Dagon by H.P. Lovecraft

read by Mike Bennett.

I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tomorrow I shall be no more.

Pennyless and at the end of my supply of the drug which alone makes life endurable, I can bear the torture

no longer, and shall cast myself from this garret window into the squalid street below. Do not think from my slavery to morphine

that I am a weakling or a degenerate. When you have read these hastily scrawled pages you may guess, though never fully realize, why it is that I must have forgetfulness or death.

It was in one of the most open and least frequented parts of the broad Pacific

that the packet of which I was supercargoe fell a victim to the German sea raider. The great war was then at its very beginning

and the ocean forces of the Hun had not completely sunk to their later degradation, so that our vessel was made a legitimate prize, whilst

we of her crew were treated with all the fairness and consideration due to us as naval prisoners.

So liberal, indeed, was the discipline of our captors that five days after we were taken I

managed to escape alone in a small boat with water and provisions for a good length of time.

When I finally found myself adrift and free, I had but little idea of my surroundings. Never a competent

navigator I could only guess vaguely by the sun and stars that I was somewhat south of

the equator.

Of the longitude I knew nothing, and no island or coastline was in sight.

The weather kept fair, and for uncounted days I drifted aimlessly beneath the scorching sun, waiting, either for some

passing ship or to be cast on the shores of some habitable land, but neither ship nor land appeared, and I began to despair

in my solitude upon the heaving vastness of unbroken blue.

The change happened whilst I slept.

Its details I shall never know, for my slumber, though troubled and dream infested, was continuous.

When at last I awakened, it was to discover myself half sucked into a slimy expanse of hellish black mire, which extended about me in monotonous undulations as far as I could see, and in which my boat lay grounded some distance

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