Then we saw a
series of cartouches--the continuous band arrangement being frequently
interrupted in these late carvings--depicting a constantly growing
migration to the nearest refuges of greater warmth--some fleeing to
cities under the sea off the far-away coast, and some clambering down
through networks of limestone caverns in the hollow hills to the
neighboring black abyss of subterrane waters. In the end, it seems to have been the neighboring abyss which received
the greatest colonization. This was partly due, no doubt, to the
traditional sacredness of this special region, but may have been more
conclusively determined by the opportunities it gave for continuing
the use of the great temples on the honeycombed mountains, and for
retaining the vast land city as a place of summer residence and base of
communication with various mines. The linkage of old and new abodes was made more effective by means
of several gradings and improvements along the connecting routes,
including the chiseling of numerous direct tunnels from the ancient
metropolis to the black abyss--sharply down-pointing tunnels whose
mouths we carefully drew, according to our most thoughtful estimates,
on the guide map we were compiling. It was obvious that at least two of these tunnels lay within a
reasonable exploring distance of where we were--both being on the
mountainward edge of the city, one less than a quarter of a mile toward
the ancient rivercourse, and the other perhaps twice that distance in
the opposite direction. The abyss, it seems, had shelving shores of dry land at certain places,
but the Old Ones built their new city under water--no doubt because of
its greater certainty of uniform warmth. The depth of the hidden sea
appears to have been very great, so that the earth's internal heat
could insure its habitability for an indefinite period. The beings seem to have had no trouble in adapting themselves to
part-time--and eventually, of course, whole-time--residence under
water, since they had never allowed their gill systems to atrophy. There were many sculptures which showed how they had always frequently
visited their submarine kinsfolk elsewhere, and how they had habitually
bathed on the deep bottom of their great river. The darkness of inner
earth could likewise have been no deterrent to a race accustomed to
long antarctic nights. Decadent though their style undoubtedly was, these latest carvings
had a truly epic quality where they told of the building of
the new city in the cavern sea. The Old Ones had gone about it
scientifically--quarrying insoluble rocks from the heart of the
honeycombed mountains, and employing expert workers from the nearest
submarine city to perform the construction according to the best
methods. These workers brought with them all that was necessary to establish
the new venture--Shoggoth tissue from which to breed stone lifters and
subsequent beasts of burden for the cavern city, and other protoplasmic
matter to mold into phosphorescent organisms for lighting purposes. *       *       *       *       *

At last a mighty metropolis rose on the bottom of that Stygian sea,
its architecture much like that of the city above, and its workmanship
displaying relatively little decadence because of the precise
mathematical element inherent in building operations. The newly bred Shoggoths grew to enormous size and singular
intelligence, and were represented as taking and executing orders with
marvelous quickness. They seemed to converse with the Old Ones by
mimicking their voices--a sort of musical piping over a wide range,
if poor Lake's dissection had indicated aright--and to work more from
spoken commands than from hypnotic suggestions as in earlier times. They were, however, kept in admirable control. The phosphorescent
organisms supplied light with vast effectiveness, and doubtless atoned
for the loss of the familiar polar auroras of the outer-world night. Art and decoration were pursued, though, of course, with a certain
decadence. The Old Ones seemed to realize this falling off themselves,
and in many cases anticipated the policy of Constantine the Great by
transplanting especially fine blocks of ancient carving from their
land city, just as the emperor, in a similar age of decline, stripped
Greece and Asia of their finest art to give his new Byzantine capital
greater splendors than its own people could create. That the transfer
of sculptured blocks had not been more extensive, was doubtless owing
to the fact that the land city was not at first wholly abandoned. By the time total abandonment did occur--and it surely must have
occurred before the polar Pleistocene was far advanced--the Old Ones
had perhaps become satisfied with their decadent art--or had ceased
to recognize the superior merit of the older carvings. At any rate,
the æon-silent ruins around us had certainly undergone no wholesale
sculptural denudation, though all the best separate statues, like other
movables, had been taken away. The decadent cartouches and dados telling this story were, as I have
said, the latest we could find in our limited search. They left us with
a picture of the Old Ones shuttling back and forth betwixt the land
city in summer and the sea-cavern city in winter, and sometimes trading
with the sea-bottom cities off the antarctic coast. By this time the ultimate doom of the land city must have been
recognized, for the sculptures showed many signs of the cold's malign
encroachments. Vegetation was declining, and the terrible snows of the
winter no longer melted completely even in midsummer. The saurian live stock were nearly all dead, and the mammals were
standing it none too well. To keep on with the work of the upper
world it had become necessary to adapt some of the amorphous and
curiously cold-resistant Shoggoths to land life--a thing the Old Ones
had formerly been reluctant to do. The great river was now lifeless,
and the upper sea had lost most of its denizens except the seals and
whales. All the birds had flown away, save only the great, grotesque
penguins. What had happened afterward we could only guess. How long had the new
sea-cavern city survived? Was it still down there, a stony corpse in
eternal blackness? Had the subterranean waters frozen at last? To what
fate had the ocean-bottom cities of the outer world been delivered? Had any of the Old Ones shifted north ahead of the creeping ice cap? Existing geology shows no trace of their presence. Had the frightful
Mi-Go been still a menace in the outer land world of the north? Could
one be sure of what might or might not linger, even to this day, in the
lightless and unplumbed abysses of earth's deepest water? Those things had seemingly been able to withstand any amount of
pressure--and men of the sea have fished up curious objects at
times. And has the killer-whale theory really explained the savage
and mysterious scars on antarctic seals noticed a generation ago by
Borchgrevingk?