The region they entered was one of traditionally evil repute, white men normally did not enter it. There were legends of a hidden lake, in which dwelt a huge, formless white polypous thing[55] with luminous eyes; and squatters whispered that bat-winged devils flew up out of caverns in inner earth to worship it at midnight. They said it had been there before the Indians, and before even the beasts and birds of the woods. It was nightmare itself, and to see it was to die.[56] But it came to them in dreams, and so they knew enough not to go there. The present voodoo orgy was, indeed, on the fringe of this area, but that location was bad enough; hence perhaps the very place of the worship had terrified the squatters more than the shocking sounds and incidents.
Legrasse’s men ploughed on through the black morass toward the red glare and muffled tom-toms. There are sounds made by men, and sounds made by beasts; and it is terrible to hear when the sources change. The voices the policemen heard were like pestilential tempests from the gulfs of hell. From time to time a chorus of hoarse voices chanted that hideous phrase or ritual:
“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.”
Then the men reached a spot where the trees were thinner. Four of them reeled, one fainted, and two were shaken into a frantic cry. Some stood trembling and nearly hypnotized with horror.
In a natural glade of the swamp stood a grassy island of an acre’s extent, clear of trees and dry. On this now leaped and twisted indescribable horde of humans. Totally naked, this hybrid spawn were braying, bellowing, and writhing about a monstrous ring-shaped bonfire; in the centre of which stood a great granite monolith some eight feet in height, on top of which rested the noxious carven statuette. From a wide circle of ten scaffolds set up at regular intervals hung, head downward, the marred bodies of the helpless squatters who had disappeared. Inside this circle the ring of worshippers jumped and roared, from left to right in endless bacchanal[57] between the ring of bodies and the ring of fire.
It may be only imagination, but a Spanish man heard antiphonal responses to the ritual from some far and unillumined spot within the wood. This man, Joseph D. Galvez,[58] I later met and questioned. He said that he heard beating of great wings, and saw a glimpse of shining eyes and a mountainous white bulk beyond the remotest trees but I suppose he was a little superstitious.
But duty came first; and the police relied on their firearms and went determinedly into the nauseous rout. For five minutes the chaos was beyond description. Shots were fired, and escapes were made; but in the end Legrasse was able to count forty-seven sullen prisoners, to whom he ordered to dress and fall into line between two rows of policemen. Five of the worshippers lay dead, and two were severely wounded. Of course, Legrasse took the statuette from the monolith.
After a trip, the prisoners were examined. They were men of a very low, mixed-blooded, and mentally aberrant type.[59] Most were seamen, some negroes and mulattoes, largely West Indians or Portuguese from the Cape Verde Islands.[60] But before many questions were asked, it became clear that something far deeper and older than negro fetishism was involved.
They worshipped, so they said, the
