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object:1f.lovecraft - The Horror at Martins Beach
author class:H P Lovecraft
subject class:Fiction
genre class:Horror
class:chapter


and Sonia H. Greene
I have never heard an even approximately adequate explanation of the
horror at Martin’s Beach. Despite the large number of witnesses, no two
accounts agree; and the testimony taken by local authorities contains
the most amazing discrepancies.
Perhaps this haziness is natural in view of the unheard-of character of
the horror itself, the almost paralytic terror of all who saw it, and
the efforts made by the fashionable Wavecrest Inn to hush it up after
the publicity created by Prof. Alton’s article “Are Hypnotic Powers
Confined to Recognized Humanity?”
Against all these obstacles I am striving to present a coherent
version; for I beheld the hideous occurrence, and believe it should be
known in view of the appalling possibilities it suggests. Martin’s
Beach is once more popular as a watering-place, but I shudder when I
think of it. Indeed, I cannot look at the ocean at all now without
shuddering.
Fate is not always without a sense of drama and climax, hence the
terrible happening of August 8, 1922, swiftly followed a period of
minor and agreeably wonder-fraught excitement at Martin’s Beach. On May
17 the crew of the fishing smack Alma of Gloucester, under Capt. James
P. Orne, killed, after a battle of nearly forty hours, a marine monster
whose size and aspect produced the greatest possible stir in scientific
circles and caused certain Boston naturalists to take every precaution
for its taxidermic preservation.
The object was some fifty feet in length, of roughly cylindrical shape,
and about ten feet in diameter. It was unmistakably a gilled fish in
its major affiliations; but with certain curious modifications, such as
rudimentary forelegs and six-toed feet in place of pectoral fins, which
prompted the widest speculation. Its extraordinary mouth, its thick and
scaly hide, and its single, deep-set eye were wonders scarcely less
remarkable than its colossal dimensions; and when the naturalists
pronounced it an infant organism, which could not have been hatched
more than a few days, public interest mounted to extraordinary heights.
Capt. Orne, with typical Yankee shrewdness, obtained a vessel large
enough to hold the object in its hull, and arranged for the exhibition
of his prize. With judicious carpentry he prepared what amounted to an
excellent marine museum, and, sailing south to the wealthy resort
district of Martin’s Beach, anchored at the hotel wharf and reaped a
harvest of admission fees.
The intrinsic marvelousness of the object, and the importance which it
clearly bore in the minds of many scientific visitors from near and
far, combined to make it the season’s sensation. That it was absolutely
unique—unique to a scientifically revolutionary degree—was well
understood. The naturalists had shown plainly that it radically
differed from the similarly immense fish caught off the Florida coast;
that, while it was obviously an inhabitant of almost incredible depths,
perhaps thousands of feet, its brain and principal organs indicated a
development startlingly vast, and out of all proportion to anything
hitherto associated with the fish tribe.
On the morning of July 20 the sensation was increased by the loss of
the vessel and its strange treasure. In the storm of the preceding
night it had broken from its moorings and vanished forever from the
sight of man, carrying with it the guard who had slept aboard despite
the threatening weather. Capt. Orne, backed by extensive scientific
interests and aided by large numbers of fishing boats from Gloucester,
made a thorough and exhaustive searching cruise, but with no result
other than the prompting of interest and conversation. By August 7 hope
was abandoned, and Capt. Orne had returned to the Wavecrest Inn to wind
up his business affairs at Martin’s Beach and confer with certain of
the scientific men who remained there. The horror came on August 8.
It was in the twilight, when grey sea-birds hovered low near the shore
and a rising moon began to make a glittering path across the waters.
The scene is important to remember, for every impression counts. On the
beach were several strollers and a few late bathers; stragglers from
the distant cottage colony that rose modestly on a green hill to the
north, or from the adjacent cliff-perched Inn whose imposing towers
proclaimed its allegiance to wealth and grandeur.
Well within viewing distance was another set of spectators, the
loungers on the Inn’s high-ceiled and lantern-lighted veranda, who
appeared to be enjoying the dance music from the sumptuous ballroom
inside. These spectators, who included Capt. Orne and his group of
scientific confreres, joined the beach group before the horror
progressed far; as did many more from the Inn. Certainly there was no
lack of witnesses, confused though their stories be with fear and doubt
of what they saw.
There is no exact record of the time the thing began, although a
majority say that the fairly round moon was “about a foot” above the
low-lying vapors of the horizon. They mention the moon because what
they saw seemed subtly connected with it—a sort of stealthy,
deliberate, menacing ripple which rolled in from the far skyline along
the shimmering lane of reflected moonbeams, yet which seemed to subside
before it reached the shore.
Many did not notice this ripple until reminded by later events; but it
seems to have been very marked, differing in height and motion from the
normal waves around it. Some called it cunning and calculating. And as
it died away craftily by the black reefs afar out, there suddenly came
belching up out of the glitter-streaked brine a cry of death; a scream
of anguish and despair that moved pity even while it mocked it.
First to respond to the cry were the two life guards then on duty;
sturdy fellows in white bathing attire, with their calling proclaimed
in large red letters across their chests. Accustomed as they were to
rescue work, and to the screams of the drowning, they could find
nothing familiar in the unearthly ululation; yet with a trained sense
of duty they ignored the strangeness and proceeded to follow their
usual course.
Hastily seizing an air-cushion, which with its attached coil of rope
lay always at hand, one of them ran swiftly along the shore to the
scene of the gathering crowd; whence, after whirling it about to gain
momentum, he flung the hollow disc far out in the direction from which
the sound had come. As the cushion disappeared in the waves, the crowd
curiously awaited a sight of the hapless being whose distress had been
so great; eager to see the rescue made by the massive rope.
But that rescue was soon acknowledged to be no swift and easy matter;
for, pull as they might on the rope, the two muscular guards could not
move the object at the other end. Instead, they found that object
pulling with equal or even greater force in the very opposite
direction, till in a few seconds they were dragged off their feet and
into the water by the strange power which had seized on the proffered
life-preserver.
One of them, recovering himself, called immediately for help from the
crowd on the shore, to whom he flung the remaining coil of rope; and in
a moment the guards were seconded by all the hardier men, among whom
Capt. Orne was foremost. More than a dozen strong hands were now
tugging desperately at the stout line, yet wholly without avail.
Hard as they tugged, the strange force at the other end tugged harder;
and since neither side relaxed for an instant, the rope became rigid as
steel with the enormous strain. The struggling participants, as well as
the spectators, were by this time consumed with curiosity as to the
nature of the force in the sea. The idea of a drowning man had long
been dismissed; and hints of whales, submarines, monsters, and demons
now passed freely around. Where humanity had first led the rescuers,
wonder kept them at their task; and they hauled with a grim
determination to uncover the mystery.
It being decided at last that a whale must have swallowed the
air-cushion, Capt. Orne, as a natural leader, shouted to those on the
shore that a boat must be obtained in order to approach, harpoon, and
land the unseen leviathan. Several men at once prepared to scatter in
quest of a suitable craft, while others came to supplant the captain at
the straining rope, since his place was logically with whatever boat
party might be formed. His own idea of the situation was very broad,
and by no means limited to whales, since he had to do with a monster so
much stranger. He wondered what might be the acts and manifestations of
an adult of the species of which the fifty-foot creature had been the
merest infant.
And now there developed with appalling suddenness the crucial fact
which changed the entire scene from one of wonder to one of horror, and
dazed with fright the assembled band of toilers and onlookers. Capt.
Orne, turning to leave his post at the rope, found his hands held in
their place with unaccountable strength; and in a moment he realized
that he was unable to let go of the rope. His plight was instantly
divined, and as each companion tested his own situation the same
condition was encountered. The fact could not be denied—every struggler
was irresistibly held in some mysterious bondage to the hempen line
which was slowly, hideously, and relentlessly pulling them out to sea.
Speechless horror ensued; a horror in which the spectators were
petrified to utter inaction and mental chaos. Their complete
demoralization is reflected in the conflicting accounts they give, and
the sheepish excuses they offer for their seemingly callous inertia. I
was one of them, and know.
Even the strugglers, after a few frantic screams and futile groans,
succumbed to the paralyzing influence and kept silent and fatalistic in
the face of unknown powers. There they stood in the pallid moonlight,
blindly pulling against a spectral doom and swaying monotonously
backward and forward as the water rose first to their knees, then to
their hips. The moon went partly under a cloud, and in the half-light
the line of swaying men resembled some sinister and gigantic centipede,
writhing in the clutch of a terrible creeping death.
Harder and harder grew the rope, as the tug in both directions
increased, and the strands swelled with the undisturbed soaking of the
rising waves. Slowly the tide advanced, till the sands so lately
peopled by laughing children and whispering lovers were now swallowed
by the inexorable flow. The herd of panic-stricken watchers surged
blindly backward as the water crept above their feet, while the
frightful line of strugglers swayed hideously on, half submerged, and
now at a substantial distance from their audience. Silence was
complete.
The crowd, having gained a huddling-place beyond reach of the tide,
stared in mute fascination; without offering a word of advice or
encouragement, or attempting any kind of assistance. There was in the
air a nightmare fear of impending evils such as the world had never
before known.
Minutes seemed lengthened into hours, and still that human snake of
swaying torsos was seen above the fast rising tide. Rhythmically it
undulated; slowly, horribly, with the seal of doom upon it. Thicker
clouds now passed over the ascending moon, and the glittering path on
the waters faded nearly out.
Very dimly writhed the serpentine line of nodding heads, with now and
then the livid face of a backward-glancing victim gleaming pale in the
darkness. Faster and faster gathered the clouds, till at length their
angry rifts shot down sharp tongues of febrile flame. Thunders rolled,
softly at first, yet soon increasing to a deafening, maddening
intensity. Then came a culminating crash—a shock whose reverberations
seemed to shake land and sea alike—and on its heels a cloudburst whose
drenching violence overpowered the darkened world as if the heavens
themselves had opened to pour forth a vindictive torrent.
The spectators, instinctively acting despite the absence of conscious
and coherent thought, now retreated up the cliff steps to the hotel
veranda. Rumors had reached the guests inside, so that the refugees
found a state of terror nearly equal to their own. I think a few
frightened words were uttered, but cannot be sure.
Some, who were staying at the Inn, retired in terror to their rooms;
while others remained to watch the fast sinking victims as the line of
bobbing heads showed above the mounting waves in the fitful lightning
flashes. I recall thinking of those heads, and the bulging eyes they
must contain; eyes that might well reflect all the fright, panic, and
delirium of a malignant universe—all the sorrow, sin, and misery,
blasted hopes and unfulfilled desires, fear, loathing and anguish of
the ages since time’s beginning; eyes alight with all the soul-racking
pain of eternally blazing infernos.
And as I gazed out beyond the heads, my fancy conjured up still another
eye; a single eye, equally alight, yet with a purpose so revolting to
my brain that the vision soon passed. Held in the clutches of an
unknown vise, the line of the damned dragged on; their silent screams
and unuttered prayers known only to the demons of the black waves and
the night-wind.
There now burst from the infuriate sky such a mad cataclysm of satanic
sound that even the former crash seemed dwarfed. Amidst a blinding
glare of descending fire the voice of heaven resounded with the
blasphemies of hell, and the mingled agony of all the lost reverberated
in one apocalyptic, planet-rending peal of Cyclopean din. It was the
end of the storm, for with uncanny suddenness the rain ceased and the
moon once more cast her pallid beams on a strangely quieted sea.
There was no line of bobbing heads now. The waters were calm and
deserted, and broken only by the fading ripples of what seemed to be a
whirlpool far out in the path of the moonlight whence the strange cry
had first come. But as I looked along that treacherous lane of silvery
sheen, with fancy fevered and senses overwrought, there trickled upon
my ears from some abysmal sunken waste the faint and sinister echoes of
a laugh.
Return to “The Horror at Martin’s Beach”


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