Dark, frail, he asked me about my business without rising. Then I told him who I was, he displayed some interest; for my uncle had excited his curiosity studying his strange dreams, yet had never explained the reason for the study. In a short time I became convinced of his absolute sincerity, for he spoke of the dreams in a manner none could mistake. They had influenced his art profoundly, and he showed me a morbid statue whose contours almost made me shake. He could not recall the original of this thing except in his own dream bas-relief, but the outlines had formed themselves insensibly under his hands. It was, no doubt, the giant shape he had seen in delirium. But he really knew nothing of the hidden cult.
He talked of his dreams in a strangely poetic fashion; making me see the damp Cyclopean city of slimy green stone – whose geometry, he said, was all wrong – and hear with frightened expectancy the ceaseless, half-mental calling from underground: “Cthulhu fhtagn”, “Cthulhu fhtagn.”
These words had formed part of that dread ritual which told of dead Cthulhu’s dream-vigil in his stone vault at R’lyeh, and I felt deeply touched despite my rational beliefs. Wilcox, I was sure, had heard of the cult in some casual way, and had soon forgotten it amidst the mass of his equally weird reading and imagining. Later it had found subconscious expression in dreams, in the bas-relief, and in the terrible statue. The young man was slightly affected and slightly ill-mannered, that type I never liked, but I admit both his genius and his honesty. I wish him all the success his talent promises.
The matter of the cult still fascinated me, and sometimes I met serious researches. I visited New Orleans, talked with Legrasse and other people of that old-time party, saw the frightful image, and even questioned some mongrel prisoners. Old Castro, unfortunately, had been dead for some years. What I now heard was really no more than a detailed confirmation of what my uncle had written, and it excited me. I felt sure that I touched a very real, very secret, and very ancient religion whose discovery would make me a famous scientist. My attitude was absolute materialistic.
One thing I began to suspect, and which I now fear I know, is that my uncle’s death was not natural. He fell on a narrow hill street leading up from an ancient waterfront, after a careless push from a negro sailor. I did not forget the mixed blood and marine background of the cult-members in Louisiana, and I would not be surprised to learn of secret methods and rites and beliefs. Legrasse and his men, it is true, have been alive; but in Norway a certain seaman who saw everything is dead. Maybe the deeper inquiries of my uncle have come to sinister ears? I think Professor Angell died because he knew too much, or because he could learn too much. And at the moment I have learned much, too.
III. The Madness from the Sea
I had almost ceased my inquiries into what Professor Angell called the “Cthulhu Cult”, and was visiting a learned friend in Paterson, New Jersey; the curator of a local museum and a famous mineralogist. Examining one day the stones in a rear room of the museum, my eye noticed an odd picture in one of the old papers spread beneath the stones. It was the Australian journal, the Sydney Bulletin,[73] for April 18, 1925. There was a picture of a hideous stone image almost identical with that which Legrasse had found in the swamp.
I read the article in detail. It was of great significance to my quest; and I carefully tore it out. It read as follows:
Vigilant Arrives With Helpless Armed New Zealand Yacht in Tow.[74]
One Survivor and Dead Man Found Aboard. Tale of Desperate Battle and Deaths at Sea. Rescued Seaman Refuses Particulars of Strange Experience. Odd Idol Found in His Possession. Inquiry to Follow.[75]
The Morrison Co.’s freighter Vigilant,[76] bound from Valparaiso,[77] arrived this morning at its wharf in Darling Harbour,[78] having in tow the battled and disabled but heavily armed steam yacht Alert of Dunedin, N. Z.,[79] which was sighted April 12th in S. Latitude[80] 34°21’, W. Longitude[81] 152°17’, with one living and one dead man aboard.
The Vigilant left Valparaiso March 25th, and on April 2nd was driven considerably south of its course by exceptionally heavy storms and monster waves. On April 12th the derelict was sighted. One survivor in a half-delirious condition and one man who had evidently been dead for more than a week were found. The living man was holding a horrible stone idol of unknown origin, about foot in height. Its nature is unknown, the authorities at Sydney University, the Royal Society, and the Museum in College Street say. The survivor says he found it in the cabin of the yacht, in a small carved shrine.
This man told an exceedingly strange story of piracy and slaughter. He is Gustaf Johansen,[82] a Norwegian, from the two-masted schooner Emma of Auckland,[83] which sailed for Callao[84] February 20th with a complement of eleven men. The Emma, he says, was delayed and thrown widely south of her course by the great storm of March 1st, and on March 22nd, in S. Latitude 49°51’ W. Longitude 128°34’, encountered the Alert, manned by a queer and evil-looking crew of Kanakas and half-castes.[85] They ordered to turn back, Capt. Collins[86] refused; and the strange crew began to fire savagely and without warning. Though the schooner began to sink from shots beneath the water-line, the Emma’s men managed to heave alongside their enemy and board it. They were forced to kill them all.
Three of the Emma’s men, including Capt. Collins and First Mate Green,[87] were killed; and the remaining eight under Second Mate Johansen[88] proceeded to navigate the captured yacht. The next day, it appears, they raised and landed on a small island, although none knew about it in that part of the ocean. Six of the men somehow died ashore; Johansen says very little about this part of his story. Later, it seems, he and one companion boarded the yacht and tried to manage it, but were driven by the storm of April 2nd. From that time till his rescue on the 12th the man remembers little, and he does not even recall when William Briden,[89] his companion, died. There was no apparent cause for Briden’s death, and it happened probably due to excitement or exposure. The Alert was well known as an island trader,[90] and bore an evil reputation. It was owned by a curious group of half-castes whose frequent meetings and night trips to the woods attracted curiosity. It started in great haste just after the storm and earth tremors of March 1st. Our Auckland correspondent gives the Emma and her crew an excellent reputation, and Johansen is described as a sober and worthy man. The admiralty will make Johansen speak more freely than he has done hitherto.
This was all, together with the picture of the hellish image; but what a train of ideas it started in my mind! Here were new data on the Cthulhu Cult, and evidence that it had strange interests at sea as well as on land. Why did the hybrid crew order the Emma to sail back? What was