Joe Sargent is a minor character who appears in H. P. Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth".
Overview[]
In 1927 Robert Olmstead rode Joe Sargent's bus and described him thus:
“ | a thin, stoop-shouldered man not much under six feet tall, dressed in shabby blue civilian clothes and wearing a frayed grey golf cap. His age was perhaps thirty-five, but the odd, deep creases in the sides of his neck made him seem older when one did not study his dull, expressionless face. He had a narrow head, bulging, watery blue eyes that seemed never to wink, a flat nose, a receding forehead and chin, and singularly underdeveloped ears. His long, thick lip and coarse-pored, greyish cheeks seemed almost beardless except for some sparse yellow hairs that straggled and curled in irregular patches; and in places the surface seemed queerly irregular, as if peeling from some cutaneous disease. His hands were large and heavily veined, and had a very unusual greyish-blue tinge. The fingers were strikingly short in proportion to the rest of the structure, and seemed to have a tendency to curl closely into the huge palm. [He walked with a] peculiarly shambling gait and . . . his feet were inordinately immense | „ | |
~ HPL: "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" |
Although he did not know what it was at the time, Olmstead was looking at a case of the Innsmouth Look, although not one so far advanced as to be obviously identifiable as non-human. He immediately disliked Sargent, further stating:
“ | He was evidently given to working or lounging around the fish docks, and carried with them much of their characteristic smell. Just what foreign blood was in him I could not even guess . . . I myself would have thought of biological degeneration rather than alienage | „ | |
~ HPL: "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" |
Bus route[]
Sergeant drove the only bus which ran between Newburyport and Arkham, via Innsmouth. The coach itself is described as a decrepit grey rattletrap and cost 60¢ to ride.
Hammond’s Drug Store Stop, Newburyport (10 AM / 7 PM)[]
- Out of Market Square onto State Street
- Left into High Street.
- Past the Lower Green and Parker River, and finally emerging into a long, monotonous stretch of open shore country.
- Past Plum Island on the main highway to Rowley and Ipswich.
- Down a narrow road very near the beach.
- A steeper incline with the Atlantic to the left.
- Down into the valley of the Manuxet with a view of the long line of cliffs that culminate in Kingsport Head and veer off toward Cape Ann.
- Past a series of ruined farms.
- Through the outer layers of Innsmouth on Federal Street.
- Past the New Church Green and the Esoteric Order of Dagon Hall.
- Across the Federal Street Bridge into the Town Square.
Gilman House Stop, Innsmouth (11 AM) / 8 PM)[]
- Southbound on Federal Road
- ???
Arkham (? / ?)[]
Appearances[]
Although a minor character in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", his family name has been incorporated into several other Cthulhu Mythos entries, including the following:
- In The Innsmouth Heritage by Brian Stableford, the protagonist meets with and genetically tests one Gideon Sargent, the grandson of Joe, before he mysteriously dies.
- In Brian McNaughton's The Doom That Came to Innsmouth, the main character Bob Smith is Sargent's grandnephew. Joe's sister Alma also made a brief appearance.
- Sargent appeared as a Blight card (a creature with negative effects on the players) in Fantasy Flight Games' Miskatonic Horror expansion for Lovecraftian board game Arkham Horror.