and all over the floor. Its arms writhe and writhe. And its demands are insatiable. Every waking moment it demands food. Sometimes it completely absorbs me. But now as I write the upper portion of my body is human.
This afternoon I moved to furnished room near beach. Salt water has become a necessity. Change comes on more rapidly now. I can’t keep it off. My will is powerless. I filled the tub with water and put in some salt. Then I wallowed in it. Great comfort. Great relief. Hunger. Dreadful, insatiable hunger.
I am all beast, all animal. Rats. I have caught six rats. Delicious. Great comfort. But I’ve messed up the room. What if the old idiot downstairs should suspect?
She does suspect. Wants me to get out. I shall get out. There is only one refuge for me now. The sea! I shall go to the sea. I can’t pretend I’m human any longer. I’m all animal, all beast. What a shock I must have given the old hag! I could hear her teeth chattering as she came up the stairs. All I could do to keep from springing at her.
Into the sea at last. Great relief, great joy. Freedom at last!
A ship. I ran head on into it. Six arms gone. Terrible agony. Flopped about for hours.
Land. I climbed over the rocks and collapsed. Then I managed to get back.
Part of me got back. I called for help. A crazy fool came out of the lighthouse and stared at me. Five of my tentacles sprang at him. I couldn’t control them. They, got him about the leg. He lost his head. Got out a revolver and shot at them.
I got them under control. Tremendous effort. Pleaded with him, tried to explain. He would not listen. Shots — many shots. White-hot fire in my body — in my arms and legs. Strength returned to me. I rose up, and went back into the sea. I hate human beings. I am growing larger, and I shall make myself felt in the world.
[Statement of William Gamwell]
There were five of us in the boat: Jimmy Simms, Tom Snodgrass, Harry O’Brien, Bill Samson and myself. “Jimmy,” I said, “we may as well open the lunch. I’m not particularly hungry, but the salmon all have their noses stuck in the mud!”
“They sure ain’t biting,” said Jimmy. “I never seen such a bum run of the lazy critters.”
“Don’t go complaining,” Harry piped up. “We’ve only been here five hours.”
We were drifting toward the east shore and I yelled to Bill to pull on the oars, but he ignored me.
“We’ll drift in with the shipping,” I warned. “By the way, what’s that queer-looking tug with a broken smoke-stack?”
“It came in this morning,” said Jim. “It looks like a rum-runner to me.” “They’re taking an awful risk,” Harry put in. “The revenue cutter’s due by here any minute.”
“There she is now,” said Bill and pointed toward the flats.
Sure enough, there was the government boat, skirting the shore and looking like a lean wasp on the warpath. “She’s heading the tug off as sure as you’re born,” 3aid Bill. “I’ll say we’re in for a hot time!”
“Back water!” I shouted. “Do you want to get between ’em?”
Tom and Bill pulled sturdily on the oars and our boat swung out in the direction of the west shore; and then the current took us and carried us downstream.
A signal flag flashed for a moment on the deck of the cutter. Jimmy translated it to us. “ ‘Stand to, or we’ll fire’,” he exclaimed. “Now let’s see what the tug’s got to say to that!”
The tug apparently decided to ignore the command. It rose on a tremorless swell, and plunged doggedly forward. A vast black column ascended from its broken smoke-stack. “They’re putting on steam!” cried Bill. “But they haven’t a chance in the world.”
“Not a chance,” confirmed Tom. “One broadside will blow ’em to atoms.” Bill stood up and clapped his hands to his ears. The rest of us were nearly deafened by the thunderous report. “What did I tell you?” shouted Tom.
We looked at the tug. The smoke-stack was gone and she was wallowing in a heavy swell. “That was only a single shot across her bows,” said Bill. “But it did a lot of damage. Wait until they open fire with the big guns!” We waited, expecting to see something interesting. But we saw something that nearly frightened us out of our shoes. Between the cutter and the tug a gigantic, yellowish obscenity shot up from the water and towered thirty feet in the air. It thrashed wildly about and made a horrible gulping noise. We could hear the frenzied shrieks of the men on the tug, and from the deck of the cutter someone yelled. “Look at it! Look at it! Oh, my God!” “Mercy in heaven!” groaned Bill.
“We’re in for it!” sobbed Tom.
For a moment the thing simply towered and vibrated between the two boats and then it made for the cutter. It had at least a thousand legs and they waved loathsomely in the sunlight. It had a hooked beak and a great mouth that opened and closed and gulped, and it was larger than a whale. It was horribly, hideously large. It towered to the mounting zenith, and in its mephitic, blasphemous immensity it dwarfed the two boats and all the tangled shipping in the harbor.
“Are we alive?” shrieked Bill. “And is that there shore really Long Island? I don’t believe it. We’re in the Indian Ocean, or the Persian Gulf or the middle of the Hyperborean sea…That there thing is a
“What’s a Jormungandar?” yelled Tom. He was at the end of his rope and clutching valiantly at straws.
“Them things what live on the bottom of the arctic seas,” groaned Bill. “They comes up for air once in a hundred years. I’ll take my oath that there thing’s a Jormungandar.”
Jormungandar or not, it was apparent to all of us that the monster meant business. It was bearing down upon the cutter with incredible ferocity. The water boiled and bubbled in its wake. On the other boats men rushed hysterically to the rails and stared with wide eyes.
The officers of the cutter had recovered from their momentary astonishment and were gesticulating furiously and running back and forth on the decks. Three guns were lowered into position and directed at the onrushing horror. A little man with gilt braid on his sleeves danced about absurdly on his toes and shouted out commands at the top of his voice.
“Don’t fire until you can look into his eyes,” he yelled. “We can’t afford to miss him. We’ll give him a broadside he won’t forget.”
“It isn’t human,' sir!” someone yelled. “There never was nothing like it before in this world.”
The men aboard the tug were obviously rejoicing. Caps and pipes ascended into the air and loud shouts of triumph issued from a hundred drunken throats.
“Fire!” shouted the blue-coated midget on the cutter.
“It won’t do ’em no good!” shouted Bill, as the thunder of the guns smote our ears. “It won’t do ’em a bit o’ good.”
As it turned out, Bill was right. The tremendous discharge failed to arrest the progress of the obscene monster.
It rose like a cloud from the Water and flew at the cutter like a flying-fish. Furiously it stretched forth its enormous arms, and embraced the cutter. It wrenched the little vessel from the trough of the wave in which it wal-,lowed and lifted it violently into the air.
Its great golden sides shone like the morning star, but red blood trickled from a gaping hole in its throat. Yet it ignored its wounds. It lifted the small steel ship into the air in its gigantic, weaving arms.
I shall never forget that moment. I have but to shut my eyes and it is before me now. I see again that Brobdingnagian horror from measureless abysses, that twisting, fantastic monstrosity from sinister depths of blackest midnight. And in its colossal arms and legs I see a tiny ship from whose deck a hundred little men fall shrieking and screaming into the black maelstrom beneath its churning maws.
Yards and yards it towered, and its glittering bulk hid the sun. It towered to the zenith and its weaving arms twisted the cutter into a shapeless mass of glistening steel.
“We’re next!” muttered Bill. “There ain’t nothing can save us now. A man ain’t got a chance when he runs head-on against a Jormungandar!” “That ain’t qo Jormungandar,” piped Tom. “It’s a human being what’s been out all night. But I ain’t saying we’re not in for it.”
