After that I went to Sydney and talked uselessly with seamen and members of the vice-admiralty court. I saw the Alert, now sold and in commercial use, but gained nothing. The crouching image with its cuttlefish head, dragon body, scaly wings, and hieroglyphed pedestal, was preserved in the Museum at Hyde Park; and I studied it long and well. Geologists, the curator told me, had found it a monstrous puzzle; for they vowed that the rock like it did not exist. Then I remembered the words Old Castro had told Legrasse about the Old Ones: They had come from the stars, and had brought Their images with Them.
I decided to visit Mate Johansen in Oslo. Johansen lived, I discovered, in the Old Town. I made a brief taxi-trip, and knocked at the door of a neat and ancient building. A sad-faced woman in black came out and told me that Gustaf Johansen was dead.
He had not lived long after his return, said his wife, the sea events in 1925 had broken him. He had told her no more than he told the public, but had left a long manuscript of technical matters as he said written in English. During a walk near the Gothenburg dock, a bundle of papers falling from an attic window had knocked him down. Two sailors at once helped him, but before the ambulance could reach him he was dead. Physicians said that his death occurred due to a heart trouble and a weakened constitution.
I persuaded the widow that I had to get her husbands technical matters. I bore the document away and began to read it on the London boat.
It was a naive sailors effort at a diary to recall day by day that last awful voyage.
Johansen, thank God, did not know quite all, even though he saw the city and the Thing. I shall never sleep calmly again when I think of the horrors that lurk ceaselessly behind life in time and in space, and of those blasphemies from elder stars which dream beneath the sea.
Johansens voyage had begun just as he told it to the vice-admiralty. The Emma had left Auckland on February 20th, and had felt the full force of the earthquake-born tempest. Once more under control[93], the ship was making good progress when she was held up[94] by the Alert on March 22nd, and I could feel the mates regret as he wrote of her bombardment and sinking. He speaks with significant horror of the swarthy cult-fiends on the Alert. Then, driven ahead by curiosity in their captured yacht under Johansens command, the men saw a great stone pillar sticking out of the sea, and in S. Latitude 47°9, W. Longitude 123°43, came upon a coastline of mingled mud, ooze, and weedy Cyclopean masonry which can be nothing less than the tangible substance of Earths supreme terror the nightmare corpse-city of Rlyeh, that was built in measureless ages behind history by the vast, loathsome creatures that came down from the dark stars. There lay great Cthulhu and his hordes, hidden in green slimy vaults and sending out the thoughts that spread fear to the dreams of the sensitive. The thoughts called imperiously to the faithful to come on a pilgrimage of liberation and restoration. All this Johansen did not suspect, but he soon saw enough!
I suppose that only a single mountain-top, the hideous monolith-crowned citadel whereon great Cthulhu was buried, actually emerged from the waters. Johansen and his men were awed by the cosmic majesty of this dripping Babylon of elder demons, and probably guessed that it was nothing of this planet. Awe at the unbelievable size of the greenish stone blocks, at the height of the great carven monolith, and at the identity of the colossal statues and bas-reliefs with the queer image found in the shrine on the Alert, is visible in every line of the frightened description.
Johansen and his men landed at a sloping mud-bank on this monstrous Acropolis, and clambered slipperily up over titan oozy blocks. Even the sun seemed distorted.
It was Rodriguez the Portuguese[95] who climbed up the foot of the monolith and shouted of what he had found. The rest followed him, and looked curiously at the immense carved door with the squid-dragon bas-relief. It was, Johansen said, like a great barn-door; and they all felt that it was a door, though they could not decide whether it lay flat like a trap-door[96] or slantwise like an outside cellar-door. As Wilcox said, the geometry of the place was all wrong. One could not be sure that the sea and the ground were horizontal, because the relative position of everything else seemed phantasmally variable.
Briden pushed at the stone in several places without result. Then Donovan[97] studied the edge, pressing each point separately. He climbed along the grotesque stone moulding and the men wondered how any door in the universe could be so vast. Then, very softly and slowly, the acre-great lintel began to go down; and they saw that it was balanced.
Everyone watched the queer recession of the monstrously carven portal. In this prismatic distortion it moved in a diagonal way.
The aperture was black. The odour rising from the newly opened depths was intolerable. Everyone listened, and everyone was listening still when It appeared and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway into the tainted outside air of that poison city of madness.
Of the six men who never reached the ship, two died immediately. The Thing cannot be described there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order. A mountain walked or stumbled. God! What wonder[98] that across the Earth a great architect went mad, and poor Wilcox raved with fever in that telepathic instant? The Thing of the idols, the green, sticky spawn of the stars, had awaked to claim his own[99]. The stars were right again, and what an age-old cult had failed to do, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident. After millions of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight.
Three men were swept up by the flabby claws before anybody turned. God rest them, if there be any rest in the universe. They were Donovan, Guerrera, and Angstrom[100]. Parker slipped as the other three were running to the boat, and Johansen swears he was swallowed up by masonry. When Briden and Johansen reached the boat, and pulled desperately for the Alert, the mountainous monstrosity flopped down the slimy stones and was floundering at the edge of the water.
Slowly, amidst the distorted horrors of that indescribable scene, the Alert began to sail; while on the masonry of that shore great Cthulhu slid greasily into the water and began to pursue. Briden looked back and went mad. He kept on laughing till death found him one night in the cabin while Johansen was wandering deliriously.
But Johansen had not surrendered. Knowing that the Thing could surely overtake the Alert, he set the engine for full speed, and reversed the wheel. The brave Norwegian drove his vessel head on against the pursuing jelly. Johansen drove on relentlessly.
There was a horrific bursting as of an exploding bladder, a stench as of a thousand opened graves, and a sound that the chronicler could not put on paper. For an instant the ship was hidden by an acrid green cloud, and God in heaven![101] the distance widened every second as the Alert gained impetus from its mounting steam.
There was a horrific bursting as of an exploding bladder, a stench as of a thousand opened graves, and a sound that the chronicler could not put on paper. For an instant the ship was hidden by an acrid green cloud, and God in heaven![101] the distance widened every second as the Alert gained impetus from its mounting steam.
That was all. After that Johansen only watched the idol in the cabin and prepared some food for himself and the laughing maniac. He did not try to navigate, for he was completely exhausted. Then came the storm of April 2nd, and he lost his consciousness.
One day came rescue the Vigilant, the vice-admiralty court, the streets of Dunedin, and the long voyage back home to the old house. He could not tell they would think him mad[102]. He wrote of what he knew before death came. Death would be a boon if only it could delete memories.
That was the document I read, and now I have placed it in the tin box beside the bas-relief and the papers of Professor Angell. This record of mine will be placed with them. I do not think my life will be long. As my uncle went, as poor Johansen went, so I shall go. I know too much, and the cult still lives.
Cthulhu still lives, too, I suppose, again in that chasm of stone which has shielded him since the sun was young. His accursed city is sunken once more, for the Vigilant sailed over the spot after the April storm; but his ministers on Earth still bellow and prance and slay around idol-capped monoliths in lonely places. Who knows the end? What has risen may sink, and what has sunk may rise. It waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men. A time will come but I must not and cannot think about it! Let me pray that, if I do not survive this manuscript, my executors let nobody read this.
At the Mountains of Madness
I
I dont want to tell my reasons for opposing the invasion of the Antarctic with its vast fossil hunt and its melting of the ancient ice caps. I can understand clearly that my story will seem extravagant and incredible. But there are photographs, both ordinary and aerial, and they will count in my favor[103], for they are vivid and graphic. Of course, some people can say that is all fakery. And there are ink drawings which can be jeered at as obvious impostures.
I must rely on the judgment and standing of the few scientific leaders who have, on the one hand, sufficient independence of thought; and on the other hand, sufficient influence to deter the exploring world in general from any over-ambitious program in the region of those mountains of madness. It is pity that ordinary men like myself and my colleagues, connected only with a small university, have little chance of making an impression.
In the strictest sense, we are not specialists in the fields concerned. Miskatonic University[104] sent me as a geologist. The aim of our expedition was to secure deep-level specimens of rock and soil from various parts of the Antarctic continent. We had a remarkable drill devised by Professor Frank H. Pabodie[105] of our engineering department. I had no wish to be a pioneer in any other field than this, but I hoped that the use of this new mechanical device would discover materials, unacceptable by the ordinary methods of collection.
Pabodies drilling apparatus was unique and radical in its lightness, portability, and capacity. Three sledges could carry steel head, jointed rods[106], gasoline motor, collapsible wooden derrick[107], dynamiting paraphernalia[108], cords, rubbish-removal auger, and sectional piping for bores five inches wide and up to one thousand feet deep. This was possible due to aluminum alloy. Four large aeroplanes could transport our entire expedition from a base at the edge of the great ice barrier to various inland points.
We planned to explore a great area, operating mostly in the mountain ranges and on the plateau south of Ross Sea[109]; regions explored by Shackleton, Amundsen, Scott, and Byrd[110]. We expected to get a quite unprecedented amount of material especially in the pre-Cambrian[111] strata. We wished also to obtain a variety of the upper fossiliferous rocks, since the primal life history of this realm of ice and death is of the highest importance to our knowledge of the Earths past. The Antarctic continent was once temperate and even tropical; and we hoped to expand that information in variety, accuracy, and detail.
The public knows of the Miskatonic Expedition through our frequent reports to the Arkham AdvertiserandAssociated Press[112], and through the later articles of Pabodie and myself. There were four men from the University Pabodie, Lake[113] of the biology department, Atwood[114] of the physics department also a meteorologist and myself, representing geology besides sixteen assistants: seven graduate students from Miskatonic and nine skilled mechanics. Of these sixteen, twelve were qualified aeroplane pilots, they were competent wireless operators as well. Eight of them understood navigation with compass and sextant, as did Pabodie, Atwood, and I. In addition, of course, our two ships were fully manned[115].
The Nathaniel Derby Pickman Foundation[116] financed the expedition. The dogs, sledges, machines, camp materials, and unassembled parts of our five planes were delivered in Boston, and there our ships were loaded. We were marvelously well-equipped for our specific purposes. As the newspapers told, we sailed from Boston Harbor on September 2nd, 1930, taking a leisurely course down the coast and through the Panama Canal[117], and stopping at Samoa and Hobart, Tasmania[118], where we got final supplies. Our ship captains were J. B. Douglas[119], commanding the brig Arkham, and Georg Thorfinnssen[120], commanding the Miskatonic both veteran whalers in Antarctic waters.
At about 62° South Latitude we noticed our first icebergs table-like objects with vertical sides and just before reaching the Antarctic circle[121], which we crossed on October 20th with appropriately ceremonies, we were considerably troubled with field ice. The falling temperature bothered me considerably after our long voyage through the tropics. Very often the curious atmospheric effects enchanted me vastly; distant bergs became the battlements of unimaginable cosmic castles.
Pushing through the ice, we regained open water at South Latitude 67°, East Longitude 175°. On the morning of October 26th a snow-clad mountain chain appeared on the south. That was an outpost of the great unknown continent and its cryptic world of frozen death. These peaks were obviously the Admiralty Range discovered by Ross[122], and our task was to round Cape Adare[123] and sail down the east coast of Victoria Land[124] to our base on the shore of McMurdo Sound[125], at the foot of the volcano Erebus[126] in South Latitude 77° 9.