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-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU
-***
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-The Island of Doctor Moreau
-
-by H. G. Wells
-
-
-Contents
-
- INTRODUCTION
- I. IN THE DINGEY OF THE “LADY VAIN”
- II. THE MAN WHO WAS GOING NOWHERE
- III. THE STRANGE FACE
- IV. AT THE SCHOONER’S RAIL
- V. THE MAN WHO HAD NOWHERE TO GO
- VI. THE EVIL-LOOKING BOATMEN
- VII. THE LOCKED DOOR
- VIII. THE CRYING OF THE PUMA
- IX. THE THING IN THE FOREST
- X. THE CRYING OF THE MAN
- XI. THE HUNTING OF THE MAN
- XII. THE SAYERS OF THE LAW
- XIII. A PARLEY
- XIV. DOCTOR MOREAU EXPLAINS
- XV. CONCERNING THE BEAST FOLK
- XVI. HOW THE BEAST FOLK TASTE BLOOD
- XVII. A CATASTROPHE
- XVIII. THE FINDING OF MOREAU
- XIX. MONTGOMERY’S “BANK HOLIDAY”
- XX. ALONE WITH THE BEAST FOLK
- XXI. THE REVERSION OF THE BEAST FOLK
- XXII. THE MAN ALONE
-
-
-
-
-INTRODUCTION.
-
-
-On February the First 1887, the _Lady Vain_ was lost by collision with
-a derelict when about the latitude 1° S. and longitude 107° W.
-
-On January the Fifth, 1888—that is eleven months and four days after—my
-uncle, Edward Prendick, a private gentleman, who certainly went aboard
-the _Lady Vain_ at Callao, and who had been considered drowned, was
-picked up in latitude 5° 3′ S. and longitude 101° W. in a small open
-boat of which the name was illegible, but which is supposed to have
-belonged to the missing schooner _Ipecacuanha_. He gave such a strange
-account of himself that he was supposed demented. Subsequently he
-alleged that his mind was a blank from the moment of his escape from
-the _Lady Vain_. His case was discussed among psychologists at the time
-as a curious instance of the lapse of memory consequent upon physical
-and mental stress. The following narrative was found among his papers
-by the undersigned, his nephew and heir, but unaccompanied by any
-definite request for publication.
-
-The only island known to exist in the region in which my uncle was
-picked up is Noble’s Isle, a small volcanic islet and uninhabited. It
-was visited in 1891 by _H. M. S. Scorpion_. A party of sailors then
-landed, but found nothing living thereon except certain curious white
-moths, some hogs and rabbits, and some rather peculiar rats. So that
-this narrative is without confirmation in its most essential
-particular. With that understood, there seems no harm in putting this
-strange story before the public in accordance, as I believe, with my
-uncle’s intentions. There is at least this much in its behalf: my uncle
-passed out of human knowledge about latitude 5° S. and longitude 105°
-E., and reappeared in the same part of the ocean after a space of
-eleven months. In some way he must have lived during the interval. And
-it seems that a schooner called the _Ipecacuanha_ with a drunken
-captain, John Davies, did start from Africa with a puma and certain
-other animals aboard in January, 1887, that the vessel was well known
-at several ports in the South Pacific, and that it finally disappeared
-from those seas (with a considerable amount of copra aboard), sailing
-to its unknown fate from Bayna in December, 1887, a date that tallies
-entirely with my uncle’s story.
-
-CHARLES EDWARD PRENDICK.
-
-
-
-
-The Island of Doctor Moreau
-
-(The Story written by Edward Prendick.)
-
-
-
-
-I.
-IN THE DINGEY OF THE “LADY VAIN.”
-
-
-I do not propose to add anything to what has already been written
-concerning the loss of the _Lady Vain_. As everyone knows, she collided
-with a derelict when ten days out from Callao. The longboat, with seven
-of the crew, was picked up eighteen days after by H. M. gunboat
-_Myrtle_, and the story of their terrible privations has become quite
-as well known as the far more horrible _Medusa_ case. But I have to add
-to the published story of the _Lady Vain_ another, possibly as horrible
-and far stranger. It has hitherto been supposed that the four men who
-were in the dingey perished, but this is incorrect. I have the best of
-evidence for this assertion: I was one of the four men.
-
-But in the first place I must state that there never were _four_ men in
-the dingey,—the number was three. Constans, who was “seen by the
-captain to jump into the gig,”[1] luckily for us and unluckily for
-himself did not reach us. He came down out of the tangle of ropes under
-the stays of the smashed bowsprit, some small rope caught his heel as
-he let go, and he hung for a moment head downward, and then fell and
-struck a block or spar floating in the water. We pulled towards him,
-but he never came up.
-
- [1] _Daily News_, March 17, 1887.
-
-
-I say luckily for us he did not reach us, and I might almost say
-luckily for himself; for we had only a small beaker of water and some
-soddened ship’s biscuits with us, so sudden had been the alarm, so
-unprepared the ship for any disaster. We thought the people on the
-launch would be better provisioned (though it seems they were not), and
-we tried to hail them. They could not have heard us, and the next
-morning when the drizzle cleared,—which was not until past midday,—we
-could see nothing of them. We could not stand up to look about us,
-because of the pitching of the boat. The two other men who had escaped
-so far with me were a man named Helmar, a passenger like myself, and a
-seaman whose name I don’t know,—a short sturdy man, with a stammer.
-
-We drifted famishing, and, after our water had come to an end,
-tormented by an intolerable thirst, for eight days altogether. After
-the second day the sea subsided slowly to a glassy calm. It is quite
-impossible for the ordinary reader to imagine those eight days. He has
-not, luckily for himself, anything in his memory to imagine with. After
-the first day we said little to one another, and lay in our places in
-the boat and stared at the horizon, or watched, with eyes that grew
-larger and more haggard every day, the misery and weakness gaining upon
-our companions. The sun became pitiless. The water ended on the fourth
-day, and we were already thinking strange things and saying them with
-our eyes; but it was, I think, the sixth before Helmar gave voice to
-the thing we had all been thinking. I remember our voices were dry and
-thin, so that we bent towards one another and spared our words. I stood
-out against it with all my might, was rather for scuttling the boat and
-perishing together among the sharks that followed us; but when Helmar
-said that if his proposal was accepted we should have drink, the sailor
-came round to him.
-
-I would not draw lots however, and in the night the sailor whispered to
-Helmar again and again, and I sat in the bows with my clasp-knife in my
-hand, though I doubt if I had the stuff in me to fight; and in the
-morning I agreed to Helmar’s proposal, and we handed halfpence to find
-the odd man. The lot fell upon the sailor; but he was the strongest of
-us and would not abide by it, and attacked Helmar with his hands. They
-grappled together and almost stood up. I crawled along the boat to
-them, intending to help Helmar by grasping the sailor’s leg; but the
-sailor stumbled with the swaying of the boat, and the two fell upon the
-gunwale and rolled overboard together. They sank like stones. I
-remember laughing at that, and wondering why I laughed. The laugh
-caught me suddenly like a thing from without.
-
-I lay across one of the thwarts for I know not how long, thinking that
-if I had the strength I would drink sea-water and madden myself to die
-quickly. And even as I lay there I saw, with no more interest than if
-it had been a picture, a sail come up towards me over the sky-line. My
-mind must have been wandering, and yet I remember all that happened,
-quite distinctly. I remember how my head swayed with the seas, and the
-horizon with the sail above it danced up and down; but I also remember
-as distinctly that I had a persuasion that I was dead, and that I
-thought what a jest it was that they should come too late by such a
-little to catch me in my body.
-
-For an endless period, as it seemed to me, I lay with my head on the
-thwart watching the schooner (she was a little ship, schooner-rigged
-fore and aft) come up out of the sea. She kept tacking to and fro in a
-widening compass, for she was sailing dead into the wind. It never
-entered my head to attempt to attract attention, and I do not remember
-anything distinctly after the sight of her side until I found myself in
-a little cabin aft. There’s a dim half-memory of being lifted up to the
-gangway, and of a big round countenance covered with freckles and
-surrounded with red hair staring at me over the bulwarks. I also had a
-disconnected impression of a dark face, with extraordinary eyes, close
-to mine; but that I thought was a nightmare, until I met it again. I
-fancy I recollect some stuff being poured in between my teeth; and that
-is all.
-
-
-
-
-II.
-THE MAN WHO WAS GOING NOWHERE.
-
-
-The cabin in which I found myself was small and rather untidy. A
-youngish man with flaxen hair, a bristly straw-coloured moustache, and
-a dropping nether lip, was sitting and holding my wrist. For a minute
-we stared at each other without speaking. He had watery grey eyes,
-oddly void of expression. Then just overhead came a sound like an iron
-bedstead being knocked about, and the low angry growling of some large
-animal. At the same time the man spoke. He repeated his question,—“How
-do you feel now?”
-
-I think I said I felt all right. I could not recollect how I had got
-there. He must have seen the question in my face, for my voice was
-inaccessible to me.
-
-“You were picked up in a boat, starving. The name on the boat was the
-_Lady Vain_, and there were spots of blood on the gunwale.”
-
-At the same time my eye caught my hand, so thin that it looked like a
-dirty skin-purse full of loose bones, and all the business of the boat
-came back to me.
-
-“Have some of this,” said he, and gave me a dose of some scarlet stuff,
-iced.
-
-It tasted like blood, and made me feel stronger.
-
-“You were in luck,” said he, “to get picked up by a ship with a medical
-man aboard.” He spoke with a slobbering articulation, with the ghost of
-a lisp.
-
-“What ship is this?” I said slowly, hoarse from my long silence.
-
-“It’s a little trader from Arica and Callao. I never asked where she
-came from in the beginning,—out of the land of born fools, I guess. I’m
-a passenger myself, from Arica. The silly ass who owns her,—he’s
-captain too, named Davies,—he’s lost his certificate, or something. You
-know the kind of man,—calls the thing the _Ipecacuanha_, of all silly,
-infernal names; though when there’s much of a sea without any wind, she
-certainly acts according.”
-
-(Then the noise overhead began again, a snarling growl and the voice of
-a human being together. Then another voice, telling some
-“Heaven-forsaken idiot” to desist.)
-
-“You were nearly dead,” said my interlocutor. “It was a very near
-thing, indeed. But I’ve put some stuff into you now. Notice your arm’s
-sore? Injections. You’ve been insensible for nearly thirty hours.”
-
-I thought slowly. (I was distracted now by the yelping of a number of
-dogs.) “Am I eligible for solid food?” I asked.
-
-“Thanks to me,” he said. “Even now the mutton is boiling.”
-
-“Yes,” I said with assurance; “I could eat some mutton.”
-
-“But,” said he with a momentary hesitation, “you know I’m dying to hear
-of how you came to be alone in that boat. _Damn that howling_!” I
-thought I detected a certain suspicion in his eyes.
-
-He suddenly left the cabin, and I heard him in violent controversy with
-some one, who seemed to me to talk gibberish in response to him. The
-matter sounded as though it ended in blows, but in that I thought my
-ears were mistaken. Then he shouted at the dogs, and returned to the
-cabin.
-
-“Well?” said he in the doorway. “You were just beginning to tell me.”
-
-I told him my name, Edward Prendick, and how I had taken to Natural
-History as a relief from the dulness of my comfortable independence.
-
-He seemed interested in this. “I’ve done some science myself. I did my
-Biology at University College,—getting out the ovary of the earthworm
-and the radula of the snail, and all that. Lord! It’s ten years ago.
-But go on! go on! tell me about the boat.”
-
-He was evidently satisfied with the frankness of my story, which I told
-in concise sentences enough, for I felt horribly weak; and when it was
-finished he reverted at once to the topic of Natural History and his
-own biological studies. He began to question me closely about Tottenham
-Court Road and Gower Street. “Is Caplatzi still flourishing? What a
-shop that was!” He had evidently been a very ordinary medical student,
-and drifted incontinently to the topic of the music halls. He told me
-some anecdotes.
-
-“Left it all,” he said, “ten years ago. How jolly it all used to be!
-But I made a young ass of myself,—played myself out before I was
-twenty-one. I daresay it’s all different now. But I must look up that
-ass of a cook, and see what he’s done to your mutton.”
-
-The growling overhead was renewed, so suddenly and with so much savage
-anger that it startled me. “What’s that?” I called after him, but the
-door had closed. He came back again with the boiled mutton, and I was
-so excited by the appetising smell of it that I forgot the noise of the
-beast that had troubled me.
-
-After a day of alternate sleep and feeding I was so far recovered as to
-be able to get from my bunk to the scuttle, and see the green seas
-trying to keep pace with us. I judged the schooner was running before
-the wind. Montgomery—that was the name of the flaxen-haired man—came in
-again as I stood there, and I asked him for some clothes. He lent me
-some duck things of his own, for those I had worn in the boat had been
-thrown overboard. They were rather loose for me, for he was large and
-long in his limbs. He told me casually that the captain was three-parts
-drunk in his own cabin. As I assumed the clothes, I began asking him
-some questions about the destination of the ship. He said the ship was
-bound to Hawaii, but that it had to land him first.
-
-“Where?” said I.
-
-“It’s an island, where I live. So far as I know, it hasn’t got a name.”
-
-He stared at me with his nether lip dropping, and looked so wilfully
-stupid of a sudden that it came into my head that he desired to avoid
-my questions. I had the discretion to ask no more.
-
-
-
-
-III.
-THE STRANGE FACE.
-
-
-We left the cabin and found a man at the companion obstructing our way.
-He was standing on the ladder with his back to us, peering over the
-combing of the hatchway. He was, I could see, a misshapen man, short,
-broad, and clumsy, with a crooked back, a hairy neck, and a head sunk
-between his shoulders. He was dressed in dark-blue serge, and had
-peculiarly thick, coarse, black hair. I heard the unseen dogs growl
-furiously, and forthwith he ducked back,—coming into contact with the
-hand I put out to fend him off from myself. He turned with animal
-swiftness.
-
-In some indefinable way the black face thus flashed upon me shocked me
-profoundly. It was a singularly deformed one. The facial part
-projected, forming something dimly suggestive of a muzzle, and the huge
-half-open mouth showed as big white teeth as I had ever seen in a human
-mouth. His eyes were blood-shot at the edges, with scarcely a rim of
-white round the hazel pupils. There was a curious glow of excitement in
-his face.
-
-“Confound you!” said Montgomery. “Why the devil don’t you get out of
-the way?”
-
-The black-faced man started aside without a word. I went on up the
-companion, staring at him instinctively as I did so. Montgomery stayed
-at the foot for a moment. “You have no business here, you know,” he
-said in a deliberate tone. “Your place is forward.”
-
-The black-faced man cowered. “They—won’t have me forward.” He spoke
-slowly, with a queer, hoarse quality in his voice.
-
-“Won’t have you forward!” said Montgomery, in a menacing voice. “But I
-tell you to go!” He was on the brink of saying something further, then
-looked up at me suddenly and followed me up the ladder.
-
-I had paused half way through the hatchway, looking back, still
-astonished beyond measure at the grotesque ugliness of this black-faced
-creature. I had never beheld such a repulsive and extraordinary face
-before, and yet—if the contradiction is credible—I experienced at the
-same time an odd feeling that in some way I _had_ already encountered
-exactly the features and gestures that now amazed me. Afterwards it
-occurred to me that probably I had seen him as I was lifted aboard; and
-yet that scarcely satisfied my suspicion of a previous acquaintance.
-Yet how one could have set eyes on so singular a face and yet have
-forgotten the precise occasion, passed my imagination.
-
-Montgomery’s movement to follow me released my attention, and I turned
-and looked about me at the flush deck of the little schooner. I was
-already half prepared by the sounds I had heard for what I saw.
-Certainly I never beheld a deck so dirty. It was littered with scraps
-of carrot, shreds of green stuff, and indescribable filth. Fastened by
-chains to the mainmast were a number of grisly staghounds, who now
-began leaping and barking at me, and by the mizzen a huge puma was
-cramped in a little iron cage far too small even to give it turning
-room. Farther under the starboard bulwark were some big hutches
-containing a number of rabbits, and a solitary llama was squeezed in a
-mere box of a cage forward. The dogs were muzzled by leather straps.
-The only human being on deck was a gaunt and silent sailor at the
-wheel.
-
-The patched and dirty spankers were tense before the wind, and up aloft
-the little ship seemed carrying every sail she had. The sky was clear,
-the sun midway down the western sky; long waves, capped by the breeze
-with froth, were running with us. We went past the steersman to the
-taffrail, and saw the water come foaming under the stern and the
-bubbles go dancing and vanishing in her wake. I turned and surveyed the
-unsavoury length of the ship.
-
-“Is this an ocean menagerie?” said I.
-
-“Looks like it,” said Montgomery.
-
-“What are these beasts for? Merchandise, curios? Does the captain think
-he is going to sell them somewhere in the South Seas?”
-
-“It looks like it, doesn’t it?” said Montgomery, and turned towards the
-wake again.
-
-Suddenly we heard a yelp and a volley of furious blasphemy from the
-companion hatchway, and the deformed man with the black face came up
-hurriedly. He was immediately followed by a heavy red-haired man in a
-white cap. At the sight of the former the staghounds, who had all tired
-of barking at me by this time, became furiously excited, howling and
-leaping against their chains. The black hesitated before them, and this
-gave the red-haired man time to come up with him and deliver a
-tremendous blow between the shoulder-blades. The poor devil went down
-like a felled ox, and rolled in the dirt among the furiously excited
-dogs. It was lucky for him that they were muzzled. The red-haired man
-gave a yawp of exultation and stood staggering, and as it seemed to me
-in serious danger of either going backwards down the companion hatchway
-or forwards upon his victim.
-
-So soon as the second man had appeared, Montgomery had started forward.
-“Steady on there!” he cried, in a tone of remonstrance. A couple of
-sailors appeared on the forecastle. The black-faced man, howling in a
-singular voice rolled about under the feet of the dogs. No one
-attempted to help him. The brutes did their best to worry him, butting
-their muzzles at him. There was a quick dance of their lithe
-grey-figured bodies over the clumsy, prostrate figure. The sailors
-forward shouted, as though it was admirable sport. Montgomery gave an
-angry exclamation, and went striding down the deck, and I followed him.
-The black-faced man scrambled up and staggered forward, going and
-leaning over the bulwark by the main shrouds, where he remained,
-panting and glaring over his shoulder at the dogs. The red-haired man
-laughed a satisfied laugh.
-
-“Look here, Captain,” said Montgomery, with his lisp a little
-accentuated, gripping the elbows of the red-haired man, “this won’t
-do!”
-
-I stood behind Montgomery. The captain came half round, and regarded
-him with the dull and solemn eyes of a drunken man. “Wha’ won’t do?” he
-said, and added, after looking sleepily into Montgomery’s face for a
-minute, “Blasted Sawbones!”
-
-With a sudden movement he shook his arms free, and after two
-ineffectual attempts stuck his freckled fists into his side pockets.
-
-“That man’s a passenger,” said Montgomery. “I’d advise you to keep your
-hands off him.”
-
-“Go to hell!” said the captain, loudly. He suddenly turned and
-staggered towards the side. “Do what I like on my own ship,” he said.
-
-I think Montgomery might have left him then, seeing the brute was
-drunk; but he only turned a shade paler, and followed the captain to
-the bulwarks.
-
-“Look you here, Captain,” he said; “that man of mine is not to be
-ill-treated. He has been hazed ever since he came aboard.”
-
-For a minute, alcoholic fumes kept the captain speechless. “Blasted
-Sawbones!” was all he considered necessary.
-
-I could see that Montgomery had one of those slow, pertinacious tempers
-that will warm day after day to a white heat, and never again cool to
-forgiveness; and I saw too that this quarrel had been some time
-growing. “The man’s drunk,” said I, perhaps officiously; “you’ll do no
-good.”
-
-Montgomery gave an ugly twist to his dropping lip. “He’s always drunk.
-Do you think that excuses his assaulting his passengers?”
-
-“My ship,” began the captain, waving his hand unsteadily towards the
-cages, “was a clean ship. Look at it now!” It was certainly anything
-but clean. “Crew,” continued the captain, “clean, respectable crew.”
-
-“You agreed to take the beasts.”
-
-“I wish I’d never set eyes on your infernal island. What the devil—want
-beasts for on an island like that? Then, that man of yours—understood
-he was a man. He’s a lunatic; and he hadn’t no business aft. Do you
-think the whole damned ship belongs to you?”
-
-“Your sailors began to haze the poor devil as soon as he came aboard.”
-
-“That’s just what he is—he’s a devil! an ugly devil! My men can’t stand
-him. _I_ can’t stand him. None of us can’t stand him. Nor _you_
-either!”
-
-Montgomery turned away. “_You_ leave that man alone, anyhow,” he said,
-nodding his head as he spoke.
-
-But the captain meant to quarrel now. He raised his voice. “If he comes
-this end of the ship again I’ll cut his insides out, I tell you. Cut
-out his blasted insides! Who are _you_, to tell _me_ what _I’m_ to do?
-I tell you I’m captain of this ship,—captain and owner. I’m the law
-here, I tell you,—the law and the prophets. I bargained to take a man
-and his attendant to and from Arica, and bring back some animals. I
-never bargained to carry a mad devil and a silly Sawbones, a—”
-
-Well, never mind what he called Montgomery. I saw the latter take a
-step forward, and interposed. “He’s drunk,” said I. The captain began
-some abuse even fouler than the last. “Shut up!” I said, turning on him
-sharply, for I had seen danger in Montgomery’s white face. With that I
-brought the downpour on myself.
-
-However, I was glad to avert what was uncommonly near a scuffle, even
-at the price of the captain’s drunken ill-will. I do not think I have
-ever heard quite so much vile language come in a continuous stream from
-any man’s lips before, though I have frequented eccentric company
-enough. I found some of it hard to endure, though I am a mild-tempered
-man; but, certainly, when I told the captain to “shut up” I had
-forgotten that I was merely a bit of human flotsam, cut off from my
-resources and with my fare unpaid; a mere casual dependant on the
-bounty, or speculative enterprise, of the ship. He reminded me of it
-with considerable vigour; but at any rate I prevented a fight.
-
-
-
-
-IV.
-AT THE SCHOONER’S RAIL.
-
-
-That night land was sighted after sundown, and the schooner hove to.
-Montgomery intimated that was his destination. It was too far to see
-any details; it seemed to me then simply a low-lying patch of dim blue
-in the uncertain blue-grey sea. An almost vertical streak of smoke went
-up from it into the sky. The captain was not on deck when it was
-sighted. After he had vented his wrath on me he had staggered below,
-and I understand he went to sleep on the floor of his own cabin. The
-mate practically assumed the command. He was the gaunt, taciturn
-individual we had seen at the wheel. Apparently he was in an evil
-temper with Montgomery. He took not the slightest notice of either of
-us. We dined with him in a sulky silence, after a few ineffectual
-efforts on my part to talk. It struck me too that the men regarded my
-companion and his animals in a singularly unfriendly manner. I found
-Montgomery very reticent about his purpose with these creatures, and
-about his destination; and though I was sensible of a growing curiosity
-as to both, I did not press him.
-
-We remained talking on the quarter deck until the sky was thick with
-stars. Except for an occasional sound in the yellow-lit forecastle and
-a movement of the animals now and then, the night was very still. The
-puma lay crouched together, watching us with shining eyes, a black heap
-in the corner of its cage. Montgomery produced some cigars. He talked
-to me of London in a tone of half-painful reminiscence, asking all
-kinds of questions about changes that had taken place. He spoke like a
-man who had loved his life there, and had been suddenly and irrevocably
-cut off from it. I gossiped as well as I could of this and that. All
-the time the strangeness of him was shaping itself in my mind; and as I
-talked I peered at his odd, pallid face in the dim light of the
-binnacle lantern behind me. Then I looked out at the darkling sea,
-where in the dimness his little island was hidden.
-
-This man, it seemed to me, had come out of Immensity merely to save my
-life. To-morrow he would drop over the side, and vanish again out of my
-existence. Even had it been under commonplace circumstances, it would
-have made me a trifle thoughtful; but in the first place was the
-singularity of an educated man living on this unknown little island,
-and coupled with that the extraordinary nature of his luggage. I found
-myself repeating the captain’s question. What did he want with the
-beasts? Why, too, had he pretended they were not his when I had
-remarked about them at first? Then, again, in his personal attendant
-there was a bizarre quality which had impressed me profoundly. These
-circumstances threw a haze of mystery round the man. They laid hold of
-my imagination, and hampered my tongue.
-
-Towards midnight our talk of London died away, and we stood side by
-side leaning over the bulwarks and staring dreamily over the silent,
-starlit sea, each pursuing his own thoughts. It was the atmosphere for
-sentiment, and I began upon my gratitude.
-
-“If I may say it,” said I, after a time, “you have saved my life.”
-
-“Chance,” he answered. “Just chance.”
-
-“I prefer to make my thanks to the accessible agent.”
-
-“Thank no one. You had the need, and I had the knowledge; and I
-injected and fed you much as I might have collected a specimen. I was
-bored and wanted something to do. If I’d been jaded that day, or hadn’t
-liked your face, well—it’s a curious question where you would have been
-now!”
-
-This damped my mood a little. “At any rate,” I began.
-
-“It’s a chance, I tell you,” he interrupted, “as everything is in a
-man’s life. Only the asses won’t see it! Why am I here now, an outcast
-from civilisation, instead of being a happy man enjoying all the
-pleasures of London? Simply because eleven years ago—I lost my head for
-ten minutes on a foggy night.”
-
-He stopped. “Yes?” said I.
-
-“That’s all.”
-
-We relapsed into silence. Presently he laughed. “There’s something in
-this starlight that loosens one’s tongue. I’m an ass, and yet somehow I
-would like to tell you.”
-
-“Whatever you tell me, you may rely upon my keeping to myself—if that’s
-it.”
-
-He was on the point of beginning, and then shook his head, doubtfully.
-
-“Don’t,” said I. “It is all the same to me. After all, it is better to
-keep your secret. There’s nothing gained but a little relief if I
-respect your confidence. If I don’t—well?”
-
-He grunted undecidedly. I felt I had him at a disadvantage, had caught
-him in the mood of indiscretion; and to tell the truth I was not
-curious to learn what might have driven a young medical student out of
-London. I have an imagination. I shrugged my shoulders and turned away.
-Over the taffrail leant a silent black figure, watching the stars. It
-was Montgomery’s strange attendant. It looked over its shoulder quickly
-with my movement, then looked away again.
-
-It may seem a little thing to you, perhaps, but it came like a sudden
-blow to me. The only light near us was a lantern at the wheel. The
-creature’s face was turned for one brief instant out of the dimness of
-the stern towards this illumination, and I saw that the eyes that
-glanced at me shone with a pale-green light. I did not know then that a
-reddish luminosity, at least, is not uncommon in human eyes. The thing
-came to me as stark inhumanity. That black figure with its eyes of fire
-struck down through all my adult thoughts and feelings, and for a
-moment the forgotten horrors of childhood came back to my mind. Then
-the effect passed as it had come. An uncouth black figure of a man, a
-figure of no particular import, hung over the taffrail against the
-starlight, and I found Montgomery was speaking to me.
-
-“I’m thinking of turning in, then,” said he, “if you’ve had enough of
-this.”
-
-I answered him incongruously. We went below, and he wished me
-good-night at the door of my cabin.
-
-That night I had some very unpleasant dreams. The waning moon rose
-late. Its light struck a ghostly white beam across my cabin, and made
-an ominous shape on the planking by my bunk. Then the staghounds woke,
-and began howling and baying; so that I dreamt fitfully, and scarcely
-slept until the approach of dawn.
-
-
-
-
-V.
-THE MAN WHO HAD NOWHERE TO GO.
-
-
-In the early morning (it was the second morning after my recovery, and
-I believe the fourth after I was picked up), I awoke through an avenue
-of tumultuous dreams,—dreams of guns and howling mobs,—and became
-sensible of a hoarse shouting above me. I rubbed my eyes and lay
-listening to the noise, doubtful for a little while of my whereabouts.
-Then came a sudden pattering of bare feet, the sound of heavy objects
-being thrown about, a violent creaking and the rattling of chains. I
-heard the swish of the water as the ship was suddenly brought round,
-and a foamy yellow-green wave flew across the little round window and
-left it streaming. I jumped into my clothes and went on deck.
-
-As I came up the ladder I saw against the flushed sky—for the sun was
-just rising—the broad back and red hair of the captain, and over his
-shoulder the puma spinning from a tackle rigged on to the mizzen
-spanker-boom.
-
-The poor brute seemed horribly scared, and crouched in the bottom of
-its little cage.
-
-“Overboard with ’em!” bawled the captain. “Overboard with ’em! We’ll
-have a clean ship soon of the whole bilin’ of ’em.”
-
-He stood in my way, so that I had perforce to tap his shoulder to come
-on deck. He came round with a start, and staggered back a few paces to
-stare at me. It needed no expert eye to tell that the man was still
-drunk.
-
-“Hullo!” said he, stupidly; and then with a light coming into his eyes,
-“Why, it’s Mister—Mister?”
-
-“Prendick,” said I.
-
-“Prendick be damned!” said he. “Shut-up,—that’s your name. Mister
-Shut-up.”
-
-It was no good answering the brute; but I certainly did not expect his
-next move. He held out his hand to the gangway by which Montgomery
-stood talking to a massive grey-haired man in dirty-blue flannels, who
-had apparently just come aboard.
-
-“That way, Mister Blasted Shut-up! that way!” roared the captain.
-
-Montgomery and his companion turned as he spoke.
-
-“What do you mean?” I said.
-
-“That way, Mister Blasted Shut-up,—that’s what I mean! Overboard,
-Mister Shut-up,—and sharp! We’re cleaning the ship out,—cleaning the
-whole blessed ship out; and overboard you go!”
-
-I stared at him dumfounded. Then it occurred to me that it was exactly
-the thing I wanted. The lost prospect of a journey as sole passenger
-with this quarrelsome sot was not one to mourn over. I turned towards
-Montgomery.
-
-“Can’t have you,” said Montgomery’s companion, concisely.
-
-“You can’t have me!” said I, aghast. He had the squarest and most
-resolute face I ever set eyes upon.
-
-“Look here,” I began, turning to the captain.
-
-“Overboard!” said the captain. “This ship aint for beasts and cannibals
-and worse than beasts, any more. Overboard you go, Mister Shut-up. If
-they can’t have you, you goes overboard. But, anyhow, you go—with your
-friends. I’ve done with this blessed island for evermore, amen! I’ve
-had enough of it.”
-
-“But, Montgomery,” I appealed.
-
-He distorted his lower lip, and nodded his head hopelessly at the
-grey-haired man beside him, to indicate his powerlessness to help me.
-
-“I’ll see to _you_, presently,” said the captain.
-
-Then began a curious three-cornered altercation. Alternately I appealed
-to one and another of the three men,—first to the grey-haired man to
-let me land, and then to the drunken captain to keep me aboard. I even
-bawled entreaties to the sailors. Montgomery said never a word, only
-shook his head. “You’re going overboard, I tell you,” was the captain’s
-refrain. “Law be damned! I’m king here.” At last I must confess my
-voice suddenly broke in the middle of a vigorous threat. I felt a gust
-of hysterical petulance, and went aft and stared dismally at nothing.
-
-Meanwhile the sailors progressed rapidly with the task of unshipping
-the packages and caged animals. A large launch, with two standing lugs,
-lay under the lee of the schooner; and into this the strange assortment
-of goods were swung. I did not then see the hands from the island that
-were receiving the packages, for the hull of the launch was hidden from
-me by the side of the schooner. Neither Montgomery nor his companion
-took the slightest notice of me, but busied themselves in assisting and
-directing the four or five sailors who were unloading the goods. The
-captain went forward interfering rather than assisting. I was
-alternately despairful and desperate. Once or twice as I stood waiting
-there for things to accomplish themselves, I could not resist an
-impulse to laugh at my miserable quandary. I felt all the wretcheder
-for the lack of a breakfast. Hunger and a lack of blood-corpuscles take
-all the manhood from a man. I perceived pretty clearly that I had not
-the stamina either to resist what the captain chose to do to expel me,
-or to force myself upon Montgomery and his companion. So I waited
-passively upon fate; and the work of transferring Montgomery’s
-possessions to the launch went on as if I did not exist.
-
-Presently that work was finished, and then came a struggle. I was
-hauled, resisting weakly enough, to the gangway. Even then I noticed
-the oddness of the brown faces of the men who were with Montgomery in
-the launch; but the launch was now fully laden, and was shoved off
-hastily. A broadening gap of green water appeared under me, and I
-pushed back with all my strength to avoid falling headlong. The hands
-in the launch shouted derisively, and I heard Montgomery curse at them;
-and then the captain, the mate, and one of the seamen helping him, ran
-me aft towards the stern.
-
-The dingey of the _Lady Vain_ had been towing behind; it was half full
-of water, had no oars, and was quite unvictualled. I refused to go
-aboard her, and flung myself full length on the deck. In the end, they
-swung me into her by a rope (for they had no stern ladder), and then
-they cut me adrift. I drifted slowly from the schooner. In a kind of
-stupor I watched all hands take to the rigging, and slowly but surely
-she came round to the wind; the sails fluttered, and then bellied out
-as the wind came into them. I stared at her weather-beaten side heeling
-steeply towards me; and then she passed out of my range of view.
-
-I did not turn my head to follow her. At first I could scarcely believe
-what had happened. I crouched in the bottom of the dingey, stunned, and
-staring blankly at the vacant, oily sea. Then I realised that I was in
-that little hell of mine again, now half swamped; and looking back over
-the gunwale, I saw the schooner standing away from me, with the
-red-haired captain mocking at me over the taffrail, and turning towards
-the island saw the launch growing smaller as she approached the beach.
-
-Abruptly the cruelty of this desertion became clear to me. I had no
-means of reaching the land unless I should chance to drift there. I was
-still weak, you must remember, from my exposure in the boat; I was
-empty and very faint, or I should have had more heart. But as it was I
-suddenly began to sob and weep, as I had never done since I was a
-little child. The tears ran down my face. In a passion of despair I
-struck with my fists at the water in the bottom of the boat, and kicked
-savagely at the gunwale. I prayed aloud for God to let me die.
-
-
-
-
-VI.
-THE EVIL-LOOKING BOATMEN.
-
-
-But the islanders, seeing that I was really adrift, took pity on me. I
-drifted very slowly to the eastward, approaching the island slantingly;
-and presently I saw, with hysterical relief, the launch come round and
-return towards me. She was heavily laden, and I could make out as she
-drew nearer Montgomery’s white-haired, broad-shouldered companion
-sitting cramped up with the dogs and several packing-cases in the stern
-sheets. This individual stared fixedly at me without moving or
-speaking. The black-faced cripple was glaring at me as fixedly in the
-bows near the puma. There were three other men besides,—three strange
-brutish-looking fellows, at whom the staghounds were snarling savagely.
-Montgomery, who was steering, brought the boat by me, and rising,
-caught and fastened my painter to the tiller to tow me, for there was
-no room aboard.
-
-I had recovered from my hysterical phase by this time and answered his
-hail, as he approached, bravely enough. I told him the dingey was
-nearly swamped, and he reached me a piggin. I was jerked back as the
-rope tightened between the boats. For some time I was busy baling.
-
-It was not until I had got the water under (for the water in the dingey
-had been shipped; the boat was perfectly sound) that I had leisure to
-look at the people in the launch again.
-
-The white-haired man I found was still regarding me steadfastly, but
-with an expression, as I now fancied, of some perplexity. When my eyes
-met his, he looked down at the staghound that sat between his knees. He
-was a powerfully-built man, as I have said, with a fine forehead and
-rather heavy features; but his eyes had that odd drooping of the skin
-above the lids which often comes with advancing years, and the fall of
-his heavy mouth at the corners gave him an expression of pugnacious
-resolution. He talked to Montgomery in a tone too low for me to hear.
-
-From him my eyes travelled to his three men; and a strange crew they
-were. I saw only their faces, yet there was something in their faces—I
-knew not what—that gave me a queer spasm of disgust. I looked steadily
-at them, and the impression did not pass, though I failed to see what
-had occasioned it. They seemed to me then to be brown men; but their
-limbs were oddly swathed in some thin, dirty, white stuff down even to
-the fingers and feet: I have never seen men so wrapped up before, and
-women so only in the East. They wore turbans too, and thereunder peered
-out their elfin faces at me,—faces with protruding lower-jaws and
-bright eyes. They had lank black hair, almost like horsehair, and
-seemed as they sat to exceed in stature any race of men I have seen.
-The white-haired man, who I knew was a good six feet in height, sat a
-head below any one of the three. I found afterwards that really none
-were taller than myself; but their bodies were abnormally long, and the
-thigh-part of the leg short and curiously twisted. At any rate, they
-were an amazingly ugly gang, and over the heads of them under the
-forward lug peered the black face of the man whose eyes were luminous
-in the dark. As I stared at them, they met my gaze; and then first one
-and then another turned away from my direct stare, and looked at me in
-an odd, furtive manner. It occurred to me that I was perhaps annoying
-them, and I turned my attention to the island we were approaching.
-
-It was low, and covered with thick vegetation,—chiefly a kind of palm,
-that was new to me. From one point a thin white thread of vapour rose
-slantingly to an immense height, and then frayed out like a down
-feather. We were now within the embrace of a broad bay flanked on
-either hand by a low promontory. The beach was of dull-grey sand, and
-sloped steeply up to a ridge, perhaps sixty or seventy feet above the
-sea-level, and irregularly set with trees and undergrowth. Half way up
-was a square enclosure of some greyish stone, which I found
-subsequently was built partly of coral and partly of pumiceous lava.
-Two thatched roofs peeped from within this enclosure. A man stood
-awaiting us at the water’s edge. I fancied while we were still far off
-that I saw some other and very grotesque-looking creatures scuttle into
-the bushes upon the slope; but I saw nothing of these as we drew
-nearer. This man was of a moderate size, and with a black negroid face.
-He had a large, almost lipless, mouth, extraordinary lank arms, long
-thin feet, and bow-legs, and stood with his heavy face thrust forward
-staring at us. He was dressed like Montgomery and his white-haired
-companion, in jacket and trousers of blue serge. As we came still
-nearer, this individual began to run to and fro on the beach, making
-the most grotesque movements.
-
-At a word of command from Montgomery, the four men in the launch sprang
-up, and with singularly awkward gestures struck the lugs. Montgomery
-steered us round and into a narrow little dock excavated in the beach.
-Then the man on the beach hastened towards us. This dock, as I call it,
-was really a mere ditch just long enough at this phase of the tide to
-take the longboat. I heard the bows ground in the sand, staved the
-dingey off the rudder of the big boat with my piggin, and freeing the
-painter, landed. The three muffled men, with the clumsiest movements,
-scrambled out upon the sand, and forthwith set to landing the cargo,
-assisted by the man on the beach. I was struck especially by the
-curious movements of the legs of the three swathed and bandaged
-boatmen,—not stiff they were, but distorted in some odd way, almost as
-if they were jointed in the wrong place. The dogs were still snarling,
-and strained at their chains after these men, as the white-haired man
-landed with them. The three big fellows spoke to one another in odd
-guttural tones, and the man who had waited for us on the beach began
-chattering to them excitedly—a foreign language, as I fancied—as they
-laid hands on some bales piled near the stern. Somewhere I had heard
-such a voice before, and I could not think where. The white-haired man
-stood, holding in a tumult of six dogs, and bawling orders over their
-din. Montgomery, having unshipped the rudder, landed likewise, and all
-set to work at unloading. I was too faint, what with my long fast and
-the sun beating down on my bare head, to offer any assistance.
-
-Presently the white-haired man seemed to recollect my presence, and
-came up to me.
-
-“You look,” said he, “as though you had scarcely breakfasted.” His
-little eyes were a brilliant black under his heavy brows. “I must
-apologise for that. Now you are our guest, we must make you
-comfortable,—though you are uninvited, you know.” He looked keenly into
-my face. “Montgomery says you are an educated man, Mr. Prendick; says
-you know something of science. May I ask what that signifies?”
-
-I told him I had spent some years at the Royal College of Science, and
-had done some researches in biology under Huxley. He raised his
-eyebrows slightly at that.
-
-“That alters the case a little, Mr. Prendick,” he said, with a trifle
-more respect in his manner. “As it happens, we are biologists here.
-This is a biological station—of a sort.” His eye rested on the men in
-white who were busily hauling the puma, on rollers, towards the walled
-yard. “I and Montgomery, at least,” he added. Then, “When you will be
-able to get away, I can’t say. We’re off the track to anywhere. We see
-a ship once in a twelve-month or so.”
-
-He left me abruptly, and went up the beach past this group, and I think
-entered the enclosure. The other two men were with Montgomery, erecting
-a pile of smaller packages on a low-wheeled truck. The llama was still
-on the launch with the rabbit hutches; the staghounds were still lashed
-to the thwarts. The pile of things completed, all three men laid hold
-of the truck and began shoving the ton-weight or so upon it after the
-puma. Presently Montgomery left them, and coming back to me held out
-his hand.
-
-“I’m glad,” said he, “for my own part. That captain was a silly ass.
-He’d have made things lively for you.”
-
-“It was you,” said I, “that saved me again.”
-
-“That depends. You’ll find this island an infernally rum place, I
-promise you. I’d watch my goings carefully, if I were you. _He_—” He
-hesitated, and seemed to alter his mind about what was on his lips. “I
-wish you’d help me with these rabbits,” he said.
-
-His procedure with the rabbits was singular. I waded in with him, and
-helped him lug one of the hutches ashore. No sooner was that done than
-he opened the door of it, and tilting the thing on one end turned its
-living contents out on the ground. They fell in a struggling heap one
-on the top of the other. He clapped his hands, and forthwith they went
-off with that hopping run of theirs, fifteen or twenty of them I should
-think, up the beach.
-
-“Increase and multiply, my friends,” said Montgomery. “Replenish the
-island. Hitherto we’ve had a certain lack of meat here.”
-
-As I watched them disappearing, the white-haired man returned with a
-brandy-flask and some biscuits. “Something to go on with, Prendick,”
-said he, in a far more familiar tone than before. I made no ado, but
-set to work on the biscuits at once, while the white-haired man helped
-Montgomery to release about a score more of the rabbits. Three big
-hutches, however, went up to the house with the puma. The brandy I did
-not touch, for I have been an abstainer from my birth.
-
-
-
-
-VII.
-THE LOCKED DOOR.
-
-
-The reader will perhaps understand that at first everything was so
-strange about me, and my position was the outcome of such unexpected
-adventures, that I had no discernment of the relative strangeness of
-this or that thing. I followed the llama up the beach, and was
-overtaken by Montgomery, who asked me not to enter the stone enclosure.
-I noticed then that the puma in its cage and the pile of packages had
-been placed outside the entrance to this quadrangle.
-
-I turned and saw that the launch had now been unloaded, run out again,
-and was being beached, and the white-haired man was walking towards us.
-He addressed Montgomery.
-
-“And now comes the problem of this uninvited guest. What are we to do
-with him?”
-
-“He knows something of science,” said Montgomery.
-
-“I’m itching to get to work again—with this new stuff,” said the
-white-haired man, nodding towards the enclosure. His eyes grew
-brighter.
-
-“I daresay you are,” said Montgomery, in anything but a cordial tone.
-
-“We can’t send him over there, and we can’t spare the time to build him
-a new shanty; and we certainly can’t take him into our confidence just
-yet.”
-
-“I’m in your hands,” said I. I had no idea of what he meant by “over
-there.”
-
-“I’ve been thinking of the same things,” Montgomery answered. “There’s
-my room with the outer door—”
-
-“That’s it,” said the elder man, promptly, looking at Montgomery; and
-all three of us went towards the enclosure. “I’m sorry to make a
-mystery, Mr. Prendick; but you’ll remember you’re uninvited. Our little
-establishment here contains a secret or so, is a kind of Blue-Beard’s
-chamber, in fact. Nothing very dreadful, really, to a sane man; but
-just now, as we don’t know you—”
-
-“Decidedly,” said I, “I should be a fool to take offence at any want of
-confidence.”
-
-He twisted his heavy mouth into a faint smile—he was one of those
-saturnine people who smile with the corners of the mouth down,—and
-bowed his acknowledgment of my complaisance. The main entrance to the
-enclosure was passed; it was a heavy wooden gate, framed in iron and
-locked, with the cargo of the launch piled outside it, and at the
-corner we came to a small doorway I had not previously observed. The
-white-haired man produced a bundle of keys from the pocket of his
-greasy blue jacket, opened this door, and entered. His keys, and the
-elaborate locking-up of the place even while it was still under his
-eye, struck me as peculiar. I followed him, and found myself in a small
-apartment, plainly but not uncomfortably furnished and with its inner
-door, which was slightly ajar, opening into a paved courtyard. This
-inner door Montgomery at once closed. A hammock was slung across the
-darker corner of the room, and a small unglazed window defended by an
-iron bar looked out towards the sea.
-
-This the white-haired man told me was to be my apartment; and the inner
-door, which “for fear of accidents,” he said, he would lock on the
-other side, was my limit inward. He called my attention to a convenient
-deck-chair before the window, and to an array of old books, chiefly, I
-found, surgical works and editions of the Latin and Greek classics
-(languages I cannot read with any comfort), on a shelf near the
-hammock. He left the room by the outer door, as if to avoid opening the
-inner one again.
-
-“We usually have our meals in here,” said Montgomery, and then, as if
-in doubt, went out after the other. “Moreau!” I heard him call, and for
-the moment I do not think I noticed. Then as I handled the books on the
-shelf it came up in consciousness: Where had I heard the name of Moreau
-before? I sat down before the window, took out the biscuits that still
-remained to me, and ate them with an excellent appetite. Moreau!
-
-Through the window I saw one of those unaccountable men in white,
-lugging a packing-case along the beach. Presently the window-frame hid
-him. Then I heard a key inserted and turned in the lock behind me.
-After a little while I heard through the locked door the noise of the
-staghounds, that had now been brought up from the beach. They were not
-barking, but sniffing and growling in a curious fashion. I could hear
-the rapid patter of their feet, and Montgomery’s voice soothing them.
-
-I was very much impressed by the elaborate secrecy of these two men
-regarding the contents of the place, and for some time I was thinking
-of that and of the unaccountable familiarity of the name of Moreau; but
-so odd is the human memory that I could not then recall that well-known
-name in its proper connection. From that my thoughts went to the
-indefinable queerness of the deformed man on the beach. I never saw
-such a gait, such odd motions as he pulled at the box. I recalled that
-none of these men had spoken to me, though most of them I had found
-looking at me at one time or another in a peculiarly furtive manner,
-quite unlike the frank stare of your unsophisticated savage. Indeed,
-they had all seemed remarkably taciturn, and when they did speak,
-endowed with very uncanny voices. What was wrong with them? Then I
-recalled the eyes of Montgomery’s ungainly attendant.
-
-Just as I was thinking of him he came in. He was now dressed in white,
-and carried a little tray with some coffee and boiled vegetables
-thereon. I could hardly repress a shuddering recoil as he came, bending
-amiably, and placed the tray before me on the table. Then astonishment
-paralysed me. Under his stringy black locks I saw his ear; it jumped
-upon me suddenly close to my face. The man had pointed ears, covered
-with a fine brown fur!
-
-“Your breakfast, sair,” he said.
-
-I stared at his face without attempting to answer him. He turned and
-went towards the door, regarding me oddly over his shoulder. I followed
-him out with my eyes; and as I did so, by some odd trick of unconscious
-cerebration, there came surging into my head the phrase, “The Moreau
-Hollows”—was it? “The Moreau—” Ah! It sent my memory back ten years.
-“The Moreau Horrors!” The phrase drifted loose in my mind for a moment,
-and then I saw it in red lettering on a little buff-coloured pamphlet,
-to read which made one shiver and creep. Then I remembered distinctly
-all about it. That long-forgotten pamphlet came back with startling
-vividness to my mind. I had been a mere lad then, and Moreau was, I
-suppose, about fifty,—a prominent and masterful physiologist,
-well-known in scientific circles for his extraordinary imagination and
-his brutal directness in discussion.
-
-Was this the same Moreau? He had published some very astonishing facts
-in connection with the transfusion of blood, and in addition was known
-to be doing valuable work on morbid growths. Then suddenly his career
-was closed. He had to leave England. A journalist obtained access to
-his laboratory in the capacity of laboratory-assistant, with the
-deliberate intention of making sensational exposures; and by the help
-of a shocking accident (if it was an accident), his gruesome pamphlet
-became notorious. On the day of its publication a wretched dog, flayed
-and otherwise mutilated, escaped from Moreau’s house. It was in the
-silly season, and a prominent editor, a cousin of the temporary
-laboratory-assistant, appealed to the conscience of the nation. It was
-not the first time that conscience has turned against the methods of
-research. The doctor was simply howled out of the country. It may be
-that he deserved to be; but I still think that the tepid support of his
-fellow-investigators and his desertion by the great body of scientific
-workers was a shameful thing. Yet some of his experiments, by the
-journalist’s account, were wantonly cruel. He might perhaps have
-purchased his social peace by abandoning his investigations; but he
-apparently preferred the latter, as most men would who have once fallen
-under the overmastering spell of research. He was unmarried, and had
-indeed nothing but his own interest to consider.
-
-I felt convinced that this must be the same man. Everything pointed to
-it. It dawned upon me to what end the puma and the other animals—which
-had now been brought with other luggage into the enclosure behind the
-house—were destined; and a curious faint odour, the halitus of
-something familiar, an odour that had been in the background of my
-consciousness hitherto, suddenly came forward into the forefront of my
-thoughts. It was the antiseptic odour of the dissecting-room. I heard
-the puma growling through the wall, and one of the dogs yelped as
-though it had been struck.
-
-Yet surely, and especially to another scientific man, there was nothing
-so horrible in vivisection as to account for this secrecy; and by some
-odd leap in my thoughts the pointed ears and luminous eyes of
-Montgomery’s attendant came back again before me with the sharpest
-definition. I stared before me out at the green sea, frothing under a
-freshening breeze, and let these and other strange memories of the last
-few days chase one another through my mind.
-
-What could it all mean? A locked enclosure on a lonely island, a
-notorious vivisector, and these crippled and distorted men?
-
-
-
-
-VIII.
-THE CRYING OF THE PUMA.
-
-
-Montgomery interrupted my tangle of mystification and suspicion about
-one o’clock, and his grotesque attendant followed him with a tray
-bearing bread, some herbs and other eatables, a flask of whiskey, a jug
-of water, and three glasses and knives. I glanced askance at this
-strange creature, and found him watching me with his queer, restless
-eyes. Montgomery said he would lunch with me, but that Moreau was too
-preoccupied with some work to come.
-
-“Moreau!” said I. “I know that name.”
-
-“The devil you do!” said he. “What an ass I was to mention it to you! I
-might have thought. Anyhow, it will give you an inkling of
-our—mysteries. Whiskey?”
-
-“No, thanks; I’m an abstainer.”
-
-“I wish I’d been. But it’s no use locking the door after the steed is
-stolen. It was that infernal stuff which led to my coming here,—that,
-and a foggy night. I thought myself in luck at the time, when Moreau
-offered to get me off. It’s queer—”
-
-“Montgomery,” said I, suddenly, as the outer door closed, “why has your
-man pointed ears?”
-
-“Damn!” he said, over his first mouthful of food. He stared at me for a
-moment, and then repeated, “Pointed ears?”
-
-“Little points to them,” said I, as calmly as possible, with a catch in
-my breath; “and a fine black fur at the edges?”
-
-He helped himself to whiskey and water with great deliberation. “I was
-under the impression—that his hair covered his ears.”
-
-“I saw them as he stooped by me to put that coffee you sent to me on
-the table. And his eyes shine in the dark.”
-
-By this time Montgomery had recovered from the surprise of my question.
-“I always thought,” he said deliberately, with a certain accentuation
-of his flavouring of lisp, “that there _was_ something the matter with
-his ears, from the way he covered them. What were they like?”
-
-I was persuaded from his manner that this ignorance was a pretence.
-Still, I could hardly tell the man that I thought him a liar.
-“Pointed,” I said; “rather small and furry,—distinctly furry. But the
-whole man is one of the strangest beings I ever set eyes on.”
-
-A sharp, hoarse cry of animal pain came from the enclosure behind us.
-Its depth and volume testified to the puma. I saw Montgomery wince.
-
-“Yes?” he said.
-
-“Where did you pick up the creature?”
-
-“San Francisco. He’s an ugly brute, I admit. Half-witted, you know.
-Can’t remember where he came from. But I’m used to him, you know. We
-both are. How does he strike you?”
-
-“He’s unnatural,” I said. “There’s something about him—don’t think me
-fanciful, but it gives me a nasty little sensation, a tightening of my
-muscles, when he comes near me. It’s a touch—of the diabolical, in
-fact.”
-
-Montgomery had stopped eating while I told him this. “Rum!” he said.
-“_I_ can’t see it.” He resumed his meal. “I had no idea of it,” he
-said, and masticated. “The crew of the schooner must have felt it the
-same. Made a dead set at the poor devil. You saw the captain?”
-
-Suddenly the puma howled again, this time more painfully. Montgomery
-swore under his breath. I had half a mind to attack him about the men
-on the beach. Then the poor brute within gave vent to a series of
-short, sharp cries.
-
-“Your men on the beach,” said I; “what race are they?”
-
-“Excellent fellows, aren’t they?” said he, absentmindedly, knitting his
-brows as the animal yelled out sharply.
-
-I said no more. There was another outcry worse than the former. He
-looked at me with his dull grey eyes, and then took some more whiskey.
-He tried to draw me into a discussion about alcohol, professing to have
-saved my life with it. He seemed anxious to lay stress on the fact that
-I owed my life to him. I answered him distractedly.
-
-Presently our meal came to an end; the misshapen monster with the
-pointed ears cleared the remains away, and Montgomery left me alone in
-the room again. All the time he had been in a state of ill-concealed
-irritation at the noise of the vivisected puma. He had spoken of his
-odd want of nerve, and left me to the obvious application.
-
-I found myself that the cries were singularly irritating, and they grew
-in depth and intensity as the afternoon wore on. They were painful at
-first, but their constant resurgence at last altogether upset my
-balance. I flung aside a crib of Horace I had been reading, and began
-to clench my fists, to bite my lips, and to pace the room. Presently I
-got to stopping my ears with my fingers.
-
-The emotional appeal of those yells grew upon me steadily, grew at last
-to such an exquisite expression of suffering that I could stand it in
-that confined room no longer. I stepped out of the door into the
-slumberous heat of the late afternoon, and walking past the main
-entrance—locked again, I noticed—turned the corner of the wall.
-
-The crying sounded even louder out of doors. It was as if all the pain
-in the world had found a voice. Yet had I known such pain was in the
-next room, and had it been dumb, I believe—I have thought since—I could
-have stood it well enough. It is when suffering finds a voice and sets
-our nerves quivering that this pity comes troubling us. But in spite of
-the brilliant sunlight and the green fans of the trees waving in the
-soothing sea-breeze, the world was a confusion, blurred with drifting
-black and red phantasms, until I was out of earshot of the house in the
-chequered wall.
-
-
-
-
-IX.
-THE THING IN THE FOREST.
-
-
-I strode through the undergrowth that clothed the ridge behind the
-house, scarcely heeding whither I went; passed on through the shadow of
-a thick cluster of straight-stemmed trees beyond it, and so presently
-found myself some way on the other side of the ridge, and descending
-towards a streamlet that ran through a narrow valley. I paused and
-listened. The distance I had come, or the intervening masses of
-thicket, deadened any sound that might be coming from the enclosure.
-The air was still. Then with a rustle a rabbit emerged, and went
-scampering up the slope before me. I hesitated, and sat down in the
-edge of the shade.
-
-The place was a pleasant one. The rivulet was hidden by the luxuriant
-vegetation of the banks save at one point, where I caught a triangular
-patch of its glittering water. On the farther side I saw through a
-bluish haze a tangle of trees and creepers, and above these again the
-luminous blue of the sky. Here and there a splash of white or crimson
-marked the blooming of some trailing epiphyte. I let my eyes wander
-over this scene for a while, and then began to turn over in my mind
-again the strange peculiarities of Montgomery’s man. But it was too hot
-to think elaborately, and presently I fell into a tranquil state midway
-between dozing and waking.
-
-From this I was aroused, after I know not how long, by a rustling
-amidst the greenery on the other side of the stream. For a moment I
-could see nothing but the waving summits of the ferns and reeds. Then
-suddenly upon the bank of the stream appeared something—at first I
-could not distinguish what it was. It bowed its round head to the
-water, and began to drink. Then I saw it was a man, going on all-fours
-like a beast. He was clothed in bluish cloth, and was of a
-copper-coloured hue, with black hair. It seemed that grotesque ugliness
-was an invariable character of these islanders. I could hear the suck
-of the water at his lips as he drank.
-
-I leant forward to see him better, and a piece of lava, detached by my
-hand, went pattering down the slope. He looked up guiltily, and his
-eyes met mine. Forthwith he scrambled to his feet, and stood wiping his
-clumsy hand across his mouth and regarding me. His legs were scarcely
-half the length of his body. So, staring one another out of
-countenance, we remained for perhaps the space of a minute. Then,
-stopping to look back once or twice, he slunk off among the bushes to
-the right of me, and I heard the swish of the fronds grow faint in the
-distance and die away. Long after he had disappeared, I remained
-sitting up staring in the direction of his retreat. My drowsy
-tranquillity had gone.
-
-I was startled by a noise behind me, and turning suddenly saw the
-flapping white tail of a rabbit vanishing up the slope. I jumped to my
-feet. The apparition of this grotesque, half-bestial creature had
-suddenly populated the stillness of the afternoon for me. I looked
-around me rather nervously, and regretted that I was unarmed. Then I
-thought that the man I had just seen had been clothed in bluish cloth,
-had not been naked as a savage would have been; and I tried to persuade
-myself from that fact that he was after all probably a peaceful
-character, that the dull ferocity of his countenance belied him.
-
-Yet I was greatly disturbed at the apparition. I walked to the left
-along the slope, turning my head about and peering this way and that
-among the straight stems of the trees. Why should a man go on all-fours
-and drink with his lips? Presently I heard an animal wailing again, and
-taking it to be the puma, I turned about and walked in a direction
-diametrically opposite to the sound. This led me down to the stream,
-across which I stepped and pushed my way up through the undergrowth
-beyond.
-
-I was startled by a great patch of vivid scarlet on the ground, and
-going up to it found it to be a peculiar fungus, branched and
-corrugated like a foliaceous lichen, but deliquescing into slime at the
-touch; and then in the shadow of some luxuriant ferns I came upon an
-unpleasant thing,—the dead body of a rabbit covered with shining flies,
-but still warm and with the head torn off. I stopped aghast at the
-sight of the scattered blood. Here at least was one visitor to the
-island disposed of! There were no traces of other violence about it. It
-looked as though it had been suddenly snatched up and killed; and as I
-stared at the little furry body came the difficulty of how the thing
-had been done. The vague dread that had been in my mind since I had
-seen the inhuman face of the man at the stream grew distincter as I
-stood there. I began to realise the hardihood of my expedition among
-these unknown people. The thicket about me became altered to my
-imagination. Every shadow became something more than a shadow,—became
-an ambush; every rustle became a threat. Invisible things seemed
-watching me. I resolved to go back to the enclosure on the beach. I
-suddenly turned away and thrust myself violently, possibly even
-frantically, through the bushes, anxious to get a clear space about me
-again.
-
-I stopped just in time to prevent myself emerging upon an open space.
-It was a kind of glade in the forest, made by a fall; seedlings were
-already starting up to struggle for the vacant space; and beyond, the
-dense growth of stems and twining vines and splashes of fungus and
-flowers closed in again. Before me, squatting together upon the fungoid
-ruins of a huge fallen tree and still unaware of my approach, were
-three grotesque human figures. One was evidently a female; the other
-two were men. They were naked, save for swathings of scarlet cloth
-about the middle; and their skins were of a dull pinkish-drab colour,
-such as I had seen in no savages before. They had fat, heavy, chinless
-faces, retreating foreheads, and a scant bristly hair upon their heads.
-I never saw such bestial-looking creatures.
-
-They were talking, or at least one of the men was talking to the other
-two, and all three had been too closely interested to heed the rustling
-of my approach. They swayed their heads and shoulders from side to
-side. The speaker’s words came thick and sloppy, and though I could
-hear them distinctly I could not distinguish what he said. He seemed to
-me to be reciting some complicated gibberish. Presently his
-articulation became shriller, and spreading his hands he rose to his
-feet. At that the others began to gibber in unison, also rising to
-their feet, spreading their hands and swaying their bodies in rhythm
-with their chant. I noticed then the abnormal shortness of their legs,
-and their lank, clumsy feet. All three began slowly to circle round,
-raising and stamping their feet and waving their arms; a kind of tune
-crept into their rhythmic recitation, and a refrain,—“Aloola,” or
-“Balloola,” it sounded like. Their eyes began to sparkle, and their
-ugly faces to brighten, with an expression of strange pleasure. Saliva
-dripped from their lipless mouths.
-
-Suddenly, as I watched their grotesque and unaccountable gestures, I
-perceived clearly for the first time what it was that had offended me,
-what had given me the two inconsistent and conflicting impressions of
-utter strangeness and yet of the strangest familiarity. The three
-creatures engaged in this mysterious rite were human in shape, and yet
-human beings with the strangest air about them of some familiar animal.
-Each of these creatures, despite its human form, its rag of clothing,
-and the rough humanity of its bodily form, had woven into it—into its
-movements, into the expression of its countenance, into its whole
-presence—some now irresistible suggestion of a hog, a swinish taint,
-the unmistakable mark of the beast.
-
-I stood overcome by this amazing realisation and then the most horrible
-questionings came rushing into my mind. They began leaping in the air,
-first one and then the other, whooping and grunting. Then one slipped,
-and for a moment was on all-fours,—to recover, indeed, forthwith. But
-that transitory gleam of the true animalism of these monsters was
-enough.
-
-I turned as noiselessly as possible, and becoming every now and then
-rigid with the fear of being discovered, as a branch cracked or a leaf
-rustled, I pushed back into the bushes. It was long before I grew
-bolder, and dared to move freely. My only idea for the moment was to
-get away from these foul beings, and I scarcely noticed that I had
-emerged upon a faint pathway amidst the trees. Then suddenly traversing
-a little glade, I saw with an unpleasant start two clumsy legs among
-the trees, walking with noiseless footsteps parallel with my course,
-and perhaps thirty yards away from me. The head and upper part of the
-body were hidden by a tangle of creeper. I stopped abruptly, hoping the
-creature did not see me. The feet stopped as I did. So nervous was I
-that I controlled an impulse to headlong flight with the utmost
-difficulty. Then looking hard, I distinguished through the interlacing
-network the head and body of the brute I had seen drinking. He moved
-his head. There was an emerald flash in his eyes as he glanced at me
-from the shadow of the trees, a half-luminous colour that vanished as
-he turned his head again. He was motionless for a moment, and then with
-a noiseless tread began running through the green confusion. In another
-moment he had vanished behind some bushes. I could not see him, but I
-felt that he had stopped and was watching me again.
-
-What on earth was he,—man or beast? What did he want with me? I had no
-weapon, not even a stick. Flight would be madness. At any rate the
-Thing, whatever it was, lacked the courage to attack me. Setting my
-teeth hard, I walked straight towards him. I was anxious not to show
-the fear that seemed chilling my backbone. I pushed through a tangle of
-tall white-flowered bushes, and saw him twenty paces beyond, looking
-over his shoulder at me and hesitating. I advanced a step or two,
-looking steadfastly into his eyes.
-
-“Who are you?” said I.
-
-He tried to meet my gaze. “No!” he said suddenly, and turning went
-bounding away from me through the undergrowth. Then he turned and
-stared at me again. His eyes shone brightly out of the dusk under the
-trees.
-
-My heart was in my mouth; but I felt my only chance was bluff, and
-walked steadily towards him. He turned again, and vanished into the
-dusk. Once more I thought I caught the glint of his eyes, and that was
-all.
-
-For the first time I realised how the lateness of the hour might affect
-me. The sun had set some minutes since, the swift dusk of the tropics
-was already fading out of the eastern sky, and a pioneer moth fluttered
-silently by my head. Unless I would spend the night among the unknown
-dangers of the mysterious forest, I must hasten back to the enclosure.
-The thought of a return to that pain-haunted refuge was extremely
-disagreeable, but still more so was the idea of being overtaken in the
-open by darkness and all that darkness might conceal. I gave one more
-look into the blue shadows that had swallowed up this odd creature, and
-then retraced my way down the slope towards the stream, going as I
-judged in the direction from which I had come.
-
-I walked eagerly, my mind confused with many things, and presently
-found myself in a level place among scattered trees. The colourless
-clearness that comes after the sunset flush was darkling; the blue sky
-above grew momentarily deeper, and the little stars one by one pierced
-the attenuated light; the interspaces of the trees, the gaps in the
-further vegetation, that had been hazy blue in the daylight, grew black
-and mysterious. I pushed on. The colour vanished from the world. The
-tree-tops rose against the luminous blue sky in inky silhouette, and
-all below that outline melted into one formless blackness. Presently
-the trees grew thinner, and the shrubby undergrowth more abundant. Then
-there was a desolate space covered with a white sand, and then another
-expanse of tangled bushes. I did not remember crossing the sand-opening
-before. I began to be tormented by a faint rustling upon my right hand.
-I thought at first it was fancy, for whenever I stopped there was
-silence, save for the evening breeze in the tree-tops. Then when I
-turned to hurry on again there was an echo to my footsteps.
-
-I turned away from the thickets, keeping to the more open ground, and
-endeavouring by sudden turns now and then to surprise something in the
-act of creeping upon me. I saw nothing, and nevertheless my sense of
-another presence grew steadily. I increased my pace, and after some
-time came to a slight ridge, crossed it, and turned sharply, regarding
-it steadfastly from the further side. It came out black and clear-cut
-against the darkling sky; and presently a shapeless lump heaved up
-momentarily against the sky-line and vanished again. I felt assured now
-that my tawny-faced antagonist was stalking me once more; and coupled
-with that was another unpleasant realisation, that I had lost my way.
-
-For a time I hurried on hopelessly perplexed, and pursued by that
-stealthy approach. Whatever it was, the Thing either lacked the courage
-to attack me, or it was waiting to take me at some disadvantage. I kept
-studiously to the open. At times I would turn and listen; and presently
-I had half persuaded myself that my pursuer had abandoned the chase, or
-was a mere creation of my disordered imagination. Then I heard the
-sound of the sea. I quickened my footsteps almost into a run, and
-immediately there was a stumble in my rear.
-
-I turned suddenly, and stared at the uncertain trees behind me. One
-black shadow seemed to leap into another. I listened, rigid, and heard
-nothing but the creep of the blood in my ears. I thought that my nerves
-were unstrung, and that my imagination was tricking me, and turned
-resolutely towards the sound of the sea again.
-
-In a minute or so the trees grew thinner, and I emerged upon a bare,
-low headland running out into the sombre water. The night was calm and
-clear, and the reflection of the growing multitude of the stars
-shivered in the tranquil heaving of the sea. Some way out, the wash
-upon an irregular band of reef shone with a pallid light of its own.
-Westward I saw the zodiacal light mingling with the yellow brilliance
-of the evening star. The coast fell away from me to the east, and
-westward it was hidden by the shoulder of the cape. Then I recalled the
-fact that Moreau’s beach lay to the west.
-
-A twig snapped behind me, and there was a rustle. I turned, and stood
-facing the dark trees. I could see nothing—or else I could see too
-much. Every dark form in the dimness had its ominous quality, its
-peculiar suggestion of alert watchfulness. So I stood for perhaps a
-minute, and then, with an eye to the trees still, turned westward to
-cross the headland; and as I moved, one among the lurking shadows moved
-to follow me.
-
-My heart beat quickly. Presently the broad sweep of a bay to the
-westward became visible, and I halted again. The noiseless shadow
-halted a dozen yards from me. A little point of light shone on the
-further bend of the curve, and the grey sweep of the sandy beach lay
-faint under the starlight. Perhaps two miles away was that little point
-of light. To get to the beach I should have to go through the trees
-where the shadows lurked, and down a bushy slope.
-
-I could see the Thing rather more distinctly now. It was no animal, for
-it stood erect. At that I opened my mouth to speak, and found a hoarse
-phlegm choked my voice. I tried again, and shouted, “Who is there?”
-There was no answer. I advanced a step. The Thing did not move, only
-gathered itself together. My foot struck a stone. That gave me an idea.
-Without taking my eyes off the black form before me, I stooped and
-picked up this lump of rock; but at my motion the Thing turned abruptly
-as a dog might have done, and slunk obliquely into the further
-darkness. Then I recalled a schoolboy expedient against big dogs, and
-twisted the rock into my handkerchief, and gave this a turn round my
-wrist. I heard a movement further off among the shadows, as if the
-Thing was in retreat. Then suddenly my tense excitement gave way; I
-broke into a profuse perspiration and fell a-trembling, with my
-adversary routed and this weapon in my hand.
-
-It was some time before I could summon resolution to go down through
-the trees and bushes upon the flank of the headland to the beach. At
-last I did it at a run; and as I emerged from the thicket upon the
-sand, I heard some other body come crashing after me. At that I
-completely lost my head with fear, and began running along the sand.
-Forthwith there came the swift patter of soft feet in pursuit. I gave a
-wild cry, and redoubled my pace. Some dim, black things about three or
-four times the size of rabbits went running or hopping up from the
-beach towards the bushes as I passed.
-
-So long as I live, I shall remember the terror of that chase. I ran
-near the water’s edge, and heard every now and then the splash of the
-feet that gained upon me. Far away, hopelessly far, was the yellow
-light. All the night about us was black and still. Splash, splash, came
-the pursuing feet, nearer and nearer. I felt my breath going, for I was
-quite out of training; it whooped as I drew it, and I felt a pain like
-a knife at my side. I perceived the Thing would come up with me long
-before I reached the enclosure, and, desperate and sobbing for my
-breath, I wheeled round upon it and struck at it as it came up to
-me,—struck with all my strength. The stone came out of the sling of the
-handkerchief as I did so. As I turned, the Thing, which had been
-running on all-fours, rose to its feet, and the missile fell fair on
-its left temple. The skull rang loud, and the animal-man blundered into
-me, thrust me back with its hands, and went staggering past me to fall
-headlong upon the sand with its face in the water; and there it lay
-still.
-
-I could not bring myself to approach that black heap. I left it there,
-with the water rippling round it, under the still stars, and giving it
-a wide berth pursued my way towards the yellow glow of the house; and
-presently, with a positive effect of relief, came the pitiful moaning
-of the puma, the sound that had originally driven me out to explore
-this mysterious island. At that, though I was faint and horribly
-fatigued, I gathered together all my strength, and began running again
-towards the light. I thought I heard a voice calling me.
-
-
-
-
-X.
-THE CRYING OF THE MAN.
-
-
-As I drew near the house I saw that the light shone from the open door
-of my room; and then I heard coming from out of the darkness at the
-side of that orange oblong of light, the voice of Montgomery shouting,
-“Prendick!” I continued running. Presently I heard him again. I replied
-by a feeble “Hullo!” and in another moment had staggered up to him.
-
-“Where have you been?” said he, holding me at arm’s length, so that the
-light from the door fell on my face. “We have both been so busy that we
-forgot you until about half an hour ago.” He led me into the room and
-sat me down in the deck chair. For awhile I was blinded by the light.
-“We did not think you would start to explore this island of ours
-without telling us,” he said; and then, “I was afraid—But—what—Hullo!”
-
-My last remaining strength slipped from me, and my head fell forward on
-my chest. I think he found a certain satisfaction in giving me brandy.
-
-“For God’s sake,” said I, “fasten that door.”
-
-“You’ve been meeting some of our curiosities, eh?” said he.
-
-He locked the door and turned to me again. He asked me no questions,
-but gave me some more brandy and water and pressed me to eat. I was in
-a state of collapse. He said something vague about his forgetting to
-warn me, and asked me briefly when I left the house and what I had
-seen.
-
-I answered him as briefly, in fragmentary sentences. “Tell me what it
-all means,” said I, in a state bordering on hysterics.
-
-“It’s nothing so very dreadful,” said he. “But I think you have had
-about enough for one day.” The puma suddenly gave a sharp yell of pain.
-At that he swore under his breath. “I’m damned,” said he, “if this
-place is not as bad as Gower Street, with its cats.”
-
-“Montgomery,” said I, “what was that thing that came after me? Was it a
-beast or was it a man?”
-
-“If you don’t sleep to-night,” he said, “you’ll be off your head
-to-morrow.”
-
-I stood up in front of him. “What was that thing that came after me?” I
-asked.
-
-He looked me squarely in the eyes, and twisted his mouth askew. His
-eyes, which had seemed animated a minute before, went dull. “From your
-account,” said he, “I’m thinking it was a bogle.”
-
-I felt a gust of intense irritation, which passed as quickly as it
-came. I flung myself into the chair again, and pressed my hands on my
-forehead. The puma began once more.
-
-Montgomery came round behind me and put his hand on my shoulder. “Look
-here, Prendick,” he said, “I had no business to let you drift out into
-this silly island of ours. But it’s not so bad as you feel, man. Your
-nerves are worked to rags. Let me give you something that will make you
-sleep. _That_—will keep on for hours yet. You must simply get to sleep,
-or I won’t answer for it.”
-
-I did not reply. I bowed forward, and covered my face with my hands.
-Presently he returned with a small measure containing a dark liquid.
-This he gave me. I took it unresistingly, and he helped me into the
-hammock.
-
-When I awoke, it was broad day. For a little while I lay flat, staring
-at the roof above me. The rafters, I observed, were made out of the
-timbers of a ship. Then I turned my head, and saw a meal prepared for
-me on the table. I perceived that I was hungry, and prepared to clamber
-out of the hammock, which, very politely anticipating my intention,
-twisted round and deposited me upon all-fours on the floor.
-
-I got up and sat down before the food. I had a heavy feeling in my
-head, and only the vaguest memory at first of the things that had
-happened over night. The morning breeze blew very pleasantly through
-the unglazed window, and that and the food contributed to the sense of
-animal comfort which I experienced. Presently the door behind me—the
-door inward towards the yard of the enclosure—opened. I turned and saw
-Montgomery’s face.
-
-“All right,” said he. “I’m frightfully busy.” And he shut the door.
-
-Afterwards I discovered that he forgot to re-lock it. Then I recalled
-the expression of his face the previous night, and with that the memory
-of all I had experienced reconstructed itself before me. Even as that
-fear came back to me came a cry from within; but this time it was not
-the cry of a puma. I put down the mouthful that hesitated upon my lips,
-and listened. Silence, save for the whisper of the morning breeze. I
-began to think my ears had deceived me.
-
-After a long pause I resumed my meal, but with my ears still vigilant.
-Presently I heard something else, very faint and low. I sat as if
-frozen in my attitude. Though it was faint and low, it moved me more
-profoundly than all that I had hitherto heard of the abominations
-behind the wall. There was no mistake this time in the quality of the
-dim, broken sounds; no doubt at all of their source. For it was
-groaning, broken by sobs and gasps of anguish. It was no brute this
-time; it was a human being in torment!
-
-As I realised this I rose, and in three steps had crossed the room,
-seized the handle of the door into the yard, and flung it open before
-me.
-
-“Prendick, man! Stop!” cried Montgomery, intervening.
-
-A startled deerhound yelped and snarled. There was blood, I saw, in the
-sink,—brown, and some scarlet—and I smelt the peculiar smell of
-carbolic acid. Then through an open doorway beyond, in the dim light of
-the shadow, I saw something bound painfully upon a framework, scarred,
-red, and bandaged; and then blotting this out appeared the face of old
-Moreau, white and terrible. In a moment he had gripped me by the
-shoulder with a hand that was smeared red, had twisted me off my feet,
-and flung me headlong back into my own room. He lifted me as though I
-was a little child. I fell at full length upon the floor, and the door
-slammed and shut out the passionate intensity of his face. Then I heard
-the key turn in the lock, and Montgomery’s voice in expostulation.
-
-“Ruin the work of a lifetime,” I heard Moreau say.
-
-“He does not understand,” said Montgomery. and other things that were
-inaudible.
-
-“I can’t spare the time yet,” said Moreau.
-
-The rest I did not hear. I picked myself up and stood trembling, my
-mind a chaos of the most horrible misgivings. Could it be possible, I
-thought, that such a thing as the vivisection of men was carried on
-here? The question shot like lightning across a tumultuous sky; and
-suddenly the clouded horror of my mind condensed into a vivid
-realisation of my own danger.
-
-
-
-
-XI.
-THE HUNTING OF THE MAN.
-
-
-It came before my mind with an unreasonable hope of escape that the
-outer door of my room was still open to me. I was convinced now,
-absolutely assured, that Moreau had been vivisecting a human being. All
-the time since I had heard his name, I had been trying to link in my
-mind in some way the grotesque animalism of the islanders with his
-abominations; and now I thought I saw it all. The memory of his work on
-the transfusion of blood recurred to me. These creatures I had seen
-were the victims of some hideous experiment. These sickening scoundrels
-had merely intended to keep me back, to fool me with their display of
-confidence, and presently to fall upon me with a fate more horrible
-than death,—with torture; and after torture the most hideous
-degradation it is possible to conceive,—to send me off a lost soul, a
-beast, to the rest of their Comus rout.
-
-I looked round for some weapon. Nothing. Then with an inspiration I
-turned over the deck chair, put my foot on the side of it, and tore
-away the side rail. It happened that a nail came away with the wood,
-and projecting, gave a touch of danger to an otherwise petty weapon. I
-heard a step outside, and incontinently flung open the door and found
-Montgomery within a yard of it. He meant to lock the outer door! I
-raised this nailed stick of mine and cut at his face; but he sprang
-back. I hesitated a moment, then turned and fled, round the corner of
-the house. “Prendick, man!” I heard his astonished cry, “don’t be a
-silly ass, man!”
-
-Another minute, thought I, and he would have had me locked in, and as
-ready as a hospital rabbit for my fate. He emerged behind the corner,
-for I heard him shout, “Prendick!” Then he began to run after me,
-shouting things as he ran. This time running blindly, I went
-northeastward in a direction at right angles to my previous expedition.
-Once, as I went running headlong up the beach, I glanced over my
-shoulder and saw his attendant with him. I ran furiously up the slope,
-over it, then turning eastward along a rocky valley fringed on either
-side with jungle I ran for perhaps a mile altogether, my chest
-straining, my heart beating in my ears; and then hearing nothing of
-Montgomery or his man, and feeling upon the verge of exhaustion, I
-doubled sharply back towards the beach as I judged, and lay down in the
-shelter of a canebrake. There I remained for a long time, too fearful
-to move, and indeed too fearful even to plan a course of action. The
-wild scene about me lay sleeping silently under the sun, and the only
-sound near me was the thin hum of some small gnats that had discovered
-me. Presently I became aware of a drowsy breathing sound, the soughing
-of the sea upon the beach.
-
-After about an hour I heard Montgomery shouting my name, far away to
-the north. That set me thinking of my plan of action. As I interpreted
-it then, this island was inhabited only by these two vivisectors and
-their animalised victims. Some of these no doubt they could press into
-their service against me if need arose. I knew both Moreau and
-Montgomery carried revolvers; and, save for a feeble bar of deal spiked
-with a small nail, the merest mockery of a mace, I was unarmed.
-
-So I lay still there, until I began to think of food and drink; and at
-that thought the real hopelessness of my position came home to me. I
-knew no way of getting anything to eat. I was too ignorant of botany to
-discover any resort of root or fruit that might lie about me; I had no
-means of trapping the few rabbits upon the island. It grew blanker the
-more I turned the prospect over. At last in the desperation of my
-position, my mind turned to the animal men I had encountered. I tried
-to find some hope in what I remembered of them. In turn I recalled each
-one I had seen, and tried to draw some augury of assistance from my
-memory.
-
-Then suddenly I heard a staghound bay, and at that realised a new
-danger. I took little time to think, or they would have caught me then,
-but snatching up my nailed stick, rushed headlong from my hiding-place
-towards the sound of the sea. I remember a growth of thorny plants,
-with spines that stabbed like pen-knives. I emerged bleeding and with
-torn clothes upon the lip of a long creek opening northward. I went
-straight into the water without a minute’s hesitation, wading up the
-creek, and presently finding myself kneedeep in a little stream. I
-scrambled out at last on the westward bank, and with my heart beating
-loudly in my ears, crept into a tangle of ferns to await the issue. I
-heard the dog (there was only one) draw nearer, and yelp when it came
-to the thorns. Then I heard no more, and presently began to think I had
-escaped.
-
-The minutes passed; the silence lengthened out, and at last after an
-hour of security my courage began to return to me. By this time I was
-no longer very much terrified or very miserable. I had, as it were,
-passed the limit of terror and despair. I felt now that my life was
-practically lost, and that persuasion made me capable of daring
-anything. I had even a certain wish to encounter Moreau face to face;
-and as I had waded into the water, I remembered that if I were too hard
-pressed at least one path of escape from torment still lay open to
-me,—they could not very well prevent my drowning myself. I had half a
-mind to drown myself then; but an odd wish to see the whole adventure
-out, a queer, impersonal, spectacular interest in myself, restrained
-me. I stretched my limbs, sore and painful from the pricks of the spiny
-plants, and stared around me at the trees; and, so suddenly that it
-seemed to jump out of the green tracery about it, my eyes lit upon a
-black face watching me. I saw that it was the simian creature who had
-met the launch upon the beach. He was clinging to the oblique stem of a
-palm-tree. I gripped my stick, and stood up facing him. He began
-chattering. “You, you, you,” was all I could distinguish at first.
-Suddenly he dropped from the tree, and in another moment was holding
-the fronds apart and staring curiously at me.
-
-I did not feel the same repugnance towards this creature which I had
-experienced in my encounters with the other Beast Men. “You,” he said,
-“in the boat.” He was a man, then,—at least as much of a man as
-Montgomery’s attendant,—for he could talk.
-
-“Yes,” I said, “I came in the boat. From the ship.”
-
-“Oh!” he said, and his bright, restless eyes travelled over me, to my
-hands, to the stick I carried, to my feet, to the tattered places in my
-coat, and the cuts and scratches I had received from the thorns. He
-seemed puzzled at something. His eyes came back to my hands. He held
-his own hand out and counted his digits slowly, “One, two, three, four,
-five—eigh?”
-
-I did not grasp his meaning then; afterwards I was to find that a great
-proportion of these Beast People had malformed hands, lacking sometimes
-even three digits. But guessing this was in some way a greeting, I did
-the same thing by way of reply. He grinned with immense satisfaction.
-Then his swift roving glance went round again; he made a swift
-movement—and vanished. The fern fronds he had stood between came
-swishing together.
-
-I pushed out of the brake after him, and was astonished to find him
-swinging cheerfully by one lank arm from a rope of creepers that looped
-down from the foliage overhead. His back was to me.
-
-“Hullo!” said I.
-
-He came down with a twisting jump, and stood facing me.
-
-“I say,” said I, “where can I get something to eat?”
-
-“Eat!” he said. “Eat Man’s food, now.” And his eye went back to the
-swing of ropes. “At the huts.”
-
-“But where are the huts?”
-
-“Oh!”
-
-“I’m new, you know.”
-
-At that he swung round, and set off at a quick walk. All his motions
-were curiously rapid. “Come along,” said he.
-
-I went with him to see the adventure out. I guessed the huts were some
-rough shelter where he and some more of these Beast People lived. I
-might perhaps find them friendly, find some handle in their minds to
-take hold of. I did not know how far they had forgotten their human
-heritage.
-
-My ape-like companion trotted along by my side, with his hands hanging
-down and his jaw thrust forward. I wondered what memory he might have
-in him. “How long have you been on this island?” said I.
-
-“How long?” he asked; and after having the question repeated, he held
-up three fingers.
-
-The creature was little better than an idiot. I tried to make out what
-he meant by that, and it seems I bored him. After another question or
-two he suddenly left my side and went leaping at some fruit that hung
-from a tree. He pulled down a handful of prickly husks and went on
-eating the contents. I noted this with satisfaction, for here at least
-was a hint for feeding. I tried him with some other questions, but his
-chattering, prompt responses were as often as not quite at cross
-purposes with my question. Some few were appropriate, others quite
-parrot-like.
-
-I was so intent upon these peculiarities that I scarcely noticed the
-path we followed. Presently we came to trees, all charred and brown,
-and so to a bare place covered with a yellow-white incrustation, across
-which a drifting smoke, pungent in whiffs to nose and eyes, went
-drifting. On our right, over a shoulder of bare rock, I saw the level
-blue of the sea. The path coiled down abruptly into a narrow ravine
-between two tumbled and knotty masses of blackish scoriae. Into this we
-plunged.
-
-It was extremely dark, this passage, after the blinding sunlight
-reflected from the sulphurous ground. Its walls grew steep, and
-approached each other. Blotches of green and crimson drifted across my
-eyes. My conductor stopped suddenly. “Home!” said he, and I stood in a
-floor of a chasm that was at first absolutely dark to me. I heard some
-strange noises, and thrust the knuckles of my left hand into my eyes. I
-became aware of a disagreeable odor, like that of a monkey’s cage
-ill-cleaned. Beyond, the rock opened again upon a gradual slope of
-sunlit greenery, and on either hand the light smote down through narrow
-ways into the central gloom.
-
-
-
-
-XII.
-THE SAYERS OF THE LAW.
-
-
-Then something cold touched my hand. I started violently, and saw close
-to me a dim pinkish thing, looking more like a flayed child than
-anything else in the world. The creature had exactly the mild but
-repulsive features of a sloth, the same low forehead and slow gestures.
-
-As the first shock of the change of light passed, I saw about me more
-distinctly. The little sloth-like creature was standing and staring at
-me. My conductor had vanished. The place was a narrow passage between
-high walls of lava, a crack in the knotted rock, and on either side
-interwoven heaps of sea-mat, palm-fans, and reeds leaning against the
-rock formed rough and impenetrably dark dens. The winding way up the
-ravine between these was scarcely three yards wide, and was disfigured
-by lumps of decaying fruit-pulp and other refuse, which accounted for
-the disagreeable stench of the place.
-
-The little pink sloth-creature was still blinking at me when my Ape-man
-reappeared at the aperture of the nearest of these dens, and beckoned
-me in. As he did so a slouching monster wriggled out of one of the
-places, further up this strange street, and stood up in featureless
-silhouette against the bright green beyond, staring at me. I hesitated,
-having half a mind to bolt the way I had come; and then, determined to
-go through with the adventure, I gripped my nailed stick about the
-middle and crawled into the little evil-smelling lean-to after my
-conductor.
-
-It was a semi-circular space, shaped like the half of a bee-hive; and
-against the rocky wall that formed the inner side of it was a pile of
-variegated fruits, cocoa-nuts among others. Some rough vessels of lava
-and wood stood about the floor, and one on a rough stool. There was no
-fire. In the darkest corner of the hut sat a shapeless mass of darkness
-that grunted “Hey!” as I came in, and my Ape-man stood in the dim light
-of the doorway and held out a split cocoa-nut to me as I crawled into
-the other corner and squatted down. I took it, and began gnawing it, as
-serenely as possible, in spite of a certain trepidation and the nearly
-intolerable closeness of the den. The little pink sloth-creature stood
-in the aperture of the hut, and something else with a drab face and
-bright eyes came staring over its shoulder.
-
-“Hey!” came out of the lump of mystery opposite. “It is a man.”
-
-“It is a man,” gabbled my conductor, “a man, a man, a five-man, like
-me.”
-
-“Shut up!” said the voice from the dark, and grunted. I gnawed my
-cocoa-nut amid an impressive stillness.
-
-I peered hard into the blackness, but could distinguish nothing.
-
-“It is a man,” the voice repeated. “He comes to live with us?”
-
-It was a thick voice, with something in it—a kind of whistling
-overtone—that struck me as peculiar; but the English accent was
-strangely good.
-
-The Ape-man looked at me as though he expected something. I perceived
-the pause was interrogative. “He comes to live with you,” I said.
-
-“It is a man. He must learn the Law.”
-
-I began to distinguish now a deeper blackness in the black, a vague
-outline of a hunched-up figure. Then I noticed the opening of the place
-was darkened by two more black heads. My hand tightened on my stick.
-
-The thing in the dark repeated in a louder tone, “Say the words.” I had
-missed its last remark. “Not to go on all-fours; that is the Law,” it
-repeated in a kind of sing-song.
-
-I was puzzled.
-
-“Say the words,” said the Ape-man, repeating, and the figures in the
-doorway echoed this, with a threat in the tone of their voices.
-
-I realised that I had to repeat this idiotic formula; and then began
-the insanest ceremony. The voice in the dark began intoning a mad
-litany, line by line, and I and the rest to repeat it. As they did so,
-they swayed from side to side in the oddest way, and beat their hands
-upon their knees; and I followed their example. I could have imagined I
-was already dead and in another world. That dark hut, these grotesque
-dim figures, just flecked here and there by a glimmer of light, and all
-of them swaying in unison and chanting,
-
-“Not to go on all-fours; that is the Law. Are we not Men?
-“Not to suck up Drink; that is the Law. Are we not Men?
-“Not to eat Fish or Flesh; that is the Law. Are we not Men?
-“Not to claw the Bark of Trees; _that_ is the Law. Are we not Men?
-“Not to chase other Men; _that_ is the Law. Are we not Men?”
-
-
-And so from the prohibition of these acts of folly, on to the
-prohibition of what I thought then were the maddest, most impossible,
-and most indecent things one could well imagine. A kind of rhythmic
-fervour fell on all of us; we gabbled and swayed faster and faster,
-repeating this amazing Law. Superficially the contagion of these brutes
-was upon me, but deep down within me the laughter and disgust struggled
-together. We ran through a long list of prohibitions, and then the
-chant swung round to a new formula.
-
-“_His_ is the House of Pain.
-“_His_ is the Hand that makes.
-“_His_ is the Hand that wounds.
-“_His_ is the Hand that heals.”
-
-
-And so on for another long series, mostly quite incomprehensible
-gibberish to me about _Him_, whoever he might be. I could have fancied
-it was a dream, but never before have I heard chanting in a dream.
-
-“_His_ is the lightning flash,” we sang. “_His_ is the deep, salt sea.”
-
-A horrible fancy came into my head that Moreau, after animalising these
-men, had infected their dwarfed brains with a kind of deification of
-himself. However, I was too keenly aware of white teeth and strong
-claws about me to stop my chanting on that account.
-
-“_His_ are the stars in the sky.”
-
-
-At last that song ended. I saw the Ape-man’s face shining with
-perspiration; and my eyes being now accustomed to the darkness, I saw
-more distinctly the figure in the corner from which the voice came. It
-was the size of a man, but it seemed covered with a dull grey hair
-almost like a Skye-terrier. What was it? What were they all? Imagine
-yourself surrounded by all the most horrible cripples and maniacs it is
-possible to conceive, and you may understand a little of my feelings
-with these grotesque caricatures of humanity about me.
-
-“He is a five-man, a five-man, a five-man—like me,” said the Ape-man.
-
-I held out my hands. The grey creature in the corner leant forward.
-
-“Not to run on all-fours; that is the Law. Are we not Men?” he said.
-
-He put out a strangely distorted talon and gripped my fingers. The
-thing was almost like the hoof of a deer produced into claws. I could
-have yelled with surprise and pain. His face came forward and peered at
-my nails, came forward into the light of the opening of the hut and I
-saw with a quivering disgust that it was like the face of neither man
-nor beast, but a mere shock of grey hair, with three shadowy
-over-archings to mark the eyes and mouth.
-
-“He has little nails,” said this grisly creature in his hairy beard.
-“It is well.”
-
-He threw my hand down, and instinctively I gripped my stick.
-
-“Eat roots and herbs; it is His will,” said the Ape-man.
-
-“I am the Sayer of the Law,” said the grey figure. “Here come all that
-be new to learn the Law. I sit in the darkness and say the Law.”
-
-“It is even so,” said one of the beasts in the doorway.
-
-“Evil are the punishments of those who break the Law. None escape.”
-
-“None escape,” said the Beast Folk, glancing furtively at one another.
-
-“None, none,” said the Ape-man,—“none escape. See! I did a little
-thing, a wrong thing, once. I jabbered, jabbered, stopped talking. None
-could understand. I am burnt, branded in the hand. He is great. He is
-good!”
-
-“None escape,” said the grey creature in the corner.
-
-“None escape,” said the Beast People, looking askance at one another.
-
-“For every one the want that is bad,” said the grey Sayer of the Law.
-“What you will want we do not know; we shall know. Some want to follow
-things that move, to watch and slink and wait and spring; to kill and
-bite, bite deep and rich, sucking the blood. It is bad. ‘Not to chase
-other Men; that is the Law. Are we not Men? Not to eat Flesh or Fish;
-that is the Law. Are we not Men?’”
-
-“None escape,” said a dappled brute standing in the doorway.
-
-“For every one the want is bad,” said the grey Sayer of the Law. “Some
-want to go tearing with teeth and hands into the roots of things,
-snuffing into the earth. It is bad.”
-
-“None escape,” said the men in the door.
-
-“Some go clawing trees; some go scratching at the graves of the dead;
-some go fighting with foreheads or feet or claws; some bite suddenly,
-none giving occasion; some love uncleanness.”
-
-“None escape,” said the Ape-man, scratching his calf.
-
-“None escape,” said the little pink sloth-creature.
-
-“Punishment is sharp and sure. Therefore learn the Law. Say the words.”
-
-And incontinently he began again the strange litany of the Law, and
-again I and all these creatures began singing and swaying. My head
-reeled with this jabbering and the close stench of the place; but I
-kept on, trusting to find presently some chance of a new development.
-
-“Not to go on all-fours; that is the Law. Are we not Men?”
-
-We were making such a noise that I noticed nothing of a tumult outside,
-until some one, who I think was one of the two Swine Men I had seen,
-thrust his head over the little pink sloth-creature and shouted
-something excitedly, something that I did not catch. Incontinently
-those at the opening of the hut vanished; my Ape-man rushed out; the
-thing that had sat in the dark followed him (I only observed that it
-was big and clumsy, and covered with silvery hair), and I was left
-alone. Then before I reached the aperture I heard the yelp of a
-staghound.
-
-In another moment I was standing outside the hovel, my chair-rail in my
-hand, every muscle of me quivering. Before me were the clumsy backs of
-perhaps a score of these Beast People, their misshapen heads half
-hidden by their shoulder-blades. They were gesticulating excitedly.
-Other half-animal faces glared interrogation out of the hovels. Looking
-in the direction in which they faced, I saw coming through the haze
-under the trees beyond the end of the passage of dens the dark figure
-and awful white face of Moreau. He was holding the leaping staghound
-back, and close behind him came Montgomery revolver in hand.
-
-For a moment I stood horror-struck. I turned and saw the passage behind
-me blocked by another heavy brute, with a huge grey face and twinkling
-little eyes, advancing towards me. I looked round and saw to the right
-of me and a half-dozen yards in front of me a narrow gap in the wall of
-rock through which a ray of light slanted into the shadows.
-
-“Stop!” cried Moreau as I strode towards this, and then, “Hold him!”
-
-At that, first one face turned towards me and then others. Their
-bestial minds were happily slow. I dashed my shoulder into a clumsy
-monster who was turning to see what Moreau meant, and flung him forward
-into another. I felt his hands fly round, clutching at me and missing
-me. The little pink sloth-creature dashed at me, and I gashed down its
-ugly face with the nail in my stick and in another minute was
-scrambling up a steep side pathway, a kind of sloping chimney, out of
-the ravine. I heard a howl behind me, and cries of “Catch him!” “Hold
-him!” and the grey-faced creature appeared behind me and jammed his
-huge bulk into the cleft. “Go on! go on!” they howled. I clambered up
-the narrow cleft in the rock and came out upon the sulphur on the
-westward side of the village of the Beast Men.
-
-That gap was altogether fortunate for me, for the narrow chimney,
-slanting obliquely upward, must have impeded the nearer pursuers. I ran
-over the white space and down a steep slope, through a scattered growth
-of trees, and came to a low-lying stretch of tall reeds, through which
-I pushed into a dark, thick undergrowth that was black and succulent
-under foot. As I plunged into the reeds, my foremost pursuers emerged
-from the gap. I broke my way through this undergrowth for some minutes.
-The air behind me and about me was soon full of threatening cries. I
-heard the tumult of my pursuers in the gap up the slope, then the
-crashing of the reeds, and every now and then the crackling crash of a
-branch. Some of the creatures roared like excited beasts of prey. The
-staghound yelped to the left. I heard Moreau and Montgomery shouting in
-the same direction. I turned sharply to the right. It seemed to me even
-then that I heard Montgomery shouting for me to run for my life.
-
-Presently the ground gave rich and oozy under my feet; but I was
-desperate and went headlong into it, struggled through kneedeep, and so
-came to a winding path among tall canes. The noise of my pursuers
-passed away to my left. In one place three strange, pink, hopping
-animals, about the size of cats, bolted before my footsteps. This
-pathway ran up hill, across another open space covered with white
-incrustation, and plunged into a canebrake again. Then suddenly it
-turned parallel with the edge of a steep-walled gap, which came without
-warning, like the ha-ha of an English park,—turned with an unexpected
-abruptness. I was still running with all my might, and I never saw this
-drop until I was flying headlong through the air.
-
-I fell on my forearms and head, among thorns, and rose with a torn ear
-and bleeding face. I had fallen into a precipitous ravine, rocky and
-thorny, full of a hazy mist which drifted about me in wisps, and with a
-narrow streamlet from which this mist came meandering down the centre.
-I was astonished at this thin fog in the full blaze of daylight; but I
-had no time to stand wondering then. I turned to my right, down-stream,
-hoping to come to the sea in that direction, and so have my way open to
-drown myself. It was only later I found that I had dropped my nailed
-stick in my fall.
-
-Presently the ravine grew narrower for a space, and carelessly I
-stepped into the stream. I jumped out again pretty quickly, for the
-water was almost boiling. I noticed too there was a thin sulphurous
-scum drifting upon its coiling water. Almost immediately came a turn in
-the ravine, and the indistinct blue horizon. The nearer sea was
-flashing the sun from a myriad facets. I saw my death before me; but I
-was hot and panting, with the warm blood oozing out on my face and
-running pleasantly through my veins. I felt more than a touch of
-exultation too, at having distanced my pursuers. It was not in me then
-to go out and drown myself yet. I stared back the way I had come.
-
-I listened. Save for the hum of the gnats and the chirp of some small
-insects that hopped among the thorns, the air was absolutely still.
-Then came the yelp of a dog, very faint, and a chattering and
-gibbering, the snap of a whip, and voices. They grew louder, then
-fainter again. The noise receded up the stream and faded away. For a
-while the chase was over; but I knew now how much hope of help for me
-lay in the Beast People.
-
-
-
-
-XIII.
-A PARLEY.
-
-
-I turned again and went on down towards the sea. I found the hot stream
-broadened out to a shallow, weedy sand, in which an abundance of crabs
-and long-bodied, many-legged creatures started from my footfall. I
-walked to the very edge of the salt water, and then I felt I was safe.
-I turned and stared, arms akimbo, at the thick green behind me, into
-which the steamy ravine cut like a smoking gash. But, as I say, I was
-too full of excitement and (a true saying, though those who have never
-known danger may doubt it) too desperate to die.
-
-Then it came into my head that there was one chance before me yet.
-While Moreau and Montgomery and their bestial rabble chased me through
-the island, might I not go round the beach until I came to their
-enclosure,—make a flank march upon them, in fact, and then with a rock
-lugged out of their loosely-built wall, perhaps, smash in the lock of
-the smaller door and see what I could find (knife, pistol, or what not)
-to fight them with when they returned? It was at any rate something to
-try.
-
-So I turned to the westward and walked along by the water’s edge. The
-setting sun flashed his blinding heat into my eyes. The slight Pacific
-tide was running in with a gentle ripple. Presently the shore fell away
-southward, and the sun came round upon my right hand. Then suddenly,
-far in front of me, I saw first one and then several figures emerging
-from the bushes,—Moreau, with his grey staghound, then Montgomery, and
-two others. At that I stopped.
-
-They saw me, and began gesticulating and advancing. I stood watching
-them approach. The two Beast Men came running forward to cut me off
-from the undergrowth, inland. Montgomery came, running also, but
-straight towards me. Moreau followed slower with the dog.
-
-At last I roused myself from my inaction, and turning seaward walked
-straight into the water. The water was very shallow at first. I was
-thirty yards out before the waves reached to my waist. Dimly I could
-see the intertidal creatures darting away from my feet.
-
-“What are you doing, man?” cried Montgomery.
-
-I turned, standing waist deep, and stared at them. Montgomery stood
-panting at the margin of the water. His face was bright-red with
-exertion, his long flaxen hair blown about his head, and his dropping
-nether lip showed his irregular teeth. Moreau was just coming up, his
-face pale and firm, and the dog at his hand barked at me. Both men had
-heavy whips. Farther up the beach stared the Beast Men.
-
-“What am I doing? I am going to drown myself,” said I.
-
-Montgomery and Moreau looked at each other. “Why?” asked Moreau.
-
-“Because that is better than being tortured by you.”
-
-“I told you so,” said Montgomery, and Moreau said something in a low
-tone.
-
-“What makes you think I shall torture you?” asked Moreau.
-
-“What I saw,” I said. “And those—yonder.”
-
-“Hush!” said Moreau, and held up his hand.
-
-“I will not,” said I. “They were men: what are they now? I at least
-will not be like them.”
-
-I looked past my interlocutors. Up the beach were M’ling, Montgomery’s
-attendant, and one of the white-swathed brutes from the boat. Farther
-up, in the shadow of the trees, I saw my little Ape-man, and behind him
-some other dim figures.
-
-“Who are these creatures?” said I, pointing to them and raising my
-voice more and more that it might reach them. “They were men, men like
-yourselves, whom you have infected with some bestial taint,—men whom
-you have enslaved, and whom you still fear.
-
-“You who listen,” I cried, pointing now to Moreau and shouting past him
-to the Beast Men,—“You who listen! Do you not see these men still fear
-you, go in dread of you? Why, then, do you fear them? You are many—”
-
-“For God’s sake,” cried Montgomery, “stop that, Prendick!”
-
-“Prendick!” cried Moreau.
-
-They both shouted together, as if to drown my voice; and behind them
-lowered the staring faces of the Beast Men, wondering, their deformed
-hands hanging down, their shoulders hunched up. They seemed, as I
-fancied, to be trying to understand me, to remember, I thought,
-something of their human past.
-
-I went on shouting, I scarcely remember what,—that Moreau and
-Montgomery could be killed, that they were not to be feared: that was
-the burden of what I put into the heads of the Beast People. I saw the
-green-eyed man in the dark rags, who had met me on the evening of my
-arrival, come out from among the trees, and others followed him, to
-hear me better. At last for want of breath I paused.
-
-“Listen to me for a moment,” said the steady voice of Moreau; “and then
-say what you will.”
-
-“Well?” said I.
-
-He coughed, thought, then shouted: “Latin, Prendick! bad Latin,
-schoolboy Latin; but try and understand. _Hi non sunt homines; sunt
-animalia qui nos habemus_—vivisected. A humanising process. I will
-explain. Come ashore.”
-
-I laughed. “A pretty story,” said I. “They talk, build houses. They
-were men. It’s likely I’ll come ashore.”
-
-“The water just beyond where you stand is deep—and full of sharks.”
-
-“That’s my way,” said I. “Short and sharp. Presently.”
-
-“Wait a minute.” He took something out of his pocket that flashed back
-the sun, and dropped the object at his feet. “That’s a loaded
-revolver,” said he. “Montgomery here will do the same. Now we are going
-up the beach until you are satisfied the distance is safe. Then come
-and take the revolvers.”
-
-“Not I! You have a third between you.”
-
-“I want you to think over things, Prendick. In the first place, I never
-asked you to come upon this island. If we vivisected men, we should
-import men, not beasts. In the next, we had you drugged last night, had
-we wanted to work you any mischief; and in the next, now your first
-panic is over and you can think a little, is Montgomery here quite up
-to the character you give him? We have chased you for your good.
-Because this island is full of inimical phenomena. Besides, why should
-we want to shoot you when you have just offered to drown yourself?”
-
-“Why did you set—your people onto me when I was in the hut?”
-
-“We felt sure of catching you, and bringing you out of danger.
-Afterwards we drew away from the scent, for your good.”
-
-I mused. It seemed just possible. Then I remembered something again.
-“But I saw,” said I, “in the enclosure—”
-
-“That was the puma.”
-
-“Look here, Prendick,” said Montgomery, “you’re a silly ass! Come out
-of the water and take these revolvers, and talk. We can’t do anything
-more than we could do now.”
-
-I will confess that then, and indeed always, I distrusted and dreaded
-Moreau; but Montgomery was a man I felt I understood.
-
-“Go up the beach,” said I, after thinking, and added, “holding your
-hands up.”
-
-“Can’t do that,” said Montgomery, with an explanatory nod over his
-shoulder. “Undignified.”
-
-“Go up to the trees, then,” said I, “as you please.”
-
-“It’s a damned silly ceremony,” said Montgomery.
-
-Both turned and faced the six or seven grotesque creatures, who stood
-there in the sunlight, solid, casting shadows, moving, and yet so
-incredibly unreal. Montgomery cracked his whip at them, and forthwith
-they all turned and fled helter-skelter into the trees; and when
-Montgomery and Moreau were at a distance I judged sufficient, I waded
-ashore, and picked up and examined the revolvers. To satisfy myself
-against the subtlest trickery, I discharged one at a round lump of
-lava, and had the satisfaction of seeing the stone pulverised and the
-beach splashed with lead. Still I hesitated for a moment.
-
-“I’ll take the risk,” said I, at last; and with a revolver in each hand
-I walked up the beach towards them.
-
-“That’s better,” said Moreau, without affectation. “As it is, you have
-wasted the best part of my day with your confounded imagination.” And
-with a touch of contempt which humiliated me, he and Montgomery turned
-and went on in silence before me.
-
-The knot of Beast Men, still wondering, stood back among the trees. I
-passed them as serenely as possible. One started to follow me, but
-retreated again when Montgomery cracked his whip. The rest stood
-silent—watching. They may once have been animals; but I never before
-saw an animal trying to think.
-
-
-
-
-XIV.
-DOCTOR MOREAU EXPLAINS.
-
-
-“And now, Prendick, I will explain,” said Doctor Moreau, so soon as we
-had eaten and drunk. “I must confess that you are the most dictatorial
-guest I ever entertained. I warn you that this is the last I shall do
-to oblige you. The next thing you threaten to commit suicide about, I
-shan’t do,—even at some personal inconvenience.”
-
-He sat in my deck chair, a cigar half consumed in his white,
-dexterous-looking fingers. The light of the swinging lamp fell on his
-white hair; he stared through the little window out at the starlight. I
-sat as far away from him as possible, the table between us and the
-revolvers to hand. Montgomery was not present. I did not care to be
-with the two of them in such a little room.
-
-“You admit that the vivisected human being, as you called it, is, after
-all, only the puma?” said Moreau. He had made me visit that horror in
-the inner room, to assure myself of its inhumanity.
-
-“It is the puma,” I said, “still alive, but so cut and mutilated as I
-pray I may never see living flesh again. Of all vile—”
-
-“Never mind that,” said Moreau; “at least, spare me those youthful
-horrors. Montgomery used to be just the same. You admit that it is the
-puma. Now be quiet, while I reel off my physiological lecture to you.”
-
-And forthwith, beginning in the tone of a man supremely bored, but
-presently warming a little, he explained his work to me. He was very
-simple and convincing. Now and then there was a touch of sarcasm in his
-voice. Presently I found myself hot with shame at our mutual positions.
-
-The creatures I had seen were not men, had never been men. They were
-animals, humanised animals,—triumphs of vivisection.
-
-“You forget all that a skilled vivisector can do with living things,”
-said Moreau. “For my own part, I’m puzzled why the things I have done
-here have not been done before. Small efforts, of course, have been
-made,—amputation, tongue-cutting, excisions. Of course you know a
-squint may be induced or cured by surgery? Then in the case of
-excisions you have all kinds of secondary changes, pigmentary
-disturbances, modifications of the passions, alterations in the
-secretion of fatty tissue. I have no doubt you have heard of these
-things?”
-
-“Of course,” said I. “But these foul creatures of yours—”
-
-“All in good time,” said he, waving his hand at me; “I am only
-beginning. Those are trivial cases of alteration. Surgery can do better
-things than that. There is building up as well as breaking down and
-changing. You have heard, perhaps, of a common surgical operation
-resorted to in cases where the nose has been destroyed: a flap of skin
-is cut from the forehead, turned down on the nose, and heals in the new
-position. This is a kind of grafting in a new position of part of an
-animal upon itself. Grafting of freshly obtained material from another
-animal is also possible,—the case of teeth, for example. The grafting
-of skin and bone is done to facilitate healing: the surgeon places in
-the middle of the wound pieces of skin snipped from another animal, or
-fragments of bone from a victim freshly killed. Hunter’s
-cock-spur—possibly you have heard of that—flourished on the bull’s
-neck; and the rhinoceros rats of the Algerian zouaves are also to be
-thought of,—monsters manufactured by transferring a slip from the tail
-of an ordinary rat to its snout, and allowing it to heal in that
-position.”
-
-“Monsters manufactured!” said I. “Then you mean to tell me—”
-
-“Yes. These creatures you have seen are animals carven and wrought into
-new shapes. To that, to the study of the plasticity of living forms, my
-life has been devoted. I have studied for years, gaining in knowledge
-as I go. I see you look horrified, and yet I am telling you nothing
-new. It all lay in the surface of practical anatomy years ago, but no
-one had the temerity to touch it. It is not simply the outward form of
-an animal which I can change. The physiology, the chemical rhythm of
-the creature, may also be made to undergo an enduring modification,—of
-which vaccination and other methods of inoculation with living or dead
-matter are examples that will, no doubt, be familiar to you. A similar
-operation is the transfusion of blood,—with which subject, indeed, I
-began. These are all familiar cases. Less so, and probably far more
-extensive, were the operations of those mediaeval practitioners who
-made dwarfs and beggar-cripples, show-monsters,—some vestiges of whose
-art still remain in the preliminary manipulation of the young
-mountebank or contortionist. Victor Hugo gives an account of them in
-‘L’Homme qui Rit.’—But perhaps my meaning grows plain now. You begin to
-see that it is a possible thing to transplant tissue from one part of
-an animal to another, or from one animal to another; to alter its
-chemical reactions and methods of growth; to modify the articulations
-of its limbs; and, indeed, to change it in its most intimate structure.
-
-“And yet this extraordinary branch of knowledge has never been sought
-as an end, and systematically, by modern investigators until I took it
-up! Some such things have been hit upon in the last resort of surgery;
-most of the kindred evidence that will recur to your mind has been
-demonstrated as it were by accident,—by tyrants, by criminals, by the
-breeders of horses and dogs, by all kinds of untrained clumsy-handed
-men working for their own immediate ends. I was the first man to take
-up this question armed with antiseptic surgery, and with a really
-scientific knowledge of the laws of growth. Yet one would imagine it
-must have been practised in secret before. Such creatures as the
-Siamese Twins—And in the vaults of the Inquisition. No doubt their
-chief aim was artistic torture, but some at least of the inquisitors
-must have had a touch of scientific curiosity.”
-
-“But,” said I, “these things—these animals talk!”
-
-He said that was so, and proceeded to point out that the possibility of
-vivisection does not stop at a mere physical metamorphosis. A pig may
-be educated. The mental structure is even less determinate than the
-bodily. In our growing science of hypnotism we find the promise of a
-possibility of superseding old inherent instincts by new suggestions,
-grafting upon or replacing the inherited fixed ideas. Very much indeed
-of what we call moral education, he said, is such an artificial
-modification and perversion of instinct; pugnacity is trained into
-courageous self-sacrifice, and suppressed sexuality into religious
-emotion. And the great difference between man and monkey is in the
-larynx, he continued,—in the incapacity to frame delicately different
-sound-symbols by which thought could be sustained. In this I failed to
-agree with him, but with a certain incivility he declined to notice my
-objection. He repeated that the thing was so, and continued his account
-of his work.
-
-I asked him why he had taken the human form as a model. There seemed to
-me then, and there still seems to me now, a strange wickedness for that
-choice.
-
-He confessed that he had chosen that form by chance. “I might just as
-well have worked to form sheep into llamas and llamas into sheep. I
-suppose there is something in the human form that appeals to the
-artistic turn of mind more powerfully than any animal shape can. But
-I’ve not confined myself to man-making. Once or twice—” He was silent,
-for a minute perhaps. “These years! How they have slipped by! And here
-I have wasted a day saving your life, and am now wasting an hour
-explaining myself!”
-
-“But,” said I, “I still do not understand. Where is your justification
-for inflicting all this pain? The only thing that could excuse
-vivisection to me would be some application—”
-
-“Precisely,” said he. “But, you see, I am differently constituted. We
-are on different platforms. You are a materialist.”
-
-“I am _not_ a materialist,” I began hotly.
-
-“In my view—in my view. For it is just this question of pain that parts
-us. So long as visible or audible pain turns you sick; so long as your
-own pains drive you; so long as pain underlies your propositions about
-sin,—so long, I tell you, you are an animal, thinking a little less
-obscurely what an animal feels. This pain—”
-
-I gave an impatient shrug at such sophistry.
-
-“Oh, but it is such a little thing! A mind truly opened to what science
-has to teach must see that it is a little thing. It may be that save in
-this little planet, this speck of cosmic dust, invisible long before
-the nearest star could be attained—it may be, I say, that nowhere else
-does this thing called pain occur. But the laws we feel our way
-towards—Why, even on this earth, even among living things, what pain is
-there?”
-
-As he spoke he drew a little penknife from his pocket, opened the
-smaller blade, and moved his chair so that I could see his thigh. Then,
-choosing the place deliberately, he drove the blade into his leg and
-withdrew it.
-
-“No doubt,” he said, “you have seen that before. It does not hurt a
-pin-prick. But what does it show? The capacity for pain is not needed
-in the muscle, and it is not placed there,—is but little needed in the
-skin, and only here and there over the thigh is a spot capable of
-feeling pain. Pain is simply our intrinsic medical adviser to warn us
-and stimulate us. Not all living flesh is painful; nor is all nerve,
-not even all sensory nerve. There’s no taint of pain, real pain, in the
-sensations of the optic nerve. If you wound the optic nerve, you merely
-see flashes of light,—just as disease of the auditory nerve merely
-means a humming in our ears. Plants do not feel pain, nor the lower
-animals; it’s possible that such animals as the starfish and crayfish
-do not feel pain at all. Then with men, the more intelligent they
-become, the more intelligently they will see after their own welfare,
-and the less they will need the goad to keep them out of danger. I
-never yet heard of a useless thing that was not ground out of existence
-by evolution sooner or later. Did you? And pain gets needless.
-
-“Then I am a religious man, Prendick, as every sane man must be. It may
-be, I fancy, that I have seen more of the ways of this world’s Maker
-than you,—for I have sought his laws, in _my_ way, all my life, while
-you, I understand, have been collecting butterflies. And I tell you,
-pleasure and pain have nothing to do with heaven or hell. Pleasure and
-pain—bah! What is your theologian’s ecstasy but Mahomet’s houri in the
-dark? This store which men and women set on pleasure and pain,
-Prendick, is the mark of the beast upon them,—the mark of the beast
-from which they came! Pain, pain and pleasure, they are for us only so
-long as we wriggle in the dust.
-
-“You see, I went on with this research just the way it led me. That is
-the only way I ever heard of true research going. I asked a question,
-devised some method of obtaining an answer, and got a fresh question.
-Was this possible or that possible? You cannot imagine what this means
-to an investigator, what an intellectual passion grows upon him! You
-cannot imagine the strange, colourless delight of these intellectual
-desires! The thing before you is no longer an animal, a
-fellow-creature, but a problem! Sympathetic pain,—all I know of it I
-remember as a thing I used to suffer from years ago. I wanted—it was
-the one thing I wanted—to find out the extreme limit of plasticity in a
-living shape.”
-
-“But,” said I, “the thing is an abomination—”
-
-“To this day I have never troubled about the ethics of the matter,” he
-continued. “The study of Nature makes a man at last as remorseless as
-Nature. I have gone on, not heeding anything but the question I was
-pursuing; and the material has—dripped into the huts yonder. It is
-nearly eleven years since we came here, I and Montgomery and six
-Kanakas. I remember the green stillness of the island and the empty
-ocean about us, as though it was yesterday. The place seemed waiting
-for me.
-
-“The stores were landed and the house was built. The Kanakas founded
-some huts near the ravine. I went to work here upon what I had brought
-with me. There were some disagreeable things happened at first. I began
-with a sheep, and killed it after a day and a half by a slip of the
-scalpel. I took another sheep, and made a thing of pain and fear and
-left it bound up to heal. It looked quite human to me when I had
-finished it; but when I went to it I was discontented with it. It
-remembered me, and was terrified beyond imagination; and it had no more
-than the wits of a sheep. The more I looked at it the clumsier it
-seemed, until at last I put the monster out of its misery. These
-animals without courage, these fear-haunted, pain-driven things,
-without a spark of pugnacious energy to face torment,—they are no good
-for man-making.
-
-“Then I took a gorilla I had; and upon that, working with infinite care
-and mastering difficulty after difficulty, I made my first man. All the
-week, night and day, I moulded him. With him it was chiefly the brain
-that needed moulding; much had to be added, much changed. I thought him
-a fair specimen of the negroid type when I had finished him, and he lay
-bandaged, bound, and motionless before me. It was only when his life
-was assured that I left him and came into this room again, and found
-Montgomery much as you are. He had heard some of the cries as the thing
-grew human,—cries like those that disturbed _you_ so. I didn’t take him
-completely into my confidence at first. And the Kanakas too, had
-realised something of it. They were scared out of their wits by the
-sight of me. I got Montgomery over to me—in a way; but I and he had the
-hardest job to prevent the Kanakas deserting. Finally they did; and so
-we lost the yacht. I spent many days educating the brute,—altogether I
-had him for three or four months. I taught him the rudiments of
-English; gave him ideas of counting; even made the thing read the
-alphabet. But at that he was slow, though I’ve met with idiots slower.
-He began with a clean sheet, mentally; had no memories left in his mind
-of what he had been. When his scars were quite healed, and he was no
-longer anything but painful and stiff, and able to converse a little, I
-took him yonder and introduced him to the Kanakas as an interesting
-stowaway.
-
-“They were horribly afraid of him at first, somehow,—which offended me
-rather, for I was conceited about him; but his ways seemed so mild, and
-he was so abject, that after a time they received him and took his
-education in hand. He was quick to learn, very imitative and adaptive,
-and built himself a hovel rather better, it seemed to me, than their
-own shanties. There was one among the boys a bit of a missionary, and
-he taught the thing to read, or at least to pick out letters, and gave
-him some rudimentary ideas of morality; but it seems the beast’s habits
-were not all that is desirable.
-
-“I rested from work for some days after this, and was in a mind to
-write an account of the whole affair to wake up English physiology.
-Then I came upon the creature squatting up in a tree and gibbering at
-two of the Kanakas who had been teasing him. I threatened him, told him
-the inhumanity of such a proceeding, aroused his sense of shame, and
-came home resolved to do better before I took my work back to England.
-I have been doing better. But somehow the things drift back again: the
-stubborn beast-flesh grows day by day back again. But I mean to do
-better things still. I mean to conquer that. This puma—
-
-“But that’s the story. All the Kanaka boys are dead now; one fell
-overboard of the launch, and one died of a wounded heel that he
-poisoned in some way with plant-juice. Three went away in the yacht,
-and I suppose and hope were drowned. The other one—was killed. Well, I
-have replaced them. Montgomery went on much as you are disposed to do
-at first, and then—
-
-“What became of the other one?” said I, sharply,—“the other Kanaka who
-was killed?”
-
-“The fact is, after I had made a number of human creatures I made a
-Thing—” He hesitated.
-
-“Yes?” said I.
-
-“It was killed.”
-
-“I don’t understand,” said I; “do you mean to say—”
-
-“It killed the Kanaka—yes. It killed several other things that it
-caught. We chased it for a couple of days. It only got loose by
-accident—I never meant it to get away. It wasn’t finished. It was
-purely an experiment. It was a limbless thing, with a horrible face,
-that writhed along the ground in a serpentine fashion. It was immensely
-strong, and in infuriating pain. It lurked in the woods for some days,
-until we hunted it; and then it wriggled into the northern part of the
-island, and we divided the party to close in upon it. Montgomery
-insisted upon coming with me. The man had a rifle; and when his body
-was found, one of the barrels was curved into the shape of an S and
-very nearly bitten through. Montgomery shot the thing. After that I
-stuck to the ideal of humanity—except for little things.”
-
-He became silent. I sat in silence watching his face.
-
-“So for twenty years altogether—counting nine years in England—I have
-been going on; and there is still something in everything I do that
-defeats me, makes me dissatisfied, challenges me to further effort.
-Sometimes I rise above my level, sometimes I fall below it; but always
-I fall short of the things I dream. The human shape I can get now,
-almost with ease, so that it is lithe and graceful, or thick and
-strong; but often there is trouble with the hands and the
-claws,—painful things, that I dare not shape too freely. But it is in
-the subtle grafting and reshaping one must needs do to the brain that
-my trouble lies. The intelligence is often oddly low, with
-unaccountable blank ends, unexpected gaps. And least satisfactory of
-all is something that I cannot touch, somewhere—I cannot determine
-where—in the seat of the emotions. Cravings, instincts, desires that
-harm humanity, a strange hidden reservoir to burst forth suddenly and
-inundate the whole being of the creature with anger, hate, or fear.
-These creatures of mine seemed strange and uncanny to you so soon as
-you began to observe them; but to me, just after I make them, they seem
-to be indisputably human beings. It’s afterwards, as I observe them,
-that the persuasion fades. First one animal trait, then another, creeps
-to the surface and stares out at me. But I will conquer yet! Each time
-I dip a living creature into the bath of burning pain, I say, ‘This
-time I will burn out all the animal; this time I will make a rational
-creature of my own!’ After all, what is ten years? Men have been a
-hundred thousand in the making.” He thought darkly. “But I am drawing
-near the fastness. This puma of mine—” After a silence, “And they
-revert. As soon as my hand is taken from them the beast begins to creep
-back, begins to assert itself again.” Another long silence.
-
-“Then you take the things you make into those dens?” said I.
-
-“They go. I turn them out when I begin to feel the beast in them, and
-presently they wander there. They all dread this house and me. There is
-a kind of travesty of humanity over there. Montgomery knows about it,
-for he interferes in their affairs. He has trained one or two of them
-to our service. He’s ashamed of it, but I believe he half likes some of
-those beasts. It’s his business, not mine. They only sicken me with a
-sense of failure. I take no interest in them. I fancy they follow in
-the lines the Kanaka missionary marked out, and have a kind of mockery
-of a rational life, poor beasts! There’s something they call the Law.
-Sing hymns about ‘all thine.’ They build themselves their dens, gather
-fruit, and pull herbs—marry even. But I can see through it all, see
-into their very souls, and see there nothing but the souls of beasts,
-beasts that perish, anger and the lusts to live and gratify
-themselves.—Yet they’re odd; complex, like everything else alive. There
-is a kind of upward striving in them, part vanity, part waste sexual
-emotion, part waste curiosity. It only mocks me. I have some hope of
-this puma. I have worked hard at her head and brain—
-
-“And now,” said he, standing up after a long gap of silence, during
-which we had each pursued our own thoughts, “what do you think? Are you
-in fear of me still?”
-
-I looked at him, and saw but a white-faced, white-haired man, with calm
-eyes. Save for his serenity, the touch almost of beauty that resulted
-from his set tranquillity and his magnificent build, he might have
-passed muster among a hundred other comfortable old gentlemen. Then I
-shivered. By way of answer to his second question, I handed him a
-revolver with either hand.
-
-“Keep them,” he said, and snatched at a yawn. He stood up, stared at me
-for a moment, and smiled. “You have had two eventful days,” said he. “I
-should advise some sleep. I’m glad it’s all clear. Good-night.” He
-thought me over for a moment, then went out by the inner door.
-
-I immediately turned the key in the outer one. I sat down again; sat
-for a time in a kind of stagnant mood, so weary, emotionally, mentally,
-and physically, that I could not think beyond the point at which he had
-left me. The black window stared at me like an eye. At last with an
-effort I put out the light and got into the hammock. Very soon I was
-asleep.
-
-
-
-
-XV.
-CONCERNING THE BEAST FOLK.
-
-
-I woke early. Moreau’s explanation stood before my mind, clear and
-definite, from the moment of my awakening. I got out of the hammock and
-went to the door to assure myself that the key was turned. Then I tried
-the window-bar, and found it firmly fixed. That these man-like
-creatures were in truth only bestial monsters, mere grotesque
-travesties of men, filled me with a vague uncertainty of their
-possibilities which was far worse than any definite fear.
-
-A tapping came at the door, and I heard the glutinous accents of M’ling
-speaking. I pocketed one of the revolvers (keeping one hand upon it),
-and opened to him.
-
-“Good-morning, sair,” he said, bringing in, in addition to the
-customary herb-breakfast, an ill-cooked rabbit. Montgomery followed
-him. His roving eye caught the position of my arm and he smiled askew.
-
-The puma was resting to heal that day; but Moreau, who was singularly
-solitary in his habits, did not join us. I talked with Montgomery to
-clear my ideas of the way in which the Beast Folk lived. In particular,
-I was urgent to know how these inhuman monsters were kept from falling
-upon Moreau and Montgomery and from rending one another. He explained
-to me that the comparative safety of Moreau and himself was due to the
-limited mental scope of these monsters. In spite of their increased
-intelligence and the tendency of their animal instincts to reawaken,
-they had certain fixed ideas implanted by Moreau in their minds, which
-absolutely bounded their imaginations. They were really hypnotised; had
-been told that certain things were impossible, and that certain things
-were not to be done, and these prohibitions were woven into the texture
-of their minds beyond any possibility of disobedience or dispute.
-
-Certain matters, however, in which old instinct was at war with
-Moreau’s convenience, were in a less stable condition. A series of
-propositions called the Law (I had already heard them recited) battled
-in their minds with the deep-seated, ever-rebellious cravings of their
-animal natures. This Law they were ever repeating, I found, and ever
-breaking. Both Montgomery and Moreau displayed particular solicitude to
-keep them ignorant of the taste of blood; they feared the inevitable
-suggestions of that flavour. Montgomery told me that the Law,
-especially among the feline Beast People, became oddly weakened about
-nightfall; that then the animal was at its strongest; that a spirit of
-adventure sprang up in them at the dusk, when they would dare things
-they never seemed to dream about by day. To that I owed my stalking by
-the Leopard-man, on the night of my arrival. But during these earlier
-days of my stay they broke the Law only furtively and after dark; in
-the daylight there was a general atmosphere of respect for its
-multifarious prohibitions.
-
-And here perhaps I may give a few general facts about the island and
-the Beast People. The island, which was of irregular outline and lay
-low upon the wide sea, had a total area, I suppose, of seven or eight
-square miles.[2] It was volcanic in origin, and was now fringed on
-three sides by coral reefs; some fumaroles to the northward, and a hot
-spring, were the only vestiges of the forces that had long since
-originated it. Now and then a faint quiver of earthquake would be
-sensible, and sometimes the ascent of the spire of smoke would be
-rendered tumultuous by gusts of steam; but that was all. The population
-of the island, Montgomery informed me, now numbered rather more than
-sixty of these strange creations of Moreau’s art, not counting the
-smaller monstrosities which lived in the undergrowth and were without
-human form. Altogether he had made nearly a hundred and twenty; but
-many had died, and others—like the writhing Footless Thing of which he
-had told me—had come by violent ends. In answer to my question,
-Montgomery said that they actually bore offspring, but that these
-generally died. When they lived, Moreau took them and stamped the human
-form upon them. There was no evidence of the inheritance of their
-acquired human characteristics. The females were less numerous than the
-males, and liable to much furtive persecution in spite of the monogamy
-the Law enjoined.
-
- [2]This description corresponds in every respect to Noble’s Isle.—C.
- E. P.
-
-
-It would be impossible for me to describe these Beast People in detail;
-my eye has had no training in details, and unhappily I cannot sketch.
-Most striking, perhaps, in their general appearance was the
-disproportion between the legs of these creatures and the length of
-their bodies; and yet—so relative is our idea of grace—my eye became
-habituated to their forms, and at last I even fell in with their
-persuasion that my own long thighs were ungainly. Another point was the
-forward carriage of the head and the clumsy and inhuman curvature of
-the spine. Even the Ape-man lacked that inward sinuous curve of the
-back which makes the human figure so graceful. Most had their shoulders
-hunched clumsily, and their short forearms hung weakly at their sides.
-Few of them were conspicuously hairy, at least until the end of my time
-upon the island.
-
-The next most obvious deformity was in their faces, almost all of which
-were prognathous, malformed about the ears, with large and protuberant
-noses, very furry or very bristly hair, and often strangely-coloured or
-strangely-placed eyes. None could laugh, though the Ape-man had a
-chattering titter. Beyond these general characters their heads had
-little in common; each preserved the quality of its particular species:
-the human mark distorted but did not hide the leopard, the ox, or the
-sow, or other animal or animals, from which the creature had been
-moulded. The voices, too, varied exceedingly. The hands were always
-malformed; and though some surprised me by their unexpected human
-appearance, almost all were deficient in the number of the digits,
-clumsy about the finger-nails, and lacking any tactile sensibility.
-
-The two most formidable Animal Men were my Leopard-man and a creature
-made of hyena and swine. Larger than these were the three
-bull-creatures who pulled in the boat. Then came the silvery-hairy-man,
-who was also the Sayer of the Law, M’ling, and a satyr-like creature of
-ape and goat. There were three Swine-men and a Swine-woman, a
-mare-rhinoceros-creature, and several other females whose sources I did
-not ascertain. There were several wolf-creatures, a bear-bull, and a
-Saint-Bernard-man. I have already described the Ape-man, and there was
-a particularly hateful (and evil-smelling) old woman made of vixen and
-bear, whom I hated from the beginning. She was said to be a passionate
-votary of the Law. Smaller creatures were certain dappled youths and my
-little sloth-creature. But enough of this catalogue.
-
-At first I had a shivering horror of the brutes, felt all too keenly
-that they were still brutes; but insensibly I became a little
-habituated to the idea of them, and moreover I was affected by
-Montgomery’s attitude towards them. He had been with them so long that
-he had come to regard them as almost normal human beings. His London
-days seemed a glorious, impossible past to him. Only once in a year or
-so did he go to Africa to deal with Moreau’s agent, a trader in animals
-there. He hardly met the finest type of mankind in that seafaring
-village of Spanish mongrels. The men aboard-ship, he told me, seemed at
-first just as strange to him as the Beast Men seemed to me,—unnaturally
-long in the leg, flat in the face, prominent in the forehead,
-suspicious, dangerous, and cold-hearted. In fact, he did not like men:
-his heart had warmed to me, he thought, because he had saved my life. I
-fancied even then that he had a sneaking kindness for some of these
-metamorphosed brutes, a vicious sympathy with some of their ways, but
-that he attempted to veil it from me at first.
-
-M’ling, the black-faced man, Montgomery’s attendant, the first of the
-Beast Folk I had encountered, did not live with the others across the
-island, but in a small kennel at the back of the enclosure. The
-creature was scarcely so intelligent as the Ape-man, but far more
-docile, and the most human-looking of all the Beast Folk; and
-Montgomery had trained it to prepare food, and indeed to discharge all
-the trivial domestic offices that were required. It was a complex
-trophy of Moreau’s horrible skill,—a bear, tainted with dog and ox, and
-one of the most elaborately made of all his creatures. It treated
-Montgomery with a strange tenderness and devotion. Sometimes he would
-notice it, pat it, call it half-mocking, half-jocular names, and so
-make it caper with extraordinary delight; sometimes he would ill-treat
-it, especially after he had been at the whiskey, kicking it, beating
-it, pelting it with stones or lighted fusees. But whether he treated it
-well or ill, it loved nothing so much as to be near him.
-
-I say I became habituated to the Beast People, that a thousand things
-which had seemed unnatural and repulsive speedily became natural and
-ordinary to me. I suppose everything in existence takes its colour from
-the average hue of our surroundings. Montgomery and Moreau were too
-peculiar and individual to keep my general impressions of humanity well
-defined. I would see one of the clumsy bovine-creatures who worked the
-launch treading heavily through the undergrowth, and find myself
-asking, trying hard to recall, how he differed from some really human
-yokel trudging home from his mechanical labours; or I would meet the
-Fox-bear woman’s vulpine, shifty face, strangely human in its
-speculative cunning, and even imagine I had met it before in some city
-byway.
-
-Yet every now and then the beast would flash out upon me beyond doubt
-or denial. An ugly-looking man, a hunch-backed human savage to all
-appearance, squatting in the aperture of one of the dens, would stretch
-his arms and yawn, showing with startling suddenness scissor-edged
-incisors and sabre-like canines, keen and brilliant as knives. Or in
-some narrow pathway, glancing with a transitory daring into the eyes of
-some lithe, white-swathed female figure, I would suddenly see (with a
-spasmodic revulsion) that she had slit-like pupils, or glancing down
-note the curving nail with which she held her shapeless wrap about her.
-It is a curious thing, by the bye, for which I am quite unable to
-account, that these weird creatures—the females, I mean—had in the
-earlier days of my stay an instinctive sense of their own repulsive
-clumsiness, and displayed in consequence a more than human regard for
-the decency and decorum of extensive costume.
-
-
-
-
-XVI.
-HOW THE BEAST FOLK TASTE BLOOD.
-
-
-My inexperience as a writer betrays me, and I wander from the thread of
-my story.
-
-After I had breakfasted with Montgomery, he took me across the island
-to see the fumarole and the source of the hot spring into whose
-scalding waters I had blundered on the previous day. Both of us carried
-whips and loaded revolvers. While going through a leafy jungle on our
-road thither, we heard a rabbit squealing. We stopped and listened, but
-we heard no more; and presently we went on our way, and the incident
-dropped out of our minds. Montgomery called my attention to certain
-little pink animals with long hind-legs, that went leaping through the
-undergrowth. He told me they were creatures made of the offspring of
-the Beast People, that Moreau had invented. He had fancied they might
-serve for meat, but a rabbit-like habit of devouring their young had
-defeated this intention. I had already encountered some of these
-creatures,—once during my moonlight flight from the Leopard-man, and
-once during my pursuit by Moreau on the previous day. By chance, one
-hopping to avoid us leapt into the hole caused by the uprooting of a
-wind-blown tree; before it could extricate itself we managed to catch
-it. It spat like a cat, scratched and kicked vigorously with its
-hind-legs, and made an attempt to bite; but its teeth were too feeble
-to inflict more than a painless pinch. It seemed to me rather a pretty
-little creature; and as Montgomery stated that it never destroyed the
-turf by burrowing, and was very cleanly in its habits, I should imagine
-it might prove a convenient substitute for the common rabbit in
-gentlemen’s parks.
-
-We also saw on our way the trunk of a tree barked in long strips and
-splintered deeply. Montgomery called my attention to this. “Not to claw
-bark of trees, _that_ is the Law,” he said. “Much some of them care for
-it!” It was after this, I think, that we met the Satyr and the Ape-man.
-The Satyr was a gleam of classical memory on the part of Moreau,—his
-face ovine in expression, like the coarser Hebrew type; his voice a
-harsh bleat, his nether extremities Satanic. He was gnawing the husk of
-a pod-like fruit as he passed us. Both of them saluted Montgomery.
-
-“Hail,” said they, “to the Other with the Whip!”
-
-“There’s a Third with a Whip now,” said Montgomery. “So you’d better
-mind!”
-
-“Was he not made?” said the Ape-man. “He said—he said he was made.”
-
-The Satyr-man looked curiously at me. “The Third with the Whip, he that
-walks weeping into the sea, has a thin white face.”
-
-“He has a thin long whip,” said Montgomery.
-
-“Yesterday he bled and wept,” said the Satyr. “You never bleed nor
-weep. The Master does not bleed or weep.”
-
-“Ollendorffian beggar!” said Montgomery, “you’ll bleed and weep if you
-don’t look out!”
-
-“He has five fingers, he is a five-man like me,” said the Ape-man.
-
-“Come along, Prendick,” said Montgomery, taking my arm; and I went on
-with him.
-
-The Satyr and the Ape-man stood watching us and making other remarks to
-each other.
-
-“He says nothing,” said the Satyr. “Men have voices.”
-
-“Yesterday he asked me of things to eat,” said the Ape-man. “He did not
-know.”
-
-Then they spoke inaudible things, and I heard the Satyr laughing.
-
-It was on our way back that we came upon the dead rabbit. The red body
-of the wretched little beast was rent to pieces, many of the ribs
-stripped white, and the backbone indisputably gnawed.
-
-At that Montgomery stopped. “Good God!” said he, stooping down, and
-picking up some of the crushed vertebrae to examine them more closely.
-“Good God!” he repeated, “what can this mean?”
-
-“Some carnivore of yours has remembered its old habits,” I said after a
-pause. “This backbone has been bitten through.”
-
-He stood staring, with his face white and his lip pulled askew. “I
-don’t like this,” he said slowly.
-
-“I saw something of the same kind,” said I, “the first day I came
-here.”
-
-“The devil you did! What was it?”
-
-“A rabbit with its head twisted off.”
-
-“The day you came here?”
-
-“The day I came here. In the undergrowth at the back of the enclosure,
-when I went out in the evening. The head was completely wrung off.”
-
-He gave a long, low whistle.
-
-“And what is more, I have an idea which of your brutes did the thing.
-It’s only a suspicion, you know. Before I came on the rabbit I saw one
-of your monsters drinking in the stream.”
-
-“Sucking his drink?”
-
-“Yes.”
-
-“‘Not to suck your drink; that is the Law.’ Much the brutes care for
-the Law, eh? when Moreau’s not about!”
-
-“It was the brute who chased me.”
-
-“Of course,” said Montgomery; “it’s just the way with carnivores. After
-a kill, they drink. It’s the taste of blood, you know.—What was the
-brute like?” he continued. “Would you know him again?” He glanced about
-us, standing astride over the mess of dead rabbit, his eyes roving
-among the shadows and screens of greenery, the lurking-places and
-ambuscades of the forest that bounded us in. “The taste of blood,” he
-said again.
-
-He took out his revolver, examined the cartridges in it and replaced
-it. Then he began to pull at his dropping lip.
-
-“I think I should know the brute again,” I said. “I stunned him. He
-ought to have a handsome bruise on the forehead of him.”
-
-“But then we have to _prove_ that he killed the rabbit,” said
-Montgomery. “I wish I’d never brought the things here.”
-
-I should have gone on, but he stayed there thinking over the mangled
-rabbit in a puzzle-headed way. As it was, I went to such a distance
-that the rabbit’s remains were hidden.
-
-“Come on!” I said.
-
-Presently he woke up and came towards me. “You see,” he said, almost in
-a whisper, “they are all supposed to have a fixed idea against eating
-anything that runs on land. If some brute has by any accident tasted
-blood—”
-
-We went on some way in silence. “I wonder what can have happened,” he
-said to himself. Then, after a pause again: “I did a foolish thing the
-other day. That servant of mine—I showed him how to skin and cook a
-rabbit. It’s odd—I saw him licking his hands—It never occurred to me.”
-
-Then: “We must put a stop to this. I must tell Moreau.”
-
-He could think of nothing else on our homeward journey.
-
-Moreau took the matter even more seriously than Montgomery, and I need
-scarcely say that I was affected by their evident consternation.
-
-“We must make an example,” said Moreau. “I’ve no doubt in my own mind
-that the Leopard-man was the sinner. But how can we prove it? I wish,
-Montgomery, you had kept your taste for meat in hand, and gone without
-these exciting novelties. We may find ourselves in a mess yet, through
-it.”
-
-“I was a silly ass,” said Montgomery. “But the thing’s done now; and
-you said I might have them, you know.”
-
-“We must see to the thing at once,” said Moreau. “I suppose if anything
-should turn up, M’ling can take care of himself?”
-
-“I’m not so sure of M’ling,” said Montgomery. “I think I ought to know
-him.”
-
-In the afternoon, Moreau, Montgomery, myself, and M’ling went across
-the island to the huts in the ravine. We three were armed; M’ling
-carried the little hatchet he used in chopping firewood, and some coils
-of wire. Moreau had a huge cowherd’s horn slung over his shoulder.
-
-“You will see a gathering of the Beast People,” said Montgomery. “It is
-a pretty sight!”
-
-Moreau said not a word on the way, but the expression of his heavy,
-white-fringed face was grimly set.
-
-We crossed the ravine down which smoked the stream of hot water, and
-followed the winding pathway through the canebrakes until we reached a
-wide area covered over with a thick, powdery yellow substance which I
-believe was sulphur. Above the shoulder of a weedy bank the sea
-glittered. We came to a kind of shallow natural amphitheatre, and here
-the four of us halted. Then Moreau sounded the horn, and broke the
-sleeping stillness of the tropical afternoon. He must have had strong
-lungs. The hooting note rose and rose amidst its echoes, to at last an
-ear-penetrating intensity.
-
-“Ah!” said Moreau, letting the curved instrument fall to his side
-again.
-
-Immediately there was a crashing through the yellow canes, and a sound
-of voices from the dense green jungle that marked the morass through
-which I had run on the previous day. Then at three or four points on
-the edge of the sulphurous area appeared the grotesque forms of the
-Beast People hurrying towards us. I could not help a creeping horror,
-as I perceived first one and then another trot out from the trees or
-reeds and come shambling along over the hot dust. But Moreau and
-Montgomery stood calmly enough; and, perforce, I stuck beside them.
-
-First to arrive was the Satyr, strangely unreal for all that he cast a
-shadow and tossed the dust with his hoofs. After him from the brake
-came a monstrous lout, a thing of horse and rhinoceros, chewing a straw
-as it came; then appeared the Swine-woman and two Wolf-women; then the
-Fox-bear witch, with her red eyes in her peaked red face, and then
-others,—all hurrying eagerly. As they came forward they began to cringe
-towards Moreau and chant, quite regardless of one another, fragments of
-the latter half of the litany of the Law,—“His is the Hand that wounds;
-His is the Hand that heals,” and so forth. As soon as they had
-approached within a distance of perhaps thirty yards they halted, and
-bowing on knees and elbows began flinging the white dust upon their
-heads.
-
-Imagine the scene if you can! We three blue-clad men, with our
-misshapen black-faced attendant, standing in a wide expanse of sunlit
-yellow dust under the blazing blue sky, and surrounded by this circle
-of crouching and gesticulating monstrosities,—some almost human save in
-their subtle expression and gestures, some like cripples, some so
-strangely distorted as to resemble nothing but the denizens of our
-wildest dreams; and, beyond, the reedy lines of a canebrake in one
-direction, a dense tangle of palm-trees on the other, separating us
-from the ravine with the huts, and to the north the hazy horizon of the
-Pacific Ocean.
-
-“Sixty-two, sixty-three,” counted Moreau. “There are four more.”
-
-“I do not see the Leopard-man,” said I.
-
-Presently Moreau sounded the great horn again, and at the sound of it
-all the Beast People writhed and grovelled in the dust. Then, slinking
-out of the canebrake, stooping near the ground and trying to join the
-dust-throwing circle behind Moreau’s back, came the Leopard-man. The
-last of the Beast People to arrive was the little Ape-man. The earlier
-animals, hot and weary with their grovelling, shot vicious glances at
-him.
-
-“Cease!” said Moreau, in his firm, loud voice; and the Beast People sat
-back upon their hams and rested from their worshipping.
-
-“Where is the Sayer of the Law?” said Moreau, and the hairy-grey
-monster bowed his face in the dust.
-
-“Say the words!” said Moreau.
-
-Forthwith all in the kneeling assembly, swaying from side to side and
-dashing up the sulphur with their hands,—first the right hand and a
-puff of dust, and then the left,—began once more to chant their strange
-litany. When they reached, “Not to eat Flesh or Fish, that is the Law,”
-Moreau held up his lank white hand.
-
-“Stop!” he cried, and there fell absolute silence upon them all.
-
-I think they all knew and dreaded what was coming. I looked round at
-their strange faces. When I saw their wincing attitudes and the furtive
-dread in their bright eyes, I wondered that I had ever believed them to
-be men.
-
-“That Law has been broken!” said Moreau.
-
-“None escape,” from the faceless creature with the silvery hair. “None
-escape,” repeated the kneeling circle of Beast People.
-
-“Who is he?” cried Moreau, and looked round at their faces, cracking
-his whip. I fancied the Hyena-swine looked dejected, so too did the
-Leopard-man. Moreau stopped, facing this creature, who cringed towards
-him with the memory and dread of infinite torment.
-
-“Who is he?” repeated Moreau, in a voice of thunder.
-
-“Evil is he who breaks the Law,” chanted the Sayer of the Law.
-
-Moreau looked into the eyes of the Leopard-man, and seemed to be
-dragging the very soul out of the creature.
-
-“Who breaks the Law—” said Moreau, taking his eyes off his victim, and
-turning towards us (it seemed to me there was a touch of exultation in
-his voice).
-
-“Goes back to the House of Pain,” they all clamoured,—“goes back to the
-House of Pain, O Master!”
-
-“Back to the House of Pain,—back to the House of Pain,” gabbled the
-Ape-man, as though the idea was sweet to him.
-
-“Do you hear?” said Moreau, turning back to the criminal, “my
-friend—Hullo!”
-
-For the Leopard-man, released from Moreau’s eye, had risen straight
-from his knees, and now, with eyes aflame and his huge feline tusks
-flashing out from under his curling lips, leapt towards his tormentor.
-I am convinced that only the madness of unendurable fear could have
-prompted this attack. The whole circle of threescore monsters seemed to
-rise about us. I drew my revolver. The two figures collided. I saw
-Moreau reeling back from the Leopard-man’s blow. There was a furious
-yelling and howling all about us. Every one was moving rapidly. For a
-moment I thought it was a general revolt. The furious face of the
-Leopard-man flashed by mine, with M’ling close in pursuit. I saw the
-yellow eyes of the Hyena-swine blazing with excitement, his attitude as
-if he were half resolved to attack me. The Satyr, too, glared at me
-over the Hyena-swine’s hunched shoulders. I heard the crack of Moreau’s
-pistol, and saw the pink flash dart across the tumult. The whole crowd
-seemed to swing round in the direction of the glint of fire, and I too
-was swung round by the magnetism of the movement. In another second I
-was running, one of a tumultuous shouting crowd, in pursuit of the
-escaping Leopard-man.
-
-That is all I can tell definitely. I saw the Leopard-man strike Moreau,
-and then everything spun about me until I was running headlong. M’ling
-was ahead, close in pursuit of the fugitive. Behind, their tongues
-already lolling out, ran the Wolf-women in great leaping strides. The
-Swine folk followed, squealing with excitement, and the two Bull-men in
-their swathings of white. Then came Moreau in a cluster of the Beast
-People, his wide-brimmed straw hat blown off, his revolver in hand, and
-his lank white hair streaming out. The Hyena-swine ran beside me,
-keeping pace with me and glancing furtively at me out of his feline
-eyes, and the others came pattering and shouting behind us.
-
-The Leopard-man went bursting his way through the long canes, which
-sprang back as he passed, and rattled in M’ling’s face. We others in
-the rear found a trampled path for us when we reached the brake. The
-chase lay through the brake for perhaps a quarter of a mile, and then
-plunged into a dense thicket, which retarded our movements exceedingly,
-though we went through it in a crowd together,—fronds flicking into our
-faces, ropy creepers catching us under the chin or gripping our ankles,
-thorny plants hooking into and tearing cloth and flesh together.
-
-“He has gone on all-fours through this,” panted Moreau, now just ahead
-of me.
-
-“None escape,” said the Wolf-bear, laughing into my face with the
-exultation of hunting. We burst out again among rocks, and saw the
-quarry ahead running lightly on all-fours and snarling at us over his
-shoulder. At that the Wolf Folk howled with delight. The Thing was
-still clothed, and at a distance its face still seemed human; but the
-carriage of its four limbs was feline, and the furtive droop of its
-shoulder was distinctly that of a hunted animal. It leapt over some
-thorny yellow-flowering bushes, and was hidden. M’ling was halfway
-across the space.
-
-Most of us now had lost the first speed of the chase, and had fallen
-into a longer and steadier stride. I saw as we traversed the open that
-the pursuit was now spreading from a column into a line. The
-Hyena-swine still ran close to me, watching me as it ran, every now and
-then puckering its muzzle with a snarling laugh. At the edge of the
-rocks the Leopard-man, realising that he was making for the projecting
-cape upon which he had stalked me on the night of my arrival, had
-doubled in the undergrowth; but Montgomery had seen the manoeuvre, and
-turned him again. So, panting, tumbling against rocks, torn by
-brambles, impeded by ferns and reeds, I helped to pursue the
-Leopard-man who had broken the Law, and the Hyena-swine ran, laughing
-savagely, by my side. I staggered on, my head reeling and my heart
-beating against my ribs, tired almost to death, and yet not daring to
-lose sight of the chase lest I should be left alone with this horrible
-companion. I staggered on in spite of infinite fatigue and the dense
-heat of the tropical afternoon.
-
-At last the fury of the hunt slackened. We had pinned the wretched
-brute into a corner of the island. Moreau, whip in hand, marshalled us
-all into an irregular line, and we advanced now slowly, shouting to one
-another as we advanced and tightening the cordon about our victim. He
-lurked noiseless and invisible in the bushes through which I had run
-from him during that midnight pursuit.
-
-“Steady!” cried Moreau, “steady!” as the ends of the line crept round
-the tangle of undergrowth and hemmed the brute in.
-
-“Ware a rush!” came the voice of Montgomery from beyond the thicket.
-
-I was on the slope above the bushes; Montgomery and Moreau beat along
-the beach beneath. Slowly we pushed in among the fretted network of
-branches and leaves. The quarry was silent.
-
-“Back to the House of Pain, the House of Pain, the House of Pain!”
-yelped the voice of the Ape-man, some twenty yards to the right.
-
-When I heard that, I forgave the poor wretch all the fear he had
-inspired in me. I heard the twigs snap and the boughs swish aside
-before the heavy tread of the Horse-rhinoceros upon my right. Then
-suddenly through a polygon of green, in the half darkness under the
-luxuriant growth, I saw the creature we were hunting. I halted. He was
-crouched together into the smallest possible compass, his luminous
-green eyes turned over his shoulder regarding me.
-
-It may seem a strange contradiction in me,—I cannot explain the
-fact,—but now, seeing the creature there in a perfectly animal
-attitude, with the light gleaming in its eyes and its imperfectly human
-face distorted with terror, I realised again the fact of its humanity.
-In another moment other of its pursuers would see it, and it would be
-overpowered and captured, to experience once more the horrible tortures
-of the enclosure. Abruptly I slipped out my revolver, aimed between its
-terror-struck eyes, and fired. As I did so, the Hyena-swine saw the
-Thing, and flung itself upon it with an eager cry, thrusting thirsty
-teeth into its neck. All about me the green masses of the thicket were
-swaying and cracking as the Beast People came rushing together. One
-face and then another appeared.
-
-“Don’t kill it, Prendick!” cried Moreau. “Don’t kill it!” and I saw him
-stooping as he pushed through under the fronds of the big ferns.
-
-In another moment he had beaten off the Hyena-swine with the handle of
-his whip, and he and Montgomery were keeping away the excited
-carnivorous Beast People, and particularly M’ling, from the still
-quivering body. The hairy-grey Thing came sniffing at the corpse under
-my arm. The other animals, in their animal ardour, jostled me to get a
-nearer view.
-
-“Confound you, Prendick!” said Moreau. “I wanted him.”
-
-“I’m sorry,” said I, though I was not. “It was the impulse of the
-moment.” I felt sick with exertion and excitement. Turning, I pushed my
-way out of the crowding Beast People and went on alone up the slope
-towards the higher part of the headland. Under the shouted directions
-of Moreau I heard the three white-swathed Bull-men begin dragging the
-victim down towards the water.
-
-It was easy now for me to be alone. The Beast People manifested a quite
-human curiosity about the dead body, and followed it in a thick knot,
-sniffing and growling at it as the Bull-men dragged it down the beach.
-I went to the headland and watched the bull-men, black against the
-evening sky as they carried the weighted dead body out to sea; and like
-a wave across my mind came the realisation of the unspeakable
-aimlessness of things upon the island. Upon the beach among the rocks
-beneath me were the Ape-man, the Hyena-swine, and several other of the
-Beast People, standing about Montgomery and Moreau. They were all still
-intensely excited, and all overflowing with noisy expressions of their
-loyalty to the Law; yet I felt an absolute assurance in my own mind
-that the Hyena-swine was implicated in the rabbit-killing. A strange
-persuasion came upon me, that, save for the grossness of the line, the
-grotesqueness of the forms, I had here before me the whole balance of
-human life in miniature, the whole interplay of instinct, reason, and
-fate in its simplest form. The Leopard-man had happened to go under:
-that was all the difference. Poor brute!
-
-Poor brutes! I began to see the viler aspect of Moreau’s cruelty. I had
-not thought before of the pain and trouble that came to these poor
-victims after they had passed from Moreau’s hands. I had shivered only
-at the days of actual torment in the enclosure. But now that seemed to
-me the lesser part. Before, they had been beasts, their instincts fitly
-adapted to their surroundings, and happy as living things may be. Now
-they stumbled in the shackles of humanity, lived in a fear that never
-died, fretted by a law they could not understand; their mock-human
-existence, begun in an agony, was one long internal struggle, one long
-dread of Moreau—and for what? It was the wantonness of it that stirred
-me.
-
-Had Moreau had any intelligible object, I could have sympathised at
-least a little with him. I am not so squeamish about pain as that. I
-could have forgiven him a little even, had his motive been only hate.
-But he was so irresponsible, so utterly careless! His curiosity, his
-mad, aimless investigations, drove him on; and the Things were thrown
-out to live a year or so, to struggle and blunder and suffer, and at
-last to die painfully. They were wretched in themselves; the old animal
-hate moved them to trouble one another; the Law held them back from a
-brief hot struggle and a decisive end to their natural animosities.
-
-In those days my fear of the Beast People went the way of my personal
-fear for Moreau. I fell indeed into a morbid state, deep and enduring,
-and alien to fear, which has left permanent scars upon my mind. I must
-confess that I lost faith in the sanity of the world when I saw it
-suffering the painful disorder of this island. A blind Fate, a vast
-pitiless mechanism, seemed to cut and shape the fabric of existence and
-I, Moreau (by his passion for research), Montgomery (by his passion for
-drink), the Beast People with their instincts and mental restrictions,
-were torn and crushed, ruthlessly, inevitably, amid the infinite
-complexity of its incessant wheels. But this condition did not come all
-at once: I think indeed that I anticipate a little in speaking of it
-now.
-
-
-
-
-XVII.
-A CATASTROPHE.
-
-
-Scarcely six weeks passed before I had lost every feeling but dislike
-and abhorrence for this infamous experiment of Moreau’s. My one idea
-was to get away from these horrible caricatures of my Maker’s image,
-back to the sweet and wholesome intercourse of men. My
-fellow-creatures, from whom I was thus separated, began to assume
-idyllic virtue and beauty in my memory. My first friendship with
-Montgomery did not increase. His long separation from humanity, his
-secret vice of drunkenness, his evident sympathy with the Beast People,
-tainted him to me. Several times I let him go alone among them. I
-avoided intercourse with them in every possible way. I spent an
-increasing proportion of my time upon the beach, looking for some
-liberating sail that never appeared,—until one day there fell upon us
-an appalling disaster, which put an altogether different aspect upon my
-strange surroundings.
-
-It was about seven or eight weeks after my landing,—rather more, I
-think, though I had not troubled to keep account of the time,—when this
-catastrophe occurred. It happened in the early morning—I should think
-about six. I had risen and breakfasted early, having been aroused by
-the noise of three Beast Men carrying wood into the enclosure.
-
-After breakfast I went to the open gateway of the enclosure, and stood
-there smoking a cigarette and enjoying the freshness of the early
-morning. Moreau presently came round the corner of the enclosure and
-greeted me. He passed by me, and I heard him behind me unlock and enter
-his laboratory. So indurated was I at that time to the abomination of
-the place, that I heard without a touch of emotion the puma victim
-begin another day of torture. It met its persecutor with a shriek,
-almost exactly like that of an angry virago.
-
-Then suddenly something happened,—I do not know what, to this day. I
-heard a short, sharp cry behind me, a fall, and turning saw an awful
-face rushing upon me,—not human, not animal, but hellish, brown, seamed
-with red branching scars, red drops starting out upon it, and the
-lidless eyes ablaze. I threw up my arm to defend myself from the blow
-that flung me headlong with a broken forearm; and the great monster,
-swathed in lint and with red-stained bandages fluttering about it,
-leapt over me and passed. I rolled over and over down the beach, tried
-to sit up, and collapsed upon my broken arm. Then Moreau appeared, his
-massive white face all the more terrible for the blood that trickled
-from his forehead. He carried a revolver in one hand. He scarcely
-glanced at me, but rushed off at once in pursuit of the puma.
-
-I tried the other arm and sat up. The muffled figure in front ran in
-great striding leaps along the beach, and Moreau followed her. She
-turned her head and saw him, then doubling abruptly made for the
-bushes. She gained upon him at every stride. I saw her plunge into
-them, and Moreau, running slantingly to intercept her, fired and missed
-as she disappeared. Then he too vanished in the green confusion. I
-stared after them, and then the pain in my arm flamed up, and with a
-groan I staggered to my feet. Montgomery appeared in the doorway,
-dressed, and with his revolver in his hand.
-
-“Great God, Prendick!” he said, not noticing that I was hurt, “that
-brute’s loose! Tore the fetter out of the wall! Have you seen them?”
-Then sharply, seeing I gripped my arm, “What’s the matter?”
-
-“I was standing in the doorway,” said I.
-
-He came forward and took my arm. “Blood on the sleeve,” said he, and
-rolled back the flannel. He pocketed his weapon, felt my arm about
-painfully, and led me inside. “Your arm is broken,” he said, and then,
-“Tell me exactly how it happened—what happened?”
-
-I told him what I had seen; told him in broken sentences, with gasps of
-pain between them, and very dexterously and swiftly he bound my arm
-meanwhile. He slung it from my shoulder, stood back and looked at me.
-
-“You’ll do,” he said. “And now?”
-
-He thought. Then he went out and locked the gates of the enclosure. He
-was absent some time.
-
-I was chiefly concerned about my arm. The incident seemed merely one
-more of many horrible things. I sat down in the deck chair, and I must
-admit swore heartily at the island. The first dull feeling of injury in
-my arm had already given way to a burning pain when Montgomery
-reappeared. His face was rather pale, and he showed more of his lower
-gums than ever.
-
-“I can neither see nor hear anything of him,” he said. “I’ve been
-thinking he may want my help.” He stared at me with his expressionless
-eyes. “That was a strong brute,” he said. “It simply wrenched its
-fetter out of the wall.” He went to the window, then to the door, and
-there turned to me. “I shall go after him,” he said. “There’s another
-revolver I can leave with you. To tell you the truth, I feel anxious
-somehow.”
-
-He obtained the weapon, and put it ready to my hand on the table; then
-went out, leaving a restless contagion in the air. I did not sit long
-after he left, but took the revolver in hand and went to the doorway.
-
-The morning was as still as death. Not a whisper of wind was stirring;
-the sea was like polished glass, the sky empty, the beach desolate. In
-my half-excited, half-feverish state, this stillness of things
-oppressed me. I tried to whistle, and the tune died away. I swore
-again,—the second time that morning. Then I went to the corner of the
-enclosure and stared inland at the green bush that had swallowed up
-Moreau and Montgomery. When would they return, and how? Then far away
-up the beach a little grey Beast Man appeared, ran down to the water’s
-edge and began splashing about. I strolled back to the doorway, then to
-the corner again, and so began pacing to and fro like a sentinel upon
-duty. Once I was arrested by the distant voice of Montgomery bawling,
-“Coo-ee—Moreau!” My arm became less painful, but very hot. I got
-feverish and thirsty. My shadow grew shorter. I watched the distant
-figure until it went away again. Would Moreau and Montgomery never
-return? Three sea-birds began fighting for some stranded treasure.
-
-Then from far away behind the enclosure I heard a pistol-shot. A long
-silence, and then came another. Then a yelling cry nearer, and another
-dismal gap of silence. My unfortunate imagination set to work to
-torment me. Then suddenly a shot close by. I went to the corner,
-startled, and saw Montgomery,—his face scarlet, his hair disordered,
-and the knee of his trousers torn. His face expressed profound
-consternation. Behind him slouched the Beast Man, M’ling, and round
-M’ling’s jaws were some queer dark stains.
-
-“Has he come?” said Montgomery.
-
-“Moreau?” said I. “No.”
-
-“My God!” The man was panting, almost sobbing. “Go back in,” he said,
-taking my arm. “They’re mad. They’re all rushing about mad. What can
-have happened? I don’t know. I’ll tell you, when my breath comes.
-Where’s some brandy?”
-
-Montgomery limped before me into the room and sat down in the deck
-chair. M’ling flung himself down just outside the doorway and began
-panting like a dog. I got Montgomery some brandy-and-water. He sat
-staring in front of him at nothing, recovering his breath. After some
-minutes he began to tell me what had happened.
-
-He had followed their track for some way. It was plain enough at first
-on account of the crushed and broken bushes, white rags torn from the
-puma’s bandages, and occasional smears of blood on the leaves of the
-shrubs and undergrowth. He lost the track, however, on the stony ground
-beyond the stream where I had seen the Beast Man drinking, and went
-wandering aimlessly westward shouting Moreau’s name. Then M’ling had
-come to him carrying a light hatchet. M’ling had seen nothing of the
-puma affair; had been felling wood, and heard him calling. They went on
-shouting together. Two Beast Men came crouching and peering at them
-through the undergrowth, with gestures and a furtive carriage that
-alarmed Montgomery by their strangeness. He hailed them, and they fled
-guiltily. He stopped shouting after that, and after wandering some time
-farther in an undecided way, determined to visit the huts.
-
-He found the ravine deserted.
-
-Growing more alarmed every minute, he began to retrace his steps. Then
-it was he encountered the two Swine-men I had seen dancing on the night
-of my arrival; blood-stained they were about the mouth, and intensely
-excited. They came crashing through the ferns, and stopped with fierce
-faces when they saw him. He cracked his whip in some trepidation, and
-forthwith they rushed at him. Never before had a Beast Man dared to do
-that. One he shot through the head; M’ling flung himself upon the
-other, and the two rolled grappling. M’ling got his brute under and
-with his teeth in its throat, and Montgomery shot that too as it
-struggled in M’ling’s grip. He had some difficulty in inducing M’ling
-to come on with him. Thence they had hurried back to me. On the way,
-M’ling had suddenly rushed into a thicket and driven out an under-sized
-Ocelot-man, also blood-stained, and lame through a wound in the foot.
-This brute had run a little way and then turned savagely at bay, and
-Montgomery—with a certain wantonness, I thought—had shot him.
-
-“What does it all mean?” said I.
-
-He shook his head, and turned once more to the brandy.
-
-
-
-
-XVIII.
-THE FINDING OF MOREAU.
-
-
-When I saw Montgomery swallow a third dose of brandy, I took it upon
-myself to interfere. He was already more than half fuddled. I told him
-that some serious thing must have happened to Moreau by this time, or
-he would have returned before this, and that it behoved us to ascertain
-what that catastrophe was. Montgomery raised some feeble objections,
-and at last agreed. We had some food, and then all three of us started.
-
-It is possibly due to the tension of my mind, at the time, but even now
-that start into the hot stillness of the tropical afternoon is a
-singularly vivid impression. M’ling went first, his shoulder hunched,
-his strange black head moving with quick starts as he peered first on
-this side of the way and then on that. He was unarmed; his axe he had
-dropped when he encountered the Swine-man. Teeth were _his_ weapons,
-when it came to fighting. Montgomery followed with stumbling footsteps,
-his hands in his pockets, his face downcast; he was in a state of
-muddled sullenness with me on account of the brandy. My left arm was in
-a sling (it was lucky it was my left), and I carried my revolver in my
-right. Soon we traced a narrow path through the wild luxuriance of the
-island, going northwestward; and presently M’ling stopped, and became
-rigid with watchfulness. Montgomery almost staggered into him, and then
-stopped too. Then, listening intently, we heard coming through the
-trees the sound of voices and footsteps approaching us.
-
-“He is dead,” said a deep, vibrating voice.
-
-“He is not dead; he is not dead,” jabbered another.
-
-“We saw, we saw,” said several voices.
-
-“_Hul_-lo!” suddenly shouted Montgomery, “Hullo, there!”
-
-“Confound you!” said I, and gripped my pistol.
-
-There was a silence, then a crashing among the interlacing vegetation,
-first here, then there, and then half-a-dozen faces appeared,—strange
-faces, lit by a strange light. M’ling made a growling noise in his
-throat. I recognised the Ape-man: I had indeed already identified his
-voice, and two of the white-swathed brown-featured creatures I had seen
-in Montgomery’s boat. With these were the two dappled brutes and that
-grey, horribly crooked creature who said the Law, with grey hair
-streaming down its cheeks, heavy grey eyebrows, and grey locks pouring
-off from a central parting upon its sloping forehead,—a heavy, faceless
-thing, with strange red eyes, looking at us curiously from amidst the
-green.
-
-For a space no one spoke. Then Montgomery hiccoughed, “Who—said he was
-dead?”
-
-The Monkey-man looked guiltily at the hairy-grey Thing. “He is dead,”
-said this monster. “They saw.”
-
-There was nothing threatening about this detachment, at any rate. They
-seemed awestricken and puzzled.
-
-“Where is he?” said Montgomery.
-
-“Beyond,” and the grey creature pointed.
-
-“Is there a Law now?” asked the Monkey-man. “Is it still to be this and
-that? Is he dead indeed?”
-
-“Is there a Law?” repeated the man in white. “Is there a Law, thou
-Other with the Whip?”
-
-“He is dead,” said the hairy-grey Thing. And they all stood watching
-us.
-
-“Prendick,” said Montgomery, turning his dull eyes to me. “He’s dead,
-evidently.”
-
-I had been standing behind him during this colloquy. I began to see how
-things lay with them. I suddenly stepped in front of Montgomery and
-lifted up my voice:—“Children of the Law,” I said, “he is _not_ dead!”
-M’ling turned his sharp eyes on me. “He has changed his shape; he has
-changed his body,” I went on. “For a time you will not see him. He
-is—there,” I pointed upward, “where he can watch you. You cannot see
-him, but he can see you. Fear the Law!”
-
-I looked at them squarely. They flinched.
-
-“He is great, he is good,” said the Ape-man, peering fearfully upward
-among the dense trees.
-
-“And the other Thing?” I demanded.
-
-“The Thing that bled, and ran screaming and sobbing,—that is dead too,”
-said the grey Thing, still regarding me.
-
-“That’s well,” grunted Montgomery.
-
-“The Other with the Whip—” began the grey Thing.
-
-“Well?” said I.
-
-“Said he was dead.”
-
-But Montgomery was still sober enough to understand my motive in
-denying Moreau’s death. “He is not dead,” he said slowly, “not dead at
-all. No more dead than I am.”
-
-“Some,” said I, “have broken the Law: they will die. Some have died.
-Show us now where his old body lies,—the body he cast away because he
-had no more need of it.”
-
-“It is this way, Man who walked in the Sea,” said the grey Thing.
-
-And with these six creatures guiding us, we went through the tumult of
-ferns and creepers and tree-stems towards the northwest. Then came a
-yelling, a crashing among the branches, and a little pink homunculus
-rushed by us shrieking. Immediately after appeared a monster in
-headlong pursuit, blood-bedabbled, who was amongst us almost before he
-could stop his career. The grey Thing leapt aside. M’ling, with a
-snarl, flew at it, and was struck aside. Montgomery fired and missed,
-bowed his head, threw up his arm, and turned to run. I fired, and the
-Thing still came on; fired again, point-blank, into its ugly face. I
-saw its features vanish in a flash: its face was driven in. Yet it
-passed me, gripped Montgomery, and holding him, fell headlong beside
-him and pulled him sprawling upon itself in its death-agony.
-
-I found myself alone with M’ling, the dead brute, and the prostrate
-man. Montgomery raised himself slowly and stared in a muddled way at
-the shattered Beast Man beside him. It more than half sobered him. He
-scrambled to his feet. Then I saw the grey Thing returning cautiously
-through the trees.
-
-“See,” said I, pointing to the dead brute, “is the Law not alive? This
-came of breaking the Law.”
-
-He peered at the body. “He sends the Fire that kills,” said he, in his
-deep voice, repeating part of the Ritual. The others gathered round and
-stared for a space.
-
-At last we drew near the westward extremity of the island. We came upon
-the gnawed and mutilated body of the puma, its shoulder-bone smashed by
-a bullet, and perhaps twenty yards farther found at last what we
-sought. Moreau lay face downward in a trampled space in a canebrake.
-One hand was almost severed at the wrist and his silvery hair was
-dabbled in blood. His head had been battered in by the fetters of the
-puma. The broken canes beneath him were smeared with blood. His
-revolver we could not find. Montgomery turned him over. Resting at
-intervals, and with the help of the seven Beast People (for he was a
-heavy man), we carried Moreau back to the enclosure. The night was
-darkling. Twice we heard unseen creatures howling and shrieking past
-our little band, and once the little pink sloth-creature appeared and
-stared at us, and vanished again. But we were not attacked again. At
-the gates of the enclosure our company of Beast People left us, M’ling
-going with the rest. We locked ourselves in, and then took Moreau’s
-mangled body into the yard and laid it upon a pile of brushwood. Then
-we went into the laboratory and put an end to all we found living
-there.
-
-
-
-
-XIX.
-MONTGOMERY’S “BANK HOLIDAY.”
-
-
-When this was accomplished, and we had washed and eaten, Montgomery and
-I went into my little room and seriously discussed our position for the
-first time. It was then near midnight. He was almost sober, but greatly
-disturbed in his mind. He had been strangely under the influence of
-Moreau’s personality: I do not think it had ever occurred to him that
-Moreau could die. This disaster was the sudden collapse of the habits
-that had become part of his nature in the ten or more monotonous years
-he had spent on the island. He talked vaguely, answered my questions
-crookedly, wandered into general questions.
-
-“This silly ass of a world,” he said; “what a muddle it all is! I
-haven’t had any life. I wonder when it’s going to begin. Sixteen years
-being bullied by nurses and schoolmasters at their own sweet will; five
-in London grinding hard at medicine, bad food, shabby lodgings, shabby
-clothes, shabby vice, a blunder,—_I_ didn’t know any better,—and
-hustled off to this beastly island. Ten years here! What’s it all for,
-Prendick? Are we bubbles blown by a baby?”
-
-It was hard to deal with such ravings. “The thing we have to think of
-now,” said I, “is how to get away from this island.”
-
-“What’s the good of getting away? I’m an outcast. Where am _I_ to join
-on? It’s all very well for _you_, Prendick. Poor old Moreau! We can’t
-leave him here to have his bones picked. As it is—And besides, what
-will become of the decent part of the Beast Folk?”
-
-“Well,” said I, “that will do to-morrow. I’ve been thinking we might
-make the brushwood into a pyre and burn his body—and those other
-things. Then what will happen with the Beast Folk?”
-
-“_I_ don’t know. I suppose those that were made of beasts of prey will
-make silly asses of themselves sooner or later. We can’t massacre the
-lot—can we? I suppose that’s what _your_ humanity would suggest? But
-they’ll change. They are sure to change.”
-
-He talked thus inconclusively until at last I felt my temper going.
-
-“Damnation!” he exclaimed at some petulance of mine; “can’t you see I’m
-in a worse hole than you are?” And he got up, and went for the brandy.
-“Drink!” he said returning, “you logic-chopping, chalky-faced saint of
-an atheist, drink!”
-
-“Not I,” said I, and sat grimly watching his face under the yellow
-paraffine flare, as he drank himself into a garrulous misery.
-
-I have a memory of infinite tedium. He wandered into a maudlin defence
-of the Beast People and of M’ling. M’ling, he said, was the only thing
-that had ever really cared for him. And suddenly an idea came to him.
-
-“I’m damned!” said he, staggering to his feet and clutching the brandy
-bottle.
-
-By some flash of intuition I knew what it was he intended. “You don’t
-give drink to that beast!” I said, rising and facing him.
-
-“Beast!” said he. “You’re the beast. He takes his liquor like a
-Christian. Come out of the way, Prendick!”
-
-“For God’s sake,” said I.
-
-“Get—out of the way!” he roared, and suddenly whipped out his revolver.
-
-“Very well,” said I, and stood aside, half-minded to fall upon him as
-he put his hand upon the latch, but deterred by the thought of my
-useless arm. “You’ve made a beast of yourself,—to the beasts you may
-go.”
-
-He flung the doorway open, and stood half facing me between the yellow
-lamp-light and the pallid glare of the moon; his eye-sockets were
-blotches of black under his stubbly eyebrows.
-
-“You’re a solemn prig, Prendick, a silly ass! You’re always fearing and
-fancying. We’re on the edge of things. I’m bound to cut my throat
-to-morrow. I’m going to have a damned Bank Holiday to-night.” He turned
-and went out into the moonlight. “M’ling!” he cried; “M’ling, old
-friend!”
-
-Three dim creatures in the silvery light came along the edge of the wan
-beach,—one a white-wrapped creature, the other two blotches of
-blackness following it. They halted, staring. Then I saw M’ling’s
-hunched shoulders as he came round the corner of the house.
-
-“Drink!” cried Montgomery, “drink, you brutes! Drink and be men! Damme,
-I’m the cleverest. Moreau forgot this; this is the last touch. Drink, I
-tell you!” And waving the bottle in his hand he started off at a kind
-of quick trot to the westward, M’ling ranging himself between him and
-the three dim creatures who followed.
-
-I went to the doorway. They were already indistinct in the mist of the
-moonlight before Montgomery halted. I saw him administer a dose of the
-raw brandy to M’ling, and saw the five figures melt into one vague
-patch.
-
-“Sing!” I heard Montgomery shout,—“sing all together, ‘Confound old
-Prendick!’ That’s right; now again, ‘Confound old Prendick!’”
-
-The black group broke up into five separate figures, and wound slowly
-away from me along the band of shining beach. Each went howling at his
-own sweet will, yelping insults at me, or giving whatever other vent
-this new inspiration of brandy demanded. Presently I heard Montgomery’s
-voice shouting, “Right turn!” and they passed with their shouts and
-howls into the blackness of the landward trees. Slowly, very slowly,
-they receded into silence.
-
-The peaceful splendour of the night healed again. The moon was now past
-the meridian and travelling down the west. It was at its full, and very
-bright riding through the empty blue sky. The shadow of the wall lay, a
-yard wide and of inky blackness, at my feet. The eastward sea was a
-featureless grey, dark and mysterious; and between the sea and the
-shadow the grey sands (of volcanic glass and crystals) flashed and
-shone like a beach of diamonds. Behind me the paraffine lamp flared hot
-and ruddy.
-
-Then I shut the door, locked it, and went into the enclosure where
-Moreau lay beside his latest victims,—the staghounds and the llama and
-some other wretched brutes,—with his massive face calm even after his
-terrible death, and with the hard eyes open, staring at the dead white
-moon above. I sat down upon the edge of the sink, and with my eyes upon
-that ghastly pile of silvery light and ominous shadows began to turn
-over my plans. In the morning I would gather some provisions in the
-dingey, and after setting fire to the pyre before me, push out into the
-desolation of the high sea once more. I felt that for Montgomery there
-was no help; that he was, in truth, half akin to these Beast Folk,
-unfitted for human kindred.
-
-I do not know how long I sat there scheming. It must have been an hour
-or so. Then my planning was interrupted by the return of Montgomery to
-my neighbourhood. I heard a yelling from many throats, a tumult of
-exultant cries passing down towards the beach, whooping and howling,
-and excited shrieks that seemed to come to a stop near the water’s
-edge. The riot rose and fell; I heard heavy blows and the splintering
-smash of wood, but it did not trouble me then. A discordant chanting
-began.
-
-My thoughts went back to my means of escape. I got up, brought the
-lamp, and went into a shed to look at some kegs I had seen there. Then
-I became interested in the contents of some biscuit-tins, and opened
-one. I saw something out of the tail of my eye,—a red figure,—and
-turned sharply.
-
-Behind me lay the yard, vividly black-and-white in the moonlight, and
-the pile of wood and faggots on which Moreau and his mutilated victims
-lay, one over another. They seemed to be gripping one another in one
-last revengeful grapple. His wounds gaped, black as night, and the
-blood that had dripped lay in black patches upon the sand. Then I saw,
-without understanding, the cause of my phantom,—a ruddy glow that came
-and danced and went upon the wall opposite. I misinterpreted this,
-fancied it was a reflection of my flickering lamp, and turned again to
-the stores in the shed. I went on rummaging among them, as well as a
-one-armed man could, finding this convenient thing and that, and
-putting them aside for to-morrow’s launch. My movements were slow, and
-the time passed quickly. Insensibly the daylight crept upon me.
-
-The chanting died down, giving place to a clamour; then it began again,
-and suddenly broke into a tumult. I heard cries of, “More! more!” a
-sound like quarrelling, and a sudden wild shriek. The quality of the
-sounds changed so greatly that it arrested my attention. I went out
-into the yard and listened. Then cutting like a knife across the
-confusion came the crack of a revolver.
-
-I rushed at once through my room to the little doorway. As I did so I
-heard some of the packing-cases behind me go sliding down and smash
-together with a clatter of glass on the floor of the shed. But I did
-not heed these. I flung the door open and looked out.
-
-Up the beach by the boathouse a bonfire was burning, raining up sparks
-into the indistinctness of the dawn. Around this struggled a mass of
-black figures. I heard Montgomery call my name. I began to run at once
-towards this fire, revolver in hand. I saw the pink tongue of
-Montgomery’s pistol lick out once, close to the ground. He was down. I
-shouted with all my strength and fired into the air. I heard some one
-cry, “The Master!” The knotted black struggle broke into scattering
-units, the fire leapt and sank down. The crowd of Beast People fled in
-sudden panic before me, up the beach. In my excitement I fired at their
-retreating backs as they disappeared among the bushes. Then I turned to
-the black heaps upon the ground.
-
-Montgomery lay on his back, with the hairy-grey Beast-man sprawling
-across his body. The brute was dead, but still gripping Montgomery’s
-throat with its curving claws. Near by lay M’ling on his face and quite
-still, his neck bitten open and the upper part of the smashed
-brandy-bottle in his hand. Two other figures lay near the fire,—the one
-motionless, the other groaning fitfully, every now and then raising its
-head slowly, then dropping it again.
-
-I caught hold of the grey man and pulled him off Montgomery’s body; his
-claws drew down the torn coat reluctantly as I dragged him away.
-Montgomery was dark in the face and scarcely breathing. I splashed
-sea-water on his face and pillowed his head on my rolled-up coat.
-M’ling was dead. The wounded creature by the fire—it was a Wolf-brute
-with a bearded grey face—lay, I found, with the fore part of its body
-upon the still glowing timber. The wretched thing was injured so
-dreadfully that in mercy I blew its brains out at once. The other brute
-was one of the Bull-men swathed in white. He too was dead. The rest of
-the Beast People had vanished from the beach.
-
-I went to Montgomery again and knelt beside him, cursing my ignorance
-of medicine. The fire beside me had sunk down, and only charred beams
-of timber glowing at the central ends and mixed with a grey ash of
-brushwood remained. I wondered casually where Montgomery had got his
-wood. Then I saw that the dawn was upon us. The sky had grown brighter,
-the setting moon was becoming pale and opaque in the luminous blue of
-the day. The sky to the eastward was rimmed with red.
-
-Suddenly I heard a thud and a hissing behind me, and, looking round,
-sprang to my feet with a cry of horror. Against the warm dawn great
-tumultuous masses of black smoke were boiling up out of the enclosure,
-and through their stormy darkness shot flickering threads of blood-red
-flame. Then the thatched roof caught. I saw the curving charge of the
-flames across the sloping straw. A spurt of fire jetted from the window
-of my room.
-
-I knew at once what had happened. I remembered the crash I had heard.
-When I had rushed out to Montgomery’s assistance, I had overturned the
-lamp.
-
-The hopelessness of saving any of the contents of the enclosure stared
-me in the face. My mind came back to my plan of flight, and turning
-swiftly I looked to see where the two boats lay upon the beach. They
-were gone! Two axes lay upon the sands beside me; chips and splinters
-were scattered broadcast, and the ashes of the bonfire were blackening
-and smoking under the dawn. Montgomery had burnt the boats to revenge
-himself upon me and prevent our return to mankind!
-
-A sudden convulsion of rage shook me. I was almost moved to batter his
-foolish head in, as he lay there helpless at my feet. Then suddenly his
-hand moved, so feebly, so pitifully, that my wrath vanished. He
-groaned, and opened his eyes for a minute. I knelt down beside him and
-raised his head. He opened his eyes again, staring silently at the
-dawn, and then they met mine. The lids fell.
-
-“Sorry,” he said presently, with an effort. He seemed trying to think.
-“The last,” he murmured, “the last of this silly universe. What a
-mess—”
-
-I listened. His head fell helplessly to one side. I thought some drink
-might revive him; but there was neither drink nor vessel in which to
-bring drink at hand. He seemed suddenly heavier. My heart went cold. I
-bent down to his face, put my hand through the rent in his blouse. He
-was dead; and even as he died a line of white heat, the limb of the
-sun, rose eastward beyond the projection of the bay, splashing its
-radiance across the sky and turning the dark sea into a weltering
-tumult of dazzling light. It fell like a glory upon his death-shrunken
-face.
-
-I let his head fall gently upon the rough pillow I had made for him,
-and stood up. Before me was the glittering desolation of the sea, the
-awful solitude upon which I had already suffered so much; behind me the
-island, hushed under the dawn, its Beast People silent and unseen. The
-enclosure, with all its provisions and ammunition, burnt noisily, with
-sudden gusts of flame, a fitful crackling, and now and then a crash.
-The heavy smoke drove up the beach away from me, rolling low over the
-distant tree-tops towards the huts in the ravine. Beside me were the
-charred vestiges of the boats and these five dead bodies.
-
-Then out of the bushes came three Beast People, with hunched shoulders,
-protruding heads, misshapen hands awkwardly held, and inquisitive,
-unfriendly eyes and advanced towards me with hesitating gestures.
-
-
-
-
-XX.
-ALONE WITH THE BEAST FOLK.
-
-
-I faced these people, facing my fate in them, single-handed
-now,—literally single-handed, for I had a broken arm. In my pocket was
-a revolver with two empty chambers. Among the chips scattered about the
-beach lay the two axes that had been used to chop up the boats. The
-tide was creeping in behind me. There was nothing for it but courage. I
-looked squarely into the faces of the advancing monsters. They avoided
-my eyes, and their quivering nostrils investigated the bodies that lay
-beyond me on the beach. I took half-a-dozen steps, picked up the
-blood-stained whip that lay beneath the body of the Wolf-man, and
-cracked it. They stopped and stared at me.
-
-“Salute!” said I. “Bow down!”
-
-They hesitated. One bent his knees. I repeated my command, with my
-heart in my mouth, and advanced upon them. One knelt, then the other
-two.
-
-I turned and walked towards the dead bodies, keeping my face towards
-the three kneeling Beast Men, very much as an actor passing up the
-stage faces the audience.
-
-“They broke the Law,” said I, putting my foot on the Sayer of the Law.
-“They have been slain,—even the Sayer of the Law; even the Other with
-the Whip. Great is the Law! Come and see.”
-
-“None escape,” said one of them, advancing and peering.
-
-“None escape,” said I. “Therefore hear and do as I command.” They stood
-up, looking questioningly at one another.
-
-“Stand there,” said I.
-
-I picked up the hatchets and swung them by their heads from the sling
-of my arm; turned Montgomery over; picked up his revolver still loaded
-in two chambers, and bending down to rummage, found half-a-dozen
-cartridges in his pocket.
-
-“Take him,” said I, standing up again and pointing with the whip; “take
-him, and carry him out and cast him into the sea.”
-
-They came forward, evidently still afraid of Montgomery, but still more
-afraid of my cracking red whip-lash; and after some fumbling and
-hesitation, some whip-cracking and shouting, they lifted him gingerly,
-carried him down to the beach, and went splashing into the dazzling
-welter of the sea.
-
-“On!” said I, “on! Carry him far.”
-
-They went in up to their armpits and stood regarding me.
-
-“Let go,” said I; and the body of Montgomery vanished with a splash.
-Something seemed to tighten across my chest.
-
-“Good!” said I, with a break in my voice; and they came back, hurrying
-and fearful, to the margin of the water, leaving long wakes of black in
-the silver. At the water’s edge they stopped, turning and glaring into
-the sea as though they presently expected Montgomery to arise therefrom
-and exact vengeance.
-
-“Now these,” said I, pointing to the other bodies.
-
-They took care not to approach the place where they had thrown
-Montgomery into the water, but instead, carried the four dead Beast
-People slantingly along the beach for perhaps a hundred yards before
-they waded out and cast them away.
-
-As I watched them disposing of the mangled remains of M’ling, I heard a
-light footfall behind me, and turning quickly saw the big Hyena-swine
-perhaps a dozen yards away. His head was bent down, his bright eyes
-were fixed upon me, his stumpy hands clenched and held close by his
-side. He stopped in this crouching attitude when I turned, his eyes a
-little averted.
-
-For a moment we stood eye to eye. I dropped the whip and snatched at
-the pistol in my pocket; for I meant to kill this brute, the most
-formidable of any left now upon the island, at the first excuse. It may
-seem treacherous, but so I was resolved. I was far more afraid of him
-than of any other two of the Beast Folk. His continued life was I knew
-a threat against mine.
-
-I was perhaps a dozen seconds collecting myself. Then cried I, “Salute!
-Bow down!”
-
-His teeth flashed upon me in a snarl. “Who are _you_ that I should—”
-
-Perhaps a little too spasmodically I drew my revolver, aimed quickly
-and fired. I heard him yelp, saw him run sideways and turn, knew I had
-missed, and clicked back the cock with my thumb for the next shot. But
-he was already running headlong, jumping from side to side, and I dared
-not risk another miss. Every now and then he looked back at me over his
-shoulder. He went slanting along the beach, and vanished beneath the
-driving masses of dense smoke that were still pouring out from the
-burning enclosure. For some time I stood staring after him. I turned to
-my three obedient Beast Folk again and signalled them to drop the body
-they still carried. Then I went back to the place by the fire where the
-bodies had fallen and kicked the sand until all the brown blood-stains
-were absorbed and hidden.
-
-I dismissed my three serfs with a wave of the hand, and went up the
-beach into the thickets. I carried my pistol in my hand, my whip thrust
-with the hatchets in the sling of my arm. I was anxious to be alone, to
-think out the position in which I was now placed. A dreadful thing that
-I was only beginning to realise was, that over all this island there
-was now no safe place where I could be alone and secure to rest or
-sleep. I had recovered strength amazingly since my landing, but I was
-still inclined to be nervous and to break down under any great stress.
-I felt that I ought to cross the island and establish myself with the
-Beast People, and make myself secure in their confidence. But my heart
-failed me. I went back to the beach, and turning eastward past the
-burning enclosure, made for a point where a shallow spit of coral sand
-ran out towards the reef. Here I could sit down and think, my back to
-the sea and my face against any surprise. And there I sat, chin on
-knees, the sun beating down upon my head and unspeakable dread in my
-mind, plotting how I could live on against the hour of my rescue (if
-ever rescue came). I tried to review the whole situation as calmly as I
-could, but it was difficult to clear the thing of emotion.
-
-I began turning over in my mind the reason of Montgomery’s despair.
-“They will change,” he said; “they are sure to change.” And Moreau,
-what was it that Moreau had said? “The stubborn beast-flesh grows day
-by day back again.” Then I came round to the Hyena-swine. I felt sure
-that if I did not kill that brute, he would kill me. The Sayer of the
-Law was dead: worse luck. They knew now that we of the Whips could be
-killed even as they themselves were killed. Were they peering at me
-already out of the green masses of ferns and palms over yonder,
-watching until I came within their spring? Were they plotting against
-me? What was the Hyena-swine telling them? My imagination was running
-away with me into a morass of unsubstantial fears.
-
-My thoughts were disturbed by a crying of sea-birds hurrying towards
-some black object that had been stranded by the waves on the beach near
-the enclosure. I knew what that object was, but I had not the heart to
-go back and drive them off. I began walking along the beach in the
-opposite direction, designing to come round the eastward corner of the
-island and so approach the ravine of the huts, without traversing the
-possible ambuscades of the thickets.
-
-Perhaps half a mile along the beach I became aware of one of my three
-Beast Folk advancing out of the landward bushes towards me. I was now
-so nervous with my own imaginings that I immediately drew my revolver.
-Even the propitiatory gestures of the creature failed to disarm me. He
-hesitated as he approached.
-
-“Go away!” cried I.
-
-There was something very suggestive of a dog in the cringing attitude
-of the creature. It retreated a little way, very like a dog being sent
-home, and stopped, looking at me imploringly with canine brown eyes.
-
-“Go away,” said I. “Do not come near me.”
-
-“May I not come near you?” it said.
-
-“No; go away,” I insisted, and snapped my whip. Then putting my whip in
-my teeth, I stooped for a stone, and with that threat drove the
-creature away.
-
-So in solitude I came round by the ravine of the Beast People, and
-hiding among the weeds and reeds that separated this crevice from the
-sea I watched such of them as appeared, trying to judge from their
-gestures and appearance how the death of Moreau and Montgomery and the
-destruction of the House of Pain had affected them. I know now the
-folly of my cowardice. Had I kept my courage up to the level of the
-dawn, had I not allowed it to ebb away in solitary thought, I might
-have grasped the vacant sceptre of Moreau and ruled over the Beast
-People. As it was I lost the opportunity, and sank to the position of a
-mere leader among my fellows.
-
-Towards noon certain of them came and squatted basking in the hot sand.
-The imperious voices of hunger and thirst prevailed over my dread. I
-came out of the bushes, and, revolver in hand, walked down towards
-these seated figures. One, a Wolf-woman, turned her head and stared at
-me, and then the others. None attempted to rise or salute me. I felt
-too faint and weary to insist, and I let the moment pass.
-
-“I want food,” said I, almost apologetically, and drawing near.
-
-“There is food in the huts,” said an Ox-boar-man, drowsily, and looking
-away from me.
-
-I passed them, and went down into the shadow and odours of the almost
-deserted ravine. In an empty hut I feasted on some specked and
-half-decayed fruit; and then after I had propped some branches and
-sticks about the opening, and placed myself with my face towards it and
-my hand upon my revolver, the exhaustion of the last thirty hours
-claimed its own, and I fell into a light slumber, hoping that the
-flimsy barricade I had erected would cause sufficient noise in its
-removal to save me from surprise.
-
-
-
-
-XXI.
-THE REVERSION OF THE BEAST FOLK.
-
-
-In this way I became one among the Beast People in the Island of Doctor
-Moreau. When I awoke, it was dark about me. My arm ached in its
-bandages. I sat up, wondering at first where I might be. I heard coarse
-voices talking outside. Then I saw that my barricade had gone, and that
-the opening of the hut stood clear. My revolver was still in my hand.
-
-I heard something breathing, saw something crouched together close
-beside me. I held my breath, trying to see what it was. It began to
-move slowly, interminably. Then something soft and warm and moist
-passed across my hand. All my muscles contracted. I snatched my hand
-away. A cry of alarm began and was stifled in my throat. Then I just
-realised what had happened sufficiently to stay my fingers on the
-revolver.
-
-“Who is that?” I said in a hoarse whisper, the revolver still pointed.
-
-“_I_—Master.”
-
-“Who are _you?_”
-
-“They say there is no Master now. But I know, I know. I carried the
-bodies into the sea, O Walker in the Sea! the bodies of those you slew.
-I am your slave, Master.”
-
-“Are you the one I met on the beach?” I asked.
-
-“The same, Master.”
-
-The Thing was evidently faithful enough, for it might have fallen upon
-me as I slept. “It is well,” I said, extending my hand for another
-licking kiss. I began to realise what its presence meant, and the tide
-of my courage flowed. “Where are the others?” I asked.
-
-“They are mad; they are fools,” said the Dog-man. “Even now they talk
-together beyond there. They say, ‘The Master is dead. The Other with
-the Whip is dead. That Other who walked in the Sea is as we are. We
-have no Master, no Whips, no House of Pain, any more. There is an end.
-We love the Law, and will keep it; but there is no Pain, no Master, no
-Whips for ever again.’ So they say. But I know, Master, I know.”
-
-I felt in the darkness, and patted the Dog-man’s head. “It is well,” I
-said again.
-
-“Presently you will slay them all,” said the Dog-man.
-
-“Presently,” I answered, “I will slay them all,—after certain days and
-certain things have come to pass. Every one of them save those you
-spare, every one of them shall be slain.”
-
-“What the Master wishes to kill, the Master kills,” said the Dog-man
-with a certain satisfaction in his voice.
-
-“And that their sins may grow,” I said, “let them live in their folly
-until their time is ripe. Let them not know that I am the Master.”
-
-“The Master’s will is sweet,” said the Dog-man, with the ready tact of
-his canine blood.
-
-“But one has sinned,” said I. “Him I will kill, whenever I may meet
-him. When I say to you, ‘_That is he_,’ see that you fall upon him. And
-now I will go to the men and women who are assembled together.”
-
-For a moment the opening of the hut was blackened by the exit of the
-Dog-man. Then I followed and stood up, almost in the exact spot where I
-had been when I had heard Moreau and his staghound pursuing me. But now
-it was night, and all the miasmatic ravine about me was black; and
-beyond, instead of a green, sunlit slope, I saw a red fire, before
-which hunched, grotesque figures moved to and fro. Farther were the
-thick trees, a bank of darkness, fringed above with the black lace of
-the upper branches. The moon was just riding up on the edge of the
-ravine, and like a bar across its face drove the spire of vapour that
-was for ever streaming from the fumaroles of the island.
-
-“Walk by me,” said I, nerving myself; and side by side we walked down
-the narrow way, taking little heed of the dim Things that peered at us
-out of the huts.
-
-None about the fire attempted to salute me. Most of them disregarded
-me, ostentatiously. I looked round for the Hyena-swine, but he was not
-there. Altogether, perhaps twenty of the Beast Folk squatted, staring
-into the fire or talking to one another.
-
-“He is dead, he is dead! the Master is dead!” said the voice of the
-Ape-man to the right of me. “The House of Pain—there is no House of
-Pain!”
-
-“He is not dead,” said I, in a loud voice. “Even now he watches us!”
-
-This startled them. Twenty pairs of eyes regarded me.
-
-“The House of Pain is gone,” said I. “It will come again. The Master
-you cannot see; yet even now he listens among you.”
-
-“True, true!” said the Dog-man.
-
-They were staggered at my assurance. An animal may be ferocious and
-cunning enough, but it takes a real man to tell a lie.
-
-“The Man with the Bandaged Arm speaks a strange thing,” said one of the
-Beast Folk.
-
-“I tell you it is so,” I said. “The Master and the House of Pain will
-come again. Woe be to him who breaks the Law!”
-
-They looked curiously at one another. With an affectation of
-indifference I began to chop idly at the ground in front of me with my
-hatchet. They looked, I noticed, at the deep cuts I made in the turf.
-
-Then the Satyr raised a doubt. I answered him. Then one of the dappled
-things objected, and an animated discussion sprang up round the fire.
-Every moment I began to feel more convinced of my present security. I
-talked now without the catching in my breath, due to the intensity of
-my excitement, that had troubled me at first. In the course of about an
-hour I had really convinced several of the Beast Folk of the truth of
-my assertions, and talked most of the others into a dubious state. I
-kept a sharp eye for my enemy the Hyena-swine, but he never appeared.
-Every now and then a suspicious movement would startle me, but my
-confidence grew rapidly. Then as the moon crept down from the zenith,
-one by one the listeners began to yawn (showing the oddest teeth in the
-light of the sinking fire), and first one and then another retired
-towards the dens in the ravine; and I, dreading the silence and
-darkness, went with them, knowing I was safer with several of them than
-with one alone.
-
-In this manner began the longer part of my sojourn upon this Island of
-Doctor Moreau. But from that night until the end came, there was but
-one thing happened to tell save a series of innumerable small
-unpleasant details and the fretting of an incessant uneasiness. So that
-I prefer to make no chronicle for that gap of time, to tell only one
-cardinal incident of the ten months I spent as an intimate of these
-half-humanised brutes. There is much that sticks in my memory that I
-could write,—things that I would cheerfully give my right hand to
-forget; but they do not help the telling of the story.
-
-In the retrospect it is strange to remember how soon I fell in with
-these monsters’ ways, and gained my confidence again. I had my quarrels
-with them of course, and could show some of their teeth-marks still;
-but they soon gained a wholesome respect for my trick of throwing
-stones and for the bite of my hatchet. And my Saint-Bernard-man’s
-loyalty was of infinite service to me. I found their simple scale of
-honour was based mainly on the capacity for inflicting trenchant
-wounds. Indeed, I may say—without vanity, I hope—that I held something
-like pre-eminence among them. One or two, whom in a rare access of high
-spirits I had scarred rather badly, bore me a grudge; but it vented
-itself chiefly behind my back, and at a safe distance from my missiles,
-in grimaces.
-
-The Hyena-swine avoided me, and I was always on the alert for him. My
-inseparable Dog-man hated and dreaded him intensely. I really believe
-that was at the root of the brute’s attachment to me. It was soon
-evident to me that the former monster had tasted blood, and gone the
-way of the Leopard-man. He formed a lair somewhere in the forest, and
-became solitary. Once I tried to induce the Beast Folk to hunt him, but
-I lacked the authority to make them co-operate for one end. Again and
-again I tried to approach his den and come upon him unaware; but always
-he was too acute for me, and saw or winded me and got away. He too made
-every forest pathway dangerous to me and my ally with his lurking
-ambuscades. The Dog-man scarcely dared to leave my side.
-
-In the first month or so the Beast Folk, compared with their latter
-condition, were human enough, and for one or two besides my canine
-friend I even conceived a friendly tolerance. The little pink
-sloth-creature displayed an odd affection for me, and took to following
-me about. The Monkey-man bored me, however; he assumed, on the strength
-of his five digits, that he was my equal, and was for ever jabbering at
-me,—jabbering the most arrant nonsense. One thing about him entertained
-me a little: he had a fantastic trick of coining new words. He had an
-idea, I believe, that to gabble about names that meant nothing was the
-proper use of speech. He called it “Big Thinks” to distinguish it from
-“Little Thinks,” the sane every-day interests of life. If ever I made a
-remark he did not understand, he would praise it very much, ask me to
-say it again, learn it by heart, and go off repeating it, with a word
-wrong here or there, to all the milder of the Beast People. He thought
-nothing of what was plain and comprehensible. I invented some very
-curious “Big Thinks” for his especial use. I think now that he was the
-silliest creature I ever met; he had developed in the most wonderful
-way the distinctive silliness of man without losing one jot of the
-natural folly of a monkey.
-
-This, I say, was in the earlier weeks of my solitude among these
-brutes. During that time they respected the usage established by the
-Law, and behaved with general decorum. Once I found another rabbit torn
-to pieces,—by the Hyena-swine, I am assured,—but that was all. It was
-about May when I first distinctly perceived a growing difference in
-their speech and carriage, a growing coarseness of articulation, a
-growing disinclination to talk. My Monkey-man’s jabber multiplied in
-volume but grew less and less comprehensible, more and more simian.
-Some of the others seemed altogether slipping their hold upon speech,
-though they still understood what I said to them at that time. (Can you
-imagine language, once clear-cut and exact, softening and guttering,
-losing shape and import, becoming mere lumps of sound again?) And they
-walked erect with an increasing difficulty. Though they evidently felt
-ashamed of themselves, every now and then I would come upon one or
-another running on toes and finger-tips, and quite unable to recover
-the vertical attitude. They held things more clumsily; drinking by
-suction, feeding by gnawing, grew commoner every day. I realised more
-keenly than ever what Moreau had told me about the “stubborn
-beast-flesh.” They were reverting, and reverting very rapidly.
-
-Some of them—the pioneers in this, I noticed with some surprise, were
-all females—began to disregard the injunction of decency, deliberately
-for the most part. Others even attempted public outrages upon the
-institution of monogamy. The tradition of the Law was clearly losing
-its force. I cannot pursue this disagreeable subject.
-
-My Dog-man imperceptibly slipped back to the dog again; day by day he
-became dumb, quadrupedal, hairy. I scarcely noticed the transition from
-the companion on my right hand to the lurching dog at my side.
-
-As the carelessness and disorganisation increased from day to day, the
-lane of dwelling places, at no time very sweet, became so loathsome
-that I left it, and going across the island made myself a hovel of
-boughs amid the black ruins of Moreau’s enclosure. Some memory of pain,
-I found, still made that place the safest from the Beast Folk.
-
-It would be impossible to detail every step of the lapsing of these
-monsters,—to tell how, day by day, the human semblance left them; how
-they gave up bandagings and wrappings, abandoned at last every stitch
-of clothing; how the hair began to spread over the exposed limbs; how
-their foreheads fell away and their faces projected; how the
-quasi-human intimacy I had permitted myself with some of them in the
-first month of my loneliness became a shuddering horror to recall.
-
-The change was slow and inevitable. For them and for me it came without
-any definite shock. I still went among them in safety, because no jolt
-in the downward glide had released the increasing charge of explosive
-animalism that ousted the human day by day. But I began to fear that
-soon now that shock must come. My Saint-Bernard-brute followed me to
-the enclosure every night, and his vigilance enabled me to sleep at
-times in something like peace. The little pink sloth-thing became shy
-and left me, to crawl back to its natural life once more among the
-tree-branches. We were in just the state of equilibrium that would
-remain in one of those “Happy Family” cages which animal-tamers
-exhibit, if the tamer were to leave it for ever.
-
-Of course these creatures did not decline into such beasts as the
-reader has seen in zoological gardens,—into ordinary bears, wolves,
-tigers, oxen, swine, and apes. There was still something strange about
-each; in each Moreau had blended this animal with that. One perhaps was
-ursine chiefly, another feline chiefly, another bovine chiefly; but
-each was tainted with other creatures,—a kind of generalised animalism
-appearing through the specific dispositions. And the dwindling shreds
-of the humanity still startled me every now and then,—a momentary
-recrudescence of speech perhaps, an unexpected dexterity of the
-fore-feet, a pitiful attempt to walk erect.
-
-I too must have undergone strange changes. My clothes hung about me as
-yellow rags, through whose rents showed the tanned skin. My hair grew
-long, and became matted together. I am told that even now my eyes have
-a strange brightness, a swift alertness of movement.
-
-At first I spent the daylight hours on the southward beach watching for
-a ship, hoping and praying for a ship. I counted on the _Ipecacuanha_
-returning as the year wore on; but she never came. Five times I saw
-sails, and thrice smoke; but nothing ever touched the island. I always
-had a bonfire ready, but no doubt the volcanic reputation of the island
-was taken to account for that.
-
-It was only about September or October that I began to think of making
-a raft. By that time my arm had healed, and both my hands were at my
-service again. At first, I found my helplessness appalling. I had never
-done any carpentry or such-like work in my life, and I spent day after
-day in experimental chopping and binding among the trees. I had no
-ropes, and could hit on nothing wherewith to make ropes; none of the
-abundant creepers seemed limber or strong enough, and with all my
-litter of scientific education I could not devise any way of making
-them so. I spent more than a fortnight grubbing among the black ruins
-of the enclosure and on the beach where the boats had been burnt,
-looking for nails and other stray pieces of metal that might prove of
-service. Now and then some Beast-creature would watch me, and go
-leaping off when I called to it. There came a season of thunder-storms
-and heavy rain, which greatly retarded my work; but at last the raft
-was completed.
-
-I was delighted with it. But with a certain lack of practical sense
-which has always been my bane, I had made it a mile or more from the
-sea; and before I had dragged it down to the beach the thing had fallen
-to pieces. Perhaps it is as well that I was saved from launching it;
-but at the time my misery at my failure was so acute that for some days
-I simply moped on the beach, and stared at the water and thought of
-death.
-
-I did not, however, mean to die, and an incident occurred that warned
-me unmistakably of the folly of letting the days pass so,—for each
-fresh day was fraught with increasing danger from the Beast People.
-
-I was lying in the shade of the enclosure wall, staring out to sea,
-when I was startled by something cold touching the skin of my heel, and
-starting round found the little pink sloth-creature blinking into my
-face. He had long since lost speech and active movement, and the lank
-hair of the little brute grew thicker every day and his stumpy claws
-more askew. He made a moaning noise when he saw he had attracted my
-attention, went a little way towards the bushes and looked back at me.
-
-At first I did not understand, but presently it occurred to me that he
-wished me to follow him; and this I did at last,—slowly, for the day
-was hot. When we reached the trees he clambered into them, for he could
-travel better among their swinging creepers than on the ground. And
-suddenly in a trampled space I came upon a ghastly group. My
-Saint-Bernard-creature lay on the ground, dead; and near his body
-crouched the Hyena-swine, gripping the quivering flesh with its
-misshapen claws, gnawing at it, and snarling with delight. As I
-approached, the monster lifted its glaring eyes to mine, its lips went
-trembling back from its red-stained teeth, and it growled menacingly.
-It was not afraid and not ashamed; the last vestige of the human taint
-had vanished. I advanced a step farther, stopped, and pulled out my
-revolver. At last I had him face to face.
-
-The brute made no sign of retreat; but its ears went back, its hair
-bristled, and its body crouched together. I aimed between the eyes and
-fired. As I did so, the Thing rose straight at me in a leap, and I was
-knocked over like a ninepin. It clutched at me with its crippled hand,
-and struck me in the face. Its spring carried it over me. I fell under
-the hind part of its body; but luckily I had hit as I meant, and it had
-died even as it leapt. I crawled out from under its unclean weight and
-stood up trembling, staring at its quivering body. That danger at least
-was over; but this, I knew was only the first of the series of relapses
-that must come.
-
-I burnt both of the bodies on a pyre of brushwood; but after that I saw
-that unless I left the island my death was only a question of time. The
-Beast People by that time had, with one or two exceptions, left the
-ravine and made themselves lairs according to their taste among the
-thickets of the island. Few prowled by day, most of them slept, and the
-island might have seemed deserted to a new-comer; but at night the air
-was hideous with their calls and howling. I had half a mind to make a
-massacre of them; to build traps, or fight them with my knife. Had I
-possessed sufficient cartridges, I should not have hesitated to begin
-the killing. There could now be scarcely a score left of the dangerous
-carnivores; the braver of these were already dead. After the death of
-this poor dog of mine, my last friend, I too adopted to some extent the
-practice of slumbering in the daytime in order to be on my guard at
-night. I rebuilt my den in the walls of the enclosure, with such a
-narrow opening that anything attempting to enter must necessarily make
-a considerable noise. The creatures had lost the art of fire too, and
-recovered their fear of it. I turned once more, almost passionately
-now, to hammering together stakes and branches to form a raft for my
-escape.
-
-I found a thousand difficulties. I am an extremely unhandy man (my
-schooling was over before the days of Slöjd); but most of the
-requirements of a raft I met at last in some clumsy, circuitous way or
-other, and this time I took care of the strength. The only
-insurmountable obstacle was that I had no vessel to contain the water I
-should need if I floated forth upon these untravelled seas. I would
-have even tried pottery, but the island contained no clay. I used to go
-moping about the island trying with all my might to solve this one last
-difficulty. Sometimes I would give way to wild outbursts of rage, and
-hack and splinter some unlucky tree in my intolerable vexation. But I
-could think of nothing.
-
-And then came a day, a wonderful day, which I spent in ecstasy. I saw a
-sail to the southwest, a small sail like that of a little schooner; and
-forthwith I lit a great pile of brushwood, and stood by it in the heat
-of it, and the heat of the midday sun, watching. All day I watched that
-sail, eating or drinking nothing, so that my head reeled; and the
-Beasts came and glared at me, and seemed to wonder, and went away. It
-was still distant when night came and swallowed it up; and all night I
-toiled to keep my blaze bright and high, and the eyes of the Beasts
-shone out of the darkness, marvelling. In the dawn the sail was nearer,
-and I saw it was the dirty lug-sail of a small boat. But it sailed
-strangely. My eyes were weary with watching, and I peered and could not
-believe them. Two men were in the boat, sitting low down,—one by the
-bows, the other at the rudder. The head was not kept to the wind; it
-yawed and fell away.
-
-As the day grew brighter, I began waving the last rag of my jacket to
-them; but they did not notice me, and sat still, facing each other. I
-went to the lowest point of the low headland, and gesticulated and
-shouted. There was no response, and the boat kept on her aimless
-course, making slowly, very slowly, for the bay. Suddenly a great white
-bird flew up out of the boat, and neither of the men stirred nor
-noticed it; it circled round, and then came sweeping overhead with its
-strong wings outspread.
-
-Then I stopped shouting, and sat down on the headland and rested my
-chin on my hands and stared. Slowly, slowly, the boat drove past
-towards the west. I would have swum out to it, but something—a cold,
-vague fear—kept me back. In the afternoon the tide stranded the boat,
-and left it a hundred yards or so to the westward of the ruins of the
-enclosure. The men in it were dead, had been dead so long that they
-fell to pieces when I tilted the boat on its side and dragged them out.
-One had a shock of red hair, like the captain of the _Ipecacuanha_, and
-a dirty white cap lay in the bottom of the boat.
-
-As I stood beside the boat, three of the Beasts came slinking out of
-the bushes and sniffing towards me. One of my spasms of disgust came
-upon me. I thrust the little boat down the beach and clambered on board
-her. Two of the brutes were Wolf-beasts, and came forward with
-quivering nostrils and glittering eyes; the third was the horrible
-nondescript of bear and bull. When I saw them approaching those
-wretched remains, heard them snarling at one another and caught the
-gleam of their teeth, a frantic horror succeeded my repulsion. I turned
-my back upon them, struck the lug and began paddling out to sea. I
-could not bring myself to look behind me.
-
-I lay, however, between the reef and the island that night, and the
-next morning went round to the stream and filled the empty keg aboard
-with water. Then, with such patience as I could command, I collected a
-quantity of fruit, and waylaid and killed two rabbits with my last
-three cartridges. While I was doing this I left the boat moored to an
-inward projection of the reef, for fear of the Beast People.
-
-
-
-
-XXII.
-THE MAN ALONE.
-
-
-In the evening I started, and drove out to sea before a gentle wind
-from the southwest, slowly, steadily; and the island grew smaller and
-smaller, and the lank spire of smoke dwindled to a finer and finer line
-against the hot sunset. The ocean rose up around me, hiding that low,
-dark patch from my eyes. The daylight, the trailing glory of the sun,
-went streaming out of the sky, was drawn aside like some luminous
-curtain, and at last I looked into the blue gulf of immensity which the
-sunshine hides, and saw the floating hosts of the stars. The sea was
-silent, the sky was silent. I was alone with the night and silence.
-
-So I drifted for three days, eating and drinking sparingly, and
-meditating upon all that had happened to me,—not desiring very greatly
-then to see men again. One unclean rag was about me, my hair a black
-tangle: no doubt my discoverers thought me a madman.
-
-It is strange, but I felt no desire to return to mankind. I was only
-glad to be quit of the foulness of the Beast People. And on the third
-day I was picked up by a brig from Apia to San Francisco. Neither the
-captain nor the mate would believe my story, judging that solitude and
-danger had made me mad; and fearing their opinion might be that of
-others, I refrained from telling my adventure further, and professed to
-recall nothing that had happened to me between the loss of the _Lady
-Vain_ and the time when I was picked up again,—the space of a year.
-
-I had to act with the utmost circumspection to save myself from the
-suspicion of insanity. My memory of the Law, of the two dead sailors,
-of the ambuscades of the darkness, of the body in the canebrake,
-haunted me; and, unnatural as it seems, with my return to mankind came,
-instead of that confidence and sympathy I had expected, a strange
-enhancement of the uncertainty and dread I had experienced during my
-stay upon the island. No one would believe me; I was almost as queer to
-men as I had been to the Beast People. I may have caught something of
-the natural wildness of my companions. They say that terror is a
-disease, and anyhow I can witness that for several years now a restless
-fear has dwelt in my mind,—such a restless fear as a half-tamed lion
-cub may feel.
-
-My trouble took the strangest form. I could not persuade myself that
-the men and women I met were not also another Beast People, animals
-half wrought into the outward image of human souls, and that they would
-presently begin to revert,—to show first this bestial mark and then
-that. But I have confided my case to a strangely able man,—a man who
-had known Moreau, and seemed half to credit my story; a mental
-specialist,—and he has helped me mightily, though I do not expect that
-the terror of that island will ever altogether leave me. At most times
-it lies far in the back of my mind, a mere distant cloud, a memory, and
-a faint distrust; but there are times when the little cloud spreads
-until it obscures the whole sky. Then I look about me at my fellow-men;
-and I go in fear. I see faces, keen and bright; others dull or
-dangerous; others, unsteady, insincere,—none that have the calm
-authority of a reasonable soul. I feel as though the animal was surging
-up through them; that presently the degradation of the Islanders will
-be played over again on a larger scale. I know this is an illusion;
-that these seeming men and women about me are indeed men and women,—men
-and women for ever, perfectly reasonable creatures, full of human
-desires and tender solicitude, emancipated from instinct and the slaves
-of no fantastic Law,—beings altogether different from the Beast Folk.
-Yet I shrink from them, from their curious glances, their inquiries and
-assistance, and long to be away from them and alone. For that reason I
-live near the broad free downland, and can escape thither when this
-shadow is over my soul; and very sweet is the empty downland then,
-under the wind-swept sky.
-
-When I lived in London the horror was well-nigh insupportable. I could
-not get away from men: their voices came through windows; locked doors
-were flimsy safeguards. I would go out into the streets to fight with
-my delusion, and prowling women would mew after me; furtive, craving
-men glance jealously at me; weary, pale workers go coughing by me with
-tired eyes and eager paces, like wounded deer dripping blood; old
-people, bent and dull, pass murmuring to themselves; and, all
-unheeding, a ragged tail of gibing children. Then I would turn aside
-into some chapel,—and even there, such was my disturbance, it seemed
-that the preacher gibbered “Big Thinks,” even as the Ape-man had done;
-or into some library, and there the intent faces over the books seemed
-but patient creatures waiting for prey. Particularly nauseous were the
-blank, expressionless faces of people in trains and omnibuses; they
-seemed no more my fellow-creatures than dead bodies would be, so that I
-did not dare to travel unless I was assured of being alone. And even it
-seemed that I too was not a reasonable creature, but only an animal
-tormented with some strange disorder in its brain which sent it to
-wander alone, like a sheep stricken with gid.
-
-This is a mood, however, that comes to me now, I thank God, more
-rarely. I have withdrawn myself from the confusion of cities and
-multitudes, and spend my days surrounded by wise books,—bright windows
-in this life of ours, lit by the shining souls of men. I see few
-strangers, and have but a small household. My days I devote to reading
-and to experiments in chemistry, and I spend many of the clear nights
-in the study of astronomy. There is—though I do not know how there is
-or why there is—a sense of infinite peace and protection in the
-glittering hosts of heaven. There it must be, I think, in the vast and
-eternal laws of matter, and not in the daily cares and sins and
-troubles of men, that whatever is more than animal within us must find
-its solace and its hope. I _hope_, or I could not live.
-
-
-And so, in hope and solitude, my story ends.
-
-EDWARD PRENDICK.
-
-
-
-
-NOTE.
-
-
-The substance of the chapter entitled “Doctor Moreau explains,” which
-contains the essential idea of the story, appeared as a middle article
-in the _Saturday Review_ in January, 1895. This is the only portion of
-this story that has been previously published, and it has been entirely
-recast to adapt it to the narrative form.
-
-*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU ***
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