Thurston travels to New Zealand and then Australia, where at the Australian Museum he views a statue retrieved from the "Alert" with a "cuttlefish head, dragon body, scaly wings, and hieroglyphed pedestal". While in Oslo, Thurston learns that Johansen died suddenly during an encounter with two Lascars near the Gothenburg docks. Johansen's widow provides Thurston with a manuscript written by her late husband, which reveals the fate of everyone aboard the "Emma". The uncharted island is described as "a coastline of mingled mud, ooze, and weedy Cyclopean masonry which can be nothing less than the tangible substance of earth's supreme terror—the nightmare corpse-city of R'lyeh". The crew struggle in comprehending the non-Euclidean geometry of their surroundings. When one of the sailors accidentally opens a "monstrously carven portal", he releases Cthulhu: