The island of Doctor Moreau ; a possibility

CO

OCT 2 3 1376"

The Island of Doctor Moreau

The

Island of Doctor Moreau

A Possibility

By
H. G. Wells

New York
Stone esT Kimball

MDCCCXCVI

COPYRIGHT

BY STONE AND KIMBALL
MDCCCXCVI

Contents

INTRODUCTION vii
I IN THE DINGEY OF THE "LADY

VAIN" 9
II THE MAN WHO WAS GOING

NOWHERE 15

III THE STRANGE FACE ai

IV AT THE SCHOONER'S RAIL 31
V THE MAN WHO HAD NOWHERE

TO GO 37

VI THE EVIL-LOOKING BOATMEN 45

VII THE LOCKED DOOR 54

VIII THE CRYING OF THE PUMA 63

IX THE THING IN THE FOREST 69

X THE CRYING OF THE MAN 86

XI THE HUNTING OF THE MAN 93

XII THE SAYERS OF THE LAW 103

XIII THE PARLEY 118

XIV DOCTOR MOREAU EXPLAINS 127
XV CONCERNING THE BEAST FOLK 147

XVI How THE BEAST FOLK TASTE

BLOOD 157

XVII A CATASTROPHE 180

XVIII THE FINDING OF MOREAU 189

XIX MONTGOMERY'S BANK HOLIDAY 197

XX ALONE WITH THE BEAST FOLK 211

XXI THE REVERSION OF THE BEAST

FOLK 221

XXII THE MAN ALONE 243

INTRODUCTION.

February the First, 1887, the ^aify
Vain was lost by collision with a
derelict when about the latitude i° S. and
longitude 107° W.

On January the Fifth, 1888 — that is
eleven months and four days after — my
uncle, Edward Prendick, a private gentle-
man, who certainly went aboard the Lady
Vain at Callao, and who had been con-
sidered 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. Subse-
quently 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
v

Introduction

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 con-
firmation 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
vi

Introduction

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 dis-
appeared from those seas (with a consider-
able 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.

VII

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

(The Story written by Edward Prendick.)

I.

IN THE DINGEY OF THE

T DO not propose to add anything to what has
* already been written concerning the loss of
the "Lady Vain." As every one knows, she
collided with a derelict when ten days out from
Callao. The long-boat, 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 hor-
rible and far stranger. It has hitherto been
supposed that the four men who were in the
dingey perished, but this is incorrect. I have

9

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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," * 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.

I say luckily for us he did not reach us, and
I might almost say luckily for himself; for we
had only a small breaker of water and some
soddenrecfc 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
1 Daily News, March 17, 1887.
IO

In the Dingey of the " Lady Vain."

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 intoler-
able 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 piti-
less. 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
ii

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 to-
gether 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

12

In the Dingey of the " Lady Vain."

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 pic-
ture, 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 re-
member 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 com-
pass, for she was sailing dead into the wind.
It never entered my head to attempt to attract
attention, and I do not remember anything dis-

'3

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

tinctly 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 red countenance covered with
freckles and surrounded with red hair staring at
me over the bulwarks. I also had a discon-
nected impression of a dark face, with extraor-
dinary 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.

HTHE 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 sit-
ting 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."

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

At the same time my eye caught my hand,
thin so 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 begin-
ning, — 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
16

The Man who was going Nowhere.

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 inter-
locutor. '.' 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 sus-
picion 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.

2 I7

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

Then he shouted at the dogs, and returned
the cabin.

"Well?" said he in the doorway. " Yc
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 indepen-
dence.

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 Totten-
ham Court Road and Gower Street. " Is Cap-
latzi 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.
• 18

The Man who was going Nowhere.

"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 sud-
denly 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. Mont-
gomery — 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 Island of Doctor Moreau.

the captain was three-parts drunk in his own
cabin. As I assumed the clothes, I began ask-
ing 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.

VX7E left the cabin and found a man at the
companion obstructing our way. He was
standing on the ladder with his back to us, peer-
ing 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 pecu-
liarly 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 sug-
gestive of a muzzle, and the huge half-open
mouth showed as big white teeth as I had ever

21

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 Mont-
gomery, in a menacing voice. " But I tell you
to go ! " He was on the brink of saying some-
thing further, then looked up at me suddenly
and followed me up the ladder.

I had paused half way through the hatch-
way, looking back, still astonished beyond
measure at the grotesque ugliness of this black-
faced creature. I had never beheld such a
22

The Strange Face.

repulsive and extraordinary face before, and
yet — if the contradiction is credible — I expe-
rienced at the same time an odd feeling that in
some way I bad 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 forgot-
ten the precise occasion, passed my imagination.
Montgomery's movement to follow me re-
leased 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
23

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 steers-
man 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 Mont-
gomery, and turned towards the wake again.

Suddenly we heard a yelp and a volley of
furious blasphemy from the companion hatch-
way, and the deformed man with the black
24

The Strange Face.

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
25

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 arm
free, and after two ineffectual attempts stuck his
freckled fists into his side pockets.

"That man's a passenger," said Mont-
26

The Strange Face.

gomery. "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,1' 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 cap-
tain 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 '11 do no good."

Montgomery gave an ugly twist to his
dropping lip. "He's always drunk. Do
27

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 cer-
tainly anything but clean. " Crew,'' con-
tinued 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. /
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
28

The Strange Face.

ship again I '11 cut his insides out, I tell you.
Cut out his blasted insides ! Who are you, to
tell me what Pm to do ? I tell you I 'm cap-
tain 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 inter-
posed. "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 ;
29

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

but, certainly, when I told the captain to " shut
up J ' 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.

PHAT 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
31

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

singularly unfriendly manner. I found Mont-
gomery 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
32

At the Schooner's Rail.

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 ? Wny, 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 imagi-
nation, 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."
3 33

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

"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 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 Lon-
don ? 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 star-
light that loosens one's tongue. I'm an ass,
and yet somehow I would like to tell you."
34

At the Schooner's Rail.

" 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 Mont-
gomery'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
35

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 morn-
ing 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 sensi-
ble 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
37

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 cap-
tain. "Overboard with 'em! We '11 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 Mis-
ter— Mister?"

"Prendick," said I.

" Pendick 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.

38

The Man who had Nowhere to Go.

" 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 com-
panion, 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,
39

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 be-
side him, to indicate his powerlessness to help
me.

" I '11 see to you, presently," said the
captain.

Then began a curious three-cornered alter-
cation. 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.
40

The Man who had Nowhere to Go.

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 lea 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 Mont-
gomery 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 for-
ward 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 break-
fast. 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

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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
42

The Man who had Nowhere to Go.

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 realized 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 grow-
ing 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.
43

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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.

44

VI.

THE EVIL-LOOKING BOATMEN.

OUT 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.

45

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 re-
garding me steadfastly, but with an expression,
as I now fancied, of some perplexity. When
my eyes met his, he looked down at the stag-
hound 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
46

The Evil-looking Boatmen.

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
47

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 man-
ner. 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 vegeta-
tion, — 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
48

The Evil-looking Boatmen.

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 compan-
ion, 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 nar-
row 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,
4 49

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 unload-
ing. 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

5°

The Evil-looking Boatmen.

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 eye-
brows slightly at that.

" That alters the case a little, Mr. Prendick,"
he said, with a trifle more respect in his man-
ner. "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

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

past this group, and I think entered the enclos-
ure. The other two men were with Mont-
gomery, 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 '11 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

52

The Evil-looking Boatmen.

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. Hith-
erto 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, how-
ever, went up to the house with the puma.
The brandy I did not touch, for I have been
an abstainer from my birth.

53

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 unex-
pected 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 pack-
ages 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 unin-
vited guest. What are we to do with him ? "

" He knows something of science," said
Montgomery.

" I *m itching to get to work again — with

54

"The Locked Door."

this new stuff," said the white-haired man, nod-
ding 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 confi-
dence 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 establish-
ment 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."
55

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 com-
plaisance. The main entrance to the enclosure
we 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 bluejacket, opened
this door, and entered. His keys, and the elabo-
rate 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 apart-
ment, 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

56

"The Locked Door."

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
57

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 queer-
ness 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. In-
deed, 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.

"The Locked Door."

He was now dressed in white, and carried a
little tray with some coffee and boiled vegeta-
bles thereon. I could hardly repress a shud-
dering 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 cerebra-
tion, 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
59

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

my mind. I had been a mere lad then, and
Moreau was, I suppose, about fifty, — a promi-
nent and masterful physiologist, well-known in
scientific circles for his extraordinary imagina-
tion and his brutal directness in discussion.

Was this the same Moreau ? He had pub-
lished some very astonishing facts in connection
with the transfusion of blood, and in addition
was known to be doing valuable work on mor-
bid growths. Then suddenly his career was
closed. He had to leave England. A journal-
ist obtained access to his laboratory in the capa-
city 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 noto-
rious. On the day of its publication a wretched
dog, flayed and otherwise mutilated, escaped
from Moreau' s house. It was in the silly sea-
son, 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
60

"The Locked Door."

deserved to be ; but I still think that the tepid
support of his fellow-investigators and his deser-
tion 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 appar-
ently 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 scien-
61

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

tific man, there was nothing so horrible in vivi-
section 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 ?

62

VIII.

THE CRYING OF THE PUMA.

JV/l ONTGOMERY 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 watch-
ing me with his queer, restless eyes. Mont-
gomery 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; Pm an abstainer."
" I wish I 'd been. But it *s no use locking

63

.

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 impres-
sion — 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,

The Crying of the Puma.

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 Mont-
gomery 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 remem-
ber 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 some-
thing 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
5 65

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

him this. " Rum ! " he said. " /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 cap-
tain?"

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,
absent-mindedly, knitting his brows as the ani-
mal 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 discus-
sion 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.
66

The Crying of the Puma.

Presently our meal came to an end ; the mis-
shapen 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 alto-
gether 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 exqui-
site 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 Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 sun-
light and the green fans of the trees waving in
the soothing sea-breeze, the world was a con-
fusion, blurred with drifting black and red
phantasms, until I was out of earshot of the
house in the chequered wall.

68

IX.

THE THING IN THE FOREST.

T 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 trian-
gular patch of its glittering water. On the
farther side I saw through a bluish haze a tangle

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 wan-
der over this scene for a while, and then began
to turn over in my mind again the strange pecu-
liarities of Montgomery* 8 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.

70

The Thing in the Forest.

I leant forward to see him better, and a
piece of lava, detached by my hand, went pat-
tering down the slope. He looked up guiltily,
and his eyes met mine. Forthwith he scram-
bled 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 tran-
quillity 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,
7*

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 counte-
nance 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 scar-
let on the ground, and going up to it found it
to be a peculiar fungus, branched and corru-
gated like a foliaceous lichen, but deliquescing
into slime at the touch ; and then in the shadow
of some luxuriant ferns I came upon an unpleas-
ant 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
72

The Thing in the Forest.

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 imagina-
tion. 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
73

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

of stems and twining vines and splashes of fungus
and flowers closed in again. Before me, squat-
ting 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. Pres-
ently his articulation became shriller, and spread-
ing his hands he rose to his feet. At that the
others began to gibber in unison, also rising to
74

The Thing in the Forest.

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 stamp-
ing their feet and waving their arms ; a kind of
tune crept into their rhythmic recitation, and a re-
frain, — " 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 move-
ments, into the expression of its countenance,

75

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

into its whole presence — some now irresistible
suggestion of a hog, a swinish taint, the unmis-
takable 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 be-
coming 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 unpleas-
ant start two clumsy legs among the trees, walk-
ing with noiseless footsteps parallel with my
course, and perhaps thirty yards away from me.
The head and upper part of the body were

The Thing in the Forest.

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 chill-
ing my backbone. I pushed through a tangle

77

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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

78

The Thing in the Forest.

the idea of being overtaken in the open by dark-
ness 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 colour-
less clearness that comes after the sunset flush
was darkling ; the blue sky above grew momen-
tarily 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 form-
less 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-
79

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 some-
thing 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 momen-
tarily against the sky-line and vanished again.
I felt assured now that my tawny-faced antago-
nist 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. What-
ever it was, the Thing either lacked the courage
80

The Thing in the Forest.

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
6 81

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

liance 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 feint
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'.

82

The Thing in the Forest.

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 dark-
ness. 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

83

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 Thing in the Forest.

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 giv-
ing 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 origi-
nally driven me out to explore this mysterious
island. At that, though I was faint and hor-
ribly 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.

A S 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 dark-
ness at the side of that orange oblong of light,
the voice of Montgomery shouting, " Pren-
dick!" I continued running. Presently I
heard him again. I replied by a feeble
"Hullo!" and in another moment had stag-
gered 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 set
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 with-
out telling us," he said; and then, "I was
afraid — But — what — Hullo ! ' '
86

The Crying of the Man.

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 curi-
osities, 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 some-
thing 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

87

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 think-
ing 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 some-
thing 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
88

The Crying of the Man.

covered my face with my hands. Presently he
returned with a small measure containing a dark
liquid. This he gave me. I took it unresist-
ingly, 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 expe-
rienced. Presently the door behind me — the
door inward towards the yard of the enclosure
— opened. I turned and saw Montgomery's
face.

89

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

"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 lis-
tened. 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 groan-
ing, broken by sobs and gasps of anguish. It
was no brute this time ; it was a human being
in torment!

90

The Crying of the Man.

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 Mont-
gomery, 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 frame-
work, 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.

9*

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

" 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.

92

XI.

THE HUNTING OF THE MAN.

TT came before my mind with an unreason-
* able hope of escape that the outer door of
my room was still open to me. I was con-
vinced 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 experi-
ment. 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 was possible to conceive,

— to send me off a lost soul, a beast, to the rest
of their Comus rout.

93

nfViino

The Island of Doctor Morcau.

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 incon-
tinently flung open the door and found Mont-
gomery 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 run-
ning blindly, I went northeastward in a direc-
tion at right angles to my previous expedition.
Once, as I went running headlong up the beach,
I glanced over my shoulder and saw his attend-
94

The Hunting of the Man.

ant 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 per-
haps 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 in-
habited 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 Mont-

95

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

gomery 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 stag-hound 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

The Hunting of the Man.

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 remem-
bered 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
7 97

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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

The Hunting of the Man.

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 some-
thing. 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 creeper 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.

99

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

"I say," said I, "where can I get some-
thing 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 Jm 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.
100

The Hunting of the Man.

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 leap-
ing 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. Pres-
ently 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 scorise. Into this we plunged.

It was extremely dark, this passage, after the
101

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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. Be-
yond, 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.

102

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 wind-
ing way up the ravine between these was
scarcely three yards wide, and was disfigured by
103

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

lumps of decaying fruit-pulp and other refu
which accounted for the disagreeable stench
the place.

The little pink sloth-creature was still blink-
ing at me when my Ape-man reappeared at the
aperture of the nearest of these dens, and beck-
oned 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, star-
ing 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
104

The Sayers of the Law.

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
105

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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
1 06

The Sayers of the Law.

in another world. That dark hut, these gro-
tesque 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 j that is the Law.
Are we not Men ?

" Not to suck up Drink j 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 j that is the
Law. Are we not Men ?

" Not to chase other Men j 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 pro-
107

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

hibitions, 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 hai
fancied it was a dream, but never before have
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 in-
fected their dwarfed brains with a kind of deifi-
cation 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 5 and my
eyes being now accustomed to the darkness, I
108

The Sayers of the Law.

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 sur-
rounded 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.
109

The Island of Doctor Morcau.

" He has little nails," said this grisly creatu
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 gr
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, glan-
cing 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.

no

The Sayers of the Law.

"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 stand-
ing 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 scratch-
ing 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, scratch-
ing his calf.

in

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

" None escape," said the little pink sic
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.

112

The Sayers of the Law.

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 ex-
citedly. Other half-animal faces glared inter-
rogation 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
8 113

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

then others. Their bestial minds were haj
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 min-
ute 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
114

The Sayers of the Law.

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 crash-
ing of the reeds, and every now and then the
crackling crash of a branch. Some of the crea-
tures 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 knee-deep,
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 incrusta-
tion, and plunged into a canebrake again. Then
"5

iau.

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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
116

The Sayers of the Law.

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 exulta-
tion 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.

117

XIII.

A PARLEY.

T TURNED again and went on down to-
* wards 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
118

A Parley.

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 re-
turned ? 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 gende
ripple. Presently the shore fell away south-
ward, 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 stag-
hound, 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 to-
wards me. Moreau followed slower with the
dog.

At last I roused myself from my inaction,
and turning seaward walked straight into the
119

*au.

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 Mont-
gomery.

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.

I2O

A Parley.

"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, point-
ing 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,
— f ' 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 ! "

121

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

" 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 de-
formed 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 even-
ing 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 babemus — vivisected. A

122

A Parley.

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
123

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 Mont-
gomery 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
124

A Parley.

an explanatory nod over his shoulder. " Un-
dignified."

"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 gro-
tesque creatures, who stood there in the sunlight,
solid, casting shadows, moving, and yet so in-
credibly unreal. Montgomery cracked his whip
at them, and forthwith they all turned and fled
helter-skelter into the trees; and when Mont-
gomery 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 '11 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
125

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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.

126

XIV.

DOCTOR MOREAU EXPLAINS.

" A ND 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 sha'n't do, — even at
some personal inconvenience."

He sat in my deck chair, a cigar half con-
sumed 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 pos-
sible, 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?"
127

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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. Mont-
gomery 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, human-
ised 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.

128

Doctor Moreau explains.

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, altera-
tions 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 — J '

"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 mate-
rial from another animal is also possible, — the
case of teeth, for example. The grafting of skin
and bone is done to facilitate healing : the sur-
9 129

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

geon 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 noth-
ing new. It all lay in the surface of practical
anatomy years ago, but no one had the temerity
to touch it. It's not simply the outward form
of an animal which I can change. The physi-
ology, the chemical rhythm of the creature, may
also be made to undergo an enduring modifica-
tion, — of which vaccination and other methods
of inoculation with living or dead matter are
130

Doctor Moreau explains.

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 ves-
tiges of whose art still remain in the preliminary
manipulation of the young mountebank or con-
tortionist. 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 re-
actions 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 knowl-
edge has never been sought as an end, and sys-
tematically, by modern investigators until I took
it up ! Some of 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

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 scien-
tific 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

tmt**

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 grow-
ing 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
132

.Doctor Moreau explains.

instinct; pugnacity is trained into courageous
self-sacrifice, and suppressed sexuality into reli-
gious emotion. And the great difference be-
tween man and monkey is in the larynx, he
continued, — in the incapacity to frame deli-
cately different sound-symbols by which thought
could be sustained. In this I failed to agree
with him, but with a certain incivility he de-
clined 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 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,

133

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

and am now wasting an hour explaining my-
self!"

"But," said I, "I still do not understand.
Where is your justification for inflicting all this
pain ? The only thing that could excuse vivi-
section 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

Doctor Moreau explains.

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 med-
ical adviser to warn us and stimulate us. Not
all living flesh is painful ; nor is all nerve, not
even all sensory nerve. There Js no tint 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
'35

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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

136

Doctor Moreau explains.

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 .1 used to
suffer from years ago. I wanted — fit 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 abomina-
tion—"

"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 remorse-
less 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 really eleven years since we came here, I
and Montgomery and six Kanakas. I remember

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 dis-
agreeable 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 pugna-
cious 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 diffi-
culty after difficulty, I made my first man. All

138

Doctor Moreau explains.

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 did n'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 count-
ing ; 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

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

what he had been. When his scars were quite
healed, and he was no longer anything but pain-
ful 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
140

Doctor Moreau explains.

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 Js 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."

141

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

"I don't understand," said I; "do you
mean to say — ' '

" It killed the Kanakas — yes. It killed sev-
eral 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
was n'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 ;
142

Doctor Moreau explains.

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, un-
expected 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 Js afterwards, as
I observe them, that the persuasion fades. First
143

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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
144

Doctor Moreau explains.

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 some-
thing 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 that
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 magnifi-

10 145

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

cent 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.

146

XV.

CONCERNING THE BEAST FOLK.

T 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 pock-
eted 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.

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 Mont-
gomery 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 Mont-
gomery 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 disobedi-
ence or dispute.

Certain matters, however, in which old
instinct was at war with Moreau' s convenience,
148

Concerning the Beast Folk.

were in a less stable condition. A series of pro-
positions 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 pro-
hibitions.

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
149

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

lay low upon the wide sea, had a total area, I
suppose, of seven or eight square miles.1 It was
volcanic in origin, and was now fringed on three
sides by coral reefs ; some fumaroles to the north-
ward, 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 mon-
strosities 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, Mont-
gomery 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
1 This description corresponds in every respect
to Noble's Isle. — c. E. p.

Concerning the Beast Folk.

inheritance of their acquired human charac-
teristics. The females were less numerous than
the males, and liable to much furtive persecution
in spite of the monogamy the Law enjoined.

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 per-
suasion 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 in-
ward 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,

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

malformed about the ears, with large and pro-
tuberant 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 exceed-
ingly. The hands were always malformed ;
and though some surprised me by their unex-
pected human appearance, almost all were defi-
cient 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-rhinoc-
eros-creature, and several other females whose
152

Concerning the Beast Folk.

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 Arica 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

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 en-
countered, 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 pre-
pare 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,

Concerning the Beast Folk.

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 un-
natural 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 mechani-
cal 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

*$$

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 glan-
cing 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 repul-
sive clumsiness, and displayed in consequence a
more than human regard for the decency and
decorum of extensive costume.

'56

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 fiimarole 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. Mont-
gomery 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

157

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

rabbit-like habit of devouring their young had
defeated this intention. I had already encoun-
tered some of these creatures, — once during my
moonlight flight from the Leopard-man, and
once during my pursuit by Moreau on the pre-
vious 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
commdn 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 ! J ' It was
after this, I think, that we met the Satyr and the
Ape-man. The Satyr was a gleam of classical

158

How the Beast Folk taste Blood.

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 '11 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.
159

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

The Satyr and the Ape-man stood watch-
ing us and making other remarks to each
other.

te 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 back-
bone has been bitten through."

He stood staring, with his face white and his
lip pulled askew. " I don't like this," he
said slowly.

160

How the Beast Folk taste Blood.

" 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 under-
growth at the back of the enclosure, when I
went out in the evening. The head was com-
pletely 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 sus-
picion, 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 Js 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.

ii 161

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

" 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 am-
buscades of the forest that bounded us in.
"The taste of blood," he said again.

He took out his revolver, examined the cart-
ridges 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 dis-
tance 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 — "
162

How the Beast Folk taste Blood.

He 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 home-
ward 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 Js done now ; and you said I
might have them, you know."

"We must see to the thing at once," said

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

Moreau. "I suppose if anything should turn
up, M'ling can take care of himself? "

" I 'm not so sure of M'ling," said Mont-
gomery. "I think I ought to know him."

In the afternoon, Moreau, Montgomery, my-
self, 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 chop-
ping 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 wind-
ing 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
164

How the Beast Folk taste Blood.

halted. Then Moreau sounded the horn, and
broke the sleeping stillness of the tropical after-
noon. 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 rhi-
noceros, chewing a straw as it came ; then ap-

165

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

peared 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 ges-
ticulating 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
166

How the Beast Folk taste Blood.

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, sway-
ing from side to side and dashing up the sulphur
with their hands, — first the right hand and

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

a puff of dust, and then the left, — began once
more to chant their strange litany. When they
reached, "Not to eat Flesh or Fowl, 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 fur-
tive 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," re-
peated the kneeling circle of Beast People.

"Who is he?" cried Moreau, and looked
round at their faces, cracking his whip. I fan-
cied the Hyena-swine looked dejected, so too
did the Leopard-man. Moreau stopped, feeing
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.

1 68

How the Beast Folk taste Blood.

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 to-
wards 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 flash-
ing 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
169

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 re-
solved 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 every-
thing spun about me until I was running head-
long. 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
170

How the Beast Folk taste Blood.

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, laugh-
ing into my face with the exultation of hunting.
171

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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
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 col-
umn 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 pro-
jecting 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, im-
172

How the Beast Folk taste Blood.

peded 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 after-
noon.

At last the fury of the hunt slackened. We
had pinned the wretched brute into a corner
of the island. Moreau, whip in hand, mar-
shalled us all into an irregular line, and we ad-
vanced 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 Mont-
gomery from beyond the thicket.

I was on the slope above the bushes ; Mont-
173

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

gomery and Moreau beat along the beach be-
neath. 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 im-
perfectly 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,
174

How the Beast Folk taste Blood.

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 particu-
larly 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.

'75

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

"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 vic-
tim 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 un-
speakable aimlessness of things upon the island.
Upon the beach among the rocks beneath me
were the Ape-man, the Hyena-swine, and sev-
eral 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
176

How the Beast Folk taste Blood.

the Hyena-swine was implicated in the rabbit-
killing. A strange persuasion came upon me,
that, save for the grossness of the line, the gro-
tesqueness 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 differ-
ence. 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 inter-
nal struggle, one long dread of Moreau — and
for what? It was the wantonness of it that
stirred me.

12 j

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 irre-
sponsible, 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 per-
manent 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

How the Beast Folk taste Blood.

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 antici-
pate a little in speaking of it now.

179

XVII.

A CATASTROPHE.

OCARCELY six weeks passed before I

o

lost every feeling but dislike and abhor-

rence for this infamous experiment of Moreau's.
My one idea was to get away from these horri-
ble 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
1 80

A Catastrophe.

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
181

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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.
182

A Catastrophe.

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 door-
way, dressed, and with his revolver in his hand.

" Great God, Prendick ! " he said, not notic-
ing 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 Js 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 '11 do," he said. « And now ? "

He thought. Then he went out and locked
the gates of the enclosure. He was absent some
time.

183

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

I was chiefly concerned about my arm. Tl
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
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.
184

A Catastrophe.

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 deso-
late. 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 — Mor-eau ! " 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

185

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 consterna-
tion. 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, tak-
ing my arm. "They're mad. They're all
rushing about mad. What can have happened ?
I don't know. I '11 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
186

A Catastrophe.

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 under-
growth. He lost the track, however, on the
stony ground beyond the stream where I had
seen the Beast Man drinking, and went wander-
ing 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
catling. 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

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 trepida-
tion, 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 him-
self upon the other, and the two rolled grap-
pling. 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 wan-
tonness, I thought — had shot him.

" What does it all mean ? " said I.

He shook his head, and turned once more to
the brandy.

1 88

XVIII.

THE FINDING OF MOREAU.

\ 17 HEN 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 objec-
tions, 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 shoul-
der 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 bis weapons, when it
189

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 stag-
gered into him, and then stopped too. Then,
listening intently, we heard coming through the
trees the sound of voices and footsteps approach-
ing 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-\Q \ " suddenly shouted Montgomery,.
"Hul-lo, 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
190

The Finding of Moreau.

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 slop-
ing forehead, — a heavy, faceless thing, with
strange red eyes, looking at us curiously from
amidst the green.

For a space no one spoke. Then Mont-
gomery 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 awe-
stricken and puzzled.

" Where is he ? " said Montgomery.

"Beyond," and the grey creature pointed.

" Is there a Law now ? " asked the Monkey -
191

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 Mont-
gomery 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.

192

The Finding of Moreau.

« 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
13 193

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

shrieking. Immediately after appeared a feral
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 return-
ing 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,
194

The Finding of Moreau.

repeating part of the Ritual. The others gath-
ered 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

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 labora-
tory and put an end to all we found living
there.

XIX.

MONTGOMERY'S "BANK HOLIDAY."

"117 HEN 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 monoto-
nous years he had spent on the island. He
talked vaguely, answered my questions crook-
edly, wandered into general questions.

" This silly ass of a world," he said ; "what
a muddle it all is ! I have n'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,
197

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

shabby clothes, shabby vice, a blunder, — /
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 / 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 that brush-
wood into a pyre and burn his body — and
those other things. Then what will happen
with the Beast Folk ? "

" /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 '11 change.
They are sure to change."
198

Montgomery's " Bank Holiday."

He talked thus inconclusively until at last I
felt my temper going.

" Damnation ! ' ' he exclaimed at some petu-
lance 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.
199

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

" 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 eye-
brows.

"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 black-
ness following it. They halted, staring. Then
I saw M'ling' s hunched shoulders as he came
round the corner of the house.
200

Montgomery's " Bank Holiday."

" 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 him-
self 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 Mont-
gomery's voice shouting, "Right turn!" and
they passed with their shouts and howls into the

201

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 east-
ward sea was a featureless grey, dark and mys-
terious ; 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,
202

Montgomery's u Bank Holiday."

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 schem-
ing. 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, whoop-
ing 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 con-
tents 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-
203

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 revenge-
ful 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
204

Montgomery's " Bank Holiday."

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.

205

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

Montgomery lay on his back, with the hairy-
grey Beast-man sprawling across his body.
The brute was dead, but still gripping Mont-
gomery'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.
206

Montgomery's u Bank Holiday."

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 east-
ward 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 slop-
ing 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.
207

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

The hopelessness of saving any of the con-
tents 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 sud-
denly 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 — "

208

Montgomery's " Bank Holiday."

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 un-
seen. 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. Be-
14 209

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

side me were the charred vestiges of the boats
and these four 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 to-
wards me with hesitating gestures.

210

XX.

ALONE WITH THE BEAST FOLK.

T 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 mon-
sters. They avoided my eyes, and their quiver-
ing 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.

211

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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

212

Alone with the Beast Folk.

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 Mont-
gomery 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

213

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 crouch-
ing 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 my-
self. 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
214

Alone with the Beast Folk.

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 shoul-
der. He went slanting along the beach, and
vanished beneath the driving masses of dense
smoke that were still pouring out from the burn-
ing 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 posi-
tion 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
215

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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?
f< The stubborn beast-flesh grows day by day
back again." Then I came round to the
216

Alone with the Beast Folk.

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, with-
out 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
217

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

out of the landward bushes towards me. I was
now so nervous with my own imaginings that I
immediately drew my revolver. Even the pro-
pitiatory 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
218

Alone with the Beast Folk.

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 soli-
tary 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 impe-
rious 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.
219

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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.

220

XXI.

THE REVERSION OF THE BEAST FOLK.

TN 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, wonder-
ing 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.

221

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

" Who is that ? " I said in a hoarse whisper,
the revolver still pointed.

« / — 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 pres-
ence 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
222

The Reversion of the Beast Folk.

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 satisfac-
tion 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
223

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 talk-
ing to one another.

224

The Reversion of the Beast Folk.

"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.
15 225

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 con-
vinced 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 sus-
picious 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
226

The Reversion of the Beast Folk.

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 infi-
nite 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
227

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 soli-
tary. 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, com-
pared 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
228

The Reversion of the Beast Folk.

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 jabber-
ing at me, — jabbering the most arrant non-
sense. 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 devel-
oped 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
229

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 dis-
tinctly 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 alto-
gether 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 limps of sound
again ?) And they walked erect with an in-
creasing 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 real-
ised more keenly than ever what Moreau had
230

The Reversion of the Beast Folk.

told me about the "stubborn beast-flesh.'*
They were reverting, and reverting very
rapidly.

Some of them — the pioneers in this, I no-
ticed 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 in-
creased from day to day, the lane of dwelling-
places, at no time very sweet, became so loath-
some 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
231

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

the lapsing of these monsters, — to tell how,
day by day, the human semblance left them 3
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 shud-
dering 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 re-
leased the increasing charge of explosive animal-
ism 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
232

The Reversion of the Beast Folk.

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 some-
thing 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 ap-
pearing through the specific dispositions. And
the dwindling shreds of the humanity still
startled me every now and then, — a momen-
tary recrudescence of speech perhaps, an un-
expected 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

233

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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
234

The Reversion of the Beast Folk.

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. Per-
haps it is as well that I was saved from launch-
ing 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

235

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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, gnaw-
ing 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

236

The Reversion of the Beast Folk.

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

237

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

massacre of them ; to build traps, or fight them
with my knife. Had I possessed sufficient cart-
ridges, 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 slumber-
ing 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 any-
thing 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 Slojd) ; 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 insur-
mountable obstacle was that I had no vessel to
contain the water I should need if I floated forth

238

The Reversion of the Beast Folk.

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

239

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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
240

The Reversion of the Beast Folk.

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 " Ipecacu-
anha,'* 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

16 241

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 projec-
tion of the reefj for fear of the Beast People.

242

XXII.

THE MAN ALONE.

TN 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 dwin-
dled to a finer and finer line against the hot sun-
set. 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 drink-
ing 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.
243

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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 soli-
tude and danger had made me mad ; and fear-
ing 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 man-
kind came, instead of that confidence and sym-
pathy 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
244

The Man Alone.

have caught something of the natural wildness
of my companions. They say that terror is a
disease, and anyhow I can witness that for sev-
eral 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 dis-
trust ; 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, —
245

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

none that have the calm authority of a reason-
able 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 illu-
sion ; 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 assist-
ance, and long to be away from them and alone.
For that reason I live near the broad free down-
land, 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 ;
246

The Man Alone.

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. Particu-
larly 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 with-
drawn myself from the confusion of cities and
multitudes, and spend my days surrounded by
247

The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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.

248

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
€t Saturday Review " in January, 1895. This
is the only portion of this story that has been pre-
viously published, and it has been entirely recast
to adapt it to the narrative form.

249

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