“Yield up enough sacrifices an’ savage knick-knacks an’ harbourage in the taown when they wanted it, an’ they’d let well enough alone. Wudn’t bother no strangers as might bear tales aoutside — that is, withaout they got pryin’. All in the band of the faithful — Order o’ Dagon — an’ the children shud never die, but go back to the Mother Hydra an’ Father Dagon what we all come from onct — Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn! Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah-nagl fhtagn—”
Old Zadok was fast lapsing into stark raving, and I held my breath. Poor old soul — to what pitiful depths of hallucination had his liquor, plus his hatred of the decay, alienage, and disease around him, brought that fertile, imaginative brain! He began to moan now, and tears were coursing down his channelled cheeks into the depths of his beard.
“God, what I seen senct I was fifteen year’ old — Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin! — the folks as was missin’, an’ them as kilt theirselves — them as told things in Arkham or Ipswich or sech places was all called crazy, like you’re a-callin’ me right naow — but God, what I seen — They’d a kilt me long ago fer what I know, only I’d took the fust an’ secon’ Oaths o’ Dagon offen Obed, so was pertected unlessen a jury of ’em proved I told things knowin’ an’ delib’rit . . . but I wudn’t take the third Oath — I’d a died ruther’n take that —
“It got wuss araound Civil War time, when children born senct ‘forty-six begun to grow up — some of ‘em, that is. I was afeard — never did no pryin’ arter that awful night, an’ never see one of — them — clost to in all my life. That is, never no full-blooded one. I went to the war, an’ ef I’d a had any guts or sense I’d a never come back, but settled away from here. But folks wrote me things wa’n’t so bad. That, I s’pose, was because gov’munt draft men was in taown arter ‘sixty-three. Arter the war it was jest as bad agin. People begun to fall off — mills an’ shops shet daown — shippin’ stopped an’ the harbour choked up — railrud give up — but they . . . they never stopped swimmin’ in an’ aout o’ the river from that cursed reef o’ Satan — an’ more an’ more attic winders got a-boarded up, an’ more an’ more noises was heerd in haouses as wa’n’t s’posed to hev nobody in ‘em. . . .
“Folks aoutside hev their stories abaout us — s’pose you’ve heerd a plenty on ‘em, seein’ what questions ye ast — stories abaout things they’ve seed naow an’ then, an’ abaout that queer joolry as still comes in from somewhars an’ ain’t quite all melted up — but nothin’ never gits def’nite. Nobody’ll believe nothin’. They call them gold-like things pirate loot, an’ allaow the Innsmouth folks hez furren blood or is distempered or somethin’. Besides, them that lives here shoo off as many strangers as they kin, an’ encourage the rest not to git very cur’ous, specially raound night time. Beasts balk at the critters — hosses wuss’n mules — but when they got autos that was all right.
“In ‘forty-six Cap’n Obed took a second wife that nobody in the taown never see — some says he didn’t want to, but was made to by them as he’d called in — had three children by her — two as disappeared young, but one gal as looked like anybody else an’ was eddicated in Europe. Obed finally got her married off by a trick to an Arkham feller as didn’t suspect nothin’. But nobody aoutside’ll hev nothin’ to do with Innsmouth folks naow. Barnabas Marsh that runs the refin’ry naow is Obed’s grandson by his fust wife — son of Onesiphorus, his eldest son, but his mother was another o’ them as wa’n’t never seed aoutdoors.
“Right naow Barnabas is abaout changed. Can’t shet his eyes no more, an’ is all aout o’ shape. They say he still wears clothes, but he’ll take to the water soon. Mebbe he’s tried it already — they do sometimes go daown fer little spells afore they go fer good. Ain’t ben seed abaout in public fer nigh on ten year’. Dun’t know haow his poor wife kin feel — she come from Ipswich, an’ they nigh lynched Barnabas when he courted her fifty odd year’ ago. Obed he died in ‘seventy-eight, an’ all the next gen’ration is gone naow — the fust wife’s children dead, an’ the rest . . . God knows. . . .”