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 The story is the testament of a tortured, morphine-addicted man who plans to commit suicide over an incident that occurred early on in WWI when he was a merchant marine officer.  In the unnamed narrator\'s account, his cargo ship is captured by a German sea-raider in "one of the most open and least frequented parts of the broad Pacific." He escapes on a lifeboat and drifts aimlessly across the sea "somewhat south of the equator" until he eventually finds himself inexplicably stranded on "a slimy expanse of hellish black mire which extended about me in monotonous undulations as far as I could see.... The region was putrid with the carcasses of decaying fish, and of other less describable things which I saw protruding from the mud of the unending plain." He speculates that this land mass could be "a portion of the ocean floor... thrown to the surface" by a volcanic upheaval, "exposing regions which for innumerable millions of years had lain hidden under unfathomable watery depths."  After waiting three days for the seafloor to dry out sufficiently to walk on, he strikes out on foot to find the sea and possible rescue. After two days of walking, he reaches his goal, a "hummock" that turns out to be a mound on the edge of an "immeasurable pit or canyon". Descending the slope, he sees a gigantic white stone object that he soon perceives to be a "well-shaped monolith whose massive bulk had known the workmanship and perhaps the worship of living and thinking creatures."  The monolith, situated next to a channel of water in the bottom of the chasm, is covered in unfamiliar hieroglyphs "consisting for the most part of conventionalised aquatic symbols such as fishes, eels, octopuses, crustaceans, molluscs, whales and the like." There are also "crude sculptures" depicting:  As the narrator looks on the monolith, a creature emerges from the water:  His next memory is of a San Francisco hospital, where he was taken after being rescued in mid-ocean by a U.S. ship. There are no reports of any Pacific upheavals, and he does not expect anyone to believe his incredible story. He mentions one abortive attempt to gain understanding of his experience:  Once I sought out a celebrated ethnologist, and amused him with peculiar questions regarding the ancient Philistine legend of Dagon, the Fish-God; but soon perceiving that he was hopelessly conventional, I did not press my inquiries Haunted by visions of the creature, "especially when the moon is gibbous and waning", he describes his fears for the future of humanity:  I cannot think of the deep sea without shuddering at the nameless things that may at this very moment be crawling and floundering on its slimy bed, worshipping their ancient stone idols and carving their own detestable likenesses on submarine obelisks of water-soaked granite. I dream of a day when they may rise above the billows to drag down in their reeking talons the remnants of puny, war-exhausted mankind --of a day when the land shall sink, and the dark ocean floor shall ascend amidst universal pandemonium. With the drug that has given him "transient surcease" running out, he declares himself ready to do himself in; the narrative is revealed to be a suicide note. The story ends with the narrator rushing to the window as he hears "a noise at the door, as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it."