Etext of 24 Public Domain Short Stories of H.P. Lovecraft
by H.P. Lovecraft selected by David Reed and the Cabal

Contents
The Alchemist
The Beast in the Cave
Memory
The Picture in the House
Beyond the Wall of Sleep
Dagon
The White Ship
The Statement of Randolph Carter
The Doom That Came to Sarnath
Poetry and the Gods
Nyarlathotep
The Cats of Ulthar
Polaris
The Street
Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family 
Ex Oblivione
The Crawling Chaos
The Terrible Old Man
The Tree
The Nameless City
Herbert West: Reanimator
The Tomb
The Music of Erich Zann
Celephais

The Alchemist
1908

High up, crowning the grassy summit of a swelling mount whose
sides are wooded near the base with the gnarled trees of the
primeval forest stands the old chateau of my ancestors. For
centuries its lofty battlements have frowned down upon the wild
and rugged countryside about, serving as a home and stronghold
for the proud house whose honored line is older even than the
moss-grown castle walls. These ancient turrets, stained by the
storms of generations and crumbling under the slow yet mighty
pressure of time, formed in the ages of feudalism one of the most
dreaded and formidable fortresses in all France. From its
machicolated parapets and mounted battlements Barons, Counts,
and even Kings had been defied, yet never had its spacious halls
resounded to the footsteps of the invader.

But since those glorious years, all is changed. A poverty but little
above the level of dire want, together with a pride of name that
forbids its alleviation by the pursuits of commercial life, have
prevented the scions of our line from maintaining their estates in
pristine splendour; and the falling stones of the walls, the
overgrown vegetation in the parks, the dry and dusty moat, the
ill-paved courtyards, and toppling towers without, as well as the
sagging floors, the worm-eaten wainscots, and the faded tapestries
within, all tell a gloomy tale of fallen grandeur. As the ages
passed, first one, then another of the four great turrets were left to
ruin, until at last but a single tower housed the sadly reduced
descendants of the once mighty lords of the estate.

It was in one of the vast and gloomy chambers of this remaining
tower that I, Antoine, last of the unhappy and accursed Counts de
C-, first saw the light of day, ninety long years ago. Within these
walls and amongst the dark and shadowy forests, the wild ravines
and grottos of the hillside below, were spent the first years of my
troubled life. My parents I never knew. My father had been killed
at the age of thirty-two, a month before I was born, by the fall of a
stone somehow dislodged from one of the deserted parapets of the
castle. And my mother having died at my birth, my care and
education devolved solely upon one remaining servitor, an old and
trusted man of considerable intelligence, whose name I remember
as Pierre. I was an only child and the lack of companionship which
this fact entailed upon me was augmented by the strange care
exercised by my aged guardian, in excluding me from the society
of the peasant children whose abodes were scattered here and there
upon the plains that surround the base of the hill. At that time,
Pierre said that this restriction was imposed upon me because my
noble birth placed me above association with such plebeian
company. Now I know tht its real object was to keep from my ears
the idle tales of the dread curse upon our line that were nightly told
and magnified by the simple tenantry as they conversed in hushed
accents in the glow of their cottage hearths.

Thus isolated, and thrown upon my own resources, I spent the
hours of my childhood in poring over the ancient tomes that filled
the shadow-haunted library of the chateau, and in roaming without
aim or purpose through the perpetual dust of the spectral wood that
clothes the side of the hill near its foot. It was perhaps an effect of
such surroundings that my mind early acquired a shade of
melancholy. Those studies and pursuits which partake of the dark
and occult in nature most strongly claimed my attention.

Of my own race I was permitted to learn singularly little, yet what
small knowledge of it I was able to gain seemed to depress me
much. Perhaps it was at first only the manifest reluctance of my
old preceptor to discuss with me my paternal ancestry that gave
rise to the terror which I ever felt at the mention of my great
house, yet as I grew out of childhood, I was able. to piece together
disconnected fragments of discourse, let slip from the unwilling
tongue which had begun to falter in approaching senility, that had
a sort of relation to a certain circumstance which I had always
deemed strange, but which now became dimly terrible. The
circumstance to which I allude is the early age at which all the
Counts of my line had met their end. Whilst I had hitherto
considered this but a natural attribute of a family of short-lived
men, I afterward pondered long upon these premature deaths, and
began to connect them with the wanderings of the old man, who
often spoke of a curse which for centuries had prevented the lives
of the holders of my title from much exceeding the span of
thirty-two years. Upon my twenty-first birthday, the aged Pierre
gave to me a family document which he said had for many
generations been handed down from father to son, and continued
by each possessor. Its contents were of the most startling nature,
and its perusal confirmed the gravest of my apprehensions. At this
time, my belief in the supernatural was firm and deep-seated, else I
should have dismissed with scorn the incredible narrative unfolded
before my eyes.

The paper carried me back to the days of the thirteenth century,
when the old castle in which I sat had been a feared and
impregnable fortress. It told of a certain ancient man who had once
dwelled on our estates, a person of no small accomplishments,
though little above the rank of peasant, by name, Michel, usually
designated by the surname of Mauvais, the Evil, on account of his
sinister reputation. He had studied beyond the custom of his kind,
seeking such things as the Philosopher's Stone or the Elixir of
Eternal Life, and was reputed wise in the terrible secrets of Black
Magic and Alchemy. Michel Mauvais had one son, named Charles,
a youth as proficient as himself in the hidden arts, who had
therefore been called Le Sorcier, or the Wizard. This pair, shunned
by all honest folk, were suspected of the most hideous practices.
Old Michel was said to have burnt his wife alive as a sacrifice to
the Devil, and the unaccountable disappearance of many small
peasant children was laid at the dreaded door of these two. Yet
through the dark natures of the father and son ran one redeeming
ray of humanity; the evil old man loved his offspring with fierce
intensity, whilst the youth had for his parent a more than filial
affection.

One night the castle on the hill was thrown into the wildest
confusion by the vanishment of young Godfrey, son to Henri, the
Count. A searching party, headed by the frantic father, invaded the
cottage of the sorcerers and there came upon old Michel Mauvais,
busy over a huge and violently boiling cauldron. Without certain
cause, in the ungoverned madness of fury and despair, the Count
laid hands on the aged wizard, and ere he released his murderous
hold, his victim was no more. Meanwhile, joyful servants were
proclaiming the finding of young Godfrey in a distant and unused
chamber of the great edifice, telling too late that poor Michel had
been killed in vain. As the Count and his associates turned away
from the lowly abode of the alchemist, the form of Charles Le
Sorcier appeared through the trees. The excited chatter of the
menials standing about told him what had occurred, yet he seemed
at first unmoved at his father's fate. Then, slowly advancing to
meet the Count, he pronounced in dull yet terrible accents the
curse that ever afterward haunted the house of C-.

`May ne'er a noble of they murd'rous line
Survive to reach a greater age than thine!' 

spake he, when, suddenly leaping backwards into the black woods,
he drew from his tunic a phial of colourless liquid which he threw
into the face of his father's slayer as he disappeared behind the
inky curtain of the night. The Count died without utterance, and
was buried the next day, but little more than two and thirty years
from the hour of his birth. No trace of the assassin could be found,
though relentless bands of peasants scoured the neighboring woods
and the meadowland around the hill.

Thus time and the want of a reminder dulled the memory of the
curse in the minds of the late Count's family, so that when
Godfrey, innocent cause of the whole tragedy and now bearing the
title, was killed by an arrow whilst hunting at the age of thirty-two,
there were no thoughts save those of grief at his demise. But when,
years afterward, the next young Count, Robert by name, was found
dead in a nearby field of no apparent cause, the peasants told in
whispers that their seigneur had but lately passed his thirty-second
birthday when surprised by early death. Louis, son to Robert, was
found drowned in the moat at the same fateful age, and thus down
through the centuries ran the ominous chronicle: Henris, Roberts,
Antoines, and Armands snatched from happy and virtuous lives
when little below the age of their unfortunate ancestor at his
murder.

That I had left at most but eleven years of further existence was
made certain to me by the words which I had read. My life,
previously held at small value, now became dearer to me each day,
as I delved deeper and deeper into the mysteries of the hidden
world of black magic. Isolated as I was, modern science had
produced no impression upon me, and I laboured as in the Middle
Ages, as wrapt as had been old Michel and young Charles
themselves in the acquisition of demonological and alchemical
learning. Yet read as I might, in no manner could I account for the
strange curse upon my line. In unusually rational moments I would
even go so far as to seek a natural explanation, attributing the early
deaths of my ancestors to the sinister Charles Le Sorcier and his
heirs; yet, having found upon careful inquiry that there were no
known descendants of the alchemist, I would fall back to occult
studies, and once more endeavor to find a spell, that would release
my house from its terrible burden. Upon one thing I was absolutely
resolved. I should never wed, for, since no other branch of my
family was in existence, I might thus end the curse with myself.

As I drew near the age of thirty, old Pierre was called to the land
beyond. Alone I buried him beneath the stones of the courtyard
about which he had loved to wander in life. Thus was I left to
ponder on myself as the only human creature within the great
fortress, and in my utter solitude my mind began to cease its vain
protest against the impending doom, to become almost reconciled
to the fate which so many of my ancestors had met. Much of my
time was now occupied in the exploration of the ruined and
abandoned halls and towers of the old chateau, which in youth fear
had caused me to shun, and some of which old Pierre had once
told me had not been trodden by human foot for over four
centuries. Strange and awesome were many of the objects I
encountered. Furniture, covered by the dust of ages and crumbling
with the rot of long dampness, met my eyes. Cobwebs in a
profusion never before seen by me were spun everywhere, and
huge bats flapped their bony and uncanny wings on all sides of the
otherwise untenanted gloom.

Of my exact age, even down to days and hours, I kept a most
careful record, for each movement of the pendulum of the massive
clock in the library told off so much of my doomed existence. At
length I approached that time which I had so long viewed with
apprehension. Since most of my ancestors had been seized some
little while before they reached the exact age of Count Henri at his
end, I was every moment on the watch for the coming of the
unknown death. In what strange form the curse should overtake
me, I knew not; but I was resolved at least that it should not find
me a cowardly or a passive victim. With new vigour I applied
myself to my examination of the old chateau and its contents.

It was upon one of the longest of all my excursions of discovery in
the deserted portion of the castle, less than a week before that fatal
hour which I felt must mark the utmost limit of my stay on earth,
beyond which I could have not even the slightest hope of
continuing to draw breath. that I came upon the culminating event
of my whole life. I had spent the better part of the morning in
climbing up and down half ruined staircases in one of the most
dilapidated of the ancient turrets. As the afternoon progressed, I
sought the lower levels, descending into what appeared to be either
a mediaeval place of confinement, or a more recently excavated
storehouse for gunpowder. As I slowly traversed the
nitre-encrusted passageway at the foot of the last staircase, the
paving became very damp, and soon I saw by the light of my
flickering torch that a blank, water-stained wall impeded my
journey. Turning to retrace my steps, my eye fell upon a small
trapdoor with a ring, which lay directly beneath my foot. Pausing, I
succeeded with difficulty in raising it, whereupon there was
revealed a black aperture, exhaling noxious fumes which caused
my torch to sputter, and disclosing in the unsteady glare the top of
a flight of stone steps.

As soon as the torch which I lowered into the repellent depths
burned freely and steadily, I commenced my descent. The steps
were many, and led to a narrow stone-flagged passage which I
knew must be far underground. This passage proved of great
length, and terminated in a massive oaken door, dripping with the
moisture of the place, and stoutly resisting all my attempts to open
it. Ceasing after a time my efforts in this direction, I had
proceeded back some distance toward the steps when there
suddenly fell to my experience one of the most profound and
maddening shocks capable of reception by the human mind.
Without warning, I heard the heavy door behind me creak slowly
open upon its rusted hinges. My immediate sensations were
incapable of analysis. To be confronted in a place as thoroughly
deserted as I had deemed the old castle with evidence of the
presence of man or spirit produced in my brain a horror of the
most acute description. When at last I turned and faced the seat of
the sound, my eyes must have started from their orbits at the sight
that they beheld.

There in the ancient Gothic doorway stood a human figure. It was
that of a man clad in a skull-cap and long mediaeval tunic of dark
colour. His long hair and flowing beard were of a terrible and
intense black hue, and of incredible profusion. His forehead, high
beyond the usual dimensions; his cheeks, deep-sunken and heavily
lined with wrinkles; and his hands, long, claw-like, and gnarled,
were of such a deadly marble-like whiteness as I have never
elsewhere seen in man. His figure, lean to the proportions of a
skeleton, was strangely bent and almost lost within the voluminous
folds of his peculiar garment. But strangest of all were his eyes,
twin caves of abysmal blackness, profound in expression of
understanding, yet inhuman in degree of wickedness. These were
now fixed upon me, piercing my soul with their hatred, and rooting
me to the spot whereon I stood.

At last the figure spoke in a rumbling voice that chilled me
through with its dull hollowness and latent malevolence. The
language in which the discourse was clothed was that debased
form of Latin in use amongst the more learned men of the Middle
Ages, and made familiar to me by my prolonged researches into
the works of the old alchemists and demonologists. The apparition
spoke of the curse which had hovered over my house, told me of
my coming end, dwelt on the wrong perpetrated by my ancestor
against old Michel Mauvais, and gloated over the revenge of
Charles Le Sorcier. He told how young Charles has escaped into
the night, returning in after years to kill Godfrey the heir with an
arrow just as he approached the age which had been his father's at
his assassination; how he had secretly returned to the estate and
established himself, unknown, in the even then deserted
subterranean chamber whose doorway now framed the hideous
narrator, how he had seized Robert, son of Godfrey, in a field,
forced poison down his throat, and left him to die at the age of
thirty-two, thus maintaing the foul provisions of his vengeful
curse. At this point I was left to imagine the solution of the
greatest mystery of all, how the curse had been fulfilled since that
time when Charles Le Sorcier must in the course of nature have
died, for the man digressed into an account of the deep alchemical
studies of the two wizards, father and son, speaking most
particularly of the researches of Charles Le Sorcier concerning the
elixir which should grant to him who partook of it eternal life and
youth.

His enthusiasm had seemed for the moment to remove from his
terrible eyes the black malevolence that had first so haunted me,
but suddenly the fiendish glare returned and, with a shocking
sound like the hissing of a serpent, the stranger raised a glass phial
with the evident intent of ending my life as had Charles Le Sorcier,
six hundred years before, ended that of my ancestor. Prompted by
some preserving instinct of self-defense, I broke through the spell
that had hitherto held me immovable, and flung my now dying
torch at the creature who menaced my existence. I heard the phial
break harmlessly against the stones of the passage as the tunic of
the strange man caught fire and lit the horrid scene with a ghastly
radiance. The shriek of fright and impotent malice emitted by the
would-be assassin proved too much for my already shaken nerves,
and I fell prone upon the slimy floor in a total faint.

When at last my senses returned, all was frightfully dark, and my
mind, remembering what had occurred, shrank from the idea of
beholding any more; yet curiosity over-mastered all. Who, I asked
myself, was this man of evil, and how came he within the castle
walls? Why should he seek to avenge the death of Michel
Mauvais, and how bad the curse been carried on through all the
long centuries since the time of Charles Le Sorcier? The dread of
years was lifted from my shoulder, for I knew that he whom I had
felled was the source of all my danger from the curse; and now
that I was free, I burned with the desire to learn more of the
sinister thing which had haunted my line for centuries, and made
of my own youth one long-continued nightmare. Determined upon
further exploration, I felt in my pockets for flint and steel, and lit
the unused torch which I had with me.

First of all, new light revealed the distorted and blackened form of
the mysterious stranger. The hideous eyes were now closed.
Disliking the sight, I turned away and entered the chamber beyond
the Gothic door. Here I found what seemed much like an
alchemist's laboratory. In one corner was an immense pile of
shining yellow metal that sparkled gorgeously in the light of the
torch. It may have been gold, but I did not pause to examine it, for
I was strangely affected by that which I had undergone. At the
farther end of the apartment was an opening leading out into one
of the many wild ravines of the dark hillside forest. Filled with
wonder, yet now realizing how the man had obtained access to the
chauteau, I proceeded to return. I had intended to pass by the
remains of the stranger with averted face but, as I approached the
body, I seemed to hear emanating from it a faint sound,. as though
life were not yet wholly extinct. Aghast, I turned to examine the
charred and shrivelled figure on the floor.

Then all at once the horrible eyes, blacker even than the seared
face in which they were set, opened wide with an expression
which I was unable to interpret. The cracked lips tried to frame
words which I could not well understand. Once I caught the name
of Charles Le Sorcier, and again I fancied that the words `years'
and `curse' issued from the twisted mouth. Still I was at a loss to
gather the purport of his disconnnected speech. At my evident
ignorance of his meaning, the pitchy eyes once more flashed
malevolently at me, until, helpless as I saw my opponent to be, I
trembled as I watched him.

Suddenly the wretch, animated with his last burst of strength,
raised his piteous head from the damp and sunken pavement.
Then, as I remained, paralyzed with fear, he found his voice and in
his dying breath screamed forth those words which have ever
afterward haunted my days and nights. `Fool!' he shrieked, `Can
you not guess my secret? Have you no brain whereby you may
recognize the will which has through six long centuries fulfilled
the dreadful curse upon the house? Have I not told you of the great
elixir of eternal life? Know you not how the secret of Alchemy
was solved? I tell you, it is I! I! I! that have lived for six hundred
years to maintain my revenge, for I am Charles Le Sorcier!'

The Beast in the Cave
April 21, 1905

The horrible conclusion which had been gradually obtruding itself
upon my confused and reluctant mind was now an awful certainty.
I was lost, completely, hopelessly lost in the vast and labyrinthine
recess of the Mammoth Cave. Turn as I might, In no direction
could my straining vision seize on any object capable of serving as
a guidepost to set me on the outward path. That nevermore should
I behold the blessed light of day, or scan the pleasant bills and
dales of the beautiful world outside, my reason could no longer
entertain the slightest unbelief. Hope had departed. Yet,
indoctrinated as I was by a life of philosophical study, I derived no
small measure of satisfaction from my unimpassioned demeanour;
for although I had frequently read of the wild frenzies into which
were thrown the victims of similar situation, I experienced none of
these, but stood quiet as soon as I clearly realised the loss of my
bearings.

Nor did the thought that I had probably wandered beyond the
utmost limits of an ordinary search cause me to abandon my
composure even for a moment. If I must die, I reflected, then was
this terrible yet majestic cavern as welcome a sepulchre as that
which any churchyard might afford, a conception which carried
with it more of tranquillity than of despair.

Starving would prove my ultimate fate; of this I was certain. Some,
I knew, had gone mad under circumstances such as these, but I felt
that this end would not be mine. My disaster was the result of no
fault save my own, since unknown to the guide I had separated
myself from the regular party of sightseers; and, wandering for
over an hour in forbidden avenues of the cave, had found myself
unable to retrace the devious windings which I had pursued since
forsaking my companions.

Already my torch had begun to expire; soon I would be enveloped
by the total and almost palpable blackness of the bowels of the
earth. As I stood in the waning, unsteady light, I idly wondered
over the exact circumstances of my coming end. I remembered the
accounts which I had heard of the colony of consumptives, who,
taking their residence in this gigantic grotto to find health from the
apparently salubrious air of the underground world, with its steady,
uniform temperature, pure air, and peaceful quiet, had found,
instead, death in strange and ghastly form. I had seen the sad
remains of their ill-made cottages as I passed them by with the
party, and had wondered what unnatural influence a long sojourn
in this immense and silent cavern would exert upon one as healthy
and vigorous as I. Now, I grimly told myself, my opportunity for
settling this point had arrived, provided that want of food should
not bring me too speedy a departure from this life.

As the last fitful rays of my torch faded into obscurity, I resolved
to leave no stone unturned, no possible means of escape neglected;
so, summoning all the powers possessed by my lungs, I set up a
series of loud shoutings, in the vain hope of attracting the attention
of the guide by my clamour. Yet, as I called, I believed in my heart
that my cries were to no purpose, and that my voice, magnified and
reflected by the numberless ramparts of the black maze about me,
fell upon no ears save my own.

All at once, however, my attention was fixed with a start as I
fancied that I heard the sound of soft approaching steps on the
rocky floor of the cavern.

Was my deliverance about to be accomplished so soon? Had, then,
all my horrible apprehensions been for naught, and was the guide,
having marked my unwarranted absence from the party, following
my course and seeking me out in this limestone labyrinth? Whilst
these joyful queries arose in my brain, I was on the point of
renewing my cries, in order that my discovery might come the
sooner, when in an instant my delight was turned to horror as I
listened; for my ever acute ear, now sharpened in even greater
degree by the complete silence of the cave, bore to my benumbed
understanding the unexpected and dreadful knowledge that these
footfalls were not like those of any mortal man. In the unearthly
stillness of this subterranean region, the tread of the booted guide
would have sounded like a series of sharp and incisive blows.
These impacts were soft, and stealthy, as of the paws of some
feline. Besides, when I listened carefully, I seemed to trace the
falls of four instead of two feet.

I was now convinced that I had by my own cries aroused and
attracted some wild beast, perhaps a mountain lion which had
accidentally strayed within the cave. Perhaps, I considered, the
Almighty had chosen for me a swifter and more merciful death
than that of hunger; yet the instinct of self-preservation, never
wholly dormant, was stirred in my breast, and though escape from
the on-coming peril might but spare me for a sterner and more
lingering end, I determined nevertheless to part with my life at as
high a price as I could command. Strange as it may seem, my mind
conceived of no intent on the part of the visitor save that of
hostility. Accordingly, I became very quiet, In the hope that the
unknown beast would, In the absence of a guiding sound, lose its
direction as had I, and thus pass me by. But this hope was not
destined for realisation, for the strange footfalls steadily advanced,
the animal evidently having obtained my scent, which in an
atmosphere so absolutely free from all distracting influences as is
that of the cave, could doubtless be followed at great distance. 

Seeing therefore that I must be armed for defense against an
uncanny and unseen attack in the dark, I groped about me the
largest of the fragments of rock which were strewn upon all parts
of the floor of the cavern In the vicinity, and grasping one in each
hand for immediate use, awaited with resignation the inevitable
result. Meanwhile the hideous pattering of the paws drew near.
Certainly, the conduct of the creature was exceedingly strange.
Most of the time, the tread seemed to be that of a quadruped,
walking with a singular lack of unison betwixt hind and fore feet,
yet at brief and infrequent intervals I fancied that but two feet were
engaged in the process of locomotion. I wondered what species of
animal was to confront me; it must, I thought, be some unfortunate
beast who had paid for its curiosity to investigate one of the
entrances of the fearful grotto with a life-long confinement in its
interminable recesses. It doubtless obtained as food the eyeless
fish, bats and rats of the cave, as well as some of the ordinary fish
that are wafted in at every freshet of Green River, which
communicates in some occult manner with the waters of the cave.
I occupied my terrible vigil with grotesque conjectures of what
alteration cave life might have wrought In the physical structure of
the beast, remembering the awful appearances ascribed by local
tradition to the consumptives who had died after long residence in
the cave. Then I remembered with a start that, even should I
succeed in felling my antagonist, I should never behold its form, as
my torch had long since been extinct, and I was entirely
unprovided with matches. The tension on my brain now became
frightful. My disordered fancy conjured up hideous and fearsome
shapes from the sinister darkness that surrounded me, and that
actually seemed to press upon my body. Nearer, nearer, the
dreadful footfalls approached. It seemed that I must give vent to a
piercing scream, yet had I been sufficiently irresolute to attempt
such a thing, my voice could scarce have responded. I was
petrified, rooted to the spot. I doubted if my right arm would allow
me to hurl its missile at the oncoming thing when the crucial
moment should arrive. Now the steady pat, pat, of the steps was
close at hand; now very close. I could hear the laboured breathing
of the animal, and terror-struck as I was, I realised that it must
have come from a considerable distance, and was correspondingly
fatigued. Suddenly the spell broke. My right hand, guided by my
ever trustworthy sense of hearing, threw with full force the
sharp-angled bit of limestone which it contained, toward that point
in the darkness from which emanated the breathing and pattering,
and, wonderful to relate, it nearly reached its goal, for I heard the
thing jump landing at a distance away, where it seemed to pause.

Having readjusted my aim, I discharged my second missile, this
time moat effectively, for with a flood of joy I listened as the
creature fell in what sounded like a complete collapse and
evidently remained prone and unmoving. Almost overpowered by
the great relief which rushed over me, I reeled back against the
wall. The breathing continued, in heavy, gasping inhalation. and
expirations, whence I realised that I had no more than wounded the
creature. And now all desire to examine the thing ceased. At last
something allied to groundless, superstitious fear had entered my
brain, and I did not approach the body, nor did I continue to cast
stones at it in order to complete the extinction of its life. Instead, I
ran at full speed in what was, as nearly as I could estimate in my
frenzied condition, the direction from which I had come. Suddenly
I heard a sound or rather, a regular succession of sounds. In
another Instant they had resolved themselves into a series of sharp,
metallic clicks. This time there was no doubt. It was the guide.
And then I shouted, yelled, screamed, even shrieked with joy as I
beheld in the vaulted arches above the faint and glimmering
effulgence which I knew to be the reflected light of an
approaching torch. I ran to meet the flare, and before I could
completely understand what had occurred, was lying upon the
ground at the feet of the guide, embracing his boots and gibbering.
despite my boasted reserve, in a most meaningless and idiotic
manner, pouring out my terrible story, and at the same time
overwhelming my auditor with protestations of gratitude. At
length, I awoke to something like my normal consciousness. The
guide had noted my absence upon the arrival of the party at the
entrance of the cave, and had, from his own intuitive sense of
direction, proceeded to make a thorough canvass of by-passages
just ahead of where he had last spoken to me, locating my
whereabouts after a quest of about four hours.

By the time he had related this to me, I, emboldened by his torch
and his company, began to reflect upon the strange beast which I
had wounded but a short distance back in the darkness, and
suggested that we ascertain, by the flashlight's aid, what manner of
creature was my victim. Accordingly I retraced my steps, this time
with a courage born of companionship, to the scene of my terrible
experience. Soon we descried a white object upon the floor, an
object whiter even than the gleaming limestone itself. Cautiously
advancing, we gave vent to a simultaneous ejaculation of
wonderment, for of all the unnatural monsters either of us had in
our lifetimes beheld, this was in surpassing degree the strangest. It
appeared to be an anthropoid ape of large proportions, escaped,
perhaps, from some itinerant menagerie. Its hair was snow-white, a
thing due no doubt to the bleaching action of a long existence
within the inky confines of the cave, but it was also surprisingly
thin, being indeed largely absent save on the head, where it was of
such length and abundance that it fell over the shoulders in
considerable profusion. The face was turned away from us, as the
creature lay almost directly upon it. The inclination of the limbs
was very singular, explaining, however, the alternation in their use
which I bad before noted, whereby the beast used sometimes all
four, and on other occasions but two for its progress. From the tips
of the fingers or toes, long rat-like claws extended. The hands or
feet were not prehensile, a fact that I ascribed to that long
residence in the cave which, as I before mentioned, seemed
evident from the all-pervading and almost unearthly whiteness so
characteristic of the whole anatomy. No tail seemed to be present.

The respiration had now grown very feeble, and the guide had
drawn his pistol with the evident intent of despatching the
creature, when a sudden sound emitted by the latter caused the
weapon to fall unused. The sound was of a nature difficult to
describe. It was not like the normal note of any known species of
simian, and I wonder if this unnatural quality were not the result of
a long continued and complete silence, broken by the sensations
produced by the advent of the light, a thing which the beast could
not have seen since its first entrance into the cave. The sound,
which I might feebly attempt to classify as a kind of deep-tone
chattering, was faintly continued.

All at once a fleeting spasm of energy seemed to pass through the
frame of the beast. The paws went through a convulsive motion,
and the limbs contracted. With a jerk, the white body rolled over
so that its face was turned in our direction. For a moment I was so
struck with horror at the eyes thus revealed that I noted nothing
else. They were black, those eyes, deep jetty black, in hideous
contrast to the snow-white hair and flesh. Like those of other cave
denizens, they were deeply sunken in their orbits, and were
entirely destitute of iris. As I looked more closely, I saw that they
were set in a face less prognathous than that of the average ape,
and infinitely less hairy. The nose was quite distinct. As we gazed
upon the uncanny sight presented to our vision, the thick lips
opened, and several sounds issued from them, after which the
thing relaxed in death.

The guide clutched my coatsleeve and trembled so violently that
the light shook fitfully, casting weird moving shadows on the
walls.

I made no motion, but stood rigidly still, my horrified eyes fixed
upon the floor ahead.

The fear left, and wonder, awe, compassion, and reverence
succeeded in its place, for the sounds uttered by the stricken figure
that lay stretched out on the limestone had told us the awesome
truth. The creature I had killed, the strange beast of the
unfathomed cave, was, or had at one time been a MAN!!!

Memory
1919

In the valley of Nis the accursed waning moon shines thinly,
tearing a path for its light with feeble horns through the lethal
foliage of a great upas-tree. And within the depths of the valley,
where the light reaches not, move forms not meant to be beheld.
Rank is the herbage on each slope, where evil vines and creeping
plants crawl amidst the stones of ruined palaces, twining tightly
about broken columns and strange monoliths, and heaving up
marble pavements laid by forgotten hands. And in trees that grow
gigantic in crumbling courtyards leap little apes, while in and out
of deep treasure-vaults writhe poison serpents and scaly things
without a name. Vast are the stones which sleep beneath coverlets
of dank moss, and mighty were the walls from which they fell. For
all time did their builders erect them, and in sooth they yet serve
nobly, for beneath them the grey toad makes his habitation.

At the very bottom of the valley lies the river Than, whose waters
are slimy and filled with weeds. From hidden springs it rises, and
to subterranean grottoes it flows, so that the Daemon of the Valley
knows not why its waters are red, nor whither they are bound.

The Genie that haunts the moonbeams spake to the Daemon of the
Valley, saying, "I am old, and forget much. Tell me the deeds and
aspect and name of them who built these things of Stone." And the
Daemon replied, "I am Memory, and am wise in lore of the past,
but I too am old. These beings were like the waters of the river
Than, not to be understood. Their deeds I recall not, for they were
but of the moment. Their aspect I recall dimly, it was like to that
of the little apes in the trees. Their name I recall clearly, for it
rhymed with that of the river. These beings of yesterday were
called Man."

So the Genie flew back to the thin horned moon, and the Daemon
looked intently at a little ape in a tree that grew in a crumbling
courtyard.

Beyond the Wall of Sleep
Published October 1919 in Pine Cones, Vol. 1, No. 6, p. 2-10

I have often wondered if the majority of mankind ever pause to
reflect upon the occasionally titanic significance of dreams, and of
the obscure world to which they belong. Whilst the greater number
of our nocturnal visions are perhaps no more than faint and
fantastic reflections of our waking experiences - Freud to the
contrary with his puerile symbolism - there are still a certain
remainder whose immundane and ethereal character permit of no
ordinary interpretation, and whose vaguely exciting and
disquieting effect suggests possible minute glimpses into a sphere
of mental existence no less important than physical life, yet
separated from that life by an all but impassable barrier. From my
experience I cannot doubt but that man, when lost to terrestrial
consciousness, is indeed sojourning in another and uncorporeal life
of far different nature from the life we know, and of which only
the slightest and most indistinct memories linger after waking.
From those blurred and fragmentary memories we may infer much,
yet prove little. We may guess that in dreams life, matter, and
vitality, as the earth knows such things, are not necessarily
constant; and that time and space do not exist as our waking selves
comprehend them. Sometimes I believe that this less material life
is our truer life, and that our vain presence on the terraqueous
globe is itself the secondary or merely virtual phenomenon.

It was from a youthful revery filled with speculations of this sort
that I arose one afternoon in the winter of 1900-01, when to the
state psychopathic institution in which I served as an intern was
brought the man whose case has ever since haunted me so
unceasingly. His name, as given on the records, was Joe Slater, or
Slaader, and his appearance was that of the typical denizen of the
Catskill Mountain region; one of those strange, repellent scions of
a primitive Colonial peasant stock whose isolation for nearly three
centuries in the hilly fastnesses of a little-traveled countryside has
caused them to sink to a kind of barbaric degeneracy, rather than
advance with their more fortunately placed brethren of the thickly
settled districts. Among these odd folk, who correspond exactly to
the decadent element of "white trash" in the South, law and morals
are non-existent; and their general mental status is probably below
that of any other section of native American people.

Joe Slater, who came to the institution in the vigilant custody of
four state policemen, and who was described as a highly dangerous
character, certainly presented no evidence of his perilous
disposition when I first beheld him. Though well above the middle
stature, and of somewhat brawny frame, he was given an absurd
appearance of harmless stupidity by the pale, sleepy blueness of
his small watery eyes, the scantiness of his neglected and
never-shaven growth of yellow beard, and the listless drooping of
his heavy nether lip. His age was unknown, since among his kind
neither family records nor permanent family ties exist; but from
the baldness of his head in front, and from the decayed condition
of his teeth, the head surgeon wrote him down as a man of about
forty.

From the medical and court documents we learned all that could
be gathered of his case: this man, a vagabond, hunter and trapper,
had always been strange in the eyes of his primitive associates. He
had habitually slept at night beyond the ordinary time, and upon
waking would often talk of unknown things in a manner so bizarre
as to inspire fear even in the hearts of an unimaginative populace.
Not that his form of language was at all unusual, for he never
spoke save in the debased patois of his environment; but the tone
and tenor of his utterances were of such mysterious wildness, that
none might listen without apprehension. He himself was generally
as terrified and baffled as his auditors, and within an hour after
awakening would forget all that he had said, or at least all that had
caused him to say what he did; relapsing into a bovine,
hall-amiable normality like that of the other hilldwellers.

As Slater grew older, it appeared, his matutinal aberrations had
gradually increased in frequency and violence; till about a month
before his arrival at the institution had occurred the shocking
tragedy which caused his arrest by the authorities. One day near
noon, after a profound sleep begun in a whiskey debauch at about
five of the previous afternoon, the man had roused himself most
suddenly, with ululations so horrible and unearthly that they
brought several neighbors to his cabin - a filthy sty where he dwelt
with a family as indescribable as himself. Rushing out into the
snow, he had flung his arms aloft and commenced a series of leaps
directly upward in the air; the while shouting his determination to
reach some "big, big cabin with brightness in the roof and walls
and floor and the loud queer music far away." As two men of
moderate size sought to restrain him, he had struggled with
maniacal force and fury, screaming of his desire and need to find
and kill a certain "thing that shines and shakes and laughs." At
length, after temporarily felling one of his detainers with a sudden
blow, he had flung himself upon the other in a demoniac ecstasy of
blood-thirstiness, shrieking fiendishly that he would "jump high in
the air and burn his way through anything that stopped him."

Family and neighbors had now fled in a panic, and when the more
courageous of them returned, Slater was gone, leaving behind an
unrecognizable pulp-like thing that had been a living man but an
hour before. None of the mountaineers had dared to pursue him,
and it is likely that they would have welcomed his death from the
cold; but when several mornings later they heard his screams from
a distant ravine they realized that he had somehow managed to
survive, and that his removal in one way or another would be
necessary. Then had followed an armed searching-party, whose
purpose (whatever it may have been originally) became that of a
sheriff's posse after one of the seldom popular state troopers had
by accident observed, then questioned, and finally joined the
seekers.

On the third day Slater was found unconscious in the hollow of a
tree, and taken to the nearest jail, where alienists from Albany
examined him as soon as his senses returned. To them he told a
simple story. He had, he said, gone to sleep one afternoon about
sundown after drinking much liquor. He had awakened to find
himself standing bloody-handed in the snow before his cabin, the
mangled corpse of his neighbor Peter Slader at his feet. Horrified,
he had taken to the woods in a vague effort to escape from the
scene of what must have been his crime. Beyond these things he
seemed to know nothing, nor could the expert questioning of his
interrogators bring out a single additional fact.

That night Slater slept quietly, and the next morning he awakened
with no singular feature save a certain alteration of expression.
Doctor Barnard, who had been watching the patient, thought he
noticed in the pale blue eyes a certain gleam of peculiar quality,
and in the flaccid lips an all but imperceptible tightening, as if of
intelligent determination. But when questioned, Slater relapsed
into the habitual vacancy of the mountaineer, and only reiterated
what he had said on the preceding day.

On the third morning occurred the first of the man's mental
attacks. After some show of uneasiness in sleep, he burst forth into
a frenzy so powerful that the combined efforts of four men were
needed to bind him in a straightjacket. The alienists listened with
keen attention to his words, since their curiosity had been aroused
to a high pitch by the suggestive yet mostly conflicting and
incoherent stories of his family and neighbors. Slater raved for
upward of fifteen minutes, babbling in his backwoods dialect of
green edifices of light, oceans of space, strange music, and
shadowy mountains and valleys. But most of all did he dwell upon
some mysterious blazing entity that shook and laughed and
mocked at him. This vast, vague personality seemed to have done
him a terrible wrong, and to kill it in triumphant revenge was his
paramount desire. In order to reach it, he said, he would soar
through abysses of emptiness, burning every obstacle that stood in
his way. Thus ran his discourse, until with the greatest suddenness
he ceased. The fire of madness died from his eyes, and in dull
wonder he looked at his questioners and asked why he was bound.
Dr. Barnard unbuckled the leather harness and did not restore it till
night, when he succeeded in persuading Slater to don it of his own
volition, for his own good. The man had now admitted that he
sometimes talked queerly, though he knew not why.

Within a week two more attacks appeared, but from them the
doctors learned little. On the source of Slater's visions they
speculated at length, for since he could neither read nor write, and
had apparently never heard a legend or fairy-tale, his gorgeous
imagery was quite inexplicable. That it could not come from any
known myth or romance was made especially clear by the fact that
the unfortunate lunatic expressed himself only in his own simple
manner. He raved of things he did not understand and could not
interpret; things which he claimed to have experienced, but which
he could not have learned through any normal or connected
narration. The alienists soon agreed that abnormal dreams were the
foundation of the trouble; dreams whose vividness could for a time
completely dominate the waking mind of this basically inferior
man. With due formality Slater was tried for murder, acquitted on
the ground of insanity, and committed to the institution wherein I
held so humble a post.

I have said that I am a constant speculator concerning dream-life,
and from this you may judge of the eagerness with which I applied
myself to the study of the new patient as soon as I had fully
ascertained the facts of his case. He seemed to sense a certain
friendliness in me, born no doubt of the interest I could not
conceal, and the gentle manner in which I questioned him. Not that
he ever recognized me during his attacks, when I hung breathlessly
upon his chaotic but cosmic word-pictures; but he knew me in his
quiet hours, when he would sit by his barred window weaving
baskets of straw and willow, and perhaps pining for the mountain
freedom he could never again enjoy. His family never called to see
him; probably it had found another temporary head, after the
manner of decadent mountain folk.

By degrees I commenced to feel an overwhelming wonder at the
mad and fantastic conceptions of Joe Slater. The man himself was
pitiably inferior in mentality and language alike; but his glowing,
titanic visions, though described in a barbarous disjointed jargon,
were assuredly things which only a superior or even exceptional
brain could conceive How, I often asked myself, could the stolid
imagination of a Catskill degenerate conjure up sights whose very
possession argued a lurking spark of genius? How could any
backwoods dullard have gained so much as an idea of those
glittering realms of supernal radiance and space about which
Slater ranted in his furious delirium? More and more I inclined to
the belief that in the pitiful personality who cringed before me lay
the disordered nucleus of something beyond my comprehension;
something infinitely beyond the comprehension of my more
experienced but less imaginative medical and scientific
colleagues.

And yet I could extract nothing definite from the man. The sum of
all my investigation was, that in a kind of semi-corporeal
dream-life Slater wandered or floated through resplendent and
prodigious valleys, meadows, gardens, cities, and palaces of light,
in a region unbounded and unknown to man; that there he was no
peasant or degenerate, but a creature of importance and vivid life,
moving proudly and dominantly, and checked only by a certain
deadly enemy, who seemed to be a being of visible yet ethereal
structure, and who did not appear to be of human shape, since
Slater never referred to it as a man, or as aught save a thing. This
thing had done Slater some hideous but unnamed wrong, which the
maniac (if maniac he were) yearned to avenge.

From the manner in which Slater alluded to their dealings, I judged
that he and the luminous thing had met on equal terms; that in his
dream existence the man was himself a luminous thing of the same
race as his enemy. This impression was sustained by his frequent
references to flying through space and burning all that impeded his
progress. Yet these conceptions were formulated in rustic words
wholly inadequate to convey them, a circumstance which drove
me to the conclusion that if a dream world indeed existed, oral
language was not its medium for the transmission of thought.
Could it be that the dream soul inhabiting this inferior body was
desperately struggling to speak things which the simple and halting
tongue of dullness could not utter? Could it be that I was face to
face with intellectual emanations which would explain the mystery
if I could but learn to discover and read them? I did not tell the
older physicians of these things, for middle age is skeptical,
cynical, and disinclined to accept new ideas. Besides, the head of
the institution had but lately warned me in his paternal way that I
was overworking; that my mind needed a rest.

It had long been my belief that human thought consists basically of
atomic or molecular motion, convertible into ether waves or radi
ant energy like heat, light and electricity. This belief had early led
me to contemplate the possibility of telepathy or mental
communication by means of suitable apparatus, and I had in my
college days prepared a set of transmitting and receiving
instruments somewhat similar to the cumbrous devices employed
in wireless telegraphy at that crude, pre-radio period. These I had
tested with a fellow-student, but achieving no result, had soon
packed them away with other scientific odds and ends for possible
future use.

Now, in my intense desire to probe into the dream-life of Joe
Slater, I sought these instruments again, and spent several days in
repairing them for action. When they were complete once more I
missed no opportunity for their trial. At each outburst of Slater's
violence, I would fit the transmitter to his forehead and the
receiver to my own, constantly making delicate adjustments for
various hypothetical wave-lengths of intellectual energy. I had but
little notion of how the thought-impressions would, if successfully
conveyed, arouse an intelligent response in my brain, but I felt
certain that I could detect and interpret them. Accordingly I
continued my experiments, though informing no one of their
nature.

It was on the twenty-first of February, 1901, that the thing
occurred. As I look back across the years I realize how unreal it
seems, and sometimes wonder if old Doctor Fenton was not right
when he charged it all to my excited imagination. I recall that he
listened with great kindness and patience when I told him, but
afterward gave me a nerve-powder and arranged for the half-year's
vacation on which I departed the next week.

That fateful night I was wildly agitated and perturbed, for despite
the excellent care he had received, Joe Slater was unmistakably
dying. Perhaps it was his mountain freedom that he missed, or
perhaps the turmoil in his brain had grown too acute for his rather
sluggish physique; but at all events the flame of vitality flickered
low in the decadent body. He was drowsy near the end, and as
darkness fell he dropped off into a troubled sleep.

I did not strap on the straightjacket as was customary when he
slept, since I saw that he was too feeble to be dangerous, even if he
woke in mental disorder once more before passing away. But I did
place upon his head and mine the two ends of my cosmic "radio,"
hoping against hope for a first and last message from the dream
world in the brief time remaining. In the cell with us was one
nurse, a mediocre fellow who did not understand the purpose of
the apparatus, or think to inquire into my course. As the hours
wore on I saw his head droop awkwardly in sleep, but I did not
disturb him. I myself, lulled by the rhythmical breathing of the
healthy and the dying man, must have nodded a little later.

The sound of weird lyric melody was what aroused me. Chords,
vibrations, and harmonic ecstasies echoed passionately on every
hand, while on my ravished sight burst the stupendous spectacle
ultimate beauty. Walls, columns, and architraves of living fire
blazed effulgently around the spot where I seemed to float in air,
extending upward to an infinitely high vaulted dome of
indescribable splendor. Blending with this display of palatial
magnificence, or rather, supplanting it at times in kaleidoscopic
rotation, were glimpses of wide plains and graceful valleys, high
mountains and inviting grottoes, covered with every lovely
attribute of scenery which my delighted eyes could conceive of,
yet formed wholly of some glowing, ethereal plastic entity, which
in consistency partook as much of spirit as of matter. As I gazed, I
perceived that my own brain held the key to these enchanting
metamorphoses; for each vista which appeared to me was the one
my changing mind most wished to behold. Amidst this elysian
realm I dwelt not as a stranger, for each sight and sound was
familiar to me; just as it had been for uncounted eons of eternity
before, and would be for like eternities to come.

Then the resplendent aura of my brother of light drew near and
held colloquy with me, soul to soul, with silent and perfect
interchange of thought. The hour was one of approaching triumph,
for was not my fellow-being escaping at last from a degrading
periodic bondage; escaping forever, and preparing to follow the
accursed oppressor even unto the uttermost fields of ether, that
upon it might be wrought a flaming cosmic vengeance which
would shake the spheres? We floated thus for a little time, when I
perceived a slight blurring and fading of the objects around us, as
though some force were recalling me to earth - where I least
wished to go. The form near me seemed to feel a change also, for
it gradually brought its discourse toward a conclusion, and itself
prepared to quit the scene, fading from my sight at a rate
somewhat less rapid than that of the other objects. A few more
thoughts were exchanged, and I knew that the luminous one and I
were being recalled to bondage, though for my brother of light it
would be the last time. The sorry planet shell being well-nigh
spent, in less than an hour my fellow would be free to pursue the
oppressor along the Milky Way and past the hither stars to the very
confines of infinity.

A well-defined shock separates my final impression of the fading
scene of light from my sudden and somewhat shamefaced
awakening and straightening up in my chair as I saw the dying
figure on the couch move hesitantly. Joe Slater was indeed
awaking, though probably for the last time. As I looked more
closely, I saw that in the sallow cheeks shone spots of color which
had never before been present. The lips, too, seemed unusual,
being tightly compressed, as if by the force of a stronger character
than had been Slater's. The whole face finally began to grow tense,
and the head turned restlessly with closed eyes.

I did not rouse the sleeping nurse, but readjusted the slightly
disarranged headband of my telepathic "radio," intent to catch any
parting message the dreamer might have to deliver. All at once the
head turned sharply in my direction and the eyes fell open, causing
me to stare in blank amazement at what I beheld. The man who
had been Joe Slater, the Catskill decadent, was gazing at me with a
pair of luminous, expanding eyes whose blue seemed subtly to
have deepened. Neither mania nor degeneracy was `visible in that
gaze, and I felt beyond a doubt that I was viewing a face behind
which lay an active mind of high order.

At this juncture my brain became aware of a steady external
influence operating upon it. I closed my eyes to concentrate my
thoughts more profoundly and was rewarded by the positive
knowledge that my long-sought mental message had come at last.
Each transmitted idea formed rapidly in my mind, and though no
actual language was employed, my habitual association of
conception and expression was so great that I seemed to be
receiving the message in ordinary English.

"Joe Slater is dead," came the soul-petrifying voice of an agency
from beyond the wall of sleep. My opened eyes sought the couch
of pain in curious horror, but the blue eyes were still calmly
gazing, and the countenance was still intelligently animated. "He is
better dead, for he was unfit to bear the active intellect of cosmic
entity. His gross body could not undergo the needed adjustments
between ethereal life and planet life. He was too much an animal,
too little a man; yet it is through his deficiency that you have come
to discover me, for the cosmic and planet souls rightly should
never meet. He has been in my torment and diurnal prison for
forty-two of your terrestrial years.

"I am an entity like that which you yourself become in the freedom
of dreamless sleep. I am your brother of light, and have floated
with you in the effulgent valleys. It is not permitted me to tell your
waking earth-self of your real self, but we are all roamers of vast
spaces and travelers in many ages. Next year I may be dwelling in
the Egypt which you call ancient, or in the cruel empire of Tsan
Chan which is to come three thousand years hence. You and I have
drifted to the worlds that reel about the red Arcturus, and dwelt in
the bodies of the insect-philosophers that crawl proudly over the
fourth moon of Jupiter. How little does the earth self know life and
its extent! How little, indeed, ought it to know for its own
tranquility!

"Of the oppressor I cannot speak. You on earth have unwittingly
felt its distant presence - you who without knowing idly gave the
blinking beacon the name of Algol, the Demon-Star It is to meet
and conquer the oppressor that I have vainly striven for eons, held
back by bodily encumbrances. Tonight I go as a Nemesis bearing
just and blazingly cataclysmic vengeance. Watch me in the sky
close by the Demon-Star.

"I cannot speak longer, for the body of Joe Slater grows cold and
rigid, and the coarse brains are ceasing to vibrate as I wish. You
have been my only friend on this planet - the only soul to sense and
seek for me within the repellent form which lies on this couch. We
shall meet again - perhaps in the shining mists of Orion's Sword,
perhaps on a bleak plateau in prehistoric Asia, perhaps in
unremembered dreams tonight, perhaps in some other form an eon
hence, when the solar system shall have been swept away."

At this point the thought-waves abruptly ceased, the pale eyes of
the dreamer - or can I say dead man? - commenced to glaze fishily.
In a half-stupor I crossed over to the couch and felt of his wrist,
but found it cold, stiff, and pulseless. The sallow cheeks paled
again, and the thick lips fell open, disclosing the repulsively rotten
fangs of the degenerate Joe Slater. I shivered, pulled a blanket over
the hideous face, and awakened the nurse. Then I left the cell and
went silently to my room. I had an instant and unaccountable
craving for a sleep whose dreams I should not remember.

The climax? What plain tale of science can boast of such a
rhetorical effect? I have merely set down certain things appealing
to me as facts, allowing you to construe them as you will. As I
have already admitted, my superior, old Doctor Fenton, denies the
reality of everything I have related. He vows that I was broken
down with nervous strain, and badly in need of a long vacation on
full pay which he so generously gave me. He assures me on his
professional honor that Joe Slater was but a low-grade paranoiac,
whose fantastic notions must have come from the crude hereditary
folk-tales which circulated in even the most decadent of
communities. All this he tells me - yet I cannot forget what I saw
in the sky on the night after Slater died. Lest you think me a biased
witness, another pen must add this final testimony, which may
perhaps supply the climax you expect. I will quote the following
account of the star Nova Persei verbatim from the pages of that
eminent astronomical authority, Professor Garrett P. Serviss:

"On February 22, 1901, a marvelous new star was discovered by
Doctor Anderson of Edinburgh, not very far from Algol. No star
had been visible at that point before. Within twenty-four hours the
stranger had become so bright that it outshone Capella. In a week
or two it had visibly faded, and in the course of a few months it
was hardly discernible with the naked eye."

Dagon
Published November 1919 in The Vagrant, No. 11, 23-29.

I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by
tonight I shall be no more. Penniless, and at the end of my supply
of the drug which alone, makes life endurable, I can bear the
torture no longer; and shall cast myself from this garret window
into the squalid street below. Do not think from my slavery to
morphine that I am a weakling or a degenerate. When you have
read these hastily scrawled pages you may guess, though never
fully realise, why it is that I must have forgetfulness or death.

It was in one of the most open and least frequented parts of the
broad Pacific that the packet of which I was supercargo fell a
victim to the German sea-raider. The great war was then at its very
beginning, and the ocean forces of the Hun had not completely
sunk to their later degradation; so that our vessel was made a
legitimate prize, whilst we of her crew were treated with all the
fairness and consideration due us as naval prisoners. So liberal,
indeed, was the discipline of our captors, that five days after we
were taken I managed to escape alone in a small boat with water
and provisions for a good length of time.

When I finally found myself adrift and free, I had but little idea of
my surroundings. Never a competent navigator, I could only guess
vaguely by the sun and stars that I was somewhat south of the
equator. Of the longitude I knew nothing, and no island or
coastline was in sight. The weather kept fair, and for uncounted
days I drifted aimlessly beneath the scorching sun; waiting either
for some passing ship, or to be cast on the shores of some
habitable land. But neither ship nor land appeared, and I began to
despair in my solitude upon the heaving vastness of unbroken blue.

The change happened whilst I slept. Its details I shall never know;
for my slumber, though troubled and dream-infested, was
continuous. When at last I awakened, it was to discover myself
half sucked into a slimy expanse of hellish black mire which
extended about me in monotonous undulations as far as I could
see, and in which my boat lay grounded some distance away.

Though one might well imagine that my first sensation would be
of wonder at so prodigious and unexpected a transformation of
scenery, I was in reality more horrified than astonished; for there
was in the air and in the rotting soil a sinister quality which chilled
me to the very core. The region was putrid with the carcasses of
decaying fish, and of other less describable things which I saw
protruding from the nasty mud of the unending plain. Perhaps I
should not hope to convey in mere words the unutterable
hideousness that can dwell in absolute silence and barren
immensity. There was nothing within hearing, and nothing in sight
save a vast reach of black slime; yet the very completeness of the
stillness and the homogeneity of the landscape oppressed me with
a nauseating fear.

The sun was blazing down from a sky which seemed to me almost
black in its cloudless cruelty; as though reflecting the inky marsh
beneath my feet. As I crawled into the stranded boat I realised that
only one theory could explain my position. Through some
unprecedented volcanic upheaval, a portion of the ocean floor
must have been thrown to the surface, exposing regions which for
innumerable millions of years had lain hidden under unfathomable
watery depths. So great was the extent of the new land which had
risen beneath me, that I could not detect the faintest noise of the
surging ocean, strain my ears as I might. Nor were there any
sea-fowl to prey upon the dead things.

For several hours I sat thinking or brooding in the boat, which lay
upon its side and afforded a slight shade as the sun moved across
the heavens. As the day progressed, the ground lost some of its
stickiness, and seemed likely to dry sufficiently for travelling
purposes in a short time. That night I slept but little, and the next
day I made for myself a pack containing food and water,
preparatory to an overland journey in search of the vanished sea
and possible rescue.

On the third morning I found the soil dry enough to walk upon
with ease. The odour of the fish was maddening; but I was too
much concerned with graver things to mind so slight an evil, and
set out boldly for an unknown goal. All day I forged steadily
westward, guided by a far-away hummock which rose higher than
any other elevation on the rolling desert. That night I encamped,
and on the following day still travelled toward the hummock,
though that object seemed scarcely nearer than when I had first
espied it. By the fourth evening I attained the base of the mound,
which turned out to be much higher than it had appeared from a
distance, an intervening valley setting it out in sharper relief from
the general surface. Too weary to ascend, I slept in the shadow of
the hill.

I know not why my dreams were so wild that night; but ere the
waning and fantastically gibbous moon had risen far above the
eastern plain, I was awake in a cold perspiration, determined to
sleep no more. Such visions as I had experienced were too much
for me to endure again. And in the glow of the moon I saw how
unwise I had been to travel by day. Without the glare of the
parching sun, my journey would have cost me less energy; indeed,
I now felt quite able to perform the ascent which had deterred me
at sunset. Picking up my pack, I started for the crest of the
eminence.

I have said that the unbroken monotony of the rolling plain was a
source of vague horror to me; but I think my horror was greater
when I gained the summit of the mound and looked down the other
side into an immeasurable pit or canyon, whose black recesses the
moon had not yet soared high enough to illumine. I felt myself on
the edge of the world, peering over the rim into a fathomless chaos
of eternal night. Through my terror ran curious reminiscences of
Paradise Lost, and Satan's hideous climb through the unfashioned
realms of darkness.

As the moon climbed higher in the sky, I began to see that the
slopes of the valley were not quite so perpendicular as I had
imagined. Ledges and outcroppings of rock afforded fairly easy
footholds for a descent, whilst after a drop of a few hundred feet,
the declivity became very gradual. Urged on by an impulse which I
cannot definitely analyse, I scrambled with difficulty down the
rocks and stood on the gentler slope beneath, gazing into the
Stygian deeps where no light had yet penetrated.

All at once my attention was captured by a vast and singular object
on the opposite slope, which rose steeply about a hundred yards
ahead of me; an object that gleamed whitely in the newly
bestowed rays of the ascending moon. That it was merely a
gigantic piece of stone, I soon assured myself; but I was conscious
of a distinct impression that its contour and position were not
altogether the work of Nature. A closer scrutiny filled me with
sensations I cannot express; for despite its enormous magnitude,
and its position in an abyss which had yawned at the bottom of the
sea since the world was young, I perceived beyond a doubt that the
strange object was a well-shaped monolith whose massive bulk
had known the workmanship and perhaps the worship of living and
thinking creatures.

Dazed and frightened, yet not without a certain thrill of the
scientist's or archaeologist's delight, I examined my surroundings
more closely. The moon, now near the zenith, shone weirdly and
vividly above the towering steeps that hemmed in the chasm, and
revealed the fact that a far-flung body of water flowed at the
bottom, winding out of sight in both directions, and almost lapping
my feet as I stood on the slope. Across the chasm, the wavelets
washed the base of the Cyclopean monolith, on whose surface I
could now trace both inscriptions and crude sculptures. The
writing was in a system of hieroglyphics unknown to me, and
unlike anything I had ever seen in books, consisting for the most
part of conventionalised aquatic symbols such as fishes, eels,
octopi, crustaceans, molluscs, whales and the like. Several
characters obviously represented marine things which are
unknown to the modern world, but whose decomposing forms I
had observed on the ocean-risen plain.

It was the pictorial carving, however, that did most to hold me
spellbound. Plainly visible across the intervening water on account
of their enormous size was an array of bas-reliefs whose subjects
would have excited the envy of a Dore. I think that these things
were supposed to depict men -- at least, a certain sort of men;
though the creatures were shown disporting like fishes in the
waters of some marine grotto, or paying homage at some
monolithic shrine which appeared to be under the waves as well.
Of their faces and forms I dare not speak in detail, for the mere
remembrance makes me grow faint. Grotesque beyond the
imagination of a Poe or a Bulwer, they were damnably human in
general outline despite webbed hands and feet, shockingly wide
and flabby lips, glassy, bulging eyes, and other features less
pleasant to recall. Curiously enough, they seemed to have been
chiselled badly out of proportion with their scenic background; for
one of the creatures was shown in the act of killing a whale
represented as but little larger than himself. I remarked, as I say,
their grotesqueness and strange size; but in a moment decided that
they were merely the imaginary gods of some primitive fishing or
seafaring tribe; some tribe whose last descendant had perished eras
before the first ancestor of the Piltdown or Neanderthal Man was
born. Awestruck at this unexpected glimpse into a past beyond the
conception of the most daring anthropologist, I stood musing
whilst the moon cast queer reflections on the silent channel before
me.

Then suddenly I saw it. With only a slight churning to mark its rise
to the surface, the thing slid into view above the dark waters. Vast,
Polyphemus-like, and loathsome, it darted like a stupendous
monster of nightmares to the monolith, about which it flung its
gigantic scaly arms, the while it bowed its hideous head and gave
vent to certain measured sounds. I think I went mad then.

Of my frantic ascent of the slope and cliff, and of my delirious
journey back to the stranded boat, I remember little. I believe I
sang a great deal, and laughed oddly when I was unable to sing. I
have indistinct recollections of a great storm some time after I
reached the boat; at any rate, I knew that I heard peals of thunder
and other tones which Nature utters only in her wildest moods.

When I came out of the shadows I was in a San Francisco hospital;
brought thither by the captain of the American ship which had
picked up my boat in mid-ocean. In my delirium I had said much,
but found that my words had been given scant attention. Of any
land upheaval in the Pacific, my rescuers knew nothing; nor did I
deem it necessary to insist upon a thing which I knew they could
not believe. Once I sought out a celebrated ethnologist, and
amused him with peculiar questions regarding the ancient
Philistine legend of Dagon, the Fish-God; but soon perceiving that
he was hopelessly conventional, I did not press my inquiries.

It is at night, especially when the moon is gibbous and waning, that
I see the thing. I tried morphine; but the drug has given only
transient surcease, and has drawn me into its clutches as a hopeless
slave. So now I am to end it all, having written a full account for
the information or the contemptuous amusement of my
fellow-men. Often I ask myself if it could not all have been a pure
phantasm -- a mere freak of fever as I lay sun-stricken and raving
in the open boat after my escape from the German man-of-war.
This I ask myself, but ever does there come before me a hideously
vivid vision in reply. I cannot think of the deep sea without
shuddering at the nameless things that may at this very moment be
crawling and floundering on its slimy bed, worshipping their
ancient stone idols and carving their own detestable likenesses on
submarine obelisks of water-soaked granite. I dream of a day when
they may rise above the billows to drag down in their reeking
talons the remnants of puny, war-exhausted mankind -- of a day
when the land shall sink, and the dark ocean floor shall ascend
amidst universal pandemonium.

The end is near. I hear a noise at the door, as of some immense
slippery body lumbering against it. It shall not find me. God, that
hand! The window! The window!

The White Ship
Published November 1919 in The United Amateur, Vol. 19, No. 2,
p. 30-33.

I am Basil Elton, keeper of the North Point light that my father and
grandfather kept before me. Far from the shore stands the gray
lighthouse, above sunken slimy rocks that are seen when the tide is
low, but unseen when the tide is high. Past that beacon for a
century have swept the majestic barques of the seven seas. In the
days of my grandfather there were many; in the days of my father
not so many; and now there are so few that I sometimes feel
strangely alone, as though I were the last man on our planet.

From far shores came those white-sailed argosies of old; from far
Eastern shores where warm suns shine and sweet odors linger
about strange gardens and gay temples. The old captains of the sea
came often to my grandfather and told him of these things which
in turn he told to my father, and my father told to me in the long
autumn evenings when the wind howled eerily from the East. And
I have read more of these things, and of many things besides, in the
books men gave me when I was young and filled with wonder.

But more wonderful than the lore of old men and the lore of books
is the secret lore of ocean. Blue, green, gray, white or black;
smooth, ruffled, or mountainous; that ocean is not silent. All my
days have I watched it and listened to it, and I know it well. At
first it told to me only the plain little tales of calm beaches and
near ports, but with the years it grew more friendly and spoke of
other things; of things more strange and more distant in space and
time. Sometimes at twilight the gray vapors of the horizon have
parted to grant me glimpses of the ways beyond; and sometimes at
night the deep waters of the sea have grown clear and
phosphorescent, to grant me glimpses of the ways beneath. And
these glimpses have been as often of the ways that were and the
ways that might be, as of the ways that are; for ocean is more
ancient than the mountains, and freighted with the memories and
the dreams of Time.

Out of the South it was that the White Ship used to come when the
moon was full and high in the heavens. Out of the South it would
glide very smoothly and silently over the sea. And whether the sea
was rough or calm, and whether the wind was friendly or adverse,
it would always glide smoothly and silently, its sails distant and its
long strange tiers of oars moving rhythmically. One night I espied
upon the deck a man, bearded and robed, and he seemed to beckon
me to embark for far unknown shores. Many times afterward I saw
him under the full moon, and never did he beckon me.

Very brightly did the moon shine on the night I answered the call,
and I walked out over the waters to the White Ship on a bridge of
moonbeams. The man who had beckoned now spoke a welcome to
me in a soft language I seemed to know well, and the hours were
filled with soft songs of the oarsmen as we glided away into a
mysterious South, golden with the glow of that full, mellow moon.

And when the day dawned, rosy and effulgent, I beheld the green
shore of far lands, bright and beautiful, and to me unknown. Up
from the sea rose lordly terraces of verdure, tree-studded, and
shewing here and there the gleaming white roofs and colonnades
of strange temples. As we drew nearer the green shore the bearded
man told me of that land, the land of Zar, where dwell all the
dreams and thoughts of beauty that come to men once and then are
forgotten. And when I looked upon the terraces again I saw that
what he said was true, for among the sights before me were many
things I had once seen through the mists beyond the horizon and in
the phosphorescent depths of ocean. There too were forms and
fantasies more splendid than any I had ever known; the visions of
young poets who died in want before the world could learn of what
they had seen and dreamed. But we did not set foot upon the
sloping meadows of Zar, for it is told that he who treads them may
nevermore return to his native shore.

As the White Ship sailed silently away from the templed terraces
of Zar, we beheld on the distant horizon ahead the spires of a
mighty city; and the bearded man said to me, "This is Thalarion,
the City of a Thousand Wonders, wherein reside all those
mysteries that man has striven in vain to fathom." And I looked
again, at closer range, and saw that the city was greater than any
city I had known or dreamed of before. Into the sky the spires of its
temples reached, so that no man might behold their peaks; and far
back beyond the horizon stretched the grim, gray walls, over which
one might spy only a few roofs, weird and ominous, yet adorned
with rich friezes and alluring sculptures. I yearned mightily to
enter this fascinating yet repellent city, and besought the bearded
man to land me at the stone pier by the huge carven gate Akariel;
but he gently denied my wish, saying, "Into Thalarion, the City of a
Thousand Wonders, many have passed but none returned. Therein
walk only daemons and mad things that are no longer men, and the
streets are white with the unburied bones of those who have
looked upon the eidolon Lathi, that reigns over the city." So the
White Ship sailed on past the walls of Thalarion, and followed for
many days a southward-flying bird, whose glossy plumage
matched the sky out of which it had appeared.

Then came we to a pleasant coast gay with blossoms of every hue,
where as far inland as we could see basked lovely groves and
radiant arbors beneath a meridian sun. From bowers beyond our
view came bursts of song and snatches of lyric harmony,
interspersed with faint laughter so delicious that I urged the rowers
onward in my eagerness to reach the scene. And the bearded man
spoke no word, but watched me as we approached the lily-lined
shore. Suddenly a wind blowing from over the flowery meadows
and leafy woods brought a scent at which I trembled. The wind
grew stronger, and the air was filled with the lethal, charnel odor
of plague-stricken towns and uncovered cemeteries. And as we
sailed madly away from that damnable coast the bearded man
spoke at last, saying, "This is Xura, the Land of Pleasures
Unattained."

So once more the White Ship followed the bird of heaven, over
warm blessed seas fanned by caressing, aromatic breezes. Day
after day and night after night did we sail, and when the moon was
full we would listen to soft songs of the oarsmen, sweet as on that
distant night when we sailed away from my far native land. And it
was by moonlight that we anchored at last in the harbor of
Sona-Nyl, which is guarded by twin headlands of crystal that rise
from the sea and meet in a resplendent arch. This is the Land of
Fancy, and we walked to the verdant shore upon a golden bridge of
moonbeams.

In the Land of Sona-Nyl there is neither time nor space, neither
suffering nor death; and there I dwelt for many aeons. Green are
the groves and pastures, bright and fragrant the flowers, blue and
musical the streams, clear and cool the fountains, and stately and
gorgeous the temples, castles, and cities of Sona-Nyl. Of that land
there is no bound, for beyond each vista of beauty rises another
more beautiful. Over the countryside and amidst the splendor of
cities can move at will the happy folk, of whom all are gifted with
unmarred grace and unalloyed happiness. For the aeons that I
dwelt there I wandered blissfully through gardens where quaint
pagodas peep from pleasing clumps of bushes, and where the
white walks are bordered with delicate blossoms. I climbed gentle
hills from whose summits I could see entrancing panoramas of
loveliness, with steepled towns nestling in verdant valleys, and
with the golden domes of gigantic cities glittering on the infinitely
distant horizon. And I viewed by moonlight the sparkling sea, the
crystal headlands, and the placid harbor wherein lay anchored the
White Ship.

It was against the full moon one night in the immemorial year of
Tharp that I saw outlined the beckoning form of the celestial bird,
and felt the first stirrings of unrest. Then I spoke with the bearded
man, and told him of my new yearnings to depart for remote
Cathuria, which no man hath seen, but which all believe to lie
beyond the basalt pillars of the West. It is the Land of Hope, and in
it shine the perfect ideals of all that we know elsewhere; or at least
so men relate. But the bearded man said to me, "Beware of those
perilous seas wherein men say Cathuria lies. In Sona-Nyl there is
no pain or death, but who can tell what lies beyond the basalt
pillars of the West?" Natheless at the next full moon I boarded the
White Ship, and with the reluctant bearded man left the happy
harbor for untraveled seas.

And the bird of heaven flew before, and led us toward the basalt
pillars of the West, but this time the oarsmen sang no soft songs
under the full moon. In my mind I would often picture the
unknown Land of Cathuria with its splendid groves and palaces,
and would wonder what new delights there awaited me.
"Cathuria," I would say to myself, "is the abode of gods and the
land of unnumbered cities of gold. Its forests are of aloe and
sandalwood, even as the fragrant groves of Camorin, and among
the trees flutter gay birds sweet with song. On the green and
flowery mountains of Cathuria stand temples of pink marble, rich
with carven and painted glories, and having in their courtyards
cool fountains of silver, where purr with ravishing music the
scented waters that come from the grotto-born river Narg. And the
cities of Cathuria are cinctured with golden walls, and their
pavements also are of gold. In the gardens of these cities are
strange orchids, and perfumed lakes whose beds are of coral and
amber. At night the streets and the gardens are lit with gay
lanthorns fashioned from the three-colored shell of the tortoise,
and here resound the soft notes of the singer and the lutanist. And
the houses of the cities of Cathuria are all palaces, each built over
a fragrant canal bearing the waters of the sacred Narg. Of marble
and porphyry are the houses, and roofed with glittering gold that
reflects the rays of the sun and enhances the splendor of the cities
as blissful gods view them from the distant peaks. Fairest of all is
the palace of the great monarch Dorieb, whom some say to be a
demi-god and others a god. High is the palace of Dorieb, and many
are the turrets of marble upon its walls. In its wide halls many
multitudes assemble, and here hang the trophies of the ages. And
the roof is of pure gold, set upon tall pillars of ruby and azure, and
having such carven figures of gods and heroes that he who looks
up to those heights seems to gaze upon the living Olympus. And
the floor of the palace is of glass, under which flow the cunningly
lighted waters of the Narg, gay with gaudy fish not known beyond
the bounds of lovely Cathuria."

Thus would I speak to myself of Cathuria, but ever would the
bearded man warn me to turn back to the happy shore of Sona-Nyl;
for Sona-Nyl is known of men, while none hath ever beheld
Cathuria.

And on the thirty-first day that we followed the bird, we beheld the
basalt pillars of the West. Shrouded in mist they were, so that no
man might peer beyond them or see their summits -- which indeed
some say reach even to the heavens. And the bearded man again
implored me to turn back, but I heeded him not; for from the mists
beyond the basalt pillars I fancied there came the notes of singers
and lutanists; sweeter than the sweetest songs of Sona-Nyl, and
sounding mine own praises; the praises of me, who had voyaged
far from the full moon and dwelt in the Land of Fancy. So to the
sound of melody the White Ship sailed into the mist betwixt the
basalt pillars of the West. And when the music ceased and the mist
lifted, we beheld not the Land of Cathuria, but a swift-rushing
resistless sea, over which our helpless barque was borne toward
some unknown goal. Soon to our ears came the distant thunder of
falling waters, and to our eyes appeared on the far horizon ahead
the titanic spray of a monstrous cataract, wherein the oceans of the
world drop down to abysmal nothingness. Then did the bearded
man say to me, with tears on his cheek, "We have rejected the
beautiful Land of Sona-Nyl, which we may never behold again.
The gods are greater than men, and they have conquered." And I
closed my eyes before the crash that I knew would come, shutting
out the sight of the celestial bird which flapped its mocking blue
wings over the brink of the torrent.

Out of that crash came darkness, and I heard the shrieking of men
and of things which were not men. From the East tempestuous
winds arose, and chilled me as I crouched on the slab of damp
stone which had risen beneath my feet. Then as I heard another
crash I opened my eyes and beheld myself upon the platform of
that lighthouse whence I had sailed so many aeons ago. In the
darkness below there loomed the vast blurred outlines of a vessel
breaking up on the cruel rocks, and as I glanced out over the waste
I saw that the light had failed for the first time since my
grandfather had assumed its care.

And in the later watches of the night, when I went within the
tower, I saw on the wall a calendar which still remained as when I
had left it at the hour I sailed away. With the dawn I descended the
tower and looked for wreckage upon the rocks, but what I found
was only this: a strange dead bird whose hue was as of the azure
sky, and a single shattered spar, of a whiteness greater than that of
the wave-tips or of the mountain snow.

And thereafter the ocean told me its secrets no more; and though
many times since has the moon shone full and high in the heavens,
the White Ship from the South came never again.

The Statement of Randolph Carter
1919

Again I say, I do not know what has become of Harley Warren,
though I think--almost hope--that he is in peaceful oblivion, if
there be anywhere so blessed a thing. It is true that I have for five
years been his closest friend, and a partial sharer of his terrible
researches into the unknown. I will not deny, though my memory
is uncertain and indistinct, that this witness of yours may have
seen us together as he says, on the Gainsville pike, walking toward
Big Cypress Swamp, at half past 11 on that awful night. That we
bore electric lanterns, spades, and a curious coil of wire with
attached instruments, I will even affirm; for these things all played
a part in the single hideous scene which remains burned into my
shaken recollection. But of what followed, and of the reason I was
found alone and dazed on the edge of the swamp next morning, I
must insist that I know nothing save what I have told you over and
over again. You say to me that there is nothing in the swamp or
near it which could form the setting of that frightful episode. I
reply that I knew nothing beyond what I saw. Vision or nightmare
it may have been--vision or nightmare I fervently hope it was--yet
it is all that my mind retains of what took place in those shocking
hours after we left the sight of men. And why Harley Warren did
not return, he or his shade--or some nameless thing I cannot
describe-- alone can tell.

As I have said before, the weird studies of Harley Warren were
well known to me, and to some extent shared by me. Of his vast
collection of strange, rare books on forbidden subjects I have read
all that are written in the languages of which I am master; but
these are few as compared with those in languages I cannot
understand. Most, I believe, are in Arabic; and the fiend-inspired
book which brought on the end--the book which he carried in his
pocket out of the world--was written in characters whose like I
never saw elsewhere. Warren would never tell me just what was in
that book. As to the nature of our studies--must I say again that I
no longer retain full comprehension? It seems to me rather
merciful that I do not, for they were terrible studies, which I
pursued more through reluctant fascination than through actual
inclination. Warren always dominated me, and sometimes I feared
him. I remember how I shuddered at his facial expression on the
night before the awful happening, when he talked so incessantly of
his theory, why certain corpses never decay, but rest firm and fat in
their tombs for a thousand years. But I do not fear him now, for I
suspect that he has known horrors beyond my ken. Now I fear for
him.

Once more I say that I have no clear idea of our object on that
night. Certainly, it had much to do with something in the book
which Warren carried with him--that ancient book in
undecipherable characters which had come to him from India a
month before--but I swear I do not know what it was that we
expected to find. Your witness says he saw us at half past 11 on
the Gainsville pike, headed for Big Cypress Swamp. This is
probably true, but I have no distinct memory of it. The picture
seared into my soul is of one scene only, and the hour must have
been long after midnight; for a waning crescent moon was high in
the vaporous heavens.

The place was an ancient cemetery; so ancient that I trembled at
the manifold signs of immemorial years. It was in a deep, damp
hollow, overgrown with rank grass, moss, and curious creeping
weeds, and filled with a vague stench which my idle fancy
associated absurdly with rotting stone. On every hand were the
signs of neglect and decrepitude, and I seemed haunted by the
notion that Warren and I were the first living creatures to invade a
lethal silence of centuries. Over the valley's rim a wan, waning
crescent moon peered through the noisome vapors that seemed to
emanate from unheard of catacombs, and by its feeble, wavering
beams I could distinguish a repellent array of antique slabs, urns,
cenotaphs, and mausoleum facades; all crumbling, moss-grown,
and moisture-stained, and partly concealed by the gross luxuriance
of the unhealthy vegetation.

My first vivid impression of my own presence in this terrible
necropolis concerns the act of pausing with Warren before a
certain half- obliterated sepulcher and of throwing down some
burdens which we seemed to have been carrying. I now observed
that I had with me an electric lantern and two spades, whilst my
companion was supplied with a similar lantern and a portable
telephone outfit. No word was uttered, for the spot and the task
seemed known to us; and without delay we seized our spades and
commenced to clear away the grass, weeds, and drifted earth from
the flat, archaic mortuary. After uncovering the entire surface,
which consisted of three immense granite slabs, we stepped back
some distance to survey the charnel scene; and Warren appeared to
make some mental calculations. Then he returned to the sepulcher,
and using his spade as a lever, sought to pry up the slab lying
nearest to a stony ruin which may have been a monument in its
day. He did not succeed, and motioned to me to come to his
assistance. Finally our combined strength loosened the stone,
which we raised and tipped to one side.

The removal of the slab revealed a black aperture, from which
rushed an effluence of miasmal gases so nauseous that we started
back in horror. After an interval, however, we approached the pit
again, and found the exhalations less unbearable. Our lanterns
disclosed the top of a flight of stone steps, dripping with some
detestable ichor of the inner earth, and bordered by moist walls
encrusted with niter. And now for the first time my memory
records verbal discourse, Warren addressing me at length in his
mellow tenor voice; a voice singularly unperturbed by our
awesome surroundings.

"I'm sorry to have to ask you to stay on the surface," he said, "but it
would be a crime to let anyone with your frail nerves go down
there. You can't imagine, even from what you have read and from
what I've told you, the things I shall have to see and do. It's
fiendish work, Carter, and I doubt if any man without ironclad
sensibilities could ever see it through and come up alive and sane.
I don't wish to offend you, and Heaven knows I'd be glad enough to
have you with me; but the responsibility is in a certain sense mine,
and I couldn't drag a bundle of nerves like you down to probable
death or madness. I tell you, you can't imagine what the thing is
really like! But I promise to keep you informed over the telephone
of every move--you see I've enough wire here to reach to the center
of the earth and back!"

I can still hear, in memory, those coolly spoken words; and I can
still remember my remonstrances. I seemed desperately anxious to
accompany my friend into those sepulchral depths, yet he proved
inflexibly obdurate. At one time he threatened to abandon the
expedition if I remained insistent; a threat which proved effective,
since he alone held the key to the thing. All this I can still
remember, though I no longer know what manner of thing we
sought. After he had obtained my reluctant acquiescence in his
design, Warren picked up the reel of wire and adjusted the
instruments. At his nod I took one of the latter and seated myself
upon an aged, discolored gravestone close by the newly uncovered
aperture. Then he shook my hand, shouldered the coil of wire, and
disappeared within that indescribable ossuary.

For a minute I kept sight of the glow of his lantern, and heard the
rustle of the wire as he laid it down after him; but the glow soon
disappeared abruptly, as if a turn in the stone staircase had been
encountered, and the sound died away almost as quickly. I was
alone, yet bound to the unknown depths by those magic strands
whose insulated surface lay green beneath the struggling beams of
that waning crescent moon.

I constantly consulted my watch by the light of my electric lantern,
and listened with feverish anxiety at the receiver of the telephone;
but for more than a quarter of an hour heard nothing. Then a faint
clicking came from the instrument, and I called down to my friend
in a tense voice. Apprehensive as I was, I was nevertheless
unprepared for the words which came up from that uncanny vault
in accents more alarmed and quivering than any I had heard before
from Harley Warren. He who had so calmly left me a little while
previously, now called from below in a shaky whisper more
portentous than the loudest shriek:

"God! If you could see what I am seeing!"

I could not answer. Speechless, I could only wait. Then came the
frenzied tones again:

"Carter, it's terrible--monstrous--unbelievable!"

This time my voice did not fail me, and I poured into the
transmitter a flood of excited questions. Terrified, I continued to
repeat, "Warren, what is it? What is it?"

Once more came the voice of my friend, still hoarse with fear, and
now apparently tinged with despair:

"I can't tell you, Carter! It's too utterly beyond thought--I dare not
tell you--no man could know it and live--Great God! I never
dreamed of this!"

Stillness again, save for my now incoherent torrent of shuddering
inquiry. Then the voice of Warren in a pitch of wilder
consternation:

"Carter! for the love of God, put back the slab and get out of this if
you can! Quick!--leave everything else and make for the
outside--it's your only chance! Do as I say, and don't ask me to
explain!"

I heard, yet was able only to repeat my frantic questions. Around
me were the tombs and the darkness and the shadows; below me,
some peril beyond the radius of the human imagination. But my
friend was in greater danger than I, and through my fear I felt a
vague resentment that he should deem me capable of deserting
him under such circumstances. More clicking, and after a pause a
piteous cry from Warren:

"Beat it! For God's sake, put back the slab and beat it, Carter!"

Something in the boyish slang of my evidently stricken companion
unleashed my faculties. I formed and shouted a resolution,
"Warren, brace up! I'm coming down!" But at this offer the tone of
my auditor changed to a scream of utter despair:

"Don't! You can't understand! It's too late--and my own fault. Put
back the slab and run--there's nothing else you or anyone can do
now!"

The tone changed again, this time acquiring a softer quality, as of
hopeless resignation. Yet it remained tense through anxiety for me.

"Quick--before it's too late!"

I tried not to heed him; tried to break through the paralysis which
held me, and to fulfil my vow to rush down to his aid. But his next
whisper found me still held inert in the chains of stark horror.

"Carter--hurry! It's no use--you must go--better one than two--the
slab--"

A pause, more clicking, then the faint voice of Warren:

"Nearly over now--don't make it harder--cover up those damned
steps and run for your life--you're losing time--so long,
Carter--won't see you again."

Here Warren's whisper swelled into a cry; a cry that gradually rose
to a shriek fraught with all the horror of the ages--

"Curse these hellish things--legions--My God! Beat it! Beat it!
BEAT IT!"

After that was silence. I know not how many interminable eons I
sat stupefied; whispering, muttering, calling, screaming into that
telephone. Over and over again through those eons I whispered and
muttered, called, shouted, and screamed, "Warren! Warren!
Answer me--are you there?"

And then there came to me the crowning horror of all--the
unbelievable, unthinkable, almost unmentionable thing. I have said
that eons seemed to elapse after Warren shrieked forth his last
despairing warning, and that only my own cries now broke the
hideous silence. But after a while there was a further clicking in
the receiver, and I strained my ears to listen. Again I called down,
"Warren, are you there?" and in answer heard the thing which has
brought this cloud over my mind. I do not try, gentlemen, to
account for that thing--that voice--nor can I venture to describe it
in detail, since the first words took away my consciousness and
created a mental blank which reaches to the time of my awakening
in the hospital. Shall I say that the voice was deep; hollow;
gelatinous; remote; unearthly; inhuman; disembodied? What shall
I say? It was the end of my experience, and is the end of my story.
I heard it, and knew no more--heard it as I sat petrified in that
unknown cemetery in the hollow, amidst the crumbling stones and
the falling tombs, the rank vegetation and the miasmal vapors--
heard it well up from the innermost depths of that damnable open
sepulcher as I watched amorphous, necrophagous shadows dance
beneath an accursed waning moon.

And this is what it said:

"You fool, Warren is DEAD!"

The Doom That Came to Sarnath
Published June 1920 in The Scot, No. 44, p. 90-8.

There is in the land of Mnar a vast still lake that is fed by no
stream, and out of which no stream flows. Ten thousand years ago
there stood by its shore the mighty city of Sarnath, but Sarnath
stands there no more.

It is told that in the immemorial years when the world was young,
before ever the men of Sarnath came to the land of Mnar, another
city stood beside the lake; the gray stone city of Ib, which was old
as the lake itseli, and peopled with beings not pleasing to behold.
Very odd and ugly were these beings, as indeed are most beings of
a world yet inchoate and rudely fashioned. It is written on the brick
cylinders of Kadatheron that the beings of lb were in hue as green
as the lake and the mists that rise above it; that they had bulging
eyes, pouting, flabby lips, and curious ears, and were without
voice. It is also written that they descended one night from the
moon in a mist; they and the vast still lake and gray stone city lb.
However this may be, it is certain that they worshipped a sea-green
stone idol chiseled in the likeness of Bokrug, the great
water-lizard; before which they danced horribly when the moon
was gibbous. And it is written in the papyrus of Ilarnek, that they
one day discovered fire, and thereafter kindled flames on many
ceremonial occasions. But not much is written of these beings,
because they lived in very ancient times, and man is young, and
knows but little of the very ancient living things.

After many eons men came to the land of Mnar, dark shepherd
folk with their fleecy flocks, who built Thraa, Ilarnek, and
Kadatheron on the winding river Ai. And certain tribes, more
hardy than the rest, pushed on to the border of the lake and built
Sarnath at a spot where precious metals were found in the earth.

Not far from the gray city of lb did the wandering tribes lay the
first stones of Sarnath, and at the beings of lb they marveled
greatly. But with their marveling was mixed hate, for they thought
it not meet that beings of such aspect should walk about the world
of men at dusk. Nor did they like the strange sculptures upon the
gray monoliths of Ib, for why those sculptures lingered so late in
the world, even until the coming men, none can tell; unless it was
because the land of Mnar is very still, and remote from most other
lands, both of waking and of dream.

As the men of Sarnath beheld more of the beings of lb their hate
grew, and it was not less because they found the beings weak, and
soft as jelly to the touch of stones and arrows. So one day the
young warriors, the slingers and the spearmen and the bowmen,
marched against lb and slew all the inhabitants thereof, pushing
the queer bodies into the lake with long spears, because they did
not wish to touch them. And because they did not like the gray
sculptured monoliths of lb they cast these also into the lake;
wondering from the greatness of the labor how ever the stones
were brought from afar, as they must have been, since there is
naught like them in the land of Mnar or in the lands adjacent.

Thus of the very ancient city of lb was nothing spared, save the
sea-green stone idol chiseled in the likeness of Bokrug, the
water-lizard. This the young warriors took back with them as a
symbol of conquest over the old gods and beings of Th, and as a
sign of leadership in Mnar. But on the night after it was set up in
the temple, a terrible thing must have happened, for weird lights
were seen over the lake, and in the morning the people found the
idol gone and the high-priest Taran-Ish lying dead, as from some
fear unspeakable. And before he died, Taran-Ish had scrawled
upon the altar of chrysolite with coarse shaky strokes the sign of
DOOM.

After Taran-Ish there were many high-priests in Sarnath but never
was the sea-green stone idol found. And many centuries came and
went, wherein Sarnath prospered exceedingly, so that only priests
and old women remembered what Taran-Ish had scrawled upon
the altar of chrysolite. Betwixt Sarnath and the city of flarnek
arose a caravan route, and the precious metals from the earth were
exchanged for other metals and rare cloths and jewels and books
and tools for artificers and all things of luxury that are known to
the people who dwell along the winding river Ai and beyond. So
Sarnath waxed mighty and learned and beautiful, and sent forth
conquering armies to subdue the neighboring cities; and in time
there sate upon a throne in Sarnath the kings of all the land of
Mnar and of many lands adjacent.

The wonder of the world and the pride of all mankind was Sarnath
the magnificent. Of polished desert-quarried marble were its walls,
in height three hundred cubits and in breadth seventy-five, so that
chariots might pass each other as men drove them along the top.
For full five hundred stadia did they run, being open only on the
side toward the lake where a green stone sea-wall kept back the
waves that rose oddly once a year at the festival of the `destroying
of lb. In Sarnath were fifty streets from the lake to the gates of the
caravans, and fifty more intersecting them. With onyx were they
paved, save those whereon the horses and camels and elephants
trod, which were paved with granite. And the gates of Sarnath
were as many as the landward ends of the streets, each of bronze,
and flanked by the figures of lions and elephants carven from some
stone no longer known among men. The houses of Sarnath were of
glazed brick and chalcedony, each having its walled garden and
crystal lakelet. With strange art were they builded, for no other city
had houses like them; and travelers from Thraa and Ilarnek and
Kadatheron marveled at the shining domes wherewith they were
surmounted.

But more marvelous still were the palaces and the temples, and the
gardens made by Zokkar the olden king. There were many palaces,
the last of which were mightier than any in Thraa or Ilarnek or
Kadatheron. So high were they that one within might sometimes
fancy himself beneath only the sky; yet when lighted with torches
dipt in the oil of Dother their walls showed vast paintings of kings
and armies, of a splendor at once inspiring and stupefying to the
beholder. Many were the pillars of the palaces, all of tinted
marble, and carven into designs of surpassing beauty. And in most
of the palaces the floors were mosaics of beryl and lapis lazuli and
sardonyx and carbuncle and other choice materials, so disposed
that the beholder might fancy himself walking over beds of the
rarest flowers. And there were likewise fountains, which cast
scented waters about in pleasing jets arranged with cunning art.
Outshining all others was the palace of the kings of Mnar and of
the lands adjacent. On a pair of golden crouching lions rested the
throne, many steps above the gleaming floor. And it was wrought
of one piece of ivory, though no man lives who knows whence so
vast a piece could have come. In that palace there were also many
galleries, and many amphitheaters where lions and men and
elephants battled at the pleasure of the kings. Sometimes the
amphitheaters were flooded with water conveyed from the lake in
mighty aqueducts, and then were enacted stirring sea-fights, or
combats betwixt swimmers and deadly marine things.

Lofty and amazing were the seventeen tower-like temples of
Sarnath, fashioned of a bright multi-colored stone not known
elsewhere. A full thousand cubits high stood the greatest among
them, wherein the high-priests dwelt with a magnificence scarce
less than that of the kings. On the ground were halls as vast and
splendid as those of the palaces; where gathered throngs in
worship of Zo-Kalar and Tamash and Lobon, the chief gods of
Sarnath, whose incense-enveloped shrines were as the thrones of
monarchs. Not like the eikons of other gods were those of
Zo-Kalar and Tamash and Lobon. For so close to life were they
that one might swear the graceful bearded gods themselves sate on
the ivory thrones. And up unending steps of zircon was the
tower-chamber, wherefrom the high-priests looked out over the
city and the plains and the lake by day; and at the cryptic moon
and significant stars and planets, and their reflections in the lake,
at night. Here was done the very secret and ancient rite in
detestation of Bokrug, the water-lizard, and here rested the altar of
chrysolite which bore the Doom-scrawl of Taran-Ish.

Wonderful likewise were the gardens made by Zokkar the olden
king. In the center of Sarnath they lay, covering a great space and
encircled by a high wall. And they were surmounted by a mighty
dome of glass, through which shone the sun and moon and planets
when it was clear, and from which were hung fulgent images of
the sun and moon and stars and planets when it was not clear. In
summer the gardens were cooled with fresh odorous breezes
skilfully wafted by fans, and in winter they were heated with
concealed fires, so that in those gardens it was always spring.
There ran little streams over bright pebbles, dividing meads of
green and gardens of many hues, and spanned by a multitude of
bridges. Many were the waterfalls in their courses, and many were
the hued lakelets into which they expanded. Over the streams and
lakelets rode white swans, whilst the music of rare birds chimed in
with the melody of the waters. In ordered terraces rose the green
banks, adorned here and there with bowers of vines and sweet
blossoms, and seats and benches of marble and porphyry. And
there were many small shrines and temples where one might rest
or pray to small gods.

Each year there was celebrated in Sarnath the feast of the
destroying of lb, at which time wine, song, dancing, and merriment
of every kind abounded. Great honors were then paid to the shades
of those who had annihilated the odd ancient beings, and the
memory of those beings and of their elder gods was derided by
dancers and lutanists crowned with roses from the gardens of
Zokkar. And the kings would look out over the lake and curse the
bones of the dead that lay beneath it.

At first the high-priests liked not these festivals, for there had
descended amongst them queer tales of how the sea-green eikon
had vanished, and how Taran-Ish had died from fear and left a
warning. And they said that from their high tower they sometimes
saw lights beneath the waters of the lake. But as many years passed
without calamity even the priests laughed and cursed and joined in
the orgies of the feasters. Indeed, had they not themselves, in their
high tower, often performed the very ancient and secret rite in
detestation of Bokrug, the water-lizard? And a thousand years of
riches and delight passed over Sarnath, wonder of the world.

Gorgeous beyond thought was the feast of the thousandth year of
the destroying of lb. For a decade had it been talked of in the land
of Mnar, and as it drew nigh there came to Sarnath on horses and
camels and elephants men from Thraa, llarnek, and Kadetheron,
and all the cities of Mnar and the lands beyond. Before the marble
walls on the appointed night were pitched the pavilions of princes
and the tents of travelers. Within his banquet-hall reclined
Nargis-Hei, the king, drunken with ancient wine from the vaults of
conquered Pnoth, and surrounded by feasting nobles and hurrying
slaves. There were eaten many strange delicacies at that feast;
peacocks from the distant hills of linplan, heels of camels from the
Bnazic desert, nuts and spices from Sydathrian groves, and pearls
from wave-washed Mtal dissolved in the vinegar of Thraa. Of
sauces there were an untold number, prepared by the subtlest
cooks in all Mnar, and suited to the palate of every feaster. But
most prized of all the viands were the great fishes from the lake,
each of vast size, and served upon golden platters set with rubies
and diamonds.

Whilst the king and his nobles feasted within the palace, and
viewed the crowning dish as it awaited them on golden platters,
others feasted elsewhere. In the tower of the great temple the
priests held revels, and in pavilions without the walls the princes
of neighboring lands made merry. And it was the high-priest
Gnai-Kah who first saw the shadows that descended from the
gibbous moon into the lake, and the damnable green mists that
arose from the lake to meet the moon and to shroud in a sinister
haze the towers and the domes of fated Sarnath. Thereafter those
in the towers and without the walls beheld strange lights on the
water, and saw that the gray rock Akurion, which was wont to rear
high above it near the shore, was almost submerged. And fear grew
vaguely yet swiftly, so that the princes of Ilarnek and of far Rokol
took down and folded their tents and pavilions and departed,
though they scarce knew the reason for their departing.

Then, close to the hour of midnight, all the bronze gates of Sarnath
burst open and emptied forth a frenzied throng that blackened the
plain, so that all the visiting princes and travelers fled away in
fright. For on the faces of this throng was writ a madness born of
horror unendurable, and on their tongues were words so terrible
that no hearer paused for proof. Men whose eyes were wild with
fear shrieked aloud of the sight within the king's banquet-hall,
where through the windows were seen no longer the forms of
Nargis-Hei and his nobles and slaves, but a horde of indescribable
green voiceless things with bulging eyes, pouting, flabby lips, and
curious ears; things which danced horribly, bearing in their paws
golden platters set with rubies and diamonds and containing
uncouth flames. And the princes and travelers, as they fled from
the doomed city of Sarnath on horses and camels and elephants,
looked again upon the mist-begetting lake and saw the gray rock
Akurion was quite submerged. Through all the land of Mnar and
the land adjacent spread the tales of those who had fled from
Sarnath, and caravans sought that accursed city and its precious
metals no more. It was long ere any travelers went thither, and
even then only the brave and adventurous young men of yellow
hair and blue eyes, who are no kin to the men of Mnar. These men
indeed went to the lake to view Sarnath; but though they found the
vast still lake itself, and the gray rock Akurion which rears high
above it near the shore, they beheld not the wonder of the world
and pride of all mankind. Where once had risen walls of three
hundred cubits and towers yet higher, now stretched only the
marshy shore, and where once had dwelt fifty million of men now
crawled the detestable water-lizard. Not even the mines of
precious metal remained. DOOM had come to Sarnath.

But half buried in the rushes was spied a curious green idol; an
exceedingly ancient idol chiseled in the likeness of Bokrug, the
great water-lizard. That idol, enshrined in the high temple at
llarnek, was subsequently worshipped beneath the gibbous moon
throughout the land of Mnar.

Poetry and the Gods and Anna Helen Crofts
Published September 1920 in The United Amateur, Vol. 20, No. 1,
p. 1-4.

A damp gloomy evening in April it was, just after the close of the
Great War, when Marcia found herself alone with strange thoughts
and wishes, unheard-of yearnings which floated out of the spacious
twentieth-century drawing room, up the deeps of the air, and
eastward to olive groves in distant Arcady which she had seen only
in her dreams. She had entered the room in abstraction, turned off
the glaring chandeliers, and now reclined on a soft divan by a
solitary lamp which shed over the reading table a green glow as
soothing as moonlight when it issued through the foliage about an
antique shrine.

Attired simply, in a low-cut black evening dress, she appeared
outwardly a typical product of modern civilization; but tonight she
felt the immeasurable gulf that separated her soul from all her
prosaic surroundings. Was it because of the strange home in which
she lived, that abode of coldness where relations were always
strained and the inmates scarcely more than strangers? Was it that,
or was it some greater and less explicable misplacement in time
and space, whereby she had been born too late, too early, or too far
away from the haunts of her spirit ever to harmonize with the
unbeautiful things of contemporary reality? To dispel the mood
which was engulfing her more and more deeply each moment, she
took a magazine from the table and searched for some healing bit
of poetry. Poetry had always relieved her troubled mind better than
anything else, though many things in the poetry she had seen
detracted from the influence. Over parts of even the sublimest
verses hung a chill vapor of sterile ugliness and restraint, like dust
on a window-pane through which one views a magnificent sunset.

Listlessly turning the magazine's pages, as if searching for an
elusive treasure, she suddenly came upon something which
dispelled her languor. An observer could have read her thoughts
and told that she had discovered some image or dream which
brought her nearer to her unattained goal than any image or dream
she had seen before. It was only a bit of vers libre, that pitiful
compromise of the poet who overleaps prose yet falls short of the
divine melody of numbers; but it had in it all the unstudied music
of a bard who lives and feels, who gropes ecstatically for unveiled
beauty. Devoid of regularity, it yet had the harmony of winged,
spontaneous words, a harmony missing from the formal,
convention-bound verse she had known. As she read on, her
surroundings gradually faded, and soon there lay about her only
the mists of dream, the purple, star-strewn mists beyond time,
where only Gods and dreamers walk.

  Moon over Japan,
  White butterfly moon!
  Where the heavy-lidded Buddhas dream
  To the sound of the cuckoo's call...
  The white wings of moon butterflies
  Flicker down the streets of the city,

  Blushing into silence the useless wicks of sound-lanterns in the
hands of girls

  Moon over the tropics,
  A white-curved bud
  Opening its petals slowly in the warmth of heaven...
  The air is full of odours
  And languorous warm sounds...
  A flute drones its insect music to the night
  Below the curving moon-petal of the heavens.

  Moon over China,
  Weary moon on the river of the sky,
  The stir of light in the willows is like the flashing of a thousand
silver minnows
  Through dark shoals;
  The tiles on graves and rotting temples flash like ripples,
  The sky is flecked with clouds like the scales of a dragon.

Amid the mists of dream the reader cried to the rhythmical stars,
of her delight at the coming of a new age of song, a rebirth of Pan.
Half closing her eyes, she repeated words whose melody lay
hidden like crystals at the bottom of a stream before dawn, hidden
but to gleam effulgently at the birth of day.

  Moon over Japan,
  White butterfly moon!
  Moon over the tropics,
  A white curved bud
  Opening its petals slowly in the warmth of heaven.
  The air is full of odours
  And languorous warm sounds...
  Moon over China,
  Weary moon on the river of the sky...

Out of the mists gleamed godlike the torm ot a youth, in winged
helmet and sandals, caduceus-bearing, and of a beauty like to
nothing on earth. Before the face of the sleeper he thrice waved the
rod which Apollo had given him in trade for the nine-corded shell
of melody, and upon her brow he placed a wreath of myrtle and
roses. Then, adoring, Hermes spoke:

"O Nymph more fair than the golden-haired sisters of Cyene or the
sky-inhabiting Atlantides, beloved of Aphrodite and blessed of
Pallas, thou hast indeed discovered the secret of the Gods, which
lieth in beauty and song. O Prophetess more lovely than the Sybil
of Cumae when Apollo first knew her, thou has truly spoken of the
new age, for even now on Maenalus, Pan sighs and stretches in his
sleep, wishful to wake and behold about him the little
rose-crowned fauns and the antique Satyrs. In thy yearning hast
thou divined what no mortal, saving only a few whom the world
rejects, remembereth: that the Gods were never dead, but only
sleeping the sleep and dreaming the dreams of Gods in lotos-filled
Hesperian gardens beyond the golden sunset. And now draweth
nigh the time of their awakening, when coldness and ugliness shall
perish, and Zeus sit once more on Olympus. Already the sea about
Paphos trembleth into a foam which only ancient skies have
looked on before, and at night on Helicon the shepherds hear
strange murmurings and half-remembered notes. Woods and fields
are tremulous at twilight with the shimmering of white saltant
forms, and immemorial Ocean yields up curious sights beneath
thin moons. The Gods are patient, and have slept long, but neither
man nor giant shall defy the Gods forever. In Tartarus the Titans
writhe and beneath the fiery Aetna groan the children of Uranus
and Gaea. The day now dawns when man must answer for
centuries of denial, but in sleeping the Gods have grown kind and
will not hurl him to the gulf made for deniers of Gods. Instead will
their vengeance smite the darkness, fallacy and ugliness which
have turned the mind of man; and under the sway of bearded
Saturnus shall mortals, once more sacrificing unto him, dwell in
beauty and delight. This night shalt thou know the favour of the
Gods, and behold on Parnassus those dreams which the Gods have
through ages sent to earth to show that they are not dead. For poets
are the dreams of Gods, and in each and every age someone hath
sung unknowingly the message and the promise from the
lotosgardens beyond the sunset."

Then in his arms Hermes bore the dreaming maiden through the
skies. Gentle breezes from the tower of Aiolas wafted them high
above warm, scented seas, till suddenly they came upon Zeus,
holding court upon double-headed Parnassus, his golden throne
flanked by Apollo and the Muses on the right hand, and by
ivy-wreathed Dionysus and pleasure-flushed Bacchae on the left
hand. So much of splendour Marcia had never seen before, either
awake or in dreams, but its radiance did her no injury, as would
have the radiance of lofty Olympus; for in this lesser court the
Father of Gods had tempered his glories for the sight of mortals.
Before the laurel-draped mouth of the Corycian cave sat in a row
six noble forms with the aspect of mortals, but the countenances of
Gods. These the dreamer recognized from images of them which
she had beheld, and she knew that they were none else than the
divine Maeonides, the avernian Dante, the more than mortal
Shakespeare, the chaos-exploring Milton, the cosmic Goethe and
the musalan Keats. These were those messengers whom the Gods
had sent to tell men that Pan had passed not away, but only slept;
for it is in poetry that Gods speak to men. Then spake the
Thunderer:

"O Daughter for, being one of my endless line, thou art indeed my
daughter behold upon ivory thrones of honour the august
messengers Gods have sent down that in the words and writing of
men there may be still some traces of divine beauty. Other bards
have men justly crowned with enduring laurels, but these hath
Apollo crowned, and these have I set in places apart, as mortals
who have spoken the language of the Gods. Long have we dreamed
in lotosgardens beyond the West, and spoken only through our
dreams; but the time approaches when our voices shall not be
silent. It is a time of awakening and change. Once more hath
Phaeton ridden low, searing the fields and drying the streams. In
Gaul lone nymphs with disordered hair weep beside fountains that
are no more, and pine over rivers turned red with the blood of
mortals. Ares and his train have gone forth with the madness of
Gods and have returned Deimos and Phobos glutted with unnatural
delight. Tellus moons with grief, and the faces of men are as the
faces of Erinyes, even as when Astraea fled to the skies, and the
waves of our bidding encompassed all the land saving this high
peak alone. Amidst this chaos, prepared to herald his coming yet to
conceal his arrival, even now toileth our latest born messenger, in
whose dreams are all the images which other messengers have
dreamed before him. He it is that we have chosen to blend into one
glorious whole all the beauty that the world hath known before,
and to write words wherein shall echo all the wisdom and the
loveliness of the past. He it is who shall proclaim our return and
sing of the days to come when Fauns and Dryads shall haunt their
accustomed groves in beauty. Guided was our choice by those who
now sit before the Corycian grotto on thrones of ivory, and in
whose songs thou shalt hear notes of sublimity by which years
hence thou shalt know the greater messenger when he cometh.
Attend their voices as one by one they sing to thee here. Each note
shall thou hear again in the poetry which is to come, the poetry
which shall bring peace and pleasure to thy soul, though search for
it through bleak years thou must. Attend with diligence, for each
chord that vibrates away into hiding shall appear again to thee
after thou hast returned to earth, as Alpheus, sinking his waters
into the soul of Hellas, appears as the crystal arethusa in remote
Sicilia."

Then arose Homeros, the ancient among bards, who took his lyre
and chanted his hymn to Aphrodite. No word of Greek did Marcia
know, yet did the message not fall vainly upon her ears, for in the
cryptic rhythm was that which spake to all mortals and Gods, and
needed no interpreter.

So too the songs of Dante and Goethe, whose unknown words dave
the ether with melodies easy to ready and adore. But at last
remembered accents resounded before the listener. It was the
Swan of Avon, once a God among men, and still a God among
Gods:

  Write, write, that from the bloody course of war,
  My dearest master, your dear son, may hie;
  Bless him at home in peace, whilst I from far,
  His name with zealous fervour sanctify.

Accents still more familiar arose as Milton, blind no more,
declaimed immortal harmony:

  Or let thy lamp at midnight hour
  Be seen in some high lonely tower,
  Where I might oft outwatch the Bear
  With thrice-great Hermes, or unsphere
  The spirit of Plato, to unfold
  What worlds or what vast regions hold
  The immortal mind, that hath forsook
  Her mansion in this fleshy nook.

    * * * * *

  Sometime let gorgeous tragedy
  In sceptered pall come sweeping by,
  Presenting Thebes, or Pelop's line,
  Or the tale of Troy divine.

  Last of all came the young voice of Keats, closest of all the
messengers to the beauteous faun-folk:

  Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
  Are sweeter, therefore, yet sweep pipes, play on...

    * * * * *

  When old age shall this generation waste,
  Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
  Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st
  "Beauty is truth -- truth beauty" -- that is all
  Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

As the singer ceased, there came a sound in the wind blowing from
far Egypt, where at night Aurora mourns by the Nile for her slain
Memnon. To the feet of the Thunderer flew the rosy-fingered
Goddess and, kneeling, cried, "Master, it is time I unlocked the
Gates of the East." And