H.P. Lovecraft. The Horror at Martin's Beach
The Horror at Martin's Beach
by H. P. Lovecraft and Sonia H. Greene
Written June 1922
Published November 1923 in Weird Tales, Vol. 2, No. 4, p. 75-76, 83
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. Ahon'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 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.