It had been pawned for a ridiculous sum at
a shop in State Street in 1873, by a drunken Innsmouth man shortly
afterward killed in a brawl. Miss Tilton was inclined to believe that it formed part of some exotic
pirate hoard discovered by old Captain Obed Marsh. This view was surely
not weakened by the insistent offers of purchase at a high price
which the Marshes began to make as soon as they knew of its presence,
and which they repeated to this day despite the Society's unvarying
determination not to sell. As the good lady showed me out of the building, she assured me that the
rumors of devil-worship were partly justified by a peculiar secret cult
which had gained force there and engulfed all the orthodox churches. It was called, she said, "The Esoteric Order of Dagon," and was
undoubtedly a debased, quasi-pagan thing imported from the East a
century before, at a time when Innsmouth fisheries seemed to be going
barren. Its persistence among a simple people was quite natural in view
of the sudden and permanent return of abundantly fine fishing, and it
soon came to be the greatest influence on the town. All this, to the pious Miss Tilton, formed an excellent reason for
shunning the ancient town of decay and desolation; but to me it was
merely a fresh incentive; and I could scarcely sleep in my small room
at the "Y" as the night wore away. II


Shortly before ten the next morning I stood with my one small valise
in front of Hammond's Drug Store in old Market Square waiting for
the Innsmouth bus. In a few moments a small motor-coach of extreme
decrepitude and dirty gray color rattled down State Street, made a
turn, and drew up at the curb beside me. I felt immediately that
it was the right one; a guess which the half-illegible sign on the
windshield--"_Arkham-Innsmouth-Newb'port_"--soon verified. There were only three passengers--dark, unkempt men of sullen visage
and somewhat youthful cast--and when the vehicle stopped they clumsily
shambled out and began walking up State Street in a silent, almost
furtive fashion. The driver also alighted. This, I reflected, must be
the Joe Sargent mentioned by the ticket-agent; and even before I had
noticed any details there spread over me a wave of spontaneous aversion
which could be neither checked nor explained. He was a thin, stoop-shouldered man not much under six feet tall,
dressed in shabby blue civilian clothes and wearing a frayed gray golf
cap. His age was perhaps thirty-five, but the odd, deep creases in the
sides of his neck made him seem older when one did not study his dull,
expressionless face. He had a narrow head, bulging, watery blue eyes
that seemed never to wink, a flat nose, a receding forehead and chin,
and singularly undeveloped ears. As he walked toward the bus I observed
his peculiarly shambling gait and saw that his feet were inordinately
immense. The more I studied them the more I wondered how he could buy
any shoes to fit them. A certain greasiness about the fellow increased my dislike. He was
evidently given to working or lounging around the fish docks, and
carried with him much of their characteristic smell. Just what foreign
blood was in him I could not even guess. I was sorry when I saw that there would be no other passengers on the
bus. Somehow I did not like the idea of riding alone with this driver. But as the leaving time obviously approached I conquered my qualms and
followed the man aboard, extending him a dollar bill and murmuring the
single word "Innsmouth." At length the decrepit vehicle started with a jerk, and rattled noisily
past the old brick buildings of State Street amidst a cloud of vapor
from the exhaust. The day was warm and sunny, but the landscape of sand, sedge-grass,
and stunted shrubbery became more and more desolate as we proceeded. Out the window I could see the blue water and the sandy line of Plum
Island, and we presently drew very near the beach as our narrow road
veered off from the main highway to Rowley and Ipswich. At last we lost sight of Plum Island and saw the vast expanse of the
open Atlantic on our left. Our narrow course began to climb steeply,
and I felt a singular sense of disquiet in looking at the lonely crest
ahead where the rutted roadway met the sky. It was as if the bus were
about to keep on its ascent leaving the sane earth altogether and
merging with the unknown arcana of upper air and cryptical sky. The
smell of the sea took on ominous implications, and the silent driver's
bent, rigid back and narrow head became more and more hateful. As I
looked at him I saw that the back of his head was almost as hairless
as his face, having only a few straggling yellow strands upon a gray
scabrous surface. Then we reached the crest and beheld the outspread valley beyond,
where the Manuxet joins the sea just north of the long line of cliffs
that culminate in Kingsport Head; all my attention was captured by the
nearer panorama just below me. I had, I realized, come face to face
with rumor-shadowed Innsmouth. It was a town of wide extent and dense construction, yet one with a
portentous dearth of visible life. The vast huddle of sagging gambrel
roofs and peaked gables conveyed with offensive clearness the idea
of wormy decay, and as we approached along the now descending road I
could see that many roofs had wholly caved in. Stretching inland I saw
the rusted, grass-grown line of the abandoned railway, with leaning
telegraph-poles now devoid of wires. Here and there the ruins of wharves jutted out from the shore to end
in indeterminate rottenness, those farthest south seeming the most
decayed. And far out at sea, despite a high tide, I glimpsed a long,
black line scarcely rising above the water yet carrying a suggestion of
odd latent malignancy. This, I knew, must be Devil Reef. As I looked,
a subtle, curious sense of beckoning seemed superadded to the grim
repulsion; and oddly enough, I found this overtone more disturbing than
the primary impression. As the bus reached a lower level I began to catch the steady note of
a waterfall through the unnatural stillness. The leaning, unpainted
houses grew thicker, lined both sides of the road, and displayed more
urban tendencies than did those we were leaving behind. The panorama
ahead had contracted to a street scene, and in spots I could see
where a cobblestone pavement and stretches of brick sidewalk had
formerly existed. All the houses were apparently deserted, and there
were occasional gaps where tumbledown chimneys and cellar walls told
of buildings that had collapsed. Pervading everything was the most
nauseous fishy odor imaginable. And I was not to reach my destination without one other very strong
impression of poignantly disagreeable quality. The bus had come to a
sort of open concourse or radial point with churches on two sides and
the bedraggled remains of a circular green in the center, and I was
looking at a large pillared hall on the right-hand junction ahead.