Robert E. Howard

“ I muttered, "sleeping in their lacquered cases, which drip with strange seaweed, far down among the green surges--where unholy spires and strange towers rise in the dark ocean."
"We have been face to face with an ancient horror," said Gordon somberly, "with a fear too dark and mysterious for the human brain to cope with. Fortune has been with us; she may not again favor the sons of men. It is best that we be ever on our guard. The universe was not made for humanity alone; life takes strange phases and it is the first instinct of nature for the different species to destroy each other. ”

“ I have come to believe that mankind eternally hovers on the brinks of secret oceans of which it knows nothing. Races have lived and vanished before our race rose out of the slime of the primitive, and it is likely still others will live upon the earth after ours has vanished. Scientists have long upheld the theory that the Atlanteans possessed a higher civilization than our own, and on very different lines. Certainly Kathulos himself was proof that our boasted culture and knowledge were nothing beside that of whatever fearful civilization produced him. ”

“ I said slowly; "the regaining of my lost manhood--and Zuleika. Kathulos, then, is dead, as far as any mortal thing can die. But what of those others--those 'ancient masters' who still sleep in the sea?"
Gordon shuddered.
"As I said, perhaps mankind loiters on the brink of unthinkable chasms of horror. But a fleet of gunboats is even now patrolling the oceans unobtrusively, with orders to destroy instantly any strange case that may be found floating--to destroy it and its contents. ”