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

******** 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 coast-line 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

vastnesses 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

awaked, 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

The odour of the fish was maddening; but I was too much concerned with graver

things to mind so slightly and 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

The following day I 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 here 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

experience was 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 of 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

The valley was not quite so perpendicular as I had imagined. Ledges and

outcroppings of rock afforded fairly easy foot-holds 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 an 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,

were an array of bas-reliefs whose subjects would have excited the envy of a

Doré. I think that these things were supposed to depict men—at least, a certain

sort of men; though the creatures were shewn 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 are 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 shewn 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, 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 know 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 ********; but the drug has given only transient surcease, and has

drew 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!

There were, I remember, six of us in Conrad’s bizarrely fashioned study, with

its queer relics from all over the world and its long rows of books which ranged

from the Mandrake Press edition of Boccaccio to a Missale Romanum, bound in

clasped oak boards and printed in Venice, 1740. Clemants and Professor

Kirowan had just engaged in a somewhat testy anthropological argument:

Clemants upholding the theory of a separate, distinct Alpine race, while the

professor maintained that this so-called race was merely a deviation from an

original Aryan stock—possibly the result of an admixture between the southern

or Mediterranean races and the Nordic people.

“And how,” asked Clemants, “do you account for their brachycephalicism?

The Mediterraneans were as long-headed as the Aryans: would admixture

between these dolichocephalic peoples produce a broad-headed intermediate

type?”

“Special conditions might bring about a change in an originally long-headed

race,” snapped Kirowan. “Boaz has demonstrated, for instance, that in the case

of immigrants to America, skull formations often change in one generation. And

Flinders Petrie has shown that the Lombards changed from a long-headed to a

round-headed race in a few centuries.”

“But what caused these changes?”

“Much is yet unknown to science,” answered Kirowan, “and we need not be

dogmatic. No one knows, as yet, why people of British and Irish ancestry tend to

grow unusually tall in the Darling district of Australia—Cornstalks, as they are

called—or why people of such descent generally have thinner jaw-structures

after a few generations in New England. The universe is full of the

unexplainable.”

“And therefore the uninteresting, according to Machen,” laughed Taverel.

Conrad shook his head. “I must disagree. To me, the unknowable is most

tantalizingly fascinating.”

“Which accounts, no doubt, for all the works on witchcraft and demonology I

see on your shelves,” said Ketrick, with a wave of his hand toward the rows of

books.

And let me speak of Ketrick. Each of the six of us was of the same breed—that

is to say, a Briton or an American of British descent. By British, I include all

natural inhabitants of the British Isles. We represented various strains of English and Celtic blood, but basically, these strains are the same after all. But Ketrick:

to me the man always seemed strangely alien. It was in his eyes that this

The difference showed externally. They were a sort of amber, almost yellow, and

slightly oblique. At times, when one looked at his face from certain angles, they

seemed to slant like a Chinaman’s.

Others than I had noticed this feature, so unusual in a man of pure Anglo

Saxon descent. The usual myths ascribing his slanted eyes to some pre-natal

influence had been mooted about, and I remember Professor Hendrik Brooler

once remarked that Ketrick was undoubtedly an atavism, representing a

reversion of type to some dim and distant ancestor of Mongolian blood—a sort

of freak reversion, since none of his family showed such traces.

But Ketrick comes off the Welsh branch of the Cetrics of Sussex, and his

lineage is set down in the Book of Peers. There you may read the line of his

ancestry, which extends unbroken to the days of Canute. No slightest trace of

Mongoloid intermixture appears in the genealogy, and how could there have

been such an intermixture in old Saxon England? For Ketrick is the modern form of

Cedric, and though that branch fled into Wales before the invasion of the Danes,

its male heirs are consistently married with English families on the border marches,

and it remains a pure line of the powerful Sussex Cedrics—almost pure Saxon.

As for the man himself, this defect of his eyes, if it can be called a defect, is his

only abnormality, except for a slight and occasional lispitation of speech. He is

highly intellectual and a good companion except for a slight aloofness and a

rather callous indifference which may serve to mask an extremely sensitive

nature.

Referring to his remark, I said with a laugh: “Conrad pursues the obscure and

mystic as some men pursue romance; his shelves throng with delightful

nightmares of every variety

Our host nodded. “You’ll find there a number of delectable dishes—Machen,

Poe, Blackwood, Maturin—look, there’s a rare feast—Horrid Mysteries, by the

Marquis of Grosse—the real Eighteenth Century edition

Taverel scanned the shelves. “Weird fiction seems to vie with works on

witchcraft, voodoo and dark magic

True; historians and chronicles are often dull; tale-weavers never—the masters,

I mean. A voodoo sacrifice can be described in such a dull manner as to take all

the real fantasy out of it, and leave it merely a sordid murder. I will admit that

few writers of fiction touch the true heights of horror—most of their stuff is too

concrete, given too much earthly shape and dimensions. But in such tales as Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher, Machen’s Black Seal and Lovecraft’s Call of

Cthulhu—the three master horror-tales, to my mind—the reader is borne into

dark and outer realms of imagination.

“But look there,” he continued, “there, sandwiched between that nightmare of

Huysmans’, and Walpole’s Castle of Otranto—Von Junzt’s Nameless Cults.

There’s a book to keep you awake at night!”

“I’ve read it,” said Taverel, “and I’m convinced the man is mad. His work is

like the conversation of a maniac—it runs with startling clarity for awhile, then

suddenly merges into vagueness and disconnected ramblings

Conrad shook his head. “Have you ever thought that perhaps it is his very

sanity that causes him to write in that fashion? What if he dares not put on paper

all he knows? What if his vague suppositions are dark and mysterious hints, keys

to the puzzle, to those who know

“Bosh!” This is from Kirowan. “Are you intimating that any of the nightmare

cults referred to by Von Junzt survive to this day—if they ever existed save in

the hag-ridden brain of a lunatic poet and philosopher

“Not he alone used hidden meanings,” answered Conrad. “If you will scan

various works of certain great poets you may find double meanings. Men have

stumbled onto cosmic secrets in the past and given a hint of them to the world in

cryptic words. Do you remember Von Junzt’s hints of ‘a city in the waste’?

What do you think of Flecker’s line:

“‘Pass not beneath! Men say there blows in stony deserts still a rose

But with no scarlet to her leaf—and from whose heart no perfume flows.’

“Men may stumble upon secret things, but Von Junzt dipped deep into

forbidden mysteries. He was one of the few men, for instance, who could read

the Necronomicon in the original Greek translation

Taverel shrugged his shoulders, and Professor Kirowan, though he snorted and

puffed viciously at his pipe, made no direct reply; for he, as well as Conrad, had

delved into the Latin version of the book, and had found there things not even a

A cold-blooded scientist could answer or refute.

“Well,” he said presently, “suppose we admit the former existence of cults

revolving about such nameless and ghastly gods and entities as Cthulhu, Yog

Sothoth, Tsathoggua, Gol-goroth, and the like, I cannot find it in my mind to

believe that survivals of such cults lurk in the dark corners of the world today

To our surprise Clemants answered. He was a tall, lean man, silent almost to

the point of taciturnity, and his fierce struggles with poverty in his youth had

lined his face beyond his years. Like many other artists, he lived a distinctly dual literary life, his swashbuckling novels furnishing him a generous income,

and his editorial position on The Cloven Hoof affording him full artistic

expression. The Cloven Hoof was a poetry magazine whose bizarre contents had

often aroused the shocked interest of the conservative critics.

“You remember Von Junzt makes mention of a so-called Bran cult,” said

Clemants, stuffing his pipe-bowl with a peculiarly villainous brand of shag

tobacco. “I think I heard you and Taverel discussing it once

“As I gather from his hints,” snapped Kirowan, “Von Junzt includes this

particular cult among those still in existence. Absurd.”

Again Clemants shook his head. “When I was a boy working my way through

a certain university, I had for roommate a lad as poor and ambitious as I. If I told

you his name, it would startle you. Though he came off an old Scotch line of

Galloway, he was obviously of a non-Aryan type.

“This is in the strictest confidence, you understand. But my roommate talked in his

sleep. I began to listen and put his disjointed mumbling together. And in his

mutterings I first heard of the ancient cult hinted at by Von Junzt; of the king

who rules the Dark Empire, which was a revival of an older, darker empire

dating back into the Stone Age; and of the great, nameless cavern where stands

the Dark Man—the image of Bran Mak Morn, carved in his likeness by a

master-hand while the great king yet lived, and to which each worshipper of

Bran makes a pilgrimage once in his or her lifetime. Yes, that cult lives today in

the descendants of Bran’s people—a silent, unknown current it flows on in the

great ocean of life, waiting for the stone image of the great Bran to breathe and

move with sudden life, and come from the great cavern to rebuild their lost

empire.”

“And who were the people of that empire?” asked Ketrick.

“Picts,” answered Taverel, “doubtless the people known later as the wild Picts

of Galloway were predominantly Celtic—a mixture of Gaelic, Cymric,

aboriginal and possibly Teutonic elements. Whether they took their name from

the older race or lent their own name to that race, is a matter yet to be decided.

But when Von Junzt speaks of Picts, he refers specifically to the small, dark,

garlic-eating peoples of Mediterranean blood who brought the Neolithic culture

into Britain. The first settlers of that country, in fact, who gave rise to the tales of

earth spirits and goblins

“I cannot agree with that last statement,” said Conrad. “These legends ascribe a

deformity and inhumaneness of appearances to the characters. There was nothing

about the Picts to excite such horror and repulsion in the Aryan peoples. I believe that the Mediterraneans were preceded by a Mongoloid type, very low in

the scale of development, whence these tales

“Quite true,” broke in Kirowan, “but I hardly think they preceded the Picts, as

you call them, into Britain. We find troll and dwarf legends all over the

Continent, and I am inclined to think that both the Mediterranean and Aryan

people brought these tales with them from the Continent. They must have been

of the extremely inhuman aspect, those early Mongoloids

“At least,” said Conrad, “here is a flint mallet a miner found in the Welsh hills

and gave to me, which has never been fully explained. It is obviously of no

ordinary Neolithic make. See how small it is, compared to most implements of

that age; almost like a child’s toy; yet it is surprisingly heavy and no doubt a

A deadly blow could be dealt with. I fitted the handle to it, myself, and you

would be surprised to know how difficult it was to carve it into a shape and

balance corresponding with the head

We looked at the thing. It was well made, polished somewhat like the other

remnants of the Neolithic I had seen, yet as Conrad said, it was strangely

different. Its small size was oddly disquieting, for it had no appearance as a toy,

otherwise. It was as sinister in suggestion as an Aztec sacrificial dagger. Conrad

had fashioned the oaken handle with rare skill, and in carving it to fit the head,

had managed to give it the same unnatural appearance as the mallet itself had.

He had even copied the workmanship of primal times, fixing the head into the

cleft of the haft with rawhide.

“My word!” Taverel made a clumsy pass at an imaginary antagonist and nearly

shattered a costly Shang vase. “The balance of the thing is all off-center; I’d

have to readjust all my mechanics of poise and equilibrium to handle it

“Let me see it,” Ketrick took the thing and fumbled with it, trying to strike the

secret of its proper handling. At length, somewhat irritated, he swung it up and

struck a heavy blow at a shield which hung on the wall nearby. I was standing

near it; I saw the hellish mallet twist in his hand like a live serpent, and his arm

wrenched out of line; I heard a shout of alarmed warning—then darkness came

with the impact of the mallet against my head.

Slowly I drifted back to consciousness. First there was a dull sensation with

blindness and total lack of knowledge as to where I was or what I was; then

vague realization of life and being, and a hard something pressing into my ribs.

Then the mists cleared and I came to myself completely.

I lay on my back half-beneath some underbrush and my head throbbed fiercely.

Also my hair was caked and clotted with blood, for the scalp had been laid open. But my eyes traveled down my body and limbs, ***** but for a deerskin

loincloth and sandals of the same material, and found no other wound. That

which pressed so uncomfortably into my ribs was my ax, on which I had fallen.

Now an abhorrent babble reached my ears and stung me into clear

consciousness. The noise was faintly like language, but not such language as

men are accustomed to it. It sounded much like the repeated hissing of many great

snakes.

I stared. I lay in a great, gloomy forest. The glade was overshadowed, so that

even in the daytime it was very dark. Aye—that forest was dark, cold, silent,

gigantic and utterly grisly. And I looked into the glade.

I saw a shambles. Five men lay there—at least, what had been five men. Now

as I marked the abhorrent mutilations my soul sickened. And about clustered the

—Things. Humans they were, of a sort, though I did not consider them so. They

were short and stocky, with broad heads too large for their scrawny bodies. Their

The hair was snaky and stringy, their faces broad and square, with flat noses,

hideously slanted eyes, a thin gash for a mouth, and pointed ears. They wore the

skins of beasts, as did I, but these hides were crudely dressed. They bore

small bows and flint-tipped arrows, flint knives and cudgels. And they conversed

in a speech as hideous as themselves, a hissing, reptilian speech that filled me

with dread and loathing.

Oh, I hated them as I lay there; my brain flamed with white-hot fury. And now

I remembered. We had hunted, we six youths of the Sword People, and

wandered far into the grim forest which our people generally shunned. Weary of

the chase, we had paused to rest; to me had been given the first watch, for in

those days, no sleep was safe without a sentry. Now shame and revulsion shook

my whole being. I had slept—I had betrayed my comrades. And now they lay

gashed and mangled—butchered while they slept, by vermin who had never

dared to stand before them on equal terms. I, Aryara, had betrayed my trust.

Aye—I remembered. I had slept and in the midst of a dream of the hunt, fire

and sparks had exploded in my head and I had plunged into a deeper darkness

where there were no dreams. And now the penalty. They who had stolen through

the dense forest smitten me senseless, had not paused to mutilate me.

Thinking me dead they had hastened swiftly to their grisly work. Now perhaps

they had forgotten me for a time. I had sat somewhat apart from the others, and

when struck, had fallen half-under some bushes. But soon they would remember

me. I would hunt no more, dance no more in the dances of hunt and love and

war, see no more the wattle huts of the Sword People.But I had no wish to escape back to my people. Should I slink back with my

tale of infamy and disgrace? Should I hear the words of scorn my tribe would

fling at me, see the girls point their contemptuous fingers at the youth who slept

and betrayed his comrades to the knives of vermin?

Tears stung my eyes, and slowly hate heaved up in my bosom, and my brain. I

would never bear the sword that marked the warrior. I would never triumph over

worthy foes and die gloriously beneath the arrows of the Picts or the axes of the

Wolf People or the River People. I would go down to death beneath a nauseous

rabble, whom the Picts had long ago driven into forest dens like rats.

And mad rage gripped me and dried my tears, giving in their stead a berserk

blaze of wrath. If such reptiles were to bring about my downfall, I would make it

a fall long remembered—if such beasts had memories.

Moving cautiously, I shifted until my hand was on the shaft of my ax; then I

called on Il - marinen and bound up as a tiger springs. And as a tiger springs I

was among my enemies and mashed a flat skull as a man crushes the head of a

snake. A sudden wild clamor of fear broke from my victims and for an instant

they closed around me, hacking and stabbing. A knife gashed my chest but I gave

no heed. A red mist waved before my eyes, and my body and limbs moved in

perfect accord with my fighting brain. Snarling, hacking and smiting, I was a

tiger among reptiles. In an instant they gave way and fled, leaving me best riding

half a dozen stunted bodies. But I was not satisfied.

I was close on the heels of the tallest one, whose head would perhaps come to

my shoulder, and who seemed to be their chief. He fled down a sort of runway,

squealing like a monstrous lizard, and when I was close at his shoulder, he

dived, snake-like, into the bushes. But I was too swift for him, and I dragged him

forth and butchered him in a most gory fashion.

And through the bushes I saw the trail he was striving to reach—a path

winding in and out among the trees, almost too narrow to allow the traversing of

it by a man of normal size. I hacked off my victim’s hideous head, and carrying

it in my left hand, went up the serpent-path, with my red ax in my right.

Now as I strode swiftly along the path and blood splashed beside my feet at

every step from the severed jugular of my foe, I thought of those I hunted. Aye

—we held them in so little esteem, we hunted by day in the forest they haunted.

What they called themselves, we never knew; for none of our tribe ever learned

the accursed hissing sibilance they used as speech; but we called them Children

of the Night. And night-things they were indeed, for they slunk in the depths of

the dark forests, and in subterraneous dwellings, venturing forth into the hills only when their conquerors slept. It was at night that they did their foul deeds

the quick flight of a flint-tipped arrow to slay cattle, or perhaps a loitering

human, the snatching of a child that had wandered from the village.

But it was for more than this we gave them their name; they were, in truth,

people of night and darkness and the ancient horror-ridden shadows of bygone

ages. For these creatures were very old, and they represented an outworn age.

They had once overrun and possessed this land, and they had been driven into

hiding and obscurity by the dark, fierce little Picts with whom we contested now,

and who hated and loathed them as savagely as we did

The Picts were different from us in general appearance, being shorter of stature

and dark of hair, eyes and skin, whereas we were tall and powerful, with yellow

hair and light eyes. But they were cast in the same mold, for all of that. These

Children of the Night seemed not human to us, with their deformed dwarfish

bodies, yellow skin and hideous faces. Aye—they were reptiles—vermin.

And my brain was likely to burst with fury when I thought that it was these

vermin on whom I was to glut my ax and perish. Bah! There is no glory slaying

snakes or dying from their bites. All this rage and fierce disappointment turned

on the objects of my hatred, and with the old red mist waving in front of me I

swore by all the gods I knew, to wreak such red havoc before I died as to leave a

dread memory in the minds of the survivors.

My people would not honor me, in such contempt they held the Children. But

those Children that I left alive would remember me and shudder. So I swore,

gripping savagely my ax, which was of bronze, set in a cleft of the oaken haft

and fastened securely with rawhide.

Now I heard ahead a sibilant, abhorrent murmur, and a vile stench filtered to

me through the trees, human, yet less than human. A few moments more and I

emerged from the deep shadows into a wide open space. I had never before seen

a village of the Children. There was a cluster of earthen domes, with low

doorways sunk into the ground; squalid dwelling-places, half-above and half

below the earth. And I knew from the talk of the old warriors that these

dwelling-places were connected by underground corridors, so the whole village

was like an ant-bed, or a system of snake holes. And I wondered if other tunnels

did not run off under the ground and emerge long distances from the villages.

Before the domes clustered a vast group of the creatures, hissing and jabbering

at a great rate.

I had quickened my pace, and now as I burst from cover, I was running with

the fleet of my race. A wild clamor went up from the rabble as they saw the avenger, tall, bloodstained and blazing-eyed leap from the forest, and I cried out

fiercely, flung the dripping head among them and bounded like a wounded tiger

into the thick of them.

Oh, there was no escape for them now! They might have taken to their tunnels

but I would have followed, even to the guts of Hell. They knew they must slay

me, and they closed around, a hundred strong, to do it.

There was no wild blaze of glory in my brain as there had been against worthy

foes. But the old berserk madness of my race was in my blood and the smell of

blood and destruction in my nostrils.

I know not how many I slew. I only know that they thronged about me in a

writing, slashing mass, like serpents about a wolf, and I smote until the ax-edge

turned and bent and the ax became no more than a bludgeon; and I smashed

skulls, split heads, splintered bones, scattered blood and brains in one red

sacrifice to Il - marinen, god of the Sword People.

Bleeding from half a hundred wounds, blinded by a slash across the eyes, I felt

a flint knife sinks deep into my groin and at the same instant a cudgel laid my

scalp open. I went to my knees but reeled up again, and saw in a thick red fog a

ring of leering, slant-eyed faces. I lashed out as a dying tiger strikes, and the

faces broke in red ruins.

And as I sagged, overbalanced by the fury of my stroke, a taloned hand

clutched my throat and a flint blade was driven into my ribs and twisted

venomously. Beneath a shower of blows I went down again, but the man with

the knife was beneath me, and with my left hand I found him and broke his neck

before he could writhe away.

Life was waning swiftly; through the hissing and howling of the Children I

could hear the voice of Il - marinen. Yet once again I rose stubbornly, through a

very whirlwind of cudgels and spears. I could no longer see my foes, even in a

red mist. But I could feel their blows and knew they surged about me. I braced

my feet, gripped my slippery ax-haft with both hands, and called once more on

Il - marinen I heaved up the ax and struck one last terrific blow. And I must have

died on my feet, for there was no sensation of falling; even as I knew, with a last

thrill of savagery, that slew, even as I felt the splintering of skulls beneath my

ax, darkness came with oblivion.

I suddenly came to myself. I was half-reclining in a big armchair and Conrad

was pouring water on me. My head ached and a trickle of blood had half-dried

on my face. Kirowan, Taverel and Clemants were hovering about, anxiously,

while Ketrick stood just in front of me, still holding the mallet, his face schooled to a polite perturbation which his eyes did not show. And at the sight of those

cursed eyes a red madness surged up in me.

“There,” Conrad was saying, “I told you he’d come out of it in a moment; just

a light crack. He’s taken harder than that. All right now, aren’t you, O’Donnel?”

At that I swept them aside, and with a single low snarl of hatred launched

myself at Ketrick. Taken utterly by surprise he had no opportunity to defend

himself. My hands locked on his throat and we crashed together on the ruins of a

divan. The others cried out in amazement and horror and sprang to separate us

or rather, to tear me from my victim, for already Ketrick’s slant eyes were

beginning to start from their sockets.

“For God’s sake, O’Donnel,” exclaimed Conrad, seeking to break my grip,

“what’s come over you? Ketrick didn’t mean to hit you—let go, you idiot!”

A fierce wrath almost overcame me at these men who were my friends, men of

my own tribe, and I swore at them and their blindness, as they finally managed

to tear my strangling fingers from Ketrick’s throat. He sat up and choked and

explored the blue marks my fingers had left, while I raged and cursed, nearly

defeating the combined efforts of the four to hold me.

“You fools!” I screamed. “Let me go! Let me do my duty as a tribesman! You

blind fools! I care nothing for the paltry blow he dealt me—he and his dealt

stronger blows than that against me, in bygone ages. You fools, he is marked

with the brand of the beast—the reptile—the vermin we exterminated centuries

ago! I must crush him, stamp him out, rid the clean earth of his accursed

pollution!”

So I raved and struggled and Conrad gasped to Ketrick over his shoulder: Get

out, quick! He’s out of his head! His mind is unhinged! Get away from him

Now I look out over the ancient dreaming downs and the hills and deep forests

beyond and I ponder. Somehow, that blow from that ancient accursed mallet

knocked me back into another age and another life. While I was Aryara I had no

cognizance of any other life. It was no dream; it was a stray bit of reality

wherein I, John O’Donnel, once lived and died, and back into which I was

snatched across the voids of time and space by a chance blow. Time and times

are but cogwheels, unmatched, grinding on obliviatory to one another.

Occasionally—oh, very rarely!—the cogs fit; the pieces of the plot snap together

momentarily and give men faint glimpses beyond the veil of this everyday

blindness we call reality.

I am John O’Donnel and I was Aryara, who dreamed dreams of war-glory and

hunt-glory and feast-glory and who died on a red heap of his victims in some lost age. But in what age and where?

The last I can answer for you. Mountains and rivers change their contours; the

landscapes alter; but the downs least of all. I look out upon them now and I

remember them, not only with John O’Donnel’s eyes, but with the eyes of

Aryara. They are a little changed. Only the great forest has shrunk and

dwindled and in many, many places vanished utterly. But here on these very

downs Aryara lived and fought and loved and in yonder forest he died. Kirowan

was wrong. The little, fierce, dark Picts were not the first men in the Isles. There

were beings before them—aye, the Children of the Night. Legends—why, the

Children were not unknown to us when we came into what is now the isle of

Britain. We had encountered them before, ages before. Already we had our

myths of them. But we found them in Britain. Nor had the Picts totally

exterminated them.

Nor had the Picts, as so many believe, preceded us by many centuries. We

drove them before us as we came, in that long drift from the East. I, Aryara,

knew old men who had marched on that century-long trek; who had been born

in the arms of yellow-haired women over countless miles of forest and plain, and

who as youths had walked in the vanguard of the invaders.

As to age—that I cannot say. But I, Aryara, was surely an Aryan and my

people were Aryans—members of one of the thousand unknown and unrecorded

drifts that scattered yellow-haired blue-eyed tribes all over the world. The Celts

were not the first to come into western Europe. I, Aryara, was of the same blood

and appearance as the men who sacked Rome, but mine was a much older strain.

Of the language spoke, no echo remains in the waking mind of John O’Donnel,

but I knew that Aryara’s tongue was to ancient Celtic what ancient Celtic is to

modern Gaelic.

Il-marinen! I remember the god I called upon, the ancient, ancient god who

worked in metals—in bronze then. For Il - marinen was one of the base gods of

the Aryans from whom many gods grew; and he was Wieland and Vulcan in the

ages of iron. But to Aryara he was Il-marinen.

And Aryara—he was one of many tribes and many drifted. Not alone did the

Sword People come or dwell in Britain. The River People were before us and the

Wolf People came later. But they were Aryans like us, light-eyed and tall and

blond. We fought them, for the reason that the various drifts of Aryans have

always fought each other, just as the Achaeans fought the Dorians, just as the

Celts and Germans cut each other’s throats; aye, just as the Hellenes and the

Persians, who were once one people and of the same drift, split in two different ways on the long trek and centuries later met and flooded Greece and Asia

Minor with blood.

Now understand, all this I did not know as Aryara. I, Aryara, knew nothing of

all these world-wide drifts of my race. I knew only that my people were

conquerors, that a century ago my ancestors had dwelt in the great plains far to

the east, plains populous with fierce, yellow-haired, light-eyed people like

myself; that my ancestors had come westward in a great drift; and that in that

drift, when my tribesmen met tribes of other races, they trampled and destroyed

them, and when they met other yellow-haired, light-eyed people, of older or

newer drifts, they fought savagely and mercilessly, according to the old, illogical

custom of the Aryan people. This Aryara knew, and I, John O’Donnel, who

know much more and much less than I, Aryara, knew, have combined the

knowledge of these separate selves and have come to conclusions that would

startled many noted scientists and historians.

Yet this fact is well known: Aryans deteriorate swiftly in sedentary and

peaceful lives. Their proper existence is a nomadic one; when they settle down

to an agricultural existence, they pave the way for their downfall; and when they

pen themselves with city walls, they seal their doom. Why, I, Aryara, remember

the tales of the old men—how the Sons of the Sword, on that long drift, found

villages of white-skinned yellow-haired people who had drifted into the west

centuries before and had quit the wandering life to dwell among the dark, garlic

eating people and gaining their sustenance from the soil. And the old men told how

soft and weak they were, and how easily they fell before the bronze blades of the

Sword People.

Look—is not the whole history of the Sons of Aryan laid on those lines? Look

—how swiftly has Persian followed Mede; Greek, Persian; Roman, Greek; and

German, Roman. Aye, and the Norseman followed the Germanic tribes when

they had grown flabby from a century or so of peace and idleness, and despoiled

the spoils they had taken in the southland.

But let me speak of Ketrick. Ha—the short hairs at the back of my neck bristle

at the very mention of his name. A reversion to type—but not to the type of

some clean Chinaman or Mongol of recent times. The Danes drove his

ancestors into the hills of Wales; and there, in what medieval century, and in

what foul way did that cursed aboriginal taint creep into the clean Saxon blood

of the Celtic line, there to lie dormant so long? The Celtic Welsh never mated

with the Children any more than the Picts did. But there must have been

survivors—vermin lurking in those grim hills, that had outlasted their time and age. In Aryara’s day they were scarcely human. What must a thousand years of

Have retrogression done to the breed?

What foul shape stole into the Ketrick castle on some forgotten night, or rose

out of the dusk to grip some woman of the line, straying in the hills?

The mind shrinks from such an image. But this I know: there must have been

survivors of that foul, reptilian epoch when the Ketricks went into Wales. There

still may be. But this changeling, this waif of darkness, this horror who bears the

noble name of Ketrick, the brand of the serpent is upon him, and until he is

destroyed there is no rest for me. Now that I know him for what he is, he

pollutes the clean air and leaves the slime of the snake on the green earth. The

sound of his lisping, hissing voice fills me with crawling horror and the sight of

his slanted eyes inspire me with madness.

For I come off a royal race, and such as he is a continual insult and a threat, like

a serpent underfoot. Mine is a regal race, though now it has become degraded and

falls into decay by continual admixture with conquered races. The waves of alien

blood has washed my hair black and my skin is dark, but I still have the lordly

statue and the blue eyes of a royal Aryan.

And as my ancestors—as I, Aryara, destroyed the scum that writhed beneath

our heels, so shall I, John O’Donnel, exterminate the reptilian thing, the monster

bred of the snaky taint that slumbered so long unguessed in clean Saxon veins,

the vestigial serpent-things left to taunt the Sons of Aryan. They say the blow I

received affected my mind; I know it but opened my eyes. Mine ancient enemy

walks often on the moors alone, attracted, though he may not know it, by

ancestral urgings. And on one of these lonely walks I shall meet him, and when I

meet him, I will break his foul neck with my hands, as I, Aryara, broke the necks

of foul night-things in the long, long ago.

Then they may take me and break my neck at the end of a rope if they will. I

I am not blind, if my friends are. And in the sight of the old Aryan god, if not in

the blinded eyes of men, I will have kept faith with my tribe.

I met her in India, when, during an eccentric course of travel, I visited the land

of palanquins and hookahs. She was a slender, pale, spiritual-looking girl. Her

figure swayed to and fro when she walked, like some delicate plant brushed by a

very gentle wind. Her face betokened a rare susceptibility of nervous

organization. Large, dark-gray eyes, spanned by slender arches of black

eyebrows; irregular and mobile features; a mouth large and singularly

expressive, and conveying vague hints of a sensual nature whenever she smiled.

The paleness of her skin could hardly be called paleness; it was rather a beautiful

transparency of texture, through the whiteness of which one beheld the

underglow of life, as one sees the fires of a lamp hazily revealed through the

white ground-glass shade that envelops it. Her motions were full of a strange and

subtile grace. It positively sent a thrill of an indefinable nature through me to

watch her moving across a room. It was perhaps a pleasurable sensation at

beholding her perform so ordinary an act in so unusual a manner. Every

wanderer in the fields has been struck with delight on beholding a tuft of thistle-

down floating calmly through the still atmosphere of a summer day. She

possessed in the most perfect degree this aerial serenity of motion. With all the

attributes of body, she seemed to move as if disembodied. It was a singular and

paradoxical combination of the real and ideal, and therein I think lay the charm.

Then her voice. It was like no voice that I ever heard before. It was low and

sweet; but how many hundreds of voices have I heard that were as low and just

as sweet! The charm lay in something else. Each word was uttered with a sort of

dovelike “coo,”—pray do not laugh at the image, for I am striving to express

what after all is perhaps inexpressible. However, I mean to say that the harsh

gutturals and hissing dentals of our English tongue were enveloped by her in a

species of vocal plumage, so that they flew from her lips, not like pebbles or

snakes, as they do from mine and yours, but like humming-birds, soft and round,

and imbued with a strange fascination of sound.

We fell in love, married, and Minnie agreed to share my travel for a year, after

which we were to repair to my native place in Maine, and settle down into a

calm, loving country life.

It was during this year that our little daughter Pearl was born. The way in which she came to be named Pearl was this.

We were cruising in the Bay of Condatchy, on the west coast of Ceylon, in a

small vessel which I had hired for a month’s trip, to go where I listed. I had

always a singular desire to make myself acquainted with the details of the pearl

fishery, and I thought this would be a good opportunity; so with my wife and

servants and little nameless children—she was only three months old—on whom,

however, we showered daily a thousand unwritable love-titles, I set sail for the

grounds of a celebrated pearl fishery.

It was a great although an idle pleasure to sit in one of the small coasting-boats

in that cloudless and serene climate, floating on an unruffled sea, and watch the

tawny natives, *****, with the exception of a small strip of cotton cloth wound

around their loins, plunge into the marvellously clear waters, and after having

shot down far beyond sight, as if they had been led instead of flesh and blood,

suddenly break above the surface after what seemed like an age of immersion,

holding in their hands a basket filled with long, uncouthly shaped bivalves, any

of

which might contain a treasure great as that which Cleopatra wasted in her

goblet. The oysters were flung into the boat, a brief breathing-spell was taken,

and then once more the dark-skinned diver darted down like some agile fish, to

recommence his search. For the pearl oyster is by no means to be found in the

prodigal profusion in which his less aristocratic brethren, the mill-ponds and

blue-points and chinkopins, exist. He is rare and exclusive, and does not bestow

himself liberally. He, like all high-born castes, is not prolific.

Sometimes a fearful moment of excitement would overtake us. While two or

three of the pearl-divers were under water, the calm, glassy surface of the sea

would be cleft by what seemed the thin blade of a sharp knife, cutting through

the water with a slow, even, deadly motion. This we knew to be the dorsal fin of

the man-eating shark. Nothing can give an idea of the horrible symbolism of that

back fin. To a person utterly unacquainted with the habits of the monster, the

silent, stealthy, resistless way in which that membranous blade divided the water

would inevitably suggest a cruelty swift, unappeasable, relentless. This may

seem exaggerated to any one who has not seen the spectacle I speak of. Every

A seafaring man will admit its truth. When this ominous apparition became visible,

all on board the fishing-boats were instantly in a state of excitement. The water

was beaten with oars until it foamed. The natives shouted aloud with the most

unearthly yells; missiles of all kinds were flung at this Seeva of the ocean, and A relentless attack was kept up on him until the poor fellows groping below showed their mahogany faces above the surface. We were so fortunate as not to

have been the spectators of any tragedy, but we knew from hearsay that it often

happened that the shark—a fish, by the way, possessed a rare intelligence

quietly bided his time until the moment the diver broke water, when there would

be a lightning-like rush, a flash of the white belly as the brute turned on his side

to snap, a faint cry of agony from the victim, and then the mahogany face would

sink convulsed, never to rise again, while a great crimson clot of blood would

hang suspended in the calm ocean, the red memorial of a sudden and awful

fatality.

One breathless day we were floating in our little boat at the pearl fishery,

watching the diving. “We” means my wife, myself, and our little daughter, who

was nestled in the arms of her “ayah,” or colored nurse. It was one of those

tropical mornings the glory of which is indescribable. The sea was so transparent

that the boat in which we lay, shielded from the sun by awnings, seemed to hang

suspended in air. The tufts of pink and white coral that studded the bed of the

ocean beneath was as distinct as if they were growing at our feet. We seemed to

be gazing upon a beautiful parterre of variegated candytuft. The shores, fringed

with palms and patches of a gigantic species of cactus, which was then in bloom,

were as still and serene as if they had been painted on glass. Indeed, the whole

landscape looked like a beautiful scene beheld through a glorified stereoscope

eminently real as far as detail went, but fixed and motionless as death. Nothing

broke the silence save the occasional plunge of the divers into the water, or the

noise of the large oysters falling into the bottom of the boats. In the distance, on

a small, narrow point of land, a strange crowd of human beings was visible.

Oriental pearl merchants, Fakirs selling amulets, Brahmins in their dirty white

robes, all attracted to the spot by the prospect of gain (as fish collect round a

handful of bait flung into a pond), bargaining, cheating, and strangely mingling

religion and lucre. My wife and I lay back on the cushions that lined the after

part of our little skiff, languidly gazing on the sea and the sky by turns. Suddenly

our attention was aroused by a great shout, which was followed by a volley of

shrill cries from the pearl-fishing boats. On turning in that direction, the greatest

excitement was visible among the different crews. Hands were pointed, white

teeth glittered in the sun, and every dusky form was gesticulating violently. Then

two or three blacks seized some long poles and commenced beating the water

violently. Others flung gourds and calabashes and odd pieces of wood and

stones in the direction of a particular spot that lay between the nearest fishing

boat and ourselves. The only thing visible in this spot was a black, sharp blade, thin as the blade of a pen-knife, that appeared, slowly and evenly cutting through

the still water. No surgical instrument ever glided through human flesh with a

more silent, cruel calm. It needed not the cry of “Shark! shark!” to tell us what it

was. In a moment we had a vivid picture of that unseen monster, with his small,

watchful eyes, and his huge mouth with its double row of fangs, presented to our

mental vision. There were three divers under water at this moment, while

directly above them hung suspended this remorseless incarnation of death. My

wife clasped my hand convulsively, and became deathly pale. I stretched out the

other hand instinctively, and grasped a revolver which lay beside me. I was in

the act of cocking it when a shriek of unutterable agony from the ayah burst on

our ears. I turned my head quick as a flash of lightning, and beheld her, with

empty arms, hanging over the gunwale of the boat, while down in the calm sea I

saw a tiny little face, swathed in white, sinking—sinking—sinking!

What are words to paint such a crisis? What pen, however vigorous, could

depict the pallid, convulsed face of my wife, my own agonized countenance, the

awful despair that settled on the dark face of the ayah, as we three beheld the

love of our lives serenely receding from us forever in that impassable,

transparent ocean? My pistol fell from my grasp. I, who rejoiced in a vigor of

manhood such as few attain, was struck dumb and helpless. My brain whirled in

its dome. Every outward object vanished from my sight, and all I saw was a vast,

translucent sea and one sweet face, rosy as a sea-shell, shining in its depths

shining with a vague smile that seemed to bid me a mute farewell as it floated

away to death! I was roused from a trance of anguish by the flitting of a dark

form through the clear water, cleaving its way swiftly toward that darling little

shape, that grew dimmer and dimmer every second as it settled in the sea. We all

saw it, and the same thought struck us all That terrible, deadly back fin was the

key of our sudden terror. The shark! A simultaneous shriek burst from our lips.

I tried to jump overboard, but was withheld by someone. Little use had I done

so, I could not swim a stroke. The dark shape glided on like a flash of light. It

reached our treasure. In an instant all we loved on earth was blotted from our

sight! My heart stood still. My breath ceased; life trembled on my hips. The next

moment a dusky head shot out of the water close to our boat—a dusky head

whose parted lips gasped for breath, but whose eyes shone with the brightness of

a superhuman joy. The second after, two tawny hands held a dripping white

mass above water, and the dark head shouted to the boatmen. Another second,

and the brave pearl-diver had clambered in and laid my little daughter at her

mother’s feet. This was the shark! This is the man-eater! This hero in sun - burned hide, who, with his quick, aquatic sight, had seen our dear one sinking through

the sea, and had brought her up to us again, pale and dripping, but still alive!

What tears and what laughter fell on us three by turns as we named our gem

rescued from the ocean “Little Pearl”.