Once I paused and looked about me, trying in vain to pierce the ocean’s depths. I thought I imagined a great pale green fish swimming in my wake, and had the illusion that it was a mermaid, for I seemed to see hair streaming from it; but then it was lost again behind the growths of that aquatic deep. But I could not pause for long; I was drawn ever forward, until at last I knew that my oxygen was almost gone, my breathing became more and more labored, and I struggled to swim to the surface, only to find myself falling from the place to which I had vaulted upward, falling into a crevice on the ocean’s floor.
Then, only a few moments before I lost consciousness, I was aware of the swift approach of my follower, of hands upon my helmet and the oxygen tanks—it was not a fish at all, nor a mermaid: it was the naked body of Ada Marsh I had seen, with her long hair streaming out behind her, swimming with the ease and facility of a natural denizen of the deep!
IV
What followed upon this almost dreamlike vision was most incredible of all. I felt in my declining consciousness, rather than saw, that Ada took the helmet and oxygen tanks from me and dropped them into the depths below, and then, slowly, awareness returned; I found myself swimming, with Ada guiding me with her strong, capable fingers, not back, not up, but still outward. And I found myself swimming as ably as she, and, like herself, opening and closing my mouth as were I breathing through the water—and so I was! What ancestral gift I had unwittingly possessed now opened up before me all the vast wonders of the sea—I could breathe without surfacing, an amphibian born!
Ada flashed ahead of me, and I followed. I was swift, but she was swifter. No more the slow walk across the ocean’s floor, now only the propulsion of arms and legs that were seemingly made for the water, and the surging, triumphant joy of swimming so, without constraint, toward some goal I knew dimly I was meant to reach. Ada led the way, and I followed, while above us, beyond the water, the sun sank westward, and the day ended, the last light withdrew down the west, and the sickle moon shone in the afterglow.
And at this hour we drove upward toward the surface, following a line of jagged rock which marked the wall of shore or island, I could not tell which, and broke water far from the shore at a place where a shelf of land jutted out of the sea, from which it was possible to see to the west the twinkling lights of a town, a harbor city, seeing which, and looking back to where Ada Marsh and I sat in the moonlight, with boats moving shadowily between us and the shore, and between us and the line of the horizon to the east, I knew where we were—on that same Devil Reef off Innsmouth, the place where once before, prior to that catastrophic night in 1928, our ancestors had played and disported themselves among their brethren from the ocean’s depths.
“How could you have failed to know?” asked Ada patiently. “You might have died with all that to suffocate you. If I had not come to the house when I did… .”
“I had no way of knowing,” I said.
“How else did you think you uncle went exploring, but like this?”
My Uncle Sylvan’s quest was hers, too, and now it was mine. To look for the seal of R’lyeh, and beyond, to discover the sleeper in the depths, the dreamer whose call I had felt and answered—great Cthulhu. It was not off Innsmouth, of that Ada was confident. And to prove it, she led the way down into the depths once more, far down off Devil Reef and showed me the great megalithic stone structures lying in ruin there as a result of the depth-bombing of 1928, the place where many years before the early Marshes and Phillipses had continued their contact with the Deep Ones, down to swim among the ruins of that once great city, where I saw the first of them and was filled with horror at the sight—the frog-like caricature of a human being, that swam with greatly exaggerated movements so similar to those of a frog, and watched us with bulging eyes and batrachian mouth, boldly, not fearful, recognizing us as his brethren from outside, down through the monoliths to the ocean floor once more. The destruction there was very great. Even so had other places been destroyed by little bands of wilfull men dedicated to preventing the return of great Cthulhu.
And so up again, and back to the house on the rock, where Ada had left her clothes, and to make that compact which bound us each to each, and to plan for the journey to Ponape and the further search.
Within two weeks we were off to Ponape in a chartered craft, off on that mission of which we dared breathe no word to the ship’s crew, for fear they would think us mad and desert. We were confident that out quest would be successful, that somewhere in the uncharted islands of the Polynesias we would find that which we sought, and, finding it, go to join forever our brethren of the seas who serve and wait upon the day of the resurrection, when Cthulhu and Hastur and Lloigor and Yog-Sothoth shall rise again and vanquish the Elder Gods in that titanic struggle which must come.
We made Ponape our headquarters. Sometimes we set out from there; sometimes we used the craft we had chartered, oblivious of the curiosity of the crew. We searched the waters; sometimes we were gone for days. And soon my metamorphosis was complete. I dare not tell how we sustained ourselves in those journeys under the sea, of what manner of food we ate. Once there was a crash of a great air liner … but of this, no more. Suffice it to say that we survived, and I found myself doing things I would have thought bestial only a year ago, that nothing but the urgence of our quest impelled us on, and nothing other concerned us—only our survival, and the goal we held ever before our eyes.
How shall I write of what we saw and still retain even a shred of confidence and trust? The great cities of the ocean floor, and the greatest of them all, the most ancient, off the coast from Ponape, where the Deep Ones abounded, and we could move for days among the towers and the great slabs of stone, down among the minarets and domes of that sunken city, almost lost among the aquatic forest-growth of the bottom of the sea, seeing how the Deep Ones lived, befriending and befriended by a curious marine life which was octopoid in general appearance, and yet was not octopoid, fighting sharks and other enemies, even as we were forced to do from time to time, living only to serve him whose call can be heard in the depths, though none knows where he lies dreaming against the time of his coming again.
How shall I write of our ceaseless search, from city to city, from building to building, looking always for the great seal, beneath which He may lie, save as an endless round of days and nights, sustained by hope and the driving urgence of the goal which loomed always ahead, a little closer every day? It seldom varied, and yet was always different. None could tell what each new day would bring. True, our chartered craft was not always a boon, for we were required to leave it by boat, and in turn, once our boat would be concealed along some island shore, to go into the depths surreptitiously, which displeased us. Even so, the crew grew daily more inquisitive, confident that we sought hidden treasure, and likely to demand a share, so that it was difficult avoiding their questions and their ever increasing suspicions.
We sought thus for three months, and then, two days ago, we put down anchor off a strange, uninhabited island far from any major settlement. Nothing grew upon it, and it had the appearance of blasted area. Indeed, it seemed to be but an upthrusting of basaltic rock, which at one time must have loomed high above the water, but which had been bombarded severely, possibly during the past war. Here we left our craft, went round the island, and descended into the sea. There, too, was a city of the Deep Ones, and it, too, had been blasted and ruined by enemy action.
But, though the city below the black island was in ruins, it was not deserted, and it stretched away on all sides into untouched areas. And there, in one of the oldest of the huge, monolithic buildings, we found that which we sought—in the center of a vast room, many storeys in height, lay a great stone slab which was the source of that likeness I had first seen and failed to recognize in the decorations of my uncle’s house—the Seal of R’lyeh! And, standing upon it, we could hear from beneath it, movement as of some vast amorphous body, restless as the sea, stirring in dream—and we knew we had come to the goal
we sought, and could now enter upon an eternity of service to Him Who Will Rise Again, the dweller in the deep, the sleeper in the depths, whose dreams encompass not only earth but the dominion of all the universes, and who shall need such as Ada Marsh and I to minister to his wants until the time of his second coming.
We are still here as I write, and I set this down should we fail to return to our craft. The hour is late, and tomorrow we shall descend again, to find some way, if possible, to open the seal. Was it indeed imposed upon Great Cthulhu by the Elder Gods in banishing him? And dare we then to pry it up, to go below, into the presence of Him Who Lies Dreaming there? Ada and I—and soon there will be another of us, born in his natural element, to wait and serve Great Cthulhu. For we have heard the call, we have obeyed, and we are not alone. There are others who come from every corner of the earth, spawn too of that mating between men and the women of the sea, and soon the seas will belong to us, and thereafter all earth, and beyond … and we shall live in power and glory forever.
*
Extract from the Singapore Times, November 7, 1947.
The crew of the ship Rogers Clark were freed today after being held in connection with the strange disappearance of Mr. and Mrs. Marius Phillips, who had chartered the vessel to conduct some kind of research among the Polynesias. Mr. and Mrs. Phillips were last seen in the vicinity of an uninhabited island approximately South Latitude 47° 53′, West Longitude 127° 37′. They had gone out in a small boat and evidently entered the island from the shore opposite the ship. From the island they would seem to have gone into the sea, for the crew testified to witnessing a singularly astonishing upheaval of the water on the far side of the island, and the ship’s captain, together with the first mate, who were on the bridge, saw what appeared to be both his employers tossed aloft in the geyser of water and drawn back down again into the sea. They did not reappear, though the ship stood by for several hours. An examination of the island disclosed that the clothes worn by Mr. and Mrs. Phillips were in their small boat. A manuscript in Mr. Phillips’ hand, purporting to be fact, but obviously fiction, was found in his cabin, and turned in to the Singapore police by Captain Morton. No trace of Mr. and Mrs. Phillips has been found… .
The End
Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction
The Return of Hastur
The Whippoorwills in the Hills
Something in Wood
The Sandwin Compact
The House in the Valley
The Seal of R’lyeh
The Mask of Cthulhu Page 18