hemmed in by low, deserted brick blocks,
and commanded a view of decrepit westward-stretching roofs with a marshy
countryside beyond. At the end of the corridor was a bathroom - a discouraging
relique with ancient marble bowl, tin tub, faint electric light, and musty wooded
paneling around all the plumbing fixtures.

It being still daylight, I descended to the Square and looked around for a dinner of
some sort; noticing as I did so the strange glances I received from the unwholesome
loafers. Since the grocery was closed, I was forced to patronise the restaurant I had
shunned before; a stooped, narrow-headed man with staring, unwinking eyes, and a
flat-nosed wench with unbelievably thick, clumsy hands being in attendance. The
service was all of the counter type, and it relieved me to find that much was
evidently served from cans and packages. A bowl of vegetable soup with crackers
was enough for me, and I soon headed back for my cheerless room at the Gilman;
getting a evening paper and a fly-specked magazine from the evil-visaged clerk at
the rickety stand beside his desk.

As twilight deepened I turned on the one feeble electric bulb over the cheap, iron-
framed bed, and tried as best I could to continue the reading I had begun. I felt it
advisable to keep my mind wholesomely occupied, for it would not do to brood
over the abnormalities of this ancient, blight-shadowed town while I was still
within its borders. The insane yarn I had heard from the aged drunkard did not
promise very pleasant dreams, and I felt I must keep the image of his wild, watery
eyes as far as possible from my imagination.

Also, I must not dwell on what that factory inspector had told the Newburyport
ticket-agent about the Gilman House and the voices of its nocturnal tenants - not
on that, nor on the face beneath the tiara in the black church doorway; the face for
whose horror my conscious mind could not account. It would perhaps have been
easier to keep my thoughts from disturbing topics had the room not been so
gruesomely musty. As it was, the lethal mustiness blended hideously with the
town's general fishy odour and persistently focussed one's fancy on death and
decay.

Another thing that disturbed me was the absence of a bolt on the door of my room.
One had been there, as marks clearly shewed, but there were signs of recent
removal. No doubt it had been out of order, like so many other things in this
decrepit edifice. In my nervousness I looked around and discovered a bolt on the
clothes press which seemed to be of the same size, judging from the marks, as the
one formerly on the door. To gain a partial relief from the general tension I busied
myself by transferring this hardware to the vacant place with the aid of a handy
three-in-one device including a screwdriver which I kept on my key-ring. The bolt
fitted perfectly, and I was somewhat relieved when I knew that I could shoot it
firmly upon retiring. Not that I had any real apprehension of its need, but that any
symbol of security was welcome in an environment of this kind. There were
adequate bolts on the two lateral doors to connecting rooms, and these I proceeded
to fasten.

I did not undress, but decided to read till I was sleepy and then lie down with only
my coat, collar, and shoes off. Taking a pocket flash light from my valise, I placed
it in my trousers, so that I could read my watch if I woke up later in the dark.
Drowsiness, however, did not come; and when I stopped to analyse my thoughts I
found to my disquiet that I was really unconsciously listening for something -
listening for something which I dreaded but could not name. That inspector's story
must have worked on my imagination more deeply than I had suspected. Again I
tried to read, but found that I made no progress.

After a time I seemed to hear the stairs and corridors creak at intervals as if with
footsteps, and wondered if the other rooms were beginning to fill up. There were no
voices, however, and it struck me that there was something subtly furtive about the
creaking. I did not like it, and debated whether I had better try to sleep at all. This
town had some queer people, and there had undoubtedly been several
disappearances. Was this one of those inns where travelers were slain for their
money? Surely I had no look of excessive prosperity. Or were the towns folk really
so resentful about curious visitors? Had my obvious sightseeing, with its frequent
map-consultations, aroused unfavorable notice. It occurred to me that I must be in a
highly nervous state to let a few random creakings set me off speculating in this
fashion - but I regretted none the less that I was unarmed.

At length, feeling a fatigue which had nothing of drowsiness in it, I bolted the
newly outfitted hall door, turned off the light, and threw myself down on the hard,
uneven bed - coat, collar, shoes, and all. In the darkness every faint noise of the
night seemed magnified, and a flood of doubly unpleasant thoughts swept over me.
I was sorry I had put out the light, yet was too tired to rise and turn it on again.
Then, after a long, dreary interval, and prefaced by a fresh creaking of stairs and
corridor, there came that soft, damnably unmistakable sound which seemed like a
malign fulfillment of all my apprehensions. Without the least shadow of a doubt,
the lock of my door was being tried - cautiously, furtively, tentatively - with a key.
My sensations upon recognising this sign of actual peril were perhaps less rather
than more tumultuous because of my previous vague fears. I had been, albeit
without definite reason, instinctively on my guard - and that was to my advantage
in the new and real crisis, whatever it might turn out to be. Nevertheless the change
in the menace from vague premonition to immediate reality was a profound shock,
and fell upon me with the force of a genuine blow. It never once occurred to me
that the fumbling might be a mere mistake. Malign purpose was all I could think of,
and I kept deathly quiet, awaiting the would-be intruder's next move.

After a time the cautious rattling ceased, and I heard the room to the north entered
with a pass key. Then the lock of the connecting door to my room was softly tried.
The bolt held, of course, and I heard the floor creak as the prowler left the room.
After a moment there came another soft rattling, and I knew that the room to the
south of me was being entered. Again a furtive trying of a bolted connecting door,
and again a receding creaking. This time the creaking went along the hall and
down the stairs, so I knew that the prowler had realised the bolted condition of my
doors and was giving up his attempt for a greater or lesser time, as the future would
shew.

The readiness with which I fell into a plan of action proves that I must have been
subconsciously fearing some menace and considering possible avenues of escape
for hours. From the first I felt that the unseen fumbler meant a danger not to be met
or dealt with, but only to be fled from as precipitately as possible. The one thing to
do was to get out of that hotel alive as quickly as I could, and through some
channel other than the front stairs and lobby.

Rising softly and throwing my flashlight on the switch, I sought to light the bulb
over my bed in order to choose and pocket some belongings for a swift, valiseless
flight. Nothing, however, happened; and I saw that the power had been cut off.
Clearly, some cryptic, evil movement was afoot on a large scale - just what, I could
not say. As I stood pondering with my hand on the now useless switch I heard a
muffled creaking on the floor below, and thought I could barely distinguish voices
in conversation. A moment later I felt less sure that the deeper sounds were voices,
since the apparent hoarse barkings and loose-syllabled croakings bore so little
resemblance to recognized human speech. Then I thought with renewed force of
what the factory inspector had heard in the night in this mouldering and
pestilential building.

Having filled my pockets with the flashlight's aid, I put on my hat and tiptoed to
the windows to consider chances of descent. Despite the state's safety regulations
there was no fire escape on this side of the hotel, and I saw that my windows
commanded only a sheer three story drop to the cobbled courtyard. On the right
and left, however, some ancient brick business blocks abutted on the hotel; their
slant roofs coming up to a reasonable jumping distance from my fourth-story level.
To reach either of these lines of buildings I would have to be in a room two from
my own - in one case on the north and in the other case on the south - and my mind
instantly set to work what chances I had of making the transfer.

I could not, I decided, risk an emergence into the corridor; where my footsteps
would surely be heard, and where the difficulties of entering the desired room
would be insuperable. My progress, if it was to be made at all, would have to be
through the less solidly-built connecting doors of the rooms; the locks and bolts of
which I would have to force violently, using my shoulder as a battering-ram
whenever they were set against me. This, I thought, would be possible owing to the
rickety nature of the house and its fixtures; but I realised I could not do it
noiselessly. I would have to count on sheer speed, and the chance of getting to a
window before any hostile forces became coordinated enough to open the right
door toward me with a pass-key. My own outer door I reinforced by pushing the
bureau against it - little by little, in order to make a minimum of sound.

I perceived that my chances were very slender, and was fully prepared for any
calamity. Even getting to another roof would not solve the problem for there would
then remain the task of reaching the ground and escaping from the town. One thing
in my favour was the deserted and ruinous state of the abutting building and the
number of skylights gaping blackly open in each row.

Gathering from the grocery boy's map that the best route out of town was
southward, I glanced first at the connecting door on the south side of the room. It
was designed to open in my direction, hence I saw - after drawing the bolt and
finding other fastening in place - it was not a favorable one for forcing.
Accordingly abandoning it as a route, I cautiously moved the bedstead against it to
hamper any attack which might be made on it later from the next room. The door
on the north was hung to open away from me, and this - though a test proved it to
be locked or bolted from the other side - I knew must be my route. If I could gain
the roofs of the buildings in Paine Street and descend successfully to the ground
level, I might perhaps dart through the courtyard and the adjacent or opposite
building to Washington or Bates - or else emerge in Paine and edge around
southward into Washington. In any case, I would aim to strike Washington
somehow and get quickly out of the Town Square region. My preference would be
to avoid Paine, since the fire station there might be open all night.

As I thought of these things I looked out over the squalid sea of decaying roofs
below me, now brightened by the beams of a moon not much past full. On the right
the black gash of the river-gorge clove the panorama; abandoned factories and
railway station clinging barnacle-like to its sides. Beyond it the rusted railway and
the Rowley road led off through a flat marshy terrain dotted with islets of higher
and dryer scrub-grown land. On the left the creek-threaded country-side was nearer,
the narrow road to Ipswich gleaming white in the moonlight. I could not see from
my side of the hotel the southward route toward Arkham which I had determined to
take.

I was irresolutely speculating on when I had better attack the northward door, and
on how I could least audibly manage it, when I noticed that the vague noises
underfoot had given place to a fresh and heavier creaking of the stairs. A wavering
flicker of light shewed through my transom, and the boards of the corridor began to
groan with a ponderous load. Muffled sounds of possible vocal origin approached,
and at length a firm knock came at my outer door.

For a moment I simply held my breath and waited. Eternities seemed to elapse, and
the nauseous fishy odour of my environment seemed to mount suddenly and
spectacularly. Then the knocking was repeated - continuously, and with growing
insistence. I knew that the time for action had come, and forthwith drew the bolt of
the northward connecting door, bracing myself for the task of battering it open. The
knocking waxed louder, and I hoped that its volume would cover the sound of my
efforts. At last beginning my attempt, I lunged again and again at the thin paneling
with my left shoulder, heedless of shock or pain. The door resisted even more than I
expected, but I did not give in. And all the while the clamour at the outer door
increased.

Finally the connecting door gave, but with such a crash that I knew those outside
must have heard. Instantly the outside knocking became a violent battering, while
keys sounded ominously in the hall doors of the rooms on both sides of me.
Rushing through the newly opened connexion, I succeeded in bolting the
northerly hall door before the lock could he turned; but even as I did so I heard the
hall door of the third room - the one from whose window I had hoped to reach the
roof below - being tried with a pass key.

For an instant I felt absolute despair, since my trapping in a chamber with no

window egress seemed complete. A wave of almost abnormal horror swept over me,
and invested with a terrible but unexplainable singularity the flashlight-glimpsed
dust prints made by the intruder who had lately tried my door from this room. Then,
with a dazed automatism which persisted despite hopelessness, I made for the next
connecting door and performed the blind motion of pushing at it in an effort to get
through and - granting that fastenings might be as providentially intact as in this
second room - bolt the hall door beyond before the lock could be turned from
outside.

Sheer fortunate chance gave me my reprieve - for the connecting door before me
was not only unlocked but actually ajar. In a second I was though, and had my
right knee and shoulder against a hall door which was visibly opening inward. My
pressure took the opener off guard, for the thing shut as I pushed, so that I could
slip the well-conditioned bolt as I had done with the other door. As I gained this
respite I heard the battering at the two other doors abate, while a confused clatter
came from the connecting door I had shielded with the bedstead. Evidently the
bulk of my assailants had entered the southerly room and were massing in a lateral
attack. But at the same moment a pass key sounded in the next door to the north,
and I knew that a nearer peril was at hand.

The northward connecting door was wide open, but there was no time to think
about checking the already turning lock in the hall. All I could do was to shut and
bolt the open connecting door, as well as its mate on the opposite side - pushing a
bedstead against the one and a bureau against the other, and moving a washstand
in front of the hall door. I must, I saw, trust to such makeshift barriers to shield me
till I could get out the window and on the roof of the Paine Street block. But even
in this acute moment my chief horror was something apart from the immediate
weakness of my defenses. I was shuddering because not one of my pursuers, despite
some hideous panting, grunting, and subdued barkings at odd intervals, was
uttering an unmuffled or intelligible vocal sound.

As I moved the furniture and rushed toward the windows I heard a frightful
scurrying along the corridor toward the room north of me, and perceived that the
southward battering had ceased. Plainly, most of my opponents were about to
concentrate against the feeble connecting door which they knew must open
directly on me. Outside, the moon played on the ridgepole of the block below, and
I saw that the jump would be desperately hazardous because of the steep surface on
which I must land.

Surveying the conditions, I chose the more southerly of the two windows as my
avenue of escape; planning to land on the inner slope of the roof and make for the
nearest sky-light. Once inside one of the decrepit brick structures I would have to
reckon with pursuit; but I hoped to descend and dodge in and out of yawning
doorways along the shadowed courtyard, eventually getting to Washington Street
and slipping out of town toward the south.

The clatter at the northerly connecting door was now terrific, and I saw that the
weak panelling was beginning to splinter. Obviously, the besiegers had brought
some ponderous object into play as a battering-ram. The bedstead, however, still
held firm; so that I had at least a faint chance of making good my escape. As I
opened the window I noticed that it was flanked by heavy velour draperies
suspended from a pole by brass rings, and also that there was a large projecting
catch for the shutters on the exterior. Seeing a possible means of avoiding the
dangerous jump, I yanked at the hangings and brought them down, pole and all;
then quickly hooking two of the rings in the shutter catch and flinging the drapery
outside. The heavy folds reached fully to the abutting roof, and I saw that the rings
and catch would be likely to bear my weight. So, climbing out of the window and
down the improvised rope ladder, I left behind me forever the morbid and horror-
infested fabric of the Gilman House.

I landed safely on the loose slates of the steep roof, and succeeded in gaining the
gaping black skylight without a slip. Glancing up at the window I had left, I
observed it was still dark, though far across the crumbling chimneys to the north I
could see lights ominously blazing in the Order of Dagon Hall, the Baptist church,
and the Congregational church which I recalled so shiveringly. There had seemed
to be no one in the courtyard below, and I hoped there would be a chance to get
away before the spreading of a general alarm. Flashing my pocket lamp into the
skylight, I saw that there were no steps down. The distance was slight, however, so I
clambered over the brink and dropped; striking a dusty floor littered with
crumbling boxes and barrels.

The place was ghoulish-looking, but I was past minding such impressions and
made at once for the staircase revealed by my flashlight - after a hasty glance at my
watch, which shewed the hour to be 2 a.m. The steps creaked, but seemed tolerably
sound; and I raced down past a barnlike second storey to the ground floor. The
desolation was complete, and only echoes answered my footfalls. At length I
reached the lower hall at the end of which I saw a faint luminous rectangle marking
the ruined Paine Street doorway. Heading the other way, I found the back door also
open; and darted out and down five stone steps to the grass-grown cobblestones of
the courtyard.

The moonbeams did not reach down here, but I could just see my way about
without using the flashlight. Some of the windows on the Gilman House side were
faintly glowing, and I thought I heard confused sounds within. Walking softly over
to the Washington Street side I perceived several open doorways, and chose the
nearest as my route out. The hallway inside was black, and when I reached the
opposite end I saw that the street door was wedged immovably shut. Resolved to
try another building, I groped my way back toward the courtyard, but stopped short
when close to the doorway.

For out of an opened door in the Gilman House a large crowd of doubtful shapes
was pouring - lanterns bobbing in the darkness, and horrible croaking voices
exchanging low cries in what was certainly not English. The figures moved
uncertainly, and I realized to my relief that they did not know where I had gone;
but for all that they sent a shiver of horror through my frame. Their features were
indistinguishable, but their crouching, shambling gait was abominably repellent.
And worst of all, I perceived that one figure was strangely robed, and unmistakably
surmounted by a tall tiara of a design altogether too familiar. As the figures spread
throughout the courtyard, I felt my fears increase. Suppose I could find no egress
from this building on the street side? The fishy odour was detestable, and I
wondered I could stand it without fainting. Again groping toward the street, I
opened a door off the hall and came upon an empty room with closely shuttered
but sashless windows. Fumbling in the rays of my flashlight, I found I could open
the shutters; and in another moment had climbed outside and was fully closing the
aperture in its original manner.

I was now in Washington Street, and for the moment saw no living thing nor any
light save that of the moon. From several directions in the distance, however, I
could hear the sound of hoarse voices, of footsteps, and of a curious kind of
pattering which did not sound quite like footsteps. Plainly I had no time to lose.
The points of the compass were clear to me, and I was glad that all the street lights
were turned off, as is often the custom on strongly moonlit nights in prosperous
rural regions. Some of the sounds came from the south, yet I retained my design of
escaping in that direction. There would, I knew, be plenty of deserted doorways to
shelter me in case I met any person or group who looked like pursuers.

I walked rapidly, softly, and close to the ruined houses. While hatless and
dishevelled after my arduous climb, I did not look especially noticeable; and stood
a good chance of passing unheeded if forced to encounter any casual wayfarer.

At Bates Street I drew into a yawning vestibule while two shambling figures
crossed in front of me, but was soon on my way again and approaching the open
space where Eliot Street obliquely crosses Washington at the intersection of South.
Though I had never seen this space, it had looked dangerous to me on the grocery
youth's map; since the moonlight would have free play there. There was no use
trying to evade it, for any alternative course would involve detours of possibly
disastrous visibility and delaying effect. The only thing to do was to cross it boldly
and openly; imitating the typical shamble of the Innsmouth folk as best I could,
and trusting that no one - or at least no pursuer of mine - would be there.

Just how fully the pursuit was organised - and indeed, just what its purpose might
be - I could form no idea. There seemed to be unusual activity in the town, but I
judged that the news of my escape from the Gilman had not yet spread. I would, of
course, soon have to shift from Washington to some other southward street; for that
party from the hotel would doubtless be after me. I must have left dust prints in that
last old building, revealing how I had gained the street.

The open space was, as I had expected, strongly moonlit; and I saw the remains of a
parklike, iron-railed green in its center. Fortunately no one was about though a
curious sort of buzz or roar seemed to be increasing in the direction of Town
Square. South Street was very wide, leading directly down a slight declivity to the
waterfront and commanding a long view out a sea; and I hoped that no one would
be glancing up it from afar as I crossed in the bright moonlight.

My progress was unimpeded, and no fresh sound arose to hint that I had been spied.
Glancing about me, I involuntarily let my pace slacken for a second to take in the
sight of the sea, gorgeous in the burning moonlight at the street's end. Far out
beyond the breakwater was the dim, dark line of Devil Reef, and as I glimpsed it I
could not help thinking of all the hideous legends I had heard in the last twenty-
four hours - legends which portrayed this ragged rock as a veritable gateway to
realms of unfathomed horror and inconceivable abnormality.

Then, without warning, I saw the intermittent flashes of light on the distant reef.
They were definite and unmistakable, and awaked in my mind a blind horror
beyond all rational proportion. My muscles tightened for panic flight, held in only
by a certain unconscious caution and half-hypnotic fascination. And to make
matters worse, there now flashed forth from the lofty cupola of the Gilman House,
which loomed up to the northeast behind me, a series of analogous though
differently spaced gleams which could be nothing less than an answering signal.

Controlling my muscles, and realising afresh - how plainly visible I was, I resumed
my brisker and feignedly shambling pace; though keeping my eyes on that hellish
and ominous reef as long as the opening of South Street gave me a seaward view.
What the whole proceeding meant, I could not imagine; unless it involved some
strange rite connected with Devil Reef, or unless some party had landed from a ship
on that sinister rock. I now bent to the left around the ruinous green; still gazing
toward the ocean as it blazed in the spectral summer moonlight, and watching the
cryptical flashing of those nameless, unexplainable beacons.

It was then that the most horrible impression of all was borne in upon me - the
impression which destroyed my last vestige of self-control and sent me running
frantically southward past the yawning black doorways and fishily staring windows
of that deserted nightmare street. For at a closer glance I saw that the moonlit waters
between the reef and the shore were far from empty. They were alive with a teeming
horde of shapes swimming inward toward the town; and even at my vast distance
and in my single moment of perception I could tell that the bobbing heads and
flailing arms were alien and aberrant in a way scarcely to be expressed or
consciously formulated.

My frantic running ceased before I had covered a block, for at my left I began to
hear something like the hue and cry of organised pursuit. There were footsteps and
gutteral sounds, and a rattling motor wheezed south along Federal Street. In a
second all my plans were utterly changed - for if the southward highway were
blocked ahead of me, I must clearly find another egress from Innsmouth. I paused
and drew into a gaping doorway, reflecting how lucky I was to have left the
moonlit open space before these pursuers came down the parallel street.

A second reflection was less comforting. Since the pursuit was down another street,
it was plain that the party was not following me directly. It had not seen me, but
was simply obeying a general plan of cutting off my escape. This, however, implied
that all roads leading out of Innsmouth were similarly patrolled; for the people
could not have known what route I intended to take. If this were so, I would have to
make my retreat across country away from any road; but how could I do that in
view of the marshy and creek-riddled nature of all the surrounding region? For a
moment my brain reeled - both from sheer hopelessness and from a rapid increase in
the omnipresent fishy odour.

Then I thought of the abandoned railway to Rowley, whose solid line of ballasted,
weed-grown earth still stretched off to the northwest from the crumbling station on
the edge at the river-gorge. There was just a chance that the townsfolk would not
think of that; since its briar-choked desertion made it half-impassable, and the
unlikeliest of all avenues for a fugitive to choose. I had seen it clearly from my
hotel window and knew about how it lay. Most of its earlier length was
uncomfortably visible from the Rowley road, and from high places in the town
itself; but one could perhaps crawl inconspicuously through the undergrowth. At
any rate, it would form my only chance of deliverance, and there was nothing to do
but try it.

Drawing inside the hall of my deserted shelter, I once more consulted the grocery
boy's map with the aid of the flashlight. The immediate problem was how to reach
the ancient railway; and I now saw that the safest course was ahead to Babson
Street; then west to Lafayette - there edging around but not crossing an open space
homologous to the one I had traversed - and subsequently back northward and
westward in a zigzagging line through Lafayette, Bates, Adam, and Bank streets -
the latter skirting the river gorge - to the abandoned and dilapidated station I had
seen from my window. My reason for going ahead to Babson was that I wished
neither to recross the earlier open space nor to begin my westward course along a
cross street as broad as South.

Starting once more, I crossed the street to the right-hand side in order to edge
around into Babson as inconspicuously as possible. Noises still continued in
Federal Street, and as I glanced behind me I thought I saw a gleam of light near the
building through which I had escaped. Anxious to leave Washington Street, I broke
into a quiet dogtrot, trusting to luck not to encounter any observing eye. Next the
corner of Babson Street I saw to my alarm that one of the houses was still inhabited,
as attested by curtains at the window; but there were no lights within, and I passed
it without disaster.

In Babson Street, which crossed Federal and might thus reveal me to the searchers, I
clung as closely as possible to the sagging, uneven buildings; twice pausing in a
doorway as the noises behind me momentarily increased. The open space ahead
shone wide and desolate under the moon, but my route would not force me to cross
it. During my second pause I began to detect a fresh distribution of vague sounds;
and upon looking cautiously out from cover beheld a motor car darting across the
open space, bound outward along Eliot Street, which there intersects both Babson
and Lafayette.

As I watched - choked by a sudden rise in the fishy odour after a short abatement - I
saw a band of uncouth, crouching shapes loping and shambling in the same
direction; and knew that this must be the party guarding the Ipswich road, since
that highway forms an extension of Eliot Street. Two of the figures I glimpsed were
in voluminous robes, and one wore a peaked diadem which glistened whitely in the
moonlight. The gait of this figure was so odd that it sent a chill through me - for it
seemed to me the creature was almost hopping.

When the last of the band was out of sight I resumed my progress; darting around
the corner into Lafayette Street, and crossing Eliot very hurriedly lest stragglers of
the party be still advancing along that thoroughfare. I did hear some croaking and
clattering sounds far off toward Town Square, but accomplished the passage
without disaster. My greatest dread was in re-crossing broad and moonlit South
Street - with its seaward view - and I had to nerve myself for the ordeal. Someone
might easily be looking, and possible Eliot Street stragglers could not fail to
glimpse me from either of two points. At the last moment I decided I had better
slacken my trot and make the crossing as before in the shambling gait of an average
Innsmouth native.

When the view of the water again opened out - this time on my right - I was half-
determined not to look at it at all. I could not however, resist; but cast a sidelong
glance as I carefully and imitatively shambled toward the protecting shadows
ahead. There was no ship visible, as I had half-expected there would be. Instead, the
first thing which caught my eye was a small rowboat pulling in toward the
abandoned wharves and laden with some bulky, tarpaulin-covered object. Its
rowers, though distantly and indistinctly seen, were of an especially repellent
aspect. Several swimmers were still discernible; while on the far black reef I could
see a faint, steady glow unlike the winking beacon visible before, and of a curious
colour which I could not precisely identify. Above the slant roofs ahead and to the
right there loomed the tall cupola of the Gilman House, but it was completely dark.
The fishy odour, dispelled for a moment by some merciful breeze, now closed in
again with maddening intensity.

I had not quite crossed the street when I heard a muttering band advancing along
Washington from the north. As they reached the broad open space where I had had
my first disquieting glimpse of the moonlit water I could see them plainly only a
block away - and was horrified by the bestial abnormality of their faces and the
doglike sub-humanness of their crouching gait. One man moved in a positively
simian way, with long arms frequently touching the ground; while another figure -
robed and tiaraed - seemed to progress in an almost hopping fashion. I judged this
party to be the one I had seen in the Gilman's courtyard - the one, therefore, most
closely on my trail. As some of the figures turned to look in my direction I was
transfixed with fright, yet managed to preserve the casual, shambling gait I had
assumed. To this day I do not know whether they saw me or not. If they did, my
stratagem must have deceived them, for they passed on across the moonlit space
without varying their course - meanwhile croaking and jabbering in some hateful
guttural patois I could not identify.

Once more in shadow, I resumed my former dog-trot past the leaning and decrepit
houses that stared blankly into the night. Having crossed to the western sidewalk I
rounded the nearest corner into Bates Street where I kept close to the buildings on
the southern side. I passed two houses shewing signs of habitation, one of which
had faint lights in upper rooms, yet met with no obstacle. As I tuned into Adams
Street I felt measurably safer, but received a shock when a man reeled out of a black
doorway directly in front of me. He proved, however, too hopelessly drunk to be a
menace; so that I reached the dismal ruins of the Bank Street warehouses in safety.

No one was stirring in that dead street beside the river-gorge, and the roar of the
waterfalls quite drowned my foot steps. It was a long dog-trot to the ruined station,
and the great brick warehouse walls around me seemed somehow more terrifying
than the fronts of private houses. At last I saw the ancient arcaded station - or what
was left of it - and made directly for the tracks that started from its farther end.

The rails were rusty but mainly intact, and not more than half the ties had rotted
away. Walking or running on such a surface was very difficult; but I did my best,
and on the whole made very fair time. For some distance the line kept on along the
gorge's brink, but at length I reached the long covered bridge where it crossed the
chasm at a dizzying height. The condition of this bridge would determine my next
step. If humanly possible, I would use it; if not, I would have to risk more street
wandering and take the nearest intact highway bridge.

The vast, barnlike length of the old bridge gleamed spectrally in the moonlight,
and I saw that the ties were safe for at least a few feet within. Entering, I began to
use my flashlight, and was almost knocked down by the cloud of bats that flapped
past me. About half-way across there was a perilous gap in the ties which I feared
for a moment would halt me; but in the end I risked a desperate jump which
fortunately succeeded.

I was glad to see the moonlight again when I emerged from that macabre tunnel.
The old tracks crossed River Street at grade, and at once veered off into a region
increasingly rural and with less and less of Innsmouth's abhorrent fishy odour. Here
the dense growth of weeds and briers hindered me and cruelly tore at my clothes,
but I was none the less glad that they were there to give me concealment in case of
peril. I knew that much of my route must be visible from the Rowley road.
The marshy region began very abruptly, with the single track on a low, grassy
embankment where the weedy growth was somewhat thinner. Then came a sort of
island of higher ground, where the line passed through a shallow open cut choked
with bushes and brambles. I was very glad of this partial shelter, since at this point
the Rowley road was uncomfortably near according to my window view. At the end
of the cut it would cross the track and swerve off to a safer distance; but meanwhile
I must be exceedingly careful. I was by this time thankfully certain that the railway
itself was not patrolled.

Just before entering the cut I glanced behind me, but saw no pursuer. The ancient
spires and roofs of decaying Innsmouth gleamed lovely and ethereal in the magic
yellow moonlight, and I thought of how they must have looked in the old days
before the shadow fell. Then, as my gaze circled inland from the town, something
less tranquil arrested my notice and held me immobile for a second.

What I saw - or fancied I saw - was a disturbing suggestion of undulant motion far
to the south; a suggestion which made me conclude that a very large horde must be
pouring out of the city along the level Ipswich road. The distance was great and I
could distinguish nothing in detail; but I did not at all like the look of that moving
column. It undulated too much, and glistened too brightly in the rays of the now
westering moon. There was a suggestion of sound, too, though the wind was
blowing the other way - a suggestion of bestial scraping and bellowing even worse
than the muttering of the parties I had lately overheard.

All sorts of unpleasant conjectures crossed my mind. I thought of those very

extreme Innsmouth types said to be hidden in crumbling, centuried warrens near
the waterfront; I thought, too, of those nameless swimmers I had seen. Counting the
parties so far glimpsed, as well as those presumably covering other roads, the
number of my pursuers must be strangely large for a town as depopulated as
Innsmouth.

Whence could come the dense personnel of such a column as I now beheld? Did
those ancient, unplumbed warrens teem with a twisted, uncatalogued, and
unsuspected life? Or had some unseen ship indeed landed a legion of unknown
outsiders on that hellish reef? Who were they? Why were they here? And if such a
column of them was scouring the Ipswich road, would the patrols on the other roads
be likewise augmented?

I had entered the brush-grown cut and was struggling along at a very slow pace
when that damnable fishy odour again waxed dominant. Had the wind suddenly
changed eastward, so that it blew in from the sea and over the town? It must have, I
concluded, since I now began to hear shocking guttural murmurs from that hitherto
silent direction. There was another sound, too - a kind of wholesale, colossal
flopping or pattering which somehow called up images of the most detestable sort.
It made me think illogically of that unpleasantly undulating column on the far-off
Ipswich road.

And then both stench and sounds grew stronger, so that I paused shivering and
grateful for the cut's protection. It was here, I recalled, that the Rowley road drew so
close to the old railway before crossing westward and diverging. Something was
coming along that road, and I must lie low till its passage and vanishment in the
distance. Thank heaven these creatures employed no dogs for tracking - though
perhaps that would have been impossible amidst the omnipresent regional odour.
Crouched in the bushes of that sandy cleft I felt reasonably safe, even though I
knew the searchers would have to cross the track in front of me not much more than
a hundred yards away. I would be able to see them, but they could not, except by a
malign miracle, see me.

All at once I began dreading to look at them as they passed. I saw the close moonlit
space where they would surge by, and had curious thoughts about the irredeemable
pollution of that space. They would perhaps be the worst of all Innsmouth types -
something one would not care to remember.

The stench waxed overpowering, and the noises swelled to a bestial babel of
croaking, baying and barking without the least suggestion of human speech. Were
these indeed the voices of my pursuers? Did they have dogs after all? So far I had
seen none of the lower animals in Innsmouth. That flopping or pattering was
monstrous - I could not look upon the degenerate creatures responsible for it. I
would keep my eyes shut till the sound receded toward the west. The horde was
very close now - air foul with their hoarse snarlings, and the ground almost shaking
with their alien-rhythmed footfalls. My breath nearly ceased to come, and I put
every ounce of will-power into the task of holding my eyelids down.

I am not even yet willing to say whether what followed was a hideous actuality or
only a nightmare hallucination. The later action of the government, after my frantic
appeals, would tend to confirm it as a monstrous truth; but could not an
hallucination have been repeated under the quasi-hypnotic spell of that ancient,
haunted, and shadowed town? Such places have strange properties, and the legacy
of insane legend might well have acted on more than one human imagination
amidst those dead, stench-cursed streets and huddles of rotting roofs and crumbling
steeples. Is it not possible that the germ of an actual contagious madness lurks in
the depths of that shadow over Innsmouth? Who can be sure of reality after hearing
things like the tale of old Zadok Allen? The government men never found poor
Zadok, and have no conjectures to make as to what became of him. Where does
madness leave off and reality begin? Is it possible that even my latest fear is sheer
delusion?

But I must try to tell what I thought I saw that night under the mocking yellow
moon - saw surging and hopping down the Rowley road in plain sight in front of
me as I crouched among the wild brambles of that desolate railway cut. Of course
my resolution to keep my eyes shut had failed. It was foredoomed to failure - for
who could crouch blindly while a legion of croaking, baying entities of unknown
source flopped noisomely past, scarcely more than a hundred yards away?

I thought I was prepared for the worst, and I really ought to have been prepared
considering what I had seen before.

My other pursuers had been accursedly abnormal - so should I not have been ready
to face a strengthening of the abnormal element; to look upon forms in which there
was no mixture of the normal at all? I did not open my eyes until the raucous
clamour came loudly from a point obviously straight ahead. Then I knew that a
long section of them must be plainly in sight where the sides of the cut flattened
out and the road crossed the track - and I could no longer keep myself from
sampling whatever honor that leering yellow moon might have to shew.

It was the end, for whatever remains to me of life on the surface of this earth, of
every vestige of mental peace and confidence in the integrity of nature and of the
human mind. Nothing that I could have imagined - nothing, even, that I could have
gathered had I credited old Zadok's crazy tale in the most literal way - would be in
any way comparable to the demoniac, blasphemous reality that I saw - or believe I
saw. I have tied to hint what it was in order to postpone the horror of writing it
down baldly. Can it be possible that this planet has actually spawned such things;
that human eyes have truly seen, as objective flesh, what man has hitherto known
only in febrile phantasy and tenuous legend?

And yet I saw them in a limitless stream - flopping, hopping, croaking, bleating -
urging inhumanly through the spectral moonlight in a grotesque, malignant
saraband of fantastic nightmare. And some of them had tall tiaras of that nameless
whitish-gold metal ... and some were strangely robed ... and one, who led the way,
was clad in a ghoulishly humped black coat and striped trousers, and had a man's
felt hat perched on the shapeless thing that answered for a head.

I think their predominant colour was a greyish-green, though they had white
bellies. They were mostly shiny and slippery, but the ridges of their backs were
scaly. Their forms vaguely suggested the anthropoid, while their heads were the
heads of fish, with prodigious bulging eyes that never closed. At the sides of their
necks were palpitating gills, and their long paws were webbed. They hopped
irregularly, sometimes on two legs and sometimes on four. I was somehow glad that
they had no more than four limbs. Their croaking, baying voices, clearly wed tar
articulate speech, held all the dark shades of expression which their staring faces
lacked.
But for all of their monstrousness they were not unfamiliar to me. I knew too well
what they must be - for was not the memory of the evil tiara at Newburyport still
fresh? They were the blasphemous fish-frogs of the nameless design - living and
horrible - and as I saw them I knew also of what that humped, tiaraed priest in the
black church basement had fearsomely reminded me. Their number was past
guessing. It seemed to me that there were limitless swarms of them and certainly my
momentary glimpse could have shewn only the least fraction. In another instant
everything was blotted out by a merciful fit of fainting; the first I had ever had.

It was a gentle daylight rain that awaked me front my stupor in the brush-grown
railway cut, and when I staggered out to the roadway ahead I saw no trace of any
prints in the fresh mud. The fishy odour, too, was gone, Innsmouth's ruined roofs
and toppling steeples loomed up greyly toward the southeast, but not a living
creature did I spy in all the desolate salt marshes around. My watch was still going,
and told me that the hour was past noon.

The reality of what I had been through was highly uncertain in my mind, but I felt
that something hideous lay in the background. I must get away from evil-shadowed
Innsmouth - and accordingly I began to test my cramped, wearied powers of
locomotion. Despite weakness hunger, horror, and bewilderment I found myself
after a time able to walk; so started slowly along the muddy road to Rowley. Before
evening I was in village, getting a meal and providing myself with presentable
clothes. I caught the night train to Arkham, and the next day talked long and
earnestly with government officials there; a process I later repeated in Boston. With
the main result of these colloquies the public is now familiar - and I wish, for
normality's sake, there were nothing more to tell. Perhaps it is madness that is
overtaking me - yet perhaps a greater horror - or a greater marvel - is reaching out.

As may well be imagined, I gave up most of the foreplanned features of the rest of
my tour - the scenic, architectural, and antiquarian diversions on which I had
counted so heavily. Nor did I dare look for that piece of strange jewelry said to be
in the Miskatonic University Museum. I did, however, improve my stay in Arkham
by collecting some genealogical notes I had long wished to possess; very rough
and hasty data, it is true, but capable of good use later no when I might have time
to collate and codify them. The curator of the historical society there - Mr. B.
Lapham Peabody - was very courteous about assisting me, and expressed unusual
interest when I told him I was a grandson of Eliza Orne of Arkham, who was born in
1867 and had married James Williamson of Ohio at the age of seventeen.

It seemed that a maternal uncle of mine had been there many years before on a
quest much like my own; and that my grandmother's family was a topic of some
local curiosity. There had, Mr. Peabody said, been considerable discussion about
the marriage of her father, Benjamin Orne, just after the Civil War; since the
ancestry of the bride was peculiarly puzzling. That bride was understood to have
been an orphaned Marsh of New Hampshire - a cousin of the Essex County Marshes
- but her education had been in France and she knew very little of her family. A
guardian had deposited funds in a Boston bank to maintain her and her French
governess; but that guardian's name was unfamiliar to Arkham people, and in time
he dropped out of sight, so that the governess assumed the role by court
appointment. The Frenchwoman - now long dead - was very taciturn, and there
were those who said she would have told more than she did.

But the most baffling thing was the inability of anyone to place the recorded
parents of the young woman - Enoch and Lydia (Meserve) Marsh - among the
known families of New Hampshire. Possibly, many suggested, she was the natural
daughter of some Marsh of prominence - she certainly had the true Marsh eyes.
Most of the puzzling was done after her early death, which took place at the birth
of my grandmother - her only child. Having formed some disagreeable impressions
connected with the name of Marsh, I did not welcome the news that it belonged on
my own ancestral tree; nor was I pleased by Mr. Peabody's suggestion that I had the
true Marsh eyes myself. However, I was grateful for data which I knew would prove
valuable; and took copious notes and lists of book references regarding the well-
documented Orne family.

I went directly home to Toledo from Boston, and later spent a month at Maumee
recuperating from my ordeal. In September I entered Oberlin for my final year, and
from then till the next June was busy with studies and other wholesome activities -
reminded of the bygone terror only by occasional official visits from government
men in connexion with the campaign which my pleas and evidence had started.
Around the middle of July - just a year after the Innsmouth experience - I spent a
week with my late mother's family in Cleveland; checking some of my new
genealogical data with the various notes, traditions, and bits of heirloom material
in existence there, and seeing what kind of a connected chart I could construct.

I did not exactly relish this task, for the atmosphere of the Williamson home had
always depressed me. There was a strain of morbidity there, and my mother had
never encouraged my visiting her parents as a child, although she always
welcomed her father when he came to Toledo. My Arkham-born grandmother had
seemed strange and almost terrifying to me, and I do not think I grieved when she
disappeared. I was eight years old then, and it was said that she had wandered off in
grief after the suicide of my Uncle Douglas, her eldest son. He had shot himself
after a trip to New England - the same trip, no doubt, which had caused him to be
recalled at the Arkham Historical Society.

This uncle had resembled her, and I had never liked him either. Something about
the staring, unwinking expression of both of them had given me a vague,
unaccountable uneasiness. My mother and Uncle Walter had not looked like that.
They were like their father, though poor little cousin Lawrence - Walter's son - had
been almost perfect duplicate of his grandmother before his condition took him to
the permanent seclusion of a sanitarium at Canton. I had not seen him in four years,
but my uncle once implied that his state, both mental and physical, was very bad.
This worry had probably been a major cause of his mother's death two years before.

My grandfather and his widowed son Walter now comprised the Cleveland
household, but the memory of older times hung thickly over it. I still disliked the
place, and tried to get my researches done as quickly as possible. Williamson
records and traditions were supplied in abundance by my grandfather; though for
Orne material I had to depend on my uncle Walter, who put at my disposal the
contents of all his files, including notes, letters, cuttings, heirlooms, photographs,
and miniatures.

It was in going over the letters and pictures on the Orne side that I began to acquire
a kind of terror of my own ancestry. As I have said, my grandmother and Uncle
Douglas had always disturbed me. Now, years after their passing, I gazed at their
pictured faces with a measurably heightened feeling of repulsion and alienation. I
could not at first understand the change, but gradually a horrible sort of comparison
began to obtrude itself on my unconscious mind despite the steady refusal of my
consciousness to admit even the least suspicion of it. It was clear that the typical
expression of these faces now suggested something it had not suggested before -
something which would bring stark panic if too openly thought of.

But the worst shock came when my uncle shewed me the Orne jewellery in a
downtown safe deposit vault. Some of the items were delicate and inspiring
enough, but there was one box of strange old pieces descended from my mysterious
great-grandmother which my uncle was almost reluctant to produce. They were, he
said, of very grotesque and almost repulsive design, and had never to his
knowledge been publicly worn; though my grandmother used to enjoy looking at
them. Vague legends of bad luck clustered around them, and my great-
grandmother's French governess had said they ought not to be worn in New
England, though it would be quite safe to wear them in Europe.

As my uncle began slowly and grudgingly to unwrap the things he urged me not to
be shocked by the strangeness and frequent hideousness of the designs. Artists and
archaeologists who had seen them pronounced their workmanship superlatively
and exotically exquisite, though no one seemed able to define their exact material
or assign them to any specific art tradition. There were two armlets, a tiara, and a
kind of pectoral; the latter having in high relief certain figures of almost unbearable
extravagance.

During this description I had kept a tight rein on my emotions, but my face must
have betrayed my mounting fears. My uncle looked concerned, and paused in his
unwrapping to study my countenance. I motioned to him to continue, which he did
with renewed signs of reluctance. He seemed to expect some demonstration when
the first piece - the tiara - became visible, but I doubt if he expected quite what
actually happened. I did not expect it, either, for I thought I was thoroughly
forewarned regarding what the jewellery would turn out to be. What I did was to
faint silently away, just as I had done in that brier choked railway cut a year before.

From that day on my life has been a nightmare of brooding and apprehension nor
do I know how much is hideous truth and how much madness. My great-
grandmother had been a Marsh of unknown source whose husband lived in Arkham
- and did not old Zadok say that the daughter of Obed Marsh by a monstrous
mother was married to an Arkham man trough trick? What was it the ancient toper
had muttered about the line of my eyes to Captain Obed's? In Arkham, too, the
curator had told me I had the true Marsh eyes. Was Obed Marsh my own great-
great-grandfather? Who - or what - then, was my great-great-grandmother? But
perhaps this was all madness. Those whitish-gold ornaments might easily have
been bought from some Innsmouth sailor by the father of my great-grand-mother,
whoever he was. And that look in the staring-eyed faces of my grandmother and
self-slain uncle might be sheer fancy on my part - sheer fancy, bolstered up by the
Innsmouth shadow which had so darkly coloured my imagination. But why had my
uncle killed himself after an ancestral quest in New England?

For more than two years l fought off these reflections with partial success. My father
secured me a place in an insurance office, and I buried myself in routine as deeply
as possible. In the winter of 1930-31, however, the dreams began. They were very
sparse and insidious at first, but increased in frequency and vividness as the weeks
went by. Great watery spaces opened out before me, and I seemed to wander
through titanic sunken porticos and labyrinths of weedy cyclopean walls with
grotesque fishes as my companions. Then the other shapes began to appear, filling
me with nameless horror the moment I awoke. But during the dreams they did not
horrify me at all - I was one with them; wearing their unhuman trappings, treading
their aqueous ways, and praying monstrously at their evil sea-bottom temples.

There was much more than I could remember, but even what I did remember each
morning would be enough to stamp me as a madman or a genius if ever I dared
write it down. Some frightful influence, I felt, was seeking gradually to drag me out
of the sane world of wholesome life into unnamable abysses of blackness and
alienage; and the process told heavily on me. My health and appearance grew
steadily worse, till finally I was forced to give up my position and adopt the static,
secluded life of an invalid. Some odd nervous affliction had me in its grip, and I
found myself at times almost unable to shut my eyes.

It was then that I began to study the mirror with mounting alarm. The slow ravages
of disease are not pleasant to watch, but in my case there was something subtler and
more puzzling in the background. My father seemed to notice it, too, for he began
looking at me curiously and almost affrightedly. What was taking place in me?
Could it be that I was coming to resemble my grandmother and uncle Douglas?

One night I had a frightful dream in which I met my grandmother under the sea. She
lived in a phosphorescent palace of many terraces, with gardens of strange leprous
corals and grotesque brachiate efflorescences, and welcomed me with a warmth that
may have been sardonic. She had changed - as those who take to the water change -
and told me she had never died. Instead, she had gone to a spot her dead son had
learned about, and had leaped to a realm whose wonders - destined for him as well -
he had spurned with a smoking pistol. This was to be my realm, too - I could not
escape it. I would never die, but would live with those who had lived since before
man ever walked the earth.

I met also that which had been her grandmother. For eighty thousand years
Pth'thya-l'yi had lived in Y'ha-nthlei, and thither she had gone back after Obed
Marsh was dead. Y'ha-nthlei was not destroyed when the upper-earth men shot
death into the sea. It was hurt, but not destroyed. The Deep Ones could never be
destroyed, even though the palaeogean magic of the forgotten Old Ones might
sometimes check them. For the present they would rest; but some day, if they
remembered, they would rise again for the tribute Great Cthulhu craved. It would
be a city greater than Innsmouth next time. They had planned to spread, and had
brought up that which would help them, but now they must wait once more. For
bringing the upper-earth men's death I must do a penance, but that would not be
heavy. This was the dream in which I saw a shoggoth for the first time, and the sight
set me awake in a frenzy of screaming. That morning the mirror definitely told me I
had acquired the Innsmouth look.

So far I have not shot myself as my uncle Douglas did. I bought an automatic and
almost took the step, but certain dreams deterred me. The tense extremes of horror
are lessening, and I feel queerly drawn toward the unknown sea-deeps instead of
fearing them. I hear and do strange things in sleep, and awake with a kind of
exaltation instead of terror. I do not believe I need to wait for the full change as
most have waited. If I did, my father would probably shut me up in a sanitarium as
my poor little cousin is shut up. Stupendous and unheard-of splendors await me
below, and I shall seek them soon. Ia-R'lyehl Cihuiha flgagnl id Ia! No, I shall not
shoot myself - I cannot be made to shoot myself!

I shall plan my cousin's escape from that Canton mad-house, and together we shall
go to marvel-shadowed Innsmouth. We shall swim out to that brooding reef in the
sea and dive down through black abysses to Cyclopean and many-columned Y'ha-
nthlei, and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory for
ever.