Of its origin, apart
from the erratic and unbelievable tales extorted from the captured
members, absolutely nothing was to be discovered; hence the anxiety
of the police for any antiquarian lore which might help them to place
the frightful symbol, and through it track down the cult to its
fountain-head. Inspector Legrasse was scarcely prepared for the sensation which his
offering created. One sight of the thing had been enough to throw the
assembled men of science into a state of tense excitement, and they
lost no time in crowding around him to gaze at the diminutive figure
whose utter strangeness and air of genuinely abysmal antiquity hinted
so potently at unopened and archaic vistas. No recognized school of
sculpture had animated this terrible object, yet centuries and even
thousands of years seemed recorded in its dim and greenish surface of
unplaceable stone. The figure, which was finally passed slowly from man to man for close
and careful study, was between seven and eight inches in height, and of
exquisitely artistic workmanship. It represented a monster of vaguely
anthropoid outline, but with an octopuslike head whose face was a mass
of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind
and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind. This thing, which seemed
instinct with a fearsome and unnatural malignancy, was of a somewhat
bloated corpulence, and squatted evilly on a rectangular block or
pedestal covered with undecipherable characters. The tips of the wings
touched the back edge of the block, the seat occupied the center,
whilst the long, curved claws of the doubled-up, crouching hind legs
gripped the front edge and extended a quarter of the way down toward
the bottom of the pedestal. The cephalopod head was bent forward, so
that the ends of the facial feelers brushed the backs of huge forepaws
which clasped the croucher's elevated knees. The aspect of the whole
was abnormally lifelike, and the more subtly fearful because its source
was so totally unknown. Its vast, awesome, and incalculable age was
unmistakable; yet not one link did it show with any known type of art
belonging to civilization's youth--or indeed to any other time. Totally separate and apart, its very material was a mystery; for the
soapy, greenish-black stone with its golden or iridescent flecks and
striations resembled nothing familiar to geology or mineralogy. The
characters along the base were equally baffling; and no member present,
despite a representation of half the world's expert learning in this
field, could form the least notion of even their remotest linguistic
kinship. They, like the subject and material, belonged to something
horribly remote and distinct from mankind as we know it; something
frightfully suggestive of old and unhallowed cycles of life in which
our world and our conceptions have no part. And yet, as the members severally shook their heads and confessed
defeat at the inspector's problem, there was one man in that gathering
who suspected a touch of bizarre familiarity in the monstrous shape and
writing, and who presently told with some diffidence of the odd trifle
he knew. This person was the late William Channing Webb, professor of
anthropology in Princeton University, and an explorer of no slight note. Professor Webb had been engaged, forty-eight years before, in a tour
of Greenland and Iceland in search of some Runic inscriptions which
he failed to unearth; and whilst high up on the West Greenland coast
had encountered a singular tribe or cult of degenerate Eskimos whose
religion, a curious form of devil-worship, chilled him with its
deliberate bloodthirstiness and repulsiveness. It was a faith of which
other Eskimos knew little, and which they mentioned only with shudders,
saying that it had come down from horribly ancient eons before ever the
world was made. Besides nameless rites and human sacrifices there were
certain queer hereditary rituals addressed to a supreme elder devil or
_tornasuk_; and of this Professor Webb had taken a careful phonetic
copy from an aged _angekok_ or wizard-priest, expressing the sounds in
Roman letters as best he knew how. But just now of prime significance
was the fetish which this cult had cherished, and around which they
danced when the aurora leaped high over the ice cliffs. It was, the
professor stated, a very crude bas-relief of stone, comprising a
hideous picture and some cryptic writing. And as far as he could tell,
it was a rough parallel in all essential features of the bestial thing
now lying before the meeting. These data, received with suspense and astonishment by the assembled
members, proved doubly exciting to Inspector Legrasse; and he began at
once to ply his informant with questions. Having noted and copied an
oral ritual among the swamp cult-worshipers his men had arrested, he
besought the professor to remember as best he might the syllables taken
down amongst the diabolist Eskimos. There then followed an exhaustive
comparison of details, and a moment of really awed silence when both
detective and scientist agreed on the virtual identity of the phrase
common to two hellish rituals so many worlds of distance apart. What,
in substance, both the Eskimo wizards and the Louisiana swamp-priests
had chanted to their kindred idols was something very like this--the
word-divisions being guessed at from traditional breaks in the phrase
as chanted aloud:

        "_Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn._"

Legrasse had one point in advance of Professor Webb, for several among
his mongrel prisoners had repeated to him what older celebrants had
told them the words meant. This text, as given, ran something like this:

         "In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming." *       *       *       *       *

And now, in response to a general urgent demand, Inspector Legrasse
related as fully as possible his experience with the swamp worshipers;
telling a story to which I could see my uncle attached profound
significance. It savored of the wildest dreams of myth-maker and
theosophist, and disclosed an astonishing degree of cosmic imagination
among such half-castes and pariahs as might be least expected to
possess it. On November 1st, 1907, there had come to New Orleans police a frantic
summons from the swamp and lagoon country to the south. The squatters
there, mostly primitive but good-natured descendants of Lafitte's men,
were in the grip of stark terror from an unknown thing which had stolen
upon them in the night. It was voodoo, apparently, but voodoo of a more
terrible sort than they had ever known; and some of their women and
children had disappeared since the malevolent tom-tom had begun its
incessant beating far within the black haunted woods where no dweller
ventured. There were insane shouts and harrowing screams, soul-chilling
chants and dancing devil-flames; and, the frightened messenger added,
the people could stand it no more.