The H.P. Lovecraft Wiki
Register
Advertisement

This subject contains information from the "Lovecraft Circle" Myth Cycles, and while guided by HPL are not based on his work alone. This subject contains information from the Expanded Cthulhu Mythos, and not based on H.P. Lovecraft's works directly. 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:

Advertisement