Tales of Horror by H. P. Lovecraft EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: H. P. Lovecraft
- Language: English
- Genre: Science Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
DAGON
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.
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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
enemy’s navy had not reached its later degree of ruthlessness; 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.
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