The White Ship (1919), The Doom that Came to Sarnath (1919), The Statement of Randolph Carter (1919)

The White Ship (1919) A lighthouse keeper, Basil Elton, embarks on a great adventure when he decides to board the mysterious white ship which appears only during a full moon. The ship, captained by a mysterious bearded man, takes him on a fantastical journey to islands, which exist beyond our own Earth.

The first island on their path is Zar, a place of dreams and ideas of beauty, which come to men once before they are forgotten. Thalarion is home to demons and a thousand wonders. Then there is Xura, the land of unattainable pleasures. For a while, Elton stops at Sona-Nyl, the land of fancy, where he learns of Cathuria, a place from where no one has ever returned. Despite the bearded man being against the expedition, he agrees to take Basil Elton to where he wants to go, leaving the land of happiness and everlasting life behind.

But instead of finding the land of hope, Cathuria, the white ship ends up at the edge of the world, from where it plummets to its doom over the edge. After the darkness of the crash, the lighthouse keeper wakes up from the same pier he aeons ago left on board the ship. On the rocks, he sees how a ship has crashed on them, as for the first time in decades, the lighthouse has failed. And never again came the white ship back.

If anything, the White Ship is a good example that horror wasn't the only game Lovecraft was good at. While the story is, thanks to it its relatively short length, somewhat barebones, it does have a structure that could have worked well as a longer narrative.

The Doom that Came to Sarnath (1919) Ages ago, more than 10 000 years back, a race of shepherds arrived in a land called Mnar. The cities formed by the people rose to be significant in their commercial and intellectual prowess, the greatest of them being Sarnath.

On the shores of the lake rose a great, ancient and grey city of Ib, inhabited by a race originating from the moon. The beings, green-skinned, voiceless and with bulging eyes, worshipped the god Bokrug, the great water lizard and are hated by the newly arrived people because of their strangeness.

This dislike leads to a massacre, where the inhabitants of Ib are slain to the last man. For a trophy, the men of Sarnath took the idol of Bokrug, placing it in their own temple. But during the night, the idol disappears mysteriously and the high priest is found dead in front of an altar. The last thing he had managed to do was to scrawl the word "doom".

Centuries later, when Sarnath has grown old and decadent, a celebration is held for the memory of the victorious battle against Ib. During the night of the revelry, a great green mist rose from the lake near which the ancient city of Ib had once stood. The mist and eerie lights drove the people of Sarnath in a frenzy, making them burst open the gates of the city, gripped by madness. Through the windows of the palaces, those who still had their wits, people saw the green-skinned inhabitants of Ib dancing silently in the halls of the king.

People fled the city, spreading the tale of the final banquet, telling how a curse had fallen over the once great Sarnath. Those, who dared to venture to see the once-fabled city themselves, saw nothing more but marshy shores with water lizards crawling over them. And some even saw a form of an ancient, green idol Bokrug, overgrown with weeds.

The Doom that Came to Sarnath is another solid little fantasy tale from Lovecraft. Again, it has the building blocks for a longer, more detailed story, so in a sense, it is a shame he never did try his hand in a longer form of fantasy writing.       

The Statement of Randolph Carter (1919) This is the first appearance of Randolph Carter as the narrator of the story. Lovecraft used him as a protagonist in several other of his Cthulhu mythos stories and because of this, some other authors have implemented this antiquarian into their stories as well. Some have suggested Carter be an alias of Lovecraft himself, as he shares some personality traits with the author.

The story begins with Carter giving his testimony on what happened Harley Warren. He knows, his tale sounds outlandish, but this is the story as it happened, come hell or high water. The whole affair began with the weird studies of Warren's, revolving around the ancient secrets of the world, the interest shared by Carter as well.

The duo had located an ancient tomb, down to which Warren descended. Carter, anxiously waiting on the top side soon hears Warren describe the things he sees, monstrous, indescribable horrors. He then begs of Carter to close the tomb, before it is too late, for he fears the monsters could be unleashed upon the world.

Overall, The Statement of Randolph Carter is a good story, the only small blemish about it is the ending statement, which comes out as a clumsy attempt at doing shock horror. It's not the first time for Lovecraft to use such an element, but it works here just as badly as it has worked in his other works.