As to the source of the pool itself: this could only be the sea. The deep kelp alone was sufficient evidence of that. And to justify and make conclusive this observation, the pool was fed by a broad expanse of water which disappeared under the ledge beneath the far wall, which my sense of direction told me lay toward the sea. The small ripples or wavelets we had noted disturbing the pool’s surface could only be the product of an influx of water from this source, doubtless the flow of the incoming tide.
Then there was the light: that same glow of putrescence or organic decomposition seen in certain fungi, an unhealthy illumination which lent the cave an almost submarine aspect. So that even without the clean light of our electric torches, still the great bell in the ceiling would have remained plainly visible.
But that bell... who could say where it came from? Not I. Not David. Certainly this was that bell whose sepulchral tolling had penetrated even to the surface, but as to its origin...
In that peculiar way of his, David, as if reading my thoughts, confirmed: “Well, it’ll not ring again—not after this lot goes off!” And I saw that he had placed his knapsack full of dynamite out of sight beneath a low, shallow ledge in the wall and was even now uncoiling a generous length of fusewire. Finishing the task, he glanced at me once, struck a match and set sputtering fire to the end of the wire, pushing it, too, out of sight.
“There,” he grunted, “and now we can get—” But here he paused, and I knew why.
The echo of a voice—a croak?—had come to us from somewhere not too far distant. And even as our ears strained to detect other than the slow gurgle of weed-choked waters, so there echoed again that damnably soft and furtive slap, slap, slap of nameless feet against slimy stone...
X: DEEP ONES!
At that panic gripped both of us anew, was magnified as the water of the pool gurgled more loudly yet and ripples showed which could not be ascribed solely to an influx from the sea. Perhaps at this very moment something other than brine and weed was moving toward us along that murky and mysterious watercourse.
My limbs were trembling, and David was in no better condition as, throwing caution to the wind, we commenced scramblingly to retrace our steps, following those fresh marks where we had scratched them upon the walls of the maze. And behind us the hidden fuse slowly sputtering its way to that massive charge of dynamite; and approaching the great pool, some entirely conjectural thing whose every purpose we were sure must be utterly alien and hostile. While ahead... who could say?
But one thing was certain: our presence down here had finally stirred something up—maybe many somethings—and now their noises came to us even above our breathless panting, the hammering of our hearts and the clattering sounds of our flight down those black tunnels of inner earth. Their noises, yes, for no man of the sane upper world of blue skies and clean air could ever have named those echoing, glutinous bursts of sporadic croaking and clotted, inquiring gurgles and grunts as speech; and no one could mistake the slithering, slapping, flopping sounds of their pursuit for anything remotely human. Or perhaps they were remotely human, but so sunken into hybrid degeneracy as to seem totally alien to all human expectations. And all of this without ever having seen these Deep Ones—“Tritons,” as David had named them—or at least, not yet!
But as we arrived at the central gallery and paused for breath, and as David struck a second match to light the fuse of the charge previously laid there, that so far merciful omission commenced to resolve itself in a manner I shall never forget to my dying day.
It started with the senses-shattering gonging of the great bell, whose echoes were deafening in those hellish tunnels, and it ended... but I go ahead of myself.
Simultaneous with the ringing of the bell, a renewed chorus of croaking and grunting came to us from somewhere dangerously close at hand; so that David at once grabbed my arm and half-dragged me into a small side tunnel leading off at an angle from the gallery. This move had been occasioned not alone by the fact that the sounds we had heard were coming closer, but also that they issued from the very burrow by which we must make our escape! But as the madly capricious gods of fate would have it, our momentary haven proved no less terrifying in its way than the vulnerable position we had been obliged to quit.
The hole into which we had fled was no tunnel at all but an “L”-shaped cave which, when we rounded its single corner, laid naked to our eyes a hideous secret. We recoiled instinctively from a discovery grisly as it was unexpected, and I silently prayed that God—if indeed there was any good, sane God—would give me strength not to break down utterly in my extreme of horror.
In there, crumpled where he had finally been overcome, lay the ragged and torn remains of old Jason Carpenter. It could only be him; the similarly broken body of Bones, his dog, lay across his feet. And all about him on the floor of the cave, spent shotgun cartridges; and clasped in his half-rotted, half-mummied hand, that weapon which in the end had not saved him.
But he had fought—how he had fought! Jason, and his dog, too...
Theirs were not the only corpses left to wither and decay in that tomb of a cave. No, for heaped to one side was a pile of quasi-human—debris—almost beyond my powers of description. Suffice to say that I will not even attempt a description, but merely confirm that these were indeed the very monstrosities of David’s tale of crumbling Innsmouth. And if in death the things were loathsome, in life they would yet prove to be worse by far. That was still to come...
***
And so, with our torches reluctantly but necessarily switched off, we crouched there in the fetid darkness amidst corpses of man, dog and nightmares, and we waited. And always we were full of that awful awareness of slowly burning fuses, of time rapidly running out. But at last the tolling of the bell ceased and its echoes died away, and the sounds of the Deep Ones decreased as they made off in a body toward the source of the summoning, and finally we made our move.
Switching on our torches we ran crouching from the cave into the gallery—and came face to face with utmost terror! A lone member of that flopping, frog-voiced horde had been posted here and now stood central in the gallery, turning startled, bulging batrachian eyes upon us as we emerged from our hiding place.
A moment later and this squat obscenity—this part-man, part-fish, part-frog creature—threw up webbed hands before its terrible face, screamed a hissing, croaking cry of rage and possibly agony, and finally hurled itself at us...
...Came frenziedly lurching, flopping and floundering, headlong into a double-barrelled barrage from the weapon I held in fingers which kept on uselessly squeezing the triggers long after the face and chest of the monster had flown into bloody tatters and its body was lifted and hurled away from us across the chamber.
Then David was yelling in my ear, tugging at me, dragging me after him, and... and all of the rest is a chaos, a madness, a nightmare of flight and fear.
I seem to recall loading my shotgun—several times, I think—and I have vague memories of discharging it a like number of times; and I believe that David, too, used his weapon, probably more successfully. As for our targets: it would have been difficult to miss them. There were clutching claws, and eyes bulging with hatred and lust; there was foul, alien breath in our faces, slime and blood and bespattered bodies obstructing our way where they fell; and always a swelling uproar of croaking and flopping and slithering as that place below became filled with the spawn of primal oceans.