"INTRODUCTION.\n\nON February the First 1887, the Lady Vain was lost by collision\nwith a derelict when about the latitude 1 degree S. and longitude\n107 degrees W.\n\nOn January the Fifth, 1888--that is eleven months and four days after--my\nuncle, Edward Prendick, a private gentleman, who certainly went\naboard the Lady Vain at Callao, and who had been considered drowned,\nwas picked up in latitude 5 degrees 3' S. and longitude 101 degrees W.\nin a small open boat of which the name was illegible, but which is\nsupposed to have belonged to the missing schooner Ipecacuanha.\nHe gave such a strange account of himself that he was supposed demented.\nSubsequently he alleged that his mind was a blank from the moment\nof his escape from the Lady Vain.  His case was discussed among\npsychologists at the time as a curious instance of the lapse\nof memory consequent upon physical and mental stress.\nThe following narrative was found among his papers by the undersigned,\nhis nephew and heir, but unaccompanied by any definite request\nfor publication.\n\nThe only island known to exist in the region in which my uncle was\npicked up is Noble's Isle, a small volcanic islet and uninhabited.\nIt was visited in 1891 by H. M. S. Scorpion.  A party of sailors\nthen landed, but found nothing living thereon except certain curious\nwhite moths, some hogs and rabbits, and some rather peculiar rats.\nSo that this narrative is without confirmation in its most\nessential particular.  With that understood, there seems no harm\nin putting this strange story before the public in accordance,\nas I believe, with my uncle's intentions.  There is at least this\nmuch in its behalf:  my uncle passed out of human knowledge about\nlatitude 5 degrees S. and longitude 105 degrees E., and reappeared\nin the same part of the ocean after a space of eleven months.\nIn some way he must have lived during the interval.  And it seems that\na schooner called the Ipecacuanha with a drunken captain, John Davies,\ndid start from Africa with a puma and certain other animals aboard\nin January, 1887, that the vessel was well known at several ports\nin the South Pacific, and that it finally disappeared from those seas\n(with a considerable amount of copra aboard), sailing to its unknown\nfate from Bayna in December, 1887, a date that tallies entirely with my\nuncle's story.\n\nCHARLES EDWARD PRENDICK.\n\n(The Story written by Edward Prendick.)\n\n\n\n\nI.  IN THE DINGEY OF THE \"LADY VAIN.\"\n\n\nI DO not propose to add anything to what has already been written\nconcerning the loss of the \"Lady Vain.\"  As everyone knows,\nshe collided with a derelict when ten days out from Callao.\nThe longboat, with seven of the crew, was picked up eighteen days after\nby H. M. gunboat \"Myrtle,\" and the story of their terrible privations\nhas become quite as well known as the far more horrible \"Medusa\" case.\nBut I have to add to the published story of the \"Lady Vain\"\nanother, possibly as horrible and far stranger.  It has hitherto\nbeen supposed that the four men who were in the dingey perished,\nbut this is incorrect.  I have the best of evidence for this assertion:\nI was one of the four men.\n\nBut in the first place I must state that there never were four men\nin the dingey,--the number was three.  Constans, who was \"seen\nby the captain to jump into the gig,\"{1} luckily for us and unluckily\nfor himself did not reach us.  He came down out of the tangle\nof ropes under the stays of the smashed bowsprit, some small rope\ncaught his heel as he let go, and he hung for a moment head downward,\nand then fell and struck a block or spar floating in the water.\nWe pulled towards him, but he never came up.\n\n{1} Daily News, March 17, 1887.\n\nI say luckily for us he did not reach us, and I might almost\nsay luckily for himself; for we had only a small beaker\nof water and some soddened ship's biscuits with us, so sudden\nhad been the alarm, so unprepared the ship for any disaster.\nWe thought the people on the launch would be better provisioned\n(though it seems they were not), and we tried to hail them.  They could\nnot have heard us, and the next morning when the drizzle cleared,--which\nwas not until past midday,--we could see nothing of them.  We could\nnot stand up to look about us, because of the pitching of the boat.\nThe two other men who had escaped so far with me were a man named Helmar,\na passenger like myself, and a seaman whose name I don't know,--a short\nsturdy man, with a stammer.\n\nWe drifted famishing, and, after our water had come to an end,\ntormented by an intolerable thirst, for eight days altogether.\nAfter the second day the sea subsided slowly to a glassy calm.  It is\nquite impossible for the ordinary reader to imagine those eight days.\nHe has not, luckily for himself, anything in his memory to imagine with.\nAfter the first day we said little to one another, and lay\nin our places in the boat and stared at the horizon, or watched,\nwith eyes that grew larger and more haggard every day, the misery\nand weakness gaining upon our companions.  The sun became pitiless.\nThe water ended on the fourth day, and we were already thinking\nstrange things and saying them with our eyes; but it was, I think,\nthe sixth before Helmar gave voice to the thing we had all been thinking.\nI remember our voices were dry and thin, so that we bent towards\none another and spared our words.  I stood out against it with all\nmy might, was rather for scuttling the boat and perishing together\namong the sharks that followed us; but when Helmar said that if his\nproposal was accepted we should have drink, the sailor came round\nto him.\n\nI would not draw lots however, and in the night the sailor whispered\nto Helmar again and again, and I sat in the bows with my clasp-knife\nin my hand, though I doubt if I had the stuff in me to fight;\nand in the morning I agreed to Helmar's proposal, and we handed\nhalfpence to find the odd man.  The lot fell upon the sailor;\nbut he was the strongest of us and would not abide by it, and attacked\nHelmar with his hands.  They grappled together and almost stood up.\nI crawled along the boat to them, intending to help Helmar by grasping\nthe sailor's leg; but the sailor stumbled with the swaying of the boat,\nand the two fell upon the gunwale and rolled overboard together.\nThey sank like stones.  I remember laughing at that, and wondering\nwhy I laughed.  The laugh caught me suddenly like a thing\nfrom without.\n\nI lay across one of the thwarts for I know not how long,\nthinking that if I had the strength I would drink sea-water\nand madden myself to die quickly.  And even as I lay there I saw,\nwith no more interest than if it had been a picture, a sail come\nup towards me over the sky-line. My mind must have been wandering,\nand yet I remember all that happened, quite distinctly.\nI remember how my head swayed with the seas, and the horizon\nwith the sail above it danced up and down; but I also remember\nas distinctly that I had a persuasion that I was dead, and that I\nthought what a jest it was that they should come too late by such\na little to catch me in my body.\n\nFor an endless period, as it seemed to me, I lay with my head\non the thwart watching the schooner (she was a little ship,\nschooner-rigged fore and aft) come up out of the sea.\nShe kept tacking to and fro in a widening compass, for she was\nsailing dead into the wind.  It never entered my head to attempt\nto attract attention, and I do not remember anything distinctly after\nthe sight of her side until I found myself in a little cabin aft.\nThere's a dim half-memory of being lifted up to the gangway, and of\na big round countenance covered with freckles and surrounded with red\nhair staring at me over the bulwarks.  I also had a disconnected\nimpression of a dark face, with extraordinary eyes, close to mine;\nbut that I thought was a nightmare, until I met it again.\nI fancy I recollect some stuff being poured in between my teeth;\nand that is all.\n\n\n\n\nII.  THE MAN WHO WAS GOING NOWHERE.\n\n\nTHE cabin in which I found myself was small and rather untidy.\nA youngish man with flaxen hair, a bristly straw-coloured moustache,\nand a dropping nether lip, was sitting and holding my wrist.\nFor a minute we stared at each other without speaking.\nHe had watery grey eyes, oddly void of expression.\nThen just overhead came a sound like an iron bedstead being\nknocked about, and the low angry growling of some large animal.\nAt the same time the man spoke.  He repeated his question,--\"How do you\nfeel now?\"\n\nI think I said I felt all right.  I could not recollect how I\nhad got there.  He must have seen the question in my face,\nfor my voice was inaccessible to me.\n\n\"You were picked up in a boat, starving.  The name on the boat\nwas the 'Lady Vain,' and there were spots of blood on the gunwale.\"\n\nAt the same time my eye caught my hand, so thin that it looked\nlike a dirty skin-purse full of loose bones, and all the business\nof the boat came back to me.\n\n\"Have some of this,\" said he, and gave me a dose of some\nscarlet stuff, iced.\n\nIt tasted like blood, and made me feel stronger.\n\n\"You were in luck,\" said he, \"to get picked up by a ship with a\nmedical man aboard.\"  He spoke with a slobbering articulation,\nwith the ghost of a lisp.\n\n\"What ship is this?\"  I said slowly, hoarse from my long silence.\n\n\"It's a little trader from Arica and Callao.  I never asked\nwhere she came from in the beginning,--out of the land\nof born fools, I guess.  I'm a passenger myself, from Arica.\nThe silly ass who owns her,--he's captain too, named Davies,--he's\nlost his certificate, or something.  You know the kind of man,--calls\nthe thing the 'Ipecacuanha,' of all silly, infernal names;\nthough when there's much of a sea without any wind, she certainly\nacts according.\"\n\n(Then the noise overhead began again, a snarling growl\nand the voice of a human being together.  Then another voice,\ntelling some \"Heaven-forsaken idiot\" to desist.)\n\n\"You were nearly dead,\" said my interlocutor.  \"It was a very\nnear thing, indeed.  But I've put some stuff into you now.\nNotice your arm's sore?  Injections.  You've been insensible for nearly\nthirty hours.\"\n\nI thought slowly.  (I was distracted now by the yelping of a number\nof dogs.) \"Am I eligible for solid food?\" I asked.\n\n\"Thanks to me,\" he said.  \"Even now the mutton is boiling.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said with assurance; \"I could eat some mutton.\"\n\n\"But,\" said he with a momentary hesitation, \"you know I'm dying to hear\nof how you came to be alone in that boat.  Damn that howling!\"\nI thought I detected a certain suspicion in his eyes.\n\nHe suddenly left the cabin, and I heard him in violent controversy\nwith some one, who seemed to me to talk gibberish in response to him.\nThe matter sounded as though it ended in blows, but in that I thought\nmy ears were mistaken.  Then he shouted at the dogs, and returned to\nthe cabin.\n\n\"Well?\" said he in the doorway.  \"You were just beginning to tell me.\"\n\nI told him my name, Edward Prendick, and how I had taken to Natural\nHistory as a relief from the dulness of my comfortable independence.\n\nHe seemed interested in this.  \"I've done some science myself.  I did\nmy Biology at University College,--getting out the ovary of the earthworm\nand the radula of the snail, and all that.  Lord!  It's ten years ago.\nBut go on! go on! tell me about the boat.\"\n\nHe was evidently satisfied with the frankness of my story,\nwhich I told in concise sentences enough, for I felt horribly weak;\nand when it was finished he reverted at once to the topic\nof Natural History and his own biological studies.  He began to\nquestion me closely about Tottenham Court Road and Gower Street.\n\"Is Caplatzi still flourishing?  What a shop that was!\"\nHe had evidently been a very ordinary medical student, and drifted\nincontinently to the topic of the music halls.  He told me\nsome anecdotes.\n\n\"Left it all,\" he said, \"ten years ago.  How jolly it all used to be!\nBut I made a young ass of myself,--played myself out before I was\ntwenty-one. I daresay it's all different now.  But I must look up\nthat ass of a cook, and see what he's done to your mutton.\"\n\nThe growling overhead was renewed, so suddenly and with so much savage\nanger that it startled me.  \"What's that?\"  I called after him,\nbut the door had closed.  He came back again with the boiled mutton,\nand I was so excited by the appetising smell of it that I forgot\nthe noise of the beast that had troubled me.\n\nAfter a day of alternate sleep and feeding I was so far recovered\nas to be able to get from my bunk to the scuttle, and see the green\nseas trying to keep pace with us.  I judged the schooner was running\nbefore the wind.  Montgomery--that was the name of the flaxen-haired\nman--came in again as I stood there, and I asked him for some clothes.\nHe lent me some duck things of his own, for those I had worn in the boat\nhad been thrown overboard.  They were rather loose for me, for he was\nlarge and long in his limbs.  He told me casually that the captain\nwas three-parts drunk in his own cabin.  As I assumed the clothes,\nI began asking him some questions about the destination of the ship.\nHe said the ship was bound to Hawaii, but that it had to land\nhim first.\n\n\"Where?\" said I.\n\n\"It's an island, where I live.  So far as I know, it hasn't got\na name.\"\n\nHe stared at me with his nether lip dropping, and looked so wilfully\nstupid of a sudden that it came into my head that he desired\nto avoid my questions.  I had the discretion to ask no more.\n\n\n\n\nIII.  THE STRANGE FACE.\n\n\nWE left the cabin and found a man at the companion obstructing\nour way.  He was standing on the ladder with his back to us,\npeering over the combing of the hatchway.  He was, I could see,\na misshapen man, short, broad, and clumsy, with a crooked back,\na hairy neck, and a head sunk between his shoulders.  He was dressed\nin dark-blue serge, and had peculiarly thick, coarse, black hair.\nI heard the unseen dogs growl furiously, and forthwith he ducked\nback,--coming into contact with the hand I put out to fend him off\nfrom myself.  He turned with animal swiftness.\n\nIn some indefinable way the black face thus flashed upon me\nshocked me profoundly.  It was a singularly deformed one.\nThe facial part projected, forming something dimly suggestive\nof a muzzle, and the huge half-open mouth showed as big white teeth\nas I had ever seen in a human mouth.  His eyes were blood-shot\nat the edges, with scarcely a rim of white round the hazel pupils.\nThere was a curious glow of excitement in his face.\n\n\"Confound you!\" said Montgomery.  \"Why the devil don't you get\nout of the way?\"\n\nThe black-faced man started aside without a word.\nI went on up the companion, staring at him instinctively\nas I did so.  Montgomery stayed at the foot for a moment.\n\"You have no business here, you know,\" he said in a deliberate tone.\n\"Your place is forward.\"\n\nThe black-faced man cowered.  \"They--won't have me forward.\"\nHe spoke slowly, with a queer, hoarse quality in his voice.\n\n\"Won't have you forward!\" said Montgomery, in a menacing voice.\n\"But I tell you to go!\"  He was on the brink of saying something further,\nthen looked up at me suddenly and followed me up the ladder.\n\nI had paused half way through the hatchway, looking back, still astonished\nbeyond measure at the grotesque ugliness of this black-faced creature.\nI had never beheld such a repulsive and extraordinary face before,\nand yet--if the contradiction is credible--I experienced at\nthe same time an odd feeling that in some way I _had_ already\nencountered exactly the features and gestures that now amazed me.\nAfterwards it occurred to me that probably I had seen him as I\nwas lifted aboard; and yet that scarcely satisfied my suspicion\nof a previous acquaintance.  Yet how one could have set eyes on\nso singular a face and yet have forgotten the precise occasion,\npassed my imagination.\n\nMontgomery's movement to follow me released my attention, and I\nturned and looked about me at the flush deck of the little schooner.\nI was already half prepared by the sounds I had heard for what I saw.\nCertainly I never beheld a deck so dirty.  It was littered with\nscraps of carrot, shreds of green stuff, and indescribable filth.\nFastened by chains to the mainmast were a number of grisly staghounds,\nwho now began leaping and barking at me, and by the mizzen a huge puma was\ncramped in a little iron cage far too small even to give it turning room.\nFarther under the starboard bulwark were some big hutches containing\na number of rabbits, and a solitary llama was squeezed in a mere\nbox of a cage forward.  The dogs were muzzled by leather straps.\nThe only human being on deck was a gaunt and silent sailor at\nthe wheel.\n\nThe patched and dirty spankers were tense before the wind,\nand up aloft the little ship seemed carrying every sail she had.\nThe sky was clear, the sun midway down the western sky;\nlong waves, capped by the breeze with froth, were running with us.\nWe went past the steersman to the taffrail, and saw the water come\nfoaming under the stern and the bubbles go dancing and vanishing\nin her wake.  I turned and surveyed the unsavoury length of\nthe ship.\n\n\"Is this an ocean menagerie?\" said I.\n\n\"Looks like it,\" said Montgomery.\n\n\"What are these beasts for?  Merchandise, curios?  Does the captain\nthink he is going to sell them somewhere in the South Seas?\"\n\n\"It looks like it, doesn't it?\" said Montgomery, and turned towards\nthe wake again.\n\nSuddenly we heard a yelp and a volley of furious blasphemy\nfrom the companion hatchway, and the deformed man with the black\nface came up hurriedly.  He was immediately followed by a heavy\nred-haired man in a white cap.  At the sight of the former\nthe staghounds, who had all tired of barking at me by this time,\nbecame furiously excited, howling and leaping against their chains.\nThe black hesitated before them, and this gave the red-haired man\ntime to come up with him and deliver a tremendous blow between\nthe shoulder-blades. The poor devil went down like a felled ox,\nand rolled in the dirt among the furiously excited dogs.\nIt was lucky for him that they were muzzled.  The red-haired man gave\na yawp of exultation and stood staggering, and as it seemed to me\nin serious danger of either going backwards down the companion hatchway\nor forwards upon his victim.\n\nSo soon as the second man had appeared, Montgomery had started forward.\n\"Steady on there!\" he cried, in a tone of remonstrance.\nA couple of sailors appeared on the forecastle.  The black-faced man,\nhowling in a singular voice rolled about under the feet of the dogs.\nNo one attempted to help him.  The brutes did their best to worry him,\nbutting their muzzles at him.  There was a quick dance of their\nlithe grey-figured bodies over the clumsy, prostrate figure.\nThe sailors forward shouted, as though it was admirable sport.\nMontgomery gave an angry exclamation, and went striding down\nthe deck, and I followed him.  The black-faced man scrambled\nup and staggered forward, going and leaning over the bulwark\nby the main shrouds, where he remained, panting and glaring\nover his shoulder at the dogs.  The red-haired man laughed a\nsatisfied laugh.\n\n\"Look here, Captain,\" said Montgomery, with his lisp a little accentuated,\ngripping the elbows of the red-haired man, \"this won't do!\"\n\nI stood behind Montgomery.  The captain came half round,\nand regarded him with the dull and solemn eyes of a drunken man.\n\"Wha' won't do?\" he said, and added, after looking sleepily into\nMontgomery's face for a minute, \"Blasted Sawbones!\"\n\nWith a sudden movement he shook his arms free, and after two\nineffectual attempts stuck his freckled fists into his side pockets.\n\n\"That man's a passenger,\" said Montgomery.  \"I'd advise you to keep\nyour hands off him.\"\n\n\"Go to hell!\" said the captain, loudly.  He suddenly turned\nand staggered towards the side.  \"Do what I like on my own ship,\"\nhe said.\n\nI think Montgomery might have left him then, seeing the brute was drunk;\nbut he only turned a shade paler, and followed the captain\nto the bulwarks.\n\n\"Look you here, Captain,\" he said; \"that man of mine is not to be\nill-treated. He has been hazed ever since he came aboard.\"\n\nFor a minute, alcoholic fumes kept the captain speechless.\n\"Blasted Sawbones!\" was all he considered necessary.\n\nI could see that Montgomery had one of those slow, pertinacious tempers\nthat will warm day after day to a white heat, and never again\ncool to forgiveness; and I saw too that this quarrel had been\nsome time growing.  \"The man's drunk,\" said I, perhaps officiously;\n\"you'll do no good.\"\n\nMontgomery gave an ugly twist to his dropping lip.  \"He's always drunk.\nDo you think that excuses his assaulting his passengers?\"\n\n\"My ship,\" began the captain, waving his hand unsteadily\ntowards the cages, \"was a clean ship.  Look at it now!\"\nIt was certainly anything but clean.  \"Crew,\" continued the captain,\n\"clean, respectable crew.\"\n\n\"You agreed to take the beasts.\"\n\n\"I wish I'd never set eyes on your infernal island.  What the\ndevil--want beasts for on an island like that?  Then, that man of\nyours--understood he was a man.  He's a lunatic; and he hadn't no\nbusiness aft.  Do you think the whole damned ship belongs to you?\"\n\n\"Your sailors began to haze the poor devil as soon as he came aboard.\"\n\n\"That's just what he is--he's a devil! an ugly devil!  My men\ncan't stand him.  _I_ can't stand him.  None of us can't stand him.\nNor _you_ either!\"\n\nMontgomery turned away.  \"_You_ leave that man alone, anyhow,\" he said,\nnodding his head as he spoke.\n\nBut the captain meant to quarrel now.  He raised his voice.  \"If he comes\nthis end of the ship again I'll cut his insides out, I tell you.\nCut out his blasted insides!  Who are you, to tell me what I'm to do?\nI tell you I'm captain of this ship,--captain and owner.\nI'm the law here, I tell you,--the law and the prophets.\nI bargained to take a man and his attendant to and from Arica,\nand bring back some animals.  I never bargained to carry a mad devil\nand a silly Sawbones, a--\"\n\nWell, never mind what he called Montgomery.  I saw the latter take\na step forward, and interposed.  \"He's drunk,\" said I. The captain\nbegan some abuse even fouler than the last.  \"Shut up!\" I said,\nturning on him sharply, for I had seen danger in Montgomery's white face.\nWith that I brought the downpour on myself.\n\nHowever, I was glad to avert what was uncommonly near a scuffle,\neven at the price of the captain's drunken ill-will. I do not think\nI have ever heard quite so much vile language come in a continuous\nstream from any man's lips before, though I have frequented eccentric\ncompany enough.  I found some of it hard to endure, though I am\na mild-tempered man; but, certainly, when I told the captain to\n\"shut up\" I had forgotten that I was merely a bit of human flotsam,\ncut off from my resources and with my fare unpaid; a mere casual\ndependant on the bounty, or speculative enterprise, of the ship.\nHe reminded me of it with considerable vigour; but at any rate I prevented\na fight.\n\n\n\n\nIV.  AT THE SCHOONER'S RAIL.\n\n\nTHAT night land was sighted after sundown, and the schooner\nhove to.  Montgomery intimated that was his destination.\nIt was too far to see any details; it seemed to me then simply\na low-lying patch of dim blue in the uncertain blue-grey sea.\nAn almost vertical streak of smoke went up from it into the sky.\nThe captain was not on deck when it was sighted.  After he had vented\nhis wrath on me he had staggered below, and I understand he went to sleep\non the floor of his own cabin.  The mate practically assumed the command.\nHe was the gaunt, taciturn individual we had seen at the wheel.\nApparently he was in an evil temper with Montgomery.  He took\nnot the slightest notice of either of us.  We dined with him in a\nsulky silence, after a few ineffectual efforts on my part to talk.\nIt struck me too that the men regarded my companion and his animals\nin a singularly unfriendly manner.  I found Montgomery very reticent\nabout his purpose with these creatures, and about his destination;\nand though I was sensible of a growing curiosity as to both, I did not\npress him.\n\nWe remained talking on the quarter deck until the sky was thick\nwith stars.  Except for an occasional sound in the yellow-lit forecastle\nand a movement of the animals now and then, the night was very still.\nThe puma lay crouched together, watching us with shining eyes, a black\nheap in the corner of its cage.  Montgomery produced some cigars.\nHe talked to me of London in a tone of half-painful reminiscence,\nasking all kinds of questions about changes that had taken place.\nHe spoke like a man who had loved his life there, and had been\nsuddenly and irrevocably cut off from it.  I gossiped as well as I\ncould of this and that.  All the time the strangeness of him was\nshaping itself in my mind; and as I talked I peered at his odd,\npallid face in the dim light of the binnacle lantern behind me.  Then I\nlooked out at the darkling sea, where in the dimness his little island\nwas hidden.\n\nThis man, it seemed to me, had come out of Immensity merely to save\nmy life.  To-morrow he would drop over the side, and vanish again out\nof my existence.  Even had it been under commonplace circumstances,\nit would have made me a trifle thoughtful; but in the first place was\nthe singularity of an educated man living on this unknown little island,\nand coupled with that the extraordinary nature of his luggage.\nI found myself repeating the captain's question. What did he want\nwith the beasts?  Why, too, had he pretended they were not his when I\nhad remarked about them at first?  Then, again, in his personal attendant\nthere was a bizarre quality which had impressed me profoundly.\nThese circumstances threw a haze of mystery round the man.  They laid\nhold of my imagination, and hampered my tongue.\n\nTowards midnight our talk of London died away, and we stood\nside by side leaning over the bulwarks and staring dreamily\nover the silent, starlit sea, each pursuing his own thoughts.\nIt was the atmosphere for sentiment, and I began upon my gratitude.\n\n\"If I may say it,\" said I, after a time, \"you have saved my life.\"\n\n\"Chance,\" he answered.  \"Just chance.\"\n\n\"I prefer to make my thanks to the accessible agent.\"\n\n\"Thank no one.  You had the need, and I had the knowledge;\nand I injected and fed you much as I might have collected a specimen.\nI was bored and wanted something to do.  If I'd been jaded that day,\nor hadn't liked your face, well--it's a curious question where you would\nhave been now!\"\n\nThis damped my mood a little.  \"At any rate,\" I began.\n\n\"It's a chance, I tell you,\" he interrupted, \"as everything is in\na man's life.  Only the asses won't see it!  Why am I here now,\nan outcast from civilisation, instead of being a happy man enjoying\nall the pleasures of London?  Simply because eleven years ago--I\nlost my head for ten minutes on a foggy night.\"\n\nHe stopped.  \"Yes?\" said I.\n\n\"That's all.\"\n\nWe relapsed into silence.  Presently he laughed.\n\"There's something in this starlight that loosens one's tongue.\nI'm an ass, and yet somehow I would like to tell you.\"\n\n\"Whatever you tell me, you may rely upon my keeping to myself--if\nthat's it.\"\n\nHe was on the point of beginning, and then shook his head, doubtfully.\n\n\"Don't,\" said I.  \"It is all the same to me.  After all, it is better\nto keep your secret.  There's nothing gained but a little relief\nif I respect your confidence.  If I don't--well?\"\n\nHe grunted undecidedly.  I felt I had him at a disadvantage, had caught\nhim in the mood of indiscretion; and to tell the truth I was not curious\nto learn what might have driven a young medical student out of London.\nI have an imagination.  I shrugged my shoulders and turned away.\nOver the taffrail leant a silent black figure, watching the stars.\nIt was Montgomery's strange attendant.  It looked over its shoulder\nquickly with my movement, then looked away again.\n\nIt may seem a little thing to you, perhaps, but it came like a sudden\nblow to me.  The only light near us was a lantern at the wheel.\nThe creature's face was turned for one brief instant out of the dimness\nof the stern towards this illumination, and I saw that the eyes\nthat glanced at me shone with a pale-green light.  I did not know then\nthat a reddish luminosity, at least, is not uncommon in human eyes.\nThe thing came to me as stark inhumanity.  That black figure with its\neyes of fire struck down through all my adult thoughts and feelings,\nand for a moment the forgotten horrors of childhood came back to my mind.\nThen the effect passed as it had come.  An uncouth black figure\nof a man, a figure of no particular import, hung over the taffrail\nagainst the starlight, and I found Montgomery was speaking\nto me.\n\n\"I'm thinking of turning in, then,\" said he, \"if you've had enough\nof this.\"\n\nI answered him incongruously.  We went below, and he wished me\ngood-night at the door of my cabin.\n\nThat night I had some very unpleasant dreams.  The waning\nmoon rose late.  Its light struck a ghostly white beam across\nmy cabin, and made an ominous shape on the planking by my bunk.\nThen the staghounds woke, and began howling and baying;\nso that I dreamt fitfully, and scarcely slept until the approach\nof dawn.\n\n\n\n\nV.  THE MAN WHO HAD NOWHERE TO GO.\n\n\nIN the early morning (it was the second morning after my recovery,\nand I believe the fourth after I was picked up), I awoke through an avenue\nof tumultuous dreams,--dreams of guns and howling mobs,--and became\nsensible of a hoarse shouting above me.  I rubbed my eyes and lay\nlistening to the noise, doubtful for a little while of my whereabouts.\nThen came a sudden pattering of bare feet, the sound of heavy objects\nbeing thrown about, a violent creaking and the rattling of chains.\nI heard the swish of the water as the ship was suddenly brought round,\nand a foamy yellow-green wave flew across the little round\nwindow and left it streaming.  I jumped into my clothes and went\non deck.\n\nAs I came up the ladder I saw against the flushed sky--for the sun\nwas just rising--the broad back and red hair of the captain,\nand over his shoulder the puma spinning from a tackle rigged on\nto the mizzen spanker-boom.\n\nThe poor brute seemed horribly scared, and crouched in the bottom\nof its little cage.\n\n\"Overboard with 'em!\" bawled the captain.  \"Overboard with 'em!\nWe'll have a clean ship soon of the whole bilin' of 'em.\"\n\nHe stood in my way, so that I had perforce to tap his shoulder\nto come on deck.  He came round with a start, and staggered back\na few paces to stare at me.  It needed no expert eye to tell\nthat the man was still drunk.\n\n\"Hullo!\" said he, stupidly; and then with a light coming into his eyes,\n\"Why, it's Mister--Mister?\"\n\n\"Prendick,\" said I.\n\n\"Prendick be damned!\" said he.  \"Shut-up,--that's your name.\nMister Shut-up.\"\n\nIt was no good answering the brute; but I certainly did not expect\nhis next move.  He held out his hand to the gangway by which Montgomery\nstood talking to a massive grey-haired man in dirty-blue flannels,\nwho had apparently just come aboard.\n\n\"That way, Mister Blasted Shut-up! that way!\" roared the captain.\n\nMontgomery and his companion turned as he spoke.\n\n\"What do you mean?\"  I said.\n\n\"That way, Mister Blasted Shut-up,--that's what I mean!\nOverboard, Mister Shut-up,--and sharp!  We're cleaning the ship\nout,--cleaning the whole blessed ship out; and overboard you go!\"\n\nI stared at him dumfounded.  Then it occurred to me that it was\nexactly the thing I wanted.  The lost prospect of a journey as sole\npassenger with this quarrelsome sot was not one to mourn over.\nI turned towards Montgomery.\n\n\"Can't have you,\" said Montgomery's companion, concisely.\n\n\"You can't have me!\" said I, aghast.  He had the squarest and most\nresolute face I ever set eyes upon.\n\n\"Look here,\" I began, turning to the captain.\n\n\"Overboard!\" said the captain.  \"This ship aint for beasts\nand cannibals and worse than beasts, any more.  Overboard you go,\nMister Shut-up. If they can't have you, you goes overboard.\nBut, anyhow, you go--with your friends.  I've done with this blessed\nisland for evermore, amen!  I've had enough of it.\"\n\n\"But, Montgomery,\" I appealed.\n\nHe distorted his lower lip, and nodded his head hopelessly at\nthe grey-haired man beside him, to indicate his powerlessness to help me.\n\n\"I'll see to _you_, presently,\" said the captain.\n\nThen began a curious three-cornered altercation.\nAlternately I appealed to one and another of the three men,--first\nto the grey-haired man to let me land, and then to the drunken\ncaptain to keep me aboard.  I even bawled entreaties to the sailors.\nMontgomery said never a word, only shook his head.\n\"You're going overboard, I tell you,\" was the captain's refrain.\n\"Law be damned!  I'm king here.\"  At last I must confess\nmy voice suddenly broke in the middle of a vigorous threat.\nI felt a gust of hysterical petulance, and went aft and stared dismally\nat nothing.\n\nMeanwhile the sailors progressed rapidly with the task of\nunshipping the packages and caged animals.  A large launch,\nwith two standing lugs, lay under the lee of the schooner;\nand into this the strange assortment of goods were swung.\nI did not then see the hands from the island that were receiving\nthe packages, for the hull of the launch was hidden from me\nby the side of the schooner.  Neither Montgomery nor his companion\ntook the slightest notice of me, but busied themselves in assisting\nand directing the four or five sailors who were unloading the goods.\nThe captain went forward interfering rather than assisting.\nI was alternately despairful and desperate.  Once or twice\nas I stood waiting there for things to accomplish themselves,\nI could not resist an impulse to laugh at my miserable quandary.\nI felt all the wretcheder for the lack of a breakfast.\nHunger and a lack of blood-corpuscles take all the manhood from a man.\nI perceived pretty clearly that I had not the stamina\neither to resist what the captain chose to do to expel me,\nor to force myself upon Montgomery and his companion.\nSo I waited passively upon fate; and the work of transferring\nMontgomery's possessions to the launch went on as if I did\nnot exist.\n\nPresently that work was finished, and then came a struggle.\nI was hauled, resisting weakly enough, to the gangway.\nEven then I noticed the oddness of the brown faces of the men who were\nwith Montgomery in the launch; but the launch was now fully laden,\nand was shoved off hastily.  A broadening gap of green water\nappeared under me, and I pushed back with all my strength to avoid\nfalling headlong.  The hands in the launch shouted derisively,\nand I heard Montgomery curse at them; and then the captain,\nthe mate, and one of the seamen helping him, ran me aft towards\nthe stern.\n\nThe dingey of the \"Lady Vain\" had been towing behind; it was\nhalf full of water, had no oars, and was quite unvictualled.\nI refused to go aboard her, and flung myself full length on the deck.\nIn the end, they swung me into her by a rope (for they had no\nstern ladder), and then they cut me adrift.  I drifted slowly\nfrom the schooner.  In a kind of stupor I watched all hands take\nto the rigging, and slowly but surely she came round to the wind;\nthe sails fluttered, and then bellied out as the wind came into them.\nI stared at her weather-beaten side heeling steeply towards me;\nand then she passed out of my range of view.\n\nI did not turn my head to follow her.  At first I could scarcely\nbelieve what had happened.  I crouched in the bottom of the dingey,\nstunned, and staring blankly at the vacant, oily sea.  Then I realised\nthat I was in that little hell of mine again, now half swamped;\nand looking back over the gunwale, I saw the schooner standing away\nfrom me, with the red-haired captain mocking at me over the taffrail,\nand turning towards the island saw the launch growing smaller as she\napproached the beach.\n\nAbruptly the cruelty of this desertion became clear to me.\nI had no means of reaching the land unless I should chance to drift there.\nI was still weak, you must remember, from my exposure in the boat;\nI was empty and very faint, or I should have had more heart.\nBut as it was I suddenly began to sob and weep, as I had never done\nsince I was a little child.  The tears ran down my face.  In a passion\nof despair I struck with my fists at the water in the bottom of the boat,\nand kicked savagely at the gunwale.  I prayed aloud for God to let\nme die.\n\n\n\n\nVI.  THE EVIL-LOOKING BOATMEN.\n\n\nBUT the islanders, seeing that I was really adrift, took pity on me.\nI drifted very slowly to the eastward, approaching the island slantingly;\nand presently I saw, with hysterical relief, the launch come round and\nreturn towards me.  She was heavily laden, and I could make out as she\ndrew nearer Montgomery's white-haired, broad-shouldered companion sitting\ncramped up with the dogs and several packing-cases in the stern sheets.\nThis individual stared fixedly at me without moving or speaking.\nThe black-faced cripple was glaring at me as fixedly in the bows\nnear the puma.  There were three other men besides,--three strange\nbrutish-looking fellows, at whom the staghounds were snarling savagely.\nMontgomery, who was steering, brought the boat by me, and rising,\ncaught and fastened my painter to the tiller to tow me, for there was no\nroom aboard.\n\nI had recovered from my hysterical phase by this time\nand answered his hail, as he approached, bravely enough.\nI told him the dingey was nearly swamped, and he reached me a piggin.\nI was jerked back as the rope tightened between the boats.\nFor some time I was busy baling.\n\nIt was not until I had got the water under (for the water\nin the dingey had been shipped; the boat was perfectly sound)\nthat I had leisure to look at the people in the launch again.\n\nThe white-haired man I found was still regarding me steadfastly,\nbut with an expression, as I now fancied, of some perplexity.\nWhen my eyes met his, he looked down at the staghound that sat\nbetween his knees.  He was a powerfully-built man, as I have said,\nwith a fine forehead and rather heavy features; but his eyes\nhad that odd drooping of the skin above the lids which often\ncomes with advancing years, and the fall of his heavy mouth\nat the corners gave him an expression of pugnacious resolution.\nHe talked to Montgomery in a tone too low for me to hear.\n\nFrom him my eyes travelled to his three men; and a strange crew they were.\nI saw only their faces, yet there was something in their\nfaces--I knew not what--that gave me a queer spasm of disgust.\nI looked steadily at them, and the impression did not pass,\nthough I failed to see what had occasioned it.  They seemed\nto me then to be brown men; but their limbs were oddly swathed\nin some thin, dirty, white stuff down even to the fingers and feet:\nI have never seen men so wrapped up before, and women so only in the East.\nThey wore turbans too, and thereunder peered out their elfin\nfaces at me,--faces with protruding lower-jaws and bright eyes.\nThey had lank black hair, almost like horsehair, and seemed\nas they sat to exceed in stature any race of men I have seen.\nThe white-haired man, who I knew was a good six feet in height,\nsat a head below any one of the three.  I found afterwards that really\nnone were taller than myself; but their bodies were abnormally long,\nand the thigh-part of the leg short and curiously twisted.\nAt any rate, they were an amazingly ugly gang, and over the heads\nof them under the forward lug peered the black face of the man whose\neyes were luminous in the dark.  As I stared at them, they met my gaze;\nand then first one and then another turned away from my direct stare,\nand looked at me in an odd, furtive manner.  It occurred to me that I\nwas perhaps annoying them, and I turned my attention to the island\nwe were approaching.\n\nIt was low, and covered with thick vegetation,--chiefly a kind of palm,\nthat was new to me.  From one point a thin white thread of vapour rose\nslantingly to an immense height, and then frayed out like a down feather.\nWe were now within the embrace of a broad bay flanked on either\nhand by a low promontory.  The beach was of dull-grey sand,\nand sloped steeply up to a ridge, perhaps sixty or seventy feet above\nthe sea-level, and irregularly set with trees and undergrowth.\nHalf way up was a square enclosure of some greyish stone, which I found\nsubsequently was built partly of coral and partly of pumiceous lava.\nTwo thatched roofs peeped from within this enclosure.\nA man stood awaiting us at the water's edge.  I fancied while we\nwere still far off that I saw some other and very grotesque-looking\ncreatures scuttle into the bushes upon the slope; but I saw nothing\nof these as we drew nearer.  This man was of a moderate size,\nand with a black negroid face.  He had a large, almost lipless,\nmouth, extraordinary lank arms, long thin feet, and bow-legs,\nand stood with his heavy face thrust forward staring at us.\nHe was dressed like Montgomery and his white-haired companion,\nin jacket and trousers of blue serge.  As we came still nearer,\nthis individual began to run to and fro on the beach, making the most\ngrotesque movements.\n\nAt a word of command from Montgomery, the four men in the launch\nsprang up, and with singularly awkward gestures struck the lugs.\nMontgomery steered us round and into a narrow little dock excavated\nin the beach.  Then the man on the beach hastened towards us.\nThis dock, as I call it, was really a mere ditch just long\nenough at this phase of the tide to take the longboat.\nI heard the bows ground in the sand, staved the dingey off the rudder\nof the big boat with my piggin, and freeing the painter, landed.\nThe three muffled men, with the clumsiest movements, scrambled out\nupon the sand, and forthwith set to landing the cargo, assisted by\nthe man on the beach.  I was struck especially by the curious\nmovements of the legs of the three swathed and bandaged boatmen,--not\nstiff they were, but distorted in some odd way, almost as if they\nwere jointed in the wrong place.  The dogs were still snarling,\nand strained at their chains after these men, as the white-haired\nman landed with them.  The three big fellows spoke to one another\nin odd guttural tones, and the man who had waited for us on\nthe beach began chattering to them excitedly--a foreign language,\nas I fancied--as they laid hands on some bales piled near the stern.\nSomewhere I had heard such a voice before, and I could not think where.\nThe white-haired man stood, holding in a tumult of six dogs, and bawling\norders over their din.  Montgomery, having unshipped the rudder,\nlanded likewise, and all set to work at unloading.  I was too faint,\nwhat with my long fast and the sun beating down on my bare head, to offer\nany assistance.\n\nPresently the white-haired man seemed to recollect my presence,\nand came up to me.\n\n\"You look,\" said he, \"as though you had scarcely breakfasted.\"\nHis little eyes were a brilliant black under his heavy brows.\n\"I must apologise for that.  Now you are our guest, we must\nmake you comfortable,--though you are uninvited, you know.\"\nHe looked keenly into my face.  \"Montgomery says you are an educated man,\nMr. Prendick; says you know something of science.  May I ask what\nthat signifies?\"\n\nI told him I had spent some years at the Royal College of Science,\nand had done some researches in biology under Huxley.  He raised\nhis eyebrows slightly at that.\n\n\"That alters the case a little, Mr. Prendick,\" he said,\nwith a trifle more respect in his manner.  \"As it happens,\nwe are biologists here.  This is a biological station--of a sort.\"\nHis eye rested on the men in white who were busily hauling the puma,\non rollers, towards the walled yard.  \"I and Montgomery, at least,\"\nhe added.  Then, \"When you will be able to get away, I can't say.\nWe're off the track to anywhere.  We see a ship once in a twelve-month\nor so.\"\n\nHe left me abruptly, and went up the beach past this group, and I\nthink entered the enclosure.  The other two men were with Montgomery,\nerecting a pile of smaller packages on a low-wheeled truck.\nThe llama was still on the launch with the rabbit hutches;\nthe staghounds were still lashed to the thwarts.\nThe pile of things completed, all three men laid hold of the truck\nand began shoving the ton-weight or so upon it after the puma.\nPresently Montgomery left them, and coming back to me held out\nhis hand.\n\n\"I'm glad,\" said he, \"for my own part.  That captain was a silly ass.\nHe'd have made things lively for you.\"\n\n\"It was you,\" said I, \"that saved me again.\"\n\n\"That depends.  You'll find this island an infernally rum place,\nI promise you.  I'd watch my goings carefully, if I were you.\n_He_--\" He hesitated, and seemed to alter his mind about what\nwas on his lips.  \"I wish you'd help me with these rabbits,\"\nhe said.\n\nHis procedure with the rabbits was singular.  I waded\nin with him, and helped him lug one of the hutches ashore.\nNo sooner was that done than he opened the door of it, and tilting\nthe thing on one end turned its living contents out on the ground.\nThey fell in a struggling heap one on the top of the other.\nHe clapped his hands, and forthwith they went off with that hopping\nrun of theirs, fifteen or twenty of them I should think, up\nthe beach.\n\n\"Increase and multiply, my friends,\" said Montgomery.\n\"Replenish the island.  Hitherto we've had a certain lack of meat here.\"\n\nAs I watched them disappearing, the white-haired man returned with a\nbrandy-flask and some biscuits.  \"Something to go on with, Prendick,\"\nsaid he, in a far more familiar tone than before.  I made no ado,\nbut set to work on the biscuits at once, while the white-haired man\nhelped Montgomery to release about a score more of the rabbits.\nThree big hutches, however, went up to the house with the puma.\nThe brandy I did not touch, for I have been an abstainer from\nmy birth.\n\n\n\n\nVII.  THE LOCKED DOOR.\n\n\nTHE reader will perhaps understand that at first everything was so strange\nabout me, and my position was the outcome of such unexpected adventures,\nthat I had no discernment of the relative strangeness of this\nor that thing.  I followed the llama up the beach, and was overtaken\nby Montgomery, who asked me not to enter the stone enclosure.\nI noticed then that the puma in its cage and the pile of packages\nhad been placed outside the entrance to this quadrangle.\n\nI turned and saw that the launch had now been unloaded, run out again,\nand was being beached, and the white-haired man was walking towards us.\nHe addressed Montgomery.\n\n\"And now comes the problem of this uninvited guest.  What are we\nto do with him?\"\n\n\"He knows something of science,\" said Montgomery.\n\n\"I'm itching to get to work again--with this new stuff,\"\nsaid the white-haired man, nodding towards the enclosure.\nHis eyes grew brighter.\n\n\"I daresay you are,\" said Montgomery, in anything but a cordial tone.\n\n\"We can't send him over there, and we can't spare the time to build\nhim a new shanty; and we certainly can't take him into our confidence\njust yet.\"\n\n\"I'm in your hands,\" said I. I had no idea of what he meant\nby \"over there.\"\n\n\"I've been thinking of the same things,\" Montgomery answered.\n\"There's my room with the outer door--\"\n\n\"That's it,\" said the elder man, promptly, looking at Montgomery;\nand all three of us went towards the enclosure.  \"I'm sorry to make\na mystery, Mr. Prendick; but you'll remember you're uninvited.\nOur little establishment here contains a secret or so, is a kind\nof Blue-Beard's chamber, in fact.  Nothing very dreadful, really, to a\nsane man; but just now, as we don't know you--\"\n\n\"Decidedly,\" said I, \"I should be a fool to take offence at any want\nof confidence.\"\n\nHe twisted his heavy mouth into a faint smile--he was one of those\nsaturnine people who smile with the corners of the mouth down,--and\nbowed his acknowledgment of my complaisance.  The main entrance\nto the enclosure was passed; it was a heavy wooden gate, framed in iron\nand locked, with the cargo of the launch piled outside it, and at\nthe corner we came to a small doorway I had not previously observed.\nThe white-haired man produced a bundle of keys from the pocket\nof his greasy blue jacket, opened this door, and entered.\nHis keys, and the elaborate locking-up of the place even while it\nwas still under his eye, struck me as peculiar.  I followed him,\nand found myself in a small apartment, plainly but not uncomfortably\nfurnished and with its inner door, which was slightly ajar, opening into\na paved courtyard.  This inner door Montgomery at once closed.\nA hammock was slung across the darker corner of the room, and a\nsmall unglazed window defended by an iron bar looked out towards\nthe sea.\n\nThis the white-haired man told me was to be my apartment;\nand the inner door, which \"for fear of accidents,\" he said,\nhe would lock on the other side, was my limit inward.\nHe called my attention to a convenient deck-chair before the window,\nand to an array of old books, chiefly, I found, surgical works\nand editions of the Latin and Greek classics (languages I\ncannot read with any comfort), on a shelf near the hammock.\nHe left the room by the outer door, as if to avoid opening the inner\none again.\n\n\"We usually have our meals in here,\" said Montgomery, and then,\nas if in doubt, went out after the other.  \"Moreau!\" I heard\nhim call, and for the moment I do not think I noticed.\nThen as I handled the books on the shelf it came up in consciousness:\nWhere had I heard the name of Moreau before?  I sat down before\nthe window, took out the biscuits that still remained to me,\nand ate them with an excellent appetite.  Moreau!\n\nThrough the window I saw one of those unaccountable men in white, lugging a\npacking-case along the beach.  Presently the window-frame hid him.\nThen I heard a key inserted and turned in the lock behind me.\nAfter a little while I heard through the locked door the noise\nof the staghounds, that had now been brought up from the beach.\nThey were not barking, but sniffing and growling in a curious fashion.\nI could hear the rapid patter of their feet, and Montgomery's voice\nsoothing them.\n\nI was very much impressed by the elaborate secrecy of these two men\nregarding the contents of the place, and for some time I was thinking\nof that and of the unaccountable familiarity of the name of Moreau;\nbut so odd is the human memory that I could not then recall that\nwell-known name in its proper connection.  From that my thoughts\nwent to the indefinable queerness of the deformed man on the beach.\nI never saw such a gait, such odd motions as he pulled at the box.\nI recalled that none of these men had spoken to me, though most\nof them I had found looking at me at one time or another in a\npeculiarly furtive manner, quite unlike the frank stare of your\nunsophisticated savage.  Indeed, they had all seemed remarkably taciturn,\nand when they did speak, endowed with very uncanny voices.\nWhat was wrong with them?  Then I recalled the eyes of Montgomery's\nungainly attendant.\n\nJust as I was thinking of him he came in.  He was now dressed in white,\nand carried a little tray with some coffee and boiled vegetables thereon.\nI could hardly repress a shuddering recoil as he came, bending amiably,\nand placed the tray before me on the table.  Then astonishment\nparalysed me.  Under his stringy black locks I saw his ear;\nit jumped upon me suddenly close to my face.  The man had pointed ears,\ncovered with a fine brown fur!\n\n\"Your breakfast, sair,\" he said.\n\nI stared at his face without attempting to answer him.  He turned\nand went towards the door, regarding me oddly over his shoulder.\nI followed him out with my eyes; and as I did so, by some odd trick\nof unconscious cerebration, there came surging into my head the phrase,\n\"The Moreau Hollows\"--was it?  \"The Moreau--\" Ah!  It sent my memory\nback ten years.  \"The Moreau Horrors!\"  The phrase drifted loose\nin my mind for a moment, and then I saw it in red lettering on a little\nbuff-coloured pamphlet, to read which made one shiver and creep.\nThen I remembered distinctly all about it.  That long-forgotten\npamphlet came back with startling vividness to my mind.\nI had been a mere lad then, and Moreau was, I suppose, about fifty,--a\nprominent and masterful physiologist, well-known in scientific\ncircles for his extraordinary imagination and his brutal directness\nin discussion.\n\nWas this the same Moreau?  He had published some very astonishing\nfacts in connection with the transfusion of blood, and in\naddition was known to be doing valuable work on morbid growths.\nThen suddenly his career was closed.  He had to leave England.\nA journalist obtained access to his laboratory in the capacity\nof laboratory-assistant, with the deliberate intention of making\nsensational exposures; and by the help of a shocking accident\n(if it was an accident), his gruesome pamphlet became notorious.\nOn the day of its publication a wretched dog, flayed and\notherwise mutilated, escaped from Moreau's house.  It was in\nthe silly season, and a prominent editor, a cousin of the temporary\nlaboratory-assistant, appealed to the conscience of the nation.\nIt was not the first time that conscience has turned against the methods\nof research.  The doctor was simply howled out of the country.\nIt may be that he deserved to be; but I still think that the tepid\nsupport of his fellow-investigators and his desertion by the great\nbody of scientific workers was a shameful thing.  Yet some of\nhis experiments, by the journalist's account, were wantonly cruel.\nHe might perhaps have purchased his social peace by abandoning\nhis investigations; but he apparently preferred the latter, as most men\nwould who have once fallen under the overmastering spell of research.\nHe was unmarried, and had indeed nothing but his own interest\nto consider.\n\nI felt convinced that this must be the same man.  Everything pointed\nto it.  It dawned upon me to what end the puma and the other\nanimals--which had now been brought with other luggage into the\nenclosure behind the house--were destined; and a curious faint odour,\nthe halitus of something familiar, an odour that had been in\nthe background of my consciousness hitherto, suddenly came forward\ninto the forefront of my thoughts.  It was the antiseptic odour\nof the dissecting-room. I heard the puma growling through the wall,\nand one of the dogs yelped as though it had been struck.\n\nYet surely, and especially to another scientific man, there was\nnothing so horrible in vivisection as to account for this secrecy;\nand by some odd leap in my thoughts the pointed ears and luminous\neyes of Montgomery's attendant came back again before me with\nthe sharpest definition.  I stared before me out at the green sea,\nfrothing under a freshening breeze, and let these and other strange\nmemories of the last few days chase one another through my mind.\n\nWhat could it all mean?  A locked enclosure on a lonely island,\na notorious vivisector, and these crippled and distorted men?\n\n\n\n\nVIII.  THE CRYING OF THE PUMA.\n\n\nMONTGOMERY interrupted my tangle of mystification and suspicion\nabout one o'clock, and his grotesque attendant followed him\nwith a tray bearing bread, some herbs and other eatables,\na flask of whiskey, a jug of water, and three glasses and knives.\nI glanced askance at this strange creature, and found him watching\nme with his queer, restless eyes.  Montgomery said he would lunch\nwith me, but that Moreau was too preoccupied with some work\nto come.\n\n\"Moreau!\" said I.  \"I know that name.\"\n\n\"The devil you do!\" said he.  \"What an ass I was to mention it to you!\nI might have thought.  Anyhow, it will give you an inkling\nof our--mysteries.  Whiskey?\"\n\n\"No, thanks; I'm an abstainer.\"\n\n\"I wish I'd been.  But it's no use locking the door\nafter the steed is stolen.  It was that infernal\nstuff which led to my coming here,--that, and a foggy night.\nI thought myself in luck at the time, when Moreau offered to get me off.\nIt's queer--\"\n\n\"Montgomery,\" said I, suddenly, as the outer door closed, \"why has\nyour man pointed ears?\"\n\n\"Damn!\" he said, over his first mouthful of food.  He stared at me\nfor a moment, and then repeated, \"Pointed ears?\"\n\n\"Little points to them,\" said I, as calmly as possible, with a catch\nin my breath; \"and a fine black fur at the edges?\"\n\nHe helped himself to whiskey and water with great deliberation.\n\"I was under the impression--that his hair covered his ears.\"\n\n\"I saw them as he stooped by me to put that coffee you sent to me\non the table.  And his eyes shine in the dark.\"\n\nBy this time Montgomery had recovered from the surprise of my question.\n\"I always thought,\" he said deliberately, with a certain\naccentuation of his flavouring of lisp, \"that there _was_ something\nthe matter with his ears, from the way he covered them.\nWhat were they like?\"\n\nI was persuaded from his manner that this ignorance was a pretence.\nStill, I could hardly tell the man that I thought him a liar.\n\"Pointed,\" I said; \"rather small and furry,--distinctly furry.\nBut the whole man is one of the strangest beings I ever set\neyes on.\"\n\nA sharp, hoarse cry of animal pain came from the enclosure behind us.\nIts depth and volume testified to the puma.  I saw Montgomery wince.\n\n\"Yes?\" he said.\n\n\"Where did you pick up the creature?\"\n\n\"San Francisco.  He's an ugly brute, I admit.  Half-witted, you know.\nCan't remember where he came from.  But I'm used to him, you know.\nWe both are.  How does he strike you?\"\n\n\"He's unnatural,\" I said.  \"There's something about him--don't\nthink me fanciful, but it gives me a nasty little sensation,\na tightening of my muscles, when he comes near me.  It's a touch--of\nthe diabolical, in fact.\"\n\nMontgomery had stopped eating while I told him this.  \"Rum!\" he said.\n\"I can't see it.\"  He resumed his meal.  \"I had no idea of it,\"\nhe said, and masticated.  \"The crew of the schooner must have\nfelt it the same.  Made a dead set at the poor devil.  You saw\nthe captain?\"\n\nSuddenly the puma howled again, this time more painfully.\nMontgomery swore under his breath.  I had half a mind to attack him\nabout the men on the beach.  Then the poor brute within gave vent\nto a series of short, sharp cries.\n\n\"Your men on the beach,\" said I; \"what race are they?\"\n\n\"Excellent fellows, aren't they?\" said he, absentmindedly,\nknitting his brows as the animal yelled out sharply.\n\nI said no more.  There was another outcry worse than the former.\nHe looked at me with his dull grey eyes, and then took some\nmore whiskey.  He tried to draw me into a discussion about alcohol,\nprofessing to have saved my life with it.  He seemed anxious\nto lay stress on the fact that I owed my life to him.  I answered\nhim distractedly.\n\nPresently our meal came to an end; the misshapen monster with\nthe pointed ears cleared the remains away, and Montgomery left\nme alone in the room again.  All the time he had been in a state\nof ill-concealed irritation at the noise of the vivisected puma.\nHe had spoken of his odd want of nerve, and left me to the\nobvious application.\n\nI found myself that the cries were singularly irritating,\nand they grew in depth and intensity as the afternoon wore on.\nThey were painful at first, but their constant resurgence at last\naltogether upset my balance.  I flung aside a crib of Horace I\nhad been reading, and began to clench my fists, to bite my lips,\nand to pace the room.  Presently I got to stopping my ears with\nmy fingers.\n\nThe emotional appeal of those yells grew upon me steadily,\ngrew at last to such an exquisite expression of suffering that I\ncould stand it in that confined room no longer.  I stepped\nout of the door into the slumberous heat of the late afternoon,\nand walking past the main entrance--locked again, I noticed--turned\nthe corner of the wall.\n\nThe crying sounded even louder out of doors.  It was as if all the pain\nin the world had found a voice.  Yet had I known such pain was in\nthe next room, and had it been dumb, I believe--I have thought since--I\ncould have stood it well enough.  It is when suffering finds a voice\nand sets our nerves quivering that this pity comes troubling us.\nBut in spite of the brilliant sunlight and the green fans of the trees\nwaving in the soothing sea-breeze, the world was a confusion,\nblurred with drifting black and red phantasms, until I was out of earshot\nof the house in the chequered wall.\n\n\n\n\nIX.  THE THING IN THE FOREST.\n\n\nI STRODE through the undergrowth that clothed the ridge behind the house,\nscarcely heeding whither I went; passed on through the shadow of a thick\ncluster of straight-stemmed trees beyond it, and so presently found\nmyself some way on the other side of the ridge, and descending towards\na streamlet that ran through a narrow valley.  I paused and listened.\nThe distance I had come, or the intervening masses of thicket,\ndeadened any sound that might be coming from the enclosure.\nThe air was still.  Then with a rustle a rabbit emerged, and went\nscampering up the slope before me.  I hesitated, and sat down in the edge\nof the shade.\n\nThe place was a pleasant one.  The rivulet was hidden\nby the luxuriant vegetation of the banks save at one point,\nwhere I caught a triangular patch of its glittering water.\nOn the farther side I saw through a bluish haze a tangle of trees\nand creepers, and above these again the luminous blue of the sky.\nHere and there a splash of white or crimson marked the blooming of some\ntrailing epiphyte.  I let my eyes wander over this scene for a while,\nand then began to turn over in my mind again the strange peculiarities\nof Montgomery's man.  But it was too hot to think elaborately,\nand presently I fell into a tranquil state midway between dozing\nand waking.\n\nFrom this I was aroused, after I know not how long, by a\nrustling amidst the greenery on the other side of the stream.\nFor a moment I could see nothing but the waving summits of\nthe ferns and reeds.  Then suddenly upon the bank of the stream\nappeared something--at first I could not distinguish what it was.\nIt bowed its round head to the water, and began to drink.\nThen I saw it was a man, going on all-fours like a beast.  He was clothed\nin bluish cloth, and was of a copper-coloured hue, with black hair.\nIt seemed that grotesque ugliness was an invariable character of\nthese islanders.  I could hear the suck of the water at his lips as\nhe drank.\n\nI leant forward to see him better, and a piece of lava, detached by\nmy hand, went pattering down the slope.  He looked up guiltily,\nand his eyes met mine.  Forthwith he scrambled to his feet,\nand stood wiping his clumsy hand across his mouth and regarding me.\nHis legs were scarcely half the length of his body.\nSo, staring one another out of countenance, we remained for perhaps\nthe space of a minute.  Then, stopping to look back once or twice,\nhe slunk off among the bushes to the right of me, and I heard\nthe swish of the fronds grow faint in the distance and die away.\nLong after he had disappeared, I remained sitting up staring\nin the direction of his retreat.  My drowsy tranquillity\nhad gone.\n\nI was startled by a noise behind me, and turning suddenly saw\nthe flapping white tail of a rabbit vanishing up the slope.\nI jumped to my feet.  The apparition of this grotesque, half-bestial\ncreature had suddenly populated the stillness of the afternoon for me.\nI looked around me rather nervously, and regretted that I was unarmed.\nThen I thought that the man I had just seen had been clothed\nin bluish cloth, had not been naked as a savage would have been;\nand I tried to persuade myself from that fact that he was after all\nprobably a peaceful character, that the dull ferocity of his countenance\nbelied him.\n\nYet I was greatly disturbed at the apparition.  I walked\nto the left along the slope, turning my head about and peering\nthis way and that among the straight stems of the trees.\nWhy should a man go on all-fours and drink with his lips?  Presently I\nheard an animal wailing again, and taking it to be the puma, I turned\nabout and walked in a direction diametrically opposite to the sound.\nThis led me down to the stream, across which I stepped and pushed\nmy way up through the undergrowth beyond.\n\nI was startled by a great patch of vivid scarlet on the ground,\nand going up to it found it to be a peculiar fungus, branched and\ncorrugated like a foliaceous lichen, but deliquescing into slime\nat the touch; and then in the shadow of some luxuriant ferns I\ncame upon an unpleasant thing,--the dead body of a rabbit covered\nwith shining flies, but still warm and with the head torn off.\nI stopped aghast at the sight of the scattered blood.\nHere at least was one visitor to the island disposed of!\nThere were no traces of other violence about it.  It looked as though it\nhad been suddenly snatched up and killed; and as I stared at the little\nfurry body came the difficulty of how the thing had been done.\nThe vague dread that had been in my mind since I had seen the inhuman\nface of the man at the stream grew distincter as I stood there.\nI began to realise the hardihood of my expedition among these\nunknown people.  The thicket about me became altered to my imagination.\nEvery shadow became something more than a shadow,--became an ambush;\nevery rustle became a threat.  Invisible things seemed watching me.\nI resolved to go back to the enclosure on the beach.  I suddenly\nturned away and thrust myself violently, possibly even frantically,\nthrough the bushes, anxious to get a clear space about me\nagain.\n\nI stopped just in time to prevent myself emerging upon an open space.\nIt was a kind of glade in the forest, made by a fall; seedlings were\nalready starting up to struggle for the vacant space; and beyond,\nthe dense growth of stems and twining vines and splashes of fungus\nand flowers closed in again.  Before me, squatting together upon\nthe fungoid ruins of a huge fallen tree and still unaware of my approach,\nwere three grotesque human figures.  One was evidently a female;\nthe other two were men.  They were naked, save for swathings\nof scarlet cloth about the middle; and their skins were of a dull\npinkish-drab colour, such as I had seen in no savages before.\nThey had fat, heavy, chinless faces, retreating foreheads,\nand a scant bristly hair upon their heads.  I never saw such\nbestial-looking creatures.\n\nThey were talking, or at least one of the men was talking to the other two,\nand all three had been too closely interested to heed the rustling of\nmy approach.  They swayed their heads and shoulders from side to side.\nThe speaker's words came thick and sloppy, and though I could\nhear them distinctly I could not distinguish what he said.\nHe seemed to me to be reciting some complicated gibberish.\nPresently his articulation became shriller, and spreading his hands\nhe rose to his feet.  At that the others began to gibber in unison,\nalso rising to their feet, spreading their hands and swaying their\nbodies in rhythm with their chant.  I noticed then the abnormal\nshortness of their legs, and their lank, clumsy feet.  All three began\nslowly to circle round, raising and stamping their feet and waving\ntheir arms; a kind of tune crept into their rhythmic recitation,\nand a refrain,--\"Aloola,\" or \"Balloola,\" it sounded like.\nTheir eyes began to sparkle, and their ugly faces to brighten,\nwith an expression of strange pleasure.  Saliva dripped from their\nlipless mouths.\n\nSuddenly, as I watched their grotesque and unaccountable gestures,\nI perceived clearly for the first time what it was that had offended me,\nwhat had given me the two inconsistent and conflicting impressions\nof utter strangeness and yet of the strangest familiarity.\nThe three creatures engaged in this mysterious rite were human in shape,\nand yet human beings with the strangest air about them of some\nfamiliar animal.  Each of these creatures, despite its human form,\nits rag of clothing, and the rough humanity of its bodily form,\nhad woven into it--into its movements, into the expression of\nits countenance, into its whole presence--some now irresistible\nsuggestion of a hog, a swinish taint, the unmistakable mark of\nthe beast.\n\nI stood overcome by this amazing realisation and then the most horrible\nquestionings came rushing into my mind.  They began leaping in the air,\nfirst one and then the other, whooping and grunting.  Then one slipped,\nand for a moment was on all-fours,--to recover, indeed, forthwith.\nBut that transitory gleam of the true animalism of these monsters\nwas enough.\n\nI turned as noiselessly as possible, and becoming every now\nand then rigid with the fear of being discovered, as a branch\ncracked or a leaf rustled, I pushed back into the bushes.\nIt was long before I grew bolder, and dared to move freely.\nMy only idea for the moment was to get away from these foul beings, and I\nscarcely noticed that I had emerged upon a faint pathway amidst the trees.\nThen suddenly traversing a little glade, I saw with an unpleasant start\ntwo clumsy legs among the trees, walking with noiseless footsteps\nparallel with my course, and perhaps thirty yards away from me.\nThe head and upper part of the body were hidden by a tangle of creeper.\nI stopped abruptly, hoping the creature did not see me.\nThe feet stopped as I did.  So nervous was I that I controlled\nan impulse to headlong flight with the utmost difficulty.\nThen looking hard, I distinguished through the interlacing network\nthe head and body of the brute I had seen drinking.  He moved his head.\nThere was an emerald flash in his eyes as he glanced at me from\nthe shadow of the trees, a half-luminous colour that vanished as\nhe turned his head again.  He was motionless for a moment, and then\nwith a noiseless tread began running through the green confusion.\nIn another moment he had vanished behind some bushes.\nI could not see him, but I felt that he had stopped and was watching me\nagain.\n\nWhat on earth was he,--man or beast?  What did he want with me?\nI had no weapon, not even a stick.  Flight would be madness.\nAt any rate the Thing, whatever it was, lacked the courage to attack me.\nSetting my teeth hard, I walked straight towards him.\nI was anxious not to show the fear that seemed chilling my backbone.\nI pushed through a tangle of tall white-flowered bushes,\nand saw him twenty paces beyond, looking over his shoulder at me\nand hesitating.  I advanced a step or two, looking steadfastly into\nhis eyes.\n\n\"Who are you?\" said I.\n\nHe tried to meet my gaze.  \"No!\" he said suddenly, and turning went\nbounding away from me through the undergrowth.  Then he turned\nand stared at me again.  His eyes shone brightly out of the dusk\nunder the trees.\n\nMy heart was in my mouth; but I felt my only chance was bluff,\nand walked steadily towards him.  He turned again, and vanished\ninto the dusk.  Once more I thought I caught the glint of his eyes,\nand that was all.\n\nFor the first time I realised how the lateness of the hour\nmight affect me.  The sun had set some minutes since, the swift\ndusk of the tropics was already fading out of the eastern sky,\nand a pioneer moth fluttered silently by my head.  Unless I would\nspend the night among the unknown dangers of the mysterious forest,\nI must hasten back to the enclosure.  The thought of a return\nto that pain-haunted refuge was extremely disagreeable, but still\nmore so was the idea of being overtaken in the open by darkness\nand all that darkness might conceal.  I gave one more look\ninto the blue shadows that had swallowed up this odd creature,\nand then retraced my way down the slope towards the stream,\ngoing as I judged in the direction from which I had come.\n\nI walked eagerly, my mind confused with many things,\nand presently found myself in a level place among scattered trees.\nThe colourless clearness that comes after the sunset flush\nwas darkling; the blue sky above grew momentarily deeper,\nand the little stars one by one pierced the attenuated light;\nthe interspaces of the trees, the gaps in the further vegetation,\nthat had been hazy blue in the daylight, grew black and mysterious.\nI pushed on.  The colour vanished from the world.\nThe tree-tops rose against the luminous blue sky in inky silhouette,\nand all below that outline melted into one formless blackness.\nPresently the trees grew thinner, and the shrubby undergrowth\nmore abundant.  Then there was a desolate space covered with\na white sand, and then another expanse of tangled bushes.\nI did not remember crossing the sand-opening before.\nI began to be tormented by a faint rustling upon my right hand.\nI thought at first it was fancy, for whenever I stopped there\nwas silence, save for the evening breeze in the tree-tops.\nThen when I turned to hurry on again there was an echo to\nmy footsteps.\n\nI turned away from the thickets, keeping to the more open ground,\nand endeavouring by sudden turns now and then to surprise something\nin the act of creeping upon me.  I saw nothing, and nevertheless\nmy sense of another presence grew steadily.  I increased my pace,\nand after some time came to a slight ridge, crossed it, and turned sharply,\nregarding it steadfastly from the further side.  It came out black\nand clear-cut against the darkling sky; and presently a shapeless\nlump heaved up momentarily against the sky-line and vanished again.\nI felt assured now that my tawny-faced antagonist was stalking me\nonce more; and coupled with that was another unpleasant realisation,\nthat I had lost my way.\n\nFor a time I hurried on hopelessly perplexed, and pursued by that\nstealthy approach.  Whatever it was, the Thing either lacked the courage\nto attack me, or it was waiting to take me at some disadvantage.\nI kept studiously to the open.  At times I would turn and listen;\nand presently I had half persuaded myself that my pursuer had abandoned\nthe chase, or was a mere creation of my disordered imagination.\nThen I heard the sound of the sea.  I quickened my footsteps\nalmost into a run, and immediately there was a stumble in\nmy rear.\n\nI turned suddenly, and stared at the uncertain trees behind me.\nOne black shadow seemed to leap into another.  I listened,\nrigid, and heard nothing but the creep of the blood in my ears.\nI thought that my nerves were unstrung, and that my imagination\nwas tricking me, and turned resolutely towards the sound of the\nsea again.\n\nIn a minute or so the trees grew thinner, and I emerged upon\na bare, low headland running out into the sombre water.\nThe night was calm and clear, and the reflection of the growing\nmultitude of the stars shivered in the tranquil heaving of the sea.\nSome way out, the wash upon an irregular band of reef shone\nwith a pallid light of its own.  Westward I saw the zodiacal\nlight mingling with the yellow brilliance of the evening star.\nThe coast fell away from me to the east, and westward it was hidden\nby the shoulder of the cape.  Then I recalled the fact that Moreau's\nbeach lay to the west.\n\nA twig snapped behind me, and there was a rustle.  I turned, and stood\nfacing the dark trees.  I could see nothing--or else I could see too much.\nEvery dark form in the dimness had its ominous quality, its peculiar\nsuggestion of alert watchfulness.  So I stood for perhaps a minute,\nand then, with an eye to the trees still, turned westward to cross\nthe headland; and as I moved, one among the lurking shadows moved\nto follow me.\n\nMy heart beat quickly.  Presently the broad sweep of a bay\nto the westward became visible, and I halted again.\nThe noiseless shadow halted a dozen yards from me.\nA little point of light shone on the further bend of the curve,\nand the grey sweep of the sandy beach lay faint under the starlight.\nPerhaps two miles away was that little point of light.\nTo get to the beach I should have to go through the trees where the\nshadows lurked, and down a bushy slope.\n\nI could see the Thing rather more distinctly now.  It was no animal,\nfor it stood erect.  At that I opened my mouth to speak, and found\na hoarse phlegm choked my voice.  I tried again, and shouted,\n\"Who is there?\"  There was no answer.  I advanced a step.\nThe Thing did not move, only gathered itself together.  My foot\nstruck a stone.  That gave me an idea.  Without taking my eyes off\nthe black form before me, I stooped and picked up this lump of rock;\nbut at my motion the Thing turned abruptly as a dog might have done,\nand slunk obliquely into the further darkness.  Then I recalled\na schoolboy expedient against big dogs, and twisted the rock into\nmy handkerchief, and gave this a turn round my wrist.  I heard a movement\nfurther off among the shadows, as if the Thing was in retreat.\nThen suddenly my tense excitement gave way; I broke into a profuse\nperspiration and fell a-trembling, with my adversary routed and this\nweapon in my hand.\n\nIt was some time before I could summon resolution to go down through\nthe trees and bushes upon the flank of the headland to the beach.\nAt last I did it at a run; and as I emerged from the thicket\nupon the sand, I heard some other body come crashing after me.\nAt that I completely lost my head with fear, and began running\nalong the sand.  Forthwith there came the swift patter of soft\nfeet in pursuit.  I gave a wild cry, and redoubled my pace.\nSome dim, black things about three or four times the size of rabbits\nwent running or hopping up from the beach towards the bushes as\nI passed.\n\nSo long as I live, I shall remember the terror of that chase.\nI ran near the water's edge, and heard every now and then the splash\nof the feet that gained upon me.  Far away, hopelessly far,\nwas the yellow light.  All the night about us was black and still.\nSplash, splash, came the pursuing feet, nearer and nearer.\nI felt my breath going, for I was quite out of training; it whooped\nas I drew it, and I felt a pain like a knife at my side.  I perceived\nthe Thing would come up with me long before I reached the enclosure,\nand, desperate and sobbing for my breath, I wheeled round upon it\nand struck at it as it came up to me,--struck with all my strength.\nThe stone came out of the sling of the handkerchief as I did so.\nAs I turned, the Thing, which had been running on all-fours,\nrose to its feet, and the missile fell fair on its left temple.\nThe skull rang loud, and the animal-man blundered into me,\nthrust me back with its hands, and went staggering past me to fall\nheadlong upon the sand with its face in the water; and there it lay\nstill.\n\nI could not bring myself to approach that black heap.  I left\nit there, with the water rippling round it, under the still stars,\nand giving it a wide berth pursued my way towards the yellow glow\nof the house; and presently, with a positive effect of relief,\ncame the pitiful moaning of the puma, the sound that had\noriginally driven me out to explore this mysterious island.\nAt that, though I was faint and horribly fatigued, I gathered\ntogether all my strength, and began running again towards the light.\nI thought I heard a voice calling me.\n\n\n\n\nX.  THE CRYING OF THE MAN.\n\n\nAS I drew near the house I saw that the light shone from\nthe open door of my room; and then I heard coming from out\nof the darkness at the side of that orange oblong of light,\nthe voice of Montgomery shouting, \"Prendick!\"  I continued running.\nPresently I heard him again.  I replied by a feeble \"Hullo!\"\nand in another moment had staggered up to him.\n\n\"Where have you been?\" said he, holding me at arm's length,\nso that the light from the door fell on my face.  \"We have both\nbeen so busy that we forgot you until about half an hour ago.\"\nHe led me into the room and sat me down in the deck chair.\nFor awhile I was blinded by the light.  \"We did not think you would start\nto explore this island of ours without telling us,\" he said; and then,\n\"I was afraid--But--what--Hullo!\"\n\nMy last remaining strength slipped from me, and my head fell forward\non my chest.  I think he found a certain satisfaction in giving\nme brandy.\n\n\"For God's sake,\" said I, \"fasten that door.\"\n\n\"You've been meeting some of our curiosities, eh?\" said he.\n\nHe locked the door and turned to me again.  He asked me no questions,\nbut gave me some more brandy and water and pressed me to eat.\nI was in a state of collapse.  He said something vague about his\nforgetting to warn me, and asked me briefly when I left the house\nand what I had seen.\n\nI answered him as briefly, in fragmentary sentences.  \"Tell me\nwhat it all means,\" said I, in a state bordering on hysterics.\n\n\"It's nothing so very dreadful,\" said he.  \"But I think you\nhave had about enough for one day.\"  The puma suddenly gave\na sharp yell of pain.  At that he swore under his breath.\n\"I'm damned,\" said he, \"if this place is not as bad as Gower Street,\nwith its cats.\"\n\n\"Montgomery,\" said I, \"what was that thing that came after me?\nWas it a beast or was it a man?\"\n\n\"If you don't sleep to-night,\" he said, \"you'll be off your\nhead to-morrow.\"\n\nI stood up in front of him.  \"What was that thing that came after me?\"\nI asked.\n\nHe looked me squarely in the eyes, and twisted his mouth askew.\nHis eyes, which had seemed animated a minute before, went dull.\n\"From your account,\" said he, \"I'm thinking it was a bogle.\"\n\nI felt a gust of intense irritation, which passed as quickly as it came.\nI flung myself into the chair again, and pressed my hands on my forehead.\nThe puma began once more.\n\nMontgomery came round behind me and put his hand on my shoulder.\n\"Look here, Prendick,\" he said, \"I had no business to let\nyou drift out into this silly island of ours.  But it's not\nso bad as you feel, man.  Your nerves are worked to rags.\nLet me give you something that will make you sleep.  _That_--will keep\non for hours yet.  You must simply get to sleep, or I won't answer\nfor it.\"\n\nI did not reply.  I bowed forward, and covered my face with my hands.\nPresently he returned with a small measure containing a dark liquid.\nThis he gave me.  I took it unresistingly, and he helped me into\nthe hammock.\n\nWhen I awoke, it was broad day.  For a little while I lay flat,\nstaring at the roof above me.  The rafters, I observed, were made\nout of the timbers of a ship.  Then I turned my head, and saw a meal\nprepared for me on the table.  I perceived that I was hungry,\nand prepared to clamber out of the hammock, which, very politely\nanticipating my intention, twisted round and deposited me upon\nall-fours on the floor.\n\nI got up and sat down before the food.  I had a heavy feeling\nin my head, and only the vaguest memory at first of the things\nthat had happened over night.  The morning breeze blew very\npleasantly through the unglazed window, and that and the food\ncontributed to the sense of animal comfort which I experienced.\nPresently the door behind me--the door inward towards the yard\nof the enclosure--opened.  I turned and saw Montgomery's face.\n\n\"All right,\" said he.  \"I'm frightfully busy.\"  And he shut the door.\n\nAfterwards I discovered that he forgot to re-lock it.\nThen I recalled the expression of his face the previous night,\nand with that the memory of all I had experienced reconstructed\nitself before me.  Even as that fear came back to me came a cry\nfrom within; but this time it was not the cry of a puma.\nI put down the mouthful that hesitated upon my lips, and listened.\nSilence, save for the whisper of the morning breeze.  I began to think my\nears had deceived me.\n\nAfter a long pause I resumed my meal, but with my ears still vigilant.\nPresently I heard something else, very faint and low.\nI sat as if frozen in my attitude.  Though it was faint and low,\nit moved me more profoundly than all that I had hitherto heard of\nthe abominations behind the wall.  There was no mistake this time in\nthe quality of the dim, broken sounds; no doubt at all of their source.\nFor it was groaning, broken by sobs and gasps of anguish.\nIt was no brute this time; it was a human being in torment!\n\nAs I realised this I rose, and in three steps had crossed the room,\nseized the handle of the door into the yard, and flung it open\nbefore me.\n\n\"Prendick, man!  Stop!\" cried Montgomery, intervening.\n\nA startled deerhound yelped and snarled.  There was blood, I saw,\nin the sink,--brown, and some scarlet--and I smelt the peculiar\nsmell of carbolic acid.  Then through an open doorway beyond,\nin the dim light of the shadow, I saw something bound painfully\nupon a framework, scarred, red, and bandaged; and then blotting\nthis out appeared the face of old Moreau, white and terrible.\nIn a moment he had gripped me by the shoulder with a hand that was\nsmeared red, had twisted me off my feet, and flung me headlong back\ninto my own room.  He lifted me as though I was a little child.\nI fell at full length upon the floor, and the door slammed\nand shut out the passionate intensity of his face.\nThen I heard the key turn in the lock, and Montgomery's voice\nin expostulation.\n\n\"Ruin the work of a lifetime,\" I heard Moreau say.\n\n\"He does not understand,\" said Montgomery.  and other things\nthat were inaudible.\n\n\"I can't spare the time yet,\" said Moreau.\n\nThe rest I did not hear.  I picked myself up and stood trembling,\nmy mind a chaos of the most horrible misgivings.  Could it be possible,\nI thought, that such a thing as the vivisection of men was carried\non here?  The question shot like lightning across a tumultuous sky;\nand suddenly the clouded horror of my mind condensed into a vivid\nrealisation of my own danger.\n\n\n\n\nXI.  THE HUNTING OF THE MAN.\n\n\nIT came before my mind with an unreasonable hope of escape that\nthe outer door of my room was still open to me.  I was convinced now,\nabsolutely assured, that Moreau had been vivisecting a human being.\nAll the time since I had heard his name, I had been trying to link\nin my mind in some way the grotesque animalism of the islanders\nwith his abominations; and now I thought I saw it all.\nThe memory of his work on the transfusion of blood recurred to me.\nThese creatures I had seen were the victims of some hideous experiment.\nThese sickening scoundrels had merely intended to keep me back,\nto fool me with their display of confidence, and presently to fall\nupon me with a fate more horrible than death,--with torture;\nand after torture the most hideous degradation it is possible\nto conceive,--to send me off a lost soul, a beast, to the rest of their\nComus rout.\n\nI looked round for some weapon.  Nothing.  Then with an inspiration I\nturned over the deck chair, put my foot on the side of it, and tore\naway the side rail.  It happened that a nail came away with the wood,\nand projecting, gave a touch of danger to an otherwise petty weapon.\nI heard a step outside, and incontinently flung open the door and found\nMontgomery within a yard of it.  He meant to lock the outer door!\nI raised this nailed stick of mine and cut at his face;\nbut he sprang back.  I hesitated a moment, then turned and fled,\nround the corner of the house.  \"Prendick, man!\"  I heard his\nastonished cry, \"don't be a silly ass, man!\"\n\nAnother minute, thought I, and he would have had me locked in,\nand as ready as a hospital rabbit for my fate.  He emerged behind\nthe corner, for I heard him shout, \"Prendick!\"  Then he began to run\nafter me, shouting things as he ran.  This time running blindly,\nI went northeastward in a direction at right angles to my\nprevious expedition.  Once, as I went running headlong up the beach,\nI glanced over my shoulder and saw his attendant with him.\nI ran furiously up the slope, over it, then turning eastward along\na rocky valley fringed on either side with jungle I ran for perhaps\na mile altogether, my chest straining, my heart beating in my ears;\nand then hearing nothing of Montgomery or his man, and feeling\nupon the verge of exhaustion, I doubled sharply back towards\nthe beach as I judged, and lay down in the shelter of a canebrake.\nThere I remained for a long time, too fearful to move, and indeed\ntoo fearful even to plan a course of action.  The wild scene about me\nlay sleeping silently under the sun, and the only sound near me was\nthe thin hum of some small gnats that had discovered me.  Presently I\nbecame aware of a drowsy breathing sound, the soughing of the sea upon\nthe beach.\n\nAfter about an hour I heard Montgomery shouting my name,\nfar away to the north.  That set me thinking of my plan of action.\nAs I interpreted it then, this island was inhabited only by these two\nvivisectors and their animalised victims.  Some of these no doubt\nthey could press into their service against me if need arose.\nI knew both Moreau and Montgomery carried revolvers; and, save for a feeble\nbar of deal spiked with a small nail, the merest mockery of a mace,\nI was unarmed.\n\nSo I lay still there, until I began to think of food and drink;\nand at that thought the real hopelessness of my position came home to me.\nI knew no way of getting anything to eat.  I was too ignorant of botany\nto discover any resort of root or fruit that might lie about me;\nI had no means of trapping the few rabbits upon the island.\nIt grew blanker the more I turned the prospect over.  At last in\nthe desperation of my position, my mind turned to the animal men I\nhad encountered.  I tried to find some hope in what I remembered of them.\nIn turn I recalled each one I had seen, and tried to draw some augury\nof assistance from my memory.\n\nThen suddenly I heard a staghound bay, and at that realised a new danger.\nI took little time to think, or they would have caught me then,\nbut snatching up my nailed stick, rushed headlong from my hiding-place\ntowards the sound of the sea.  I remember a growth of thorny plants,\nwith spines that stabbed like pen-knives. I emerged bleeding and\nwith torn clothes upon the lip of a long creek opening northward.\nI went straight into the water without a minute's hesitation, wading up\nthe creek, and presently finding myself kneedeep in a little stream.\nI scrambled out at last on the westward bank, and with my heart beating\nloudly in my ears, crept into a tangle of ferns to await the issue.\nI heard the dog (there was only one) draw nearer, and yelp when it came\nto the thorns.  Then I heard no more, and presently began to think I\nhad escaped.\n\nThe minutes passed; the silence lengthened out, and at last\nafter an hour of security my courage began to return to me.\nBy this time I was no longer very much terrified or very miserable.\nI had, as it were, passed the limit of terror and despair.\nI felt now that my life was practically lost, and that persuasion\nmade me capable of daring anything.  I had even a certain wish\nto encounter Moreau face to face; and as I had waded into the water,\nI remembered that if I were too hard pressed at least one path\nof escape from torment still lay open to me,--they could not\nvery well prevent my drowning myself.  I had half a mind to drown\nmyself then; but an odd wish to see the whole adventure out,\na queer, impersonal, spectacular interest in myself, restrained me.\nI stretched my limbs, sore and painful from the pricks of the spiny plants,\nand stared around me at the trees; and, so suddenly that it seemed\nto jump out of the green tracery about it, my eyes lit upon a black\nface watching me.  I saw that it was the simian creature who had\nmet the launch upon the beach.  He was clinging to the oblique\nstem of a palm-tree. I gripped my stick, and stood up facing him.\nHe began chattering.  \"You, you, you,\" was all I could distinguish\nat first.  Suddenly he dropped from the tree, and in another\nmoment was holding the fronds apart and staring curiously\nat me.\n\nI did not feel the same repugnance towards this creature which I\nhad experienced in my encounters with the other Beast Men.\n\"You,\" he said, \"in the boat.\"  He was a man, then,--at least as much\nof a man as Montgomery's attendant,--for he could talk.\n\n\"Yes,\" I said, \"I came in the boat.  From the ship.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" he said, and his bright, restless eyes travelled over me,\nto my hands, to the stick I carried, to my feet, to the tattered places\nin my coat, and the cuts and scratches I had received from the thorns.\nHe seemed puzzled at something.  His eyes came back to my hands.\nHe held his own hand out and counted his digits slowly, \"One, two,\nthree, four, five--eigh?\"\n\nI did not grasp his meaning then; afterwards I was to find that\na great proportion of these Beast People had malformed hands,\nlacking sometimes even three digits.  But guessing this was\nin some way a greeting, I did the same thing by way of reply.\nHe grinned with immense satisfaction.  Then his swift roving\nglance went round again; he made a swift movement--and vanished.\nThe fern fronds he had stood between came swishing together.\n\nI pushed out of the brake after him, and was astonished to find\nhim swinging cheerfully by one lank arm from a rope of creepers\nthat looped down from the foliage overhead.  His back was to me.\n\n\"Hullo!\" said I.\n\nHe came down with a twisting jump, and stood facing me.\n\n\"I say,\" said I, \"where can I get something to eat?\"\n\n\"Eat!\" he said.  \"Eat Man's food, now.\"  And his eye went back\nto the swing of ropes.  \"At the huts.\"\n\n\"But where are the huts?\"\n\n\"Oh!\"\n\n\"I'm new, you know.\"\n\nAt that he swung round, and set off at a quick walk.\nAll his motions were curiously rapid.  \"Come along,\" said he.\n\nI went with him to see the adventure out.  I guessed the huts were some\nrough shelter where he and some more of these Beast People lived.\nI might perhaps find them friendly, find some handle in their minds\nto take hold of.  I did not know how far they had forgotten their\nhuman heritage.\n\nMy ape-like companion trotted along by my side, with his hands\nhanging down and his jaw thrust forward.  I wondered what memory\nhe might have in him.  \"How long have you been on this island?\"\nsaid I.\n\n\"How long?\" he asked; and after having the question repeated,\nhe held up three fingers.\n\nThe creature was little better than an idiot.  I tried\nto make out what he meant by that, and it seems I bored him.\nAfter another question or two he suddenly left my side and went\nleaping at some fruit that hung from a tree.  He pulled down\na handful of prickly husks and went on eating the contents.\nI noted this with satisfaction, for here at least was a hint for feeding.\nI tried him with some other questions, but his chattering, prompt responses\nwere as often as not quite at cross purposes with my question.\nSome few were appropriate, others quite parrot-like.\n\nI was so intent upon these peculiarities that I scarcely noticed the path\nwe followed.  Presently we came to trees, all charred and brown,\nand so to a bare place covered with a yellow-white incrustation,\nacross which a drifting smoke, pungent in whiffs to nose and eyes,\nwent drifting.  On our right, over a shoulder of bare rock, I saw\nthe level blue of the sea.  The path coiled down abruptly into a narrow\nravine between two tumbled and knotty masses of blackish scoriae.\nInto this we plunged.\n\nIt was extremely dark, this passage, after the blinding sunlight reflected\nfrom the sulphurous ground.  Its walls grew steep, and approached\neach other.  Blotches of green and crimson drifted across my eyes.\nMy conductor stopped suddenly.  \"Home!\" said he, and I stood\nin a floor of a chasm that was at first absolutely dark to me.\nI heard some strange noises, and thrust the knuckles of my left hand\ninto my eyes.  I became aware of a disagreeable odor, like that of\na monkey's cage ill-cleaned. Beyond, the rock opened again upon\na gradual slope of sunlit greenery, and on either hand the light\nsmote down through narrow ways into the central gloom.\n\n\n\n\nXII.  THE SAYERS OF THE LAW.\n\n\nTHEN something cold touched my hand.  I started violently,\nand saw close to me a dim pinkish thing, looking more like a flayed\nchild than anything else in the world.  The creature had exactly\nthe mild but repulsive features of a sloth, the same low forehead\nand slow gestures.\n\nAs the first shock of the change of light passed, I saw about me\nmore distinctly.  The little sloth-like creature was standing and\nstaring at me.  My conductor had vanished.  The place was a narrow\npassage between high walls of lava, a crack in the knotted rock,\nand on either side interwoven heaps of sea-mat, palm-fans, and reeds\nleaning against the rock formed rough and impenetrably dark dens.\nThe winding way up the ravine between these was scarcely three yards wide,\nand was disfigured by lumps of decaying fruit-pulp and other refuse,\nwhich accounted for the disagreeable stench of the place.\n\nThe little pink sloth-creature was still blinking at me when my\nApe-man reappeared at the aperture of the nearest of these dens,\nand beckoned me in.  As he did so a slouching monster wriggled out\nof one of the places, further up this strange street, and stood up in\nfeatureless silhouette against the bright green beyond, staring at me.\nI hesitated, having half a mind to bolt the way I had come; and then,\ndetermined to go through with the adventure, I gripped my nailed stick\nabout the middle and crawled into the little evil-smelling lean-to\nafter my conductor.\n\nIt was a semi-circular space, shaped like the half of a bee-hive;\nand against the rocky wall that formed the inner side of it was a pile\nof variegated fruits, cocoa-nuts among others.  Some rough vessels\nof lava and wood stood about the floor, and one on a rough stool.\nThere was no fire.  In the darkest corner of the hut sat a shapeless\nmass of darkness that grunted \"Hey!\" as I came in, and my Ape-man\nstood in the dim light of the doorway and held out a split cocoa-nut\nto me as I crawled into the other corner and squatted down.\nI took it, and began gnawing it, as serenely as possible, in spite of a\ncertain trepidation and the nearly intolerable closeness of the den.\nThe little pink sloth-creature stood in the aperture of the hut,\nand something else with a drab face and bright eyes came staring over\nits shoulder.\n\n\"Hey!\" came out of the lump of mystery opposite.  \"It is a man.\"\n\n\"It is a man,\" gabbled my conductor, \"a man, a man, a five-man,\nlike me.\"\n\n\"Shut up!\" said the voice from the dark, and grunted.\nI gnawed my cocoa-nut amid an impressive stillness.\n\nI peered hard into the blackness, but could distinguish nothing.\n\n\"It is a man,\" the voice repeated.  \"He comes to live with us?\"\n\nIt was a thick voice, with something in it--a kind of whistling\novertone--that struck me as peculiar; but the English accent was\nstrangely good.\n\nThe Ape-man looked at me as though he expected something.\nI perceived the pause was interrogative.  \"He comes to live with you,\"\nI said.\n\n\"It is a man.  He must learn the Law.\"\n\nI began to distinguish now a deeper blackness in the black,\na vague outline of a hunched-up figure.  Then I noticed\nthe opening of the place was darkened by two more black heads.\nMy hand tightened on my stick.\n\nThe thing in the dark repeated in a louder tone, \"Say the words.\"\nI had missed its last remark.  \"Not to go on all-fours; that is the Law,\"\nit repeated in a kind of sing-song.\n\nI was puzzled.\n\n\"Say the words,\" said the Ape-man, repeating, and the figures\nin the doorway echoed this, with a threat in the tone of their voices.\n\nI realised that I had to repeat this idiotic formula; and then\nbegan the insanest ceremony.  The voice in the dark began intoning\na mad litany, line by line, and I and the rest to repeat it.\nAs they did so, they swayed from side to side in the oddest way,\nand beat their hands upon their knees; and I followed their example.\nI could have imagined I was already dead and in another world.\nThat dark hut, these grotesque dim figures, just flecked here and\nthere by a glimmer of light, and all of them swaying in unison and\nchanting,\n\n     \"Not to go on all-fours; that is the Law.  Are we not Men?\n     \"Not to suck up Drink; that is the Law.  Are we not Men?\n     \"Not to eat Fish or Flesh; that is the Law.  Are we not Men?\n     \"Not to claw the Bark of Trees; that is the Law.  Are we not Men?\n     \"Not to chase other Men; that is the Law.  Are we not Men?\"\n\nAnd so from the prohibition of these acts of folly,\non to the prohibition of what I thought then were the maddest,\nmost impossible, and most indecent things one could well imagine.\nA kind of rhythmic fervour fell on all of us; we gabbled\nand swayed faster and faster, repeating this amazing Law.\nSuperficially the contagion of these brutes was upon me, but deep\ndown within me the laughter and disgust struggled together.\nWe ran through a long list of prohibitions, and then the chant swung\nround to a new formula.\n\n     \"_His_ is the House of Pain.\n     \"_His_ is the Hand that makes.\n     \"_His_ is the Hand that wounds.\n     \"_His_ is the Hand that heals.\"\n\nAnd so on for another long series, mostly quite incomprehensible\ngibberish to me about _Him_, whoever he might be.  I could have fancied\nit was a dream, but never before have I heard chanting in a dream.\n\n\"_His_ is the lightning flash,\" we sang.  \"_His_ is the deep, salt sea.\"\n\nA horrible fancy came into my head that Moreau, after animalising\nthese men, had infected their dwarfed brains with a kind of\ndeification of himself.  However, I was too keenly aware of white\nteeth and strong claws about me to stop my chanting on that account.\n\n\"_His_ are the stars in the sky.\"\n\nAt last that song ended.  I saw the Ape-man's face shining\nwith perspiration; and my eyes being now accustomed to the darkness,\nI saw more distinctly the figure in the corner from which the voice came.\nIt was the size of a man, but it seemed covered with a dull grey\nhair almost like a Skye-terrier. What was it?  What were they all?\nImagine yourself surrounded by all the most horrible cripples\nand maniacs it is possible to conceive, and you may understand\na little of my feelings with these grotesque caricatures of humanity\nabout me.\n\n\"He is a five-man, a five-man, a five-man--like me,\" said the Ape-man.\n\nI held out my hands.  The grey creature in the corner leant forward.\n\n\"Not to run on all-fours; that is the Law.  Are we not Men?\"\nhe said.\n\nHe put out a strangely distorted talon and gripped my fingers.\nThe thing was almost like the hoof of a deer produced into claws.\nI could have yelled with surprise and pain.  His face came\nforward and peered at my nails, came forward into the light of\nthe opening of the hut and I saw with a quivering disgust that it\nwas like the face of neither man nor beast, but a mere shock\nof grey hair, with three shadowy over-archings to mark the eyes\nand mouth.\n\n\"He has little nails,\" said this grisly creature in his hairy beard.\n\"It is well.\"\n\nHe threw my hand down, and instinctively I gripped my stick.\n\n\"Eat roots and herbs; it is His will,\" said the Ape-man.\n\n\"I am the Sayer of the Law,\" said the grey figure.  \"Here come\nall that be new to learn the Law.  I sit in the darkness and say\nthe Law.\"\n\n\"It is even so,\" said one of the beasts in the doorway.\n\n\"Evil are the punishments of those who break the Law.\nNone escape.\"\n\n\"None escape,\" said the Beast Folk, glancing furtively at one another.\n\n\"None, none,\" said the Ape-man,--\"none escape.  See!  I did a little thing,\na wrong thing, once.  I jabbered, jabbered, stopped talking.\nNone could understand.  I am burnt, branded in the hand.  He is great.\nHe is good!\"\n\n\"None escape,\" said the grey creature in the corner.\n\n\"None escape,\" said the Beast People, looking askance at one another.\n\n\"For every one the want that is bad,\" said the grey Sayer of the Law.\n\"What you will want we do not know; we shall know.  Some want\nto follow things that move, to watch and slink and wait and spring;\nto kill and bite, bite deep and rich, sucking the blood.\nIt is bad.  'Not to chase other Men; that is the Law.\nAre we not Men?  Not to eat Flesh or Fish; that is the Law.  Are we\nnot Men?'\"\n\n\"None escape,\" said a dappled brute standing in the doorway.\n\n\"For every one the want is bad,\" said the grey Sayer of the Law.\n\"Some want to go tearing with teeth and hands into the roots of things,\nsnuffing into the earth.  It is bad.\"\n\n\"None escape,\" said the men in the door.\n\n\"Some go clawing trees; some go scratching at the graves of the dead;\nsome go fighting with foreheads or feet or claws; some bite suddenly,\nnone giving occasion; some love uncleanness.\"\n\n\"None escape,\" said the Ape-man, scratching his calf.\n\n\"None escape,\" said the little pink sloth-creature.\n\n\"Punishment is sharp and sure.  Therefore learn the Law.\nSay the words.\"\n\nAnd incontinently he began again the strange litany of the Law,\nand again I and all these creatures began singing and swaying.\nMy head reeled with this jabbering and the close stench of the place;\nbut I kept on, trusting to find presently some chance of a\nnew development.\n\n\"Not to go on all-fours; that is the Law.  Are we not Men?\"\n\nWe were making such a noise that I noticed nothing of a tumult outside,\nuntil some one, who I think was one of the two Swine Men I\nhad seen, thrust his head over the little pink sloth-creature\nand shouted something excitedly, something that I did not catch.\nIncontinently those at the opening of the hut vanished; my Ape-man\nrushed out; the thing that had sat in the dark followed him\n(I only observed that it was big and clumsy, and covered with silvery\nhair), and I was left alone.  Then before I reached the aperture I heard\nthe yelp of a staghound.\n\nIn another moment I was standing outside the hovel, my chair-rail\nin my hand, every muscle of me quivering.  Before me were the clumsy\nbacks of perhaps a score of these Beast People, their misshapen heads\nhalf hidden by their shoulder-blades. They were gesticulating excitedly.\nOther half-animal faces glared interrogation out of the hovels.\nLooking in the direction in which they faced, I saw coming through\nthe haze under the trees beyond the end of the passage of dens the dark\nfigure and awful white face of Moreau.  He was holding the leaping\nstaghound back, and close behind him came Montgomery revolver\nin hand.\n\nFor a moment I stood horror-struck. I turned and saw the passage\nbehind me blocked by another heavy brute, with a huge grey\nface and twinkling little eyes, advancing towards me.\nI looked round and saw to the right of me and a half-dozen yards\nin front of me a narrow gap in the wall of rock through which a ray\nof light slanted into the shadows.\n\n\"Stop!\" cried Moreau as I strode towards this, and then, \"Hold him!\"\n\nAt that, first one face turned towards me and then others.\nTheir bestial minds were happily slow.  I dashed my shoulder\ninto a clumsy monster who was turning to see what Moreau meant,\nand flung him forward into another.  I felt his hands fly round,\nclutching at me and missing me.  The little pink sloth-creature\ndashed at me, and I gashed down its ugly face with the nail\nin my stick and in another minute was scrambling up a steep\nside pathway, a kind of sloping chimney, out of the ravine.\nI heard a howl behind me, and cries of \"Catch him!\"  \"Hold him!\"\nand the grey-faced creature appeared behind me and jammed\nhis huge bulk into the cleft.  \"Go on! go on!\" they howled.\nI clambered up the narrow cleft in the rock and came out upon\nthe sulphur on the westward side of the village of the Beast Men.\n\nThat gap was altogether fortunate for me, for the narrow chimney,\nslanting obliquely upward, must have impeded the nearer pursuers.\nI ran over the white space and down a steep slope,\nthrough a scattered growth of trees, and came to a low-lying\nstretch of tall reeds, through which I pushed into a dark,\nthick undergrowth that was black and succulent under foot.\nAs I plunged into the reeds, my foremost pursuers emerged from the gap.\nI broke my way through this undergrowth for some minutes.\nThe air behind me and about me was soon full of threatening cries.\nI heard the tumult of my pursuers in the gap up the slope, then the\ncrashing of the reeds, and every now and then the crackling crash\nof a branch.  Some of the creatures roared like excited beasts of prey.\nThe staghound yelped to the left.  I heard Moreau and Montgomery shouting\nin the same direction.  I turned sharply to the right.  It seemed\nto me even then that I heard Montgomery shouting for me to run for\nmy life.\n\nPresently the ground gave rich and oozy under my feet; but I was\ndesperate and went headlong into it, struggled through kneedeep,\nand so came to a winding path among tall canes.  The noise of my\npursuers passed away to my left.  In one place three strange, pink,\nhopping animals, about the size of cats, bolted before my footsteps.\nThis pathway ran up hill, across another open space covered\nwith white incrustation, and plunged into a canebrake again.\nThen suddenly it turned parallel with the edge of a steep-walled gap,\nwhich came without warning, like the ha-ha of an English park,--turned\nwith an unexpected abruptness.  I was still running with all\nmy might, and I never saw this drop until I was flying headlong through\nthe air.\n\nI fell on my forearms and head, among thorns, and rose with a torn\near and bleeding face.  I had fallen into a precipitous ravine,\nrocky and thorny, full of a hazy mist which drifted about me in wisps,\nand with a narrow streamlet from which this mist came meandering\ndown the centre.  I was astonished at this thin fog in the full\nblaze of daylight; but I had no time to stand wondering then.\nI turned to my right, down-stream, hoping to come to the sea\nin that direction, and so have my way open to drown myself.\nIt was only later I found that I had dropped my nailed stick in\nmy fall.\n\nPresently the ravine grew narrower for a space, and carelessly\nI stepped into the stream.  I jumped out again pretty quickly,\nfor the water was almost boiling.  I noticed too there was a thin\nsulphurous scum drifting upon its coiling water.  Almost immediately\ncame a turn in the ravine, and the indistinct blue horizon.\nThe nearer sea was flashing the sun from a myriad facets.\nI saw my death before me; but I was hot and panting, with the warm\nblood oozing out on my face and running pleasantly through my veins.\nI felt more than a touch of exultation too, at having distanced\nmy pursuers.  It was not in me then to go out and drown myself yet.\nI stared back the way I had come.\n\nI listened.  Save for the hum of the gnats and the chirp of some small\ninsects that hopped among the thorns, the air was absolutely still.\nThen came the yelp of a dog, very faint, and a chattering and gibbering,\nthe snap of a whip, and voices.  They grew louder, then fainter again.\nThe noise receded up the stream and faded away.  For a while the chase\nwas over; but I knew now how much hope of help for me lay in the\nBeast People.\n\n\n\n\nXIII.  A PARLEY.\n\n\nI TURNED again and went on down towards the sea.  I found the hot stream\nbroadened out to a shallow, weedy sand, in which an abundance of crabs\nand long-bodied, many-legged creatures started from my footfall.\nI walked to the very edge of the salt water, and then I felt I was safe.\nI turned and stared, arms akimbo, at the thick green behind me,\ninto which the steamy ravine cut like a smoking gash.\nBut, as I say, I was too full of excitement and (a true saying,\nthough those who have never known danger may doubt it) too desperate\nto die.\n\nThen it came into my head that there was one chance before me yet.\nWhile Moreau and Montgomery and their bestial rabble chased me\nthrough the island, might I not go round the beach until I came\nto their enclosure,--make a flank march upon them, in fact,\nand then with a rock lugged out of their loosely-built wall, perhaps,\nsmash in the lock of the smaller door and see what I could find\n(knife, pistol, or what not) to fight them with when they returned?\nIt was at any rate something to try.\n\nSo I turned to the westward and walked along by the water's edge.\nThe setting sun flashed his blinding heat into my eyes.\nThe slight Pacific tide was running in with a gentle ripple.\nPresently the shore fell away southward, and the sun came round\nupon my right hand.  Then suddenly, far in front of me, I saw\nfirst one and then several figures emerging from the bushes,--Moreau,\nwith his grey staghound, then Montgomery, and two others.\nAt that I stopped.\n\nThey saw me, and began gesticulating and advancing.  I stood watching\nthem approach.  The two Beast Men came running forward to cut me\noff from the undergrowth, inland.  Montgomery came, running also,\nbut straight towards me.  Moreau followed slower with the dog.\n\nAt last I roused myself from my inaction, and turning seaward walked\nstraight into the water.  The water was very shallow at first.\nI was thirty yards out before the waves reached to my waist.\nDimly I could see the intertidal creatures darting away from\nmy feet.\n\n\"What are you doing, man?\" cried Montgomery.\n\nI turned, standing waist deep, and stared at them.\nMontgomery stood panting at the margin of the water.  His face\nwas bright-red with exertion, his long flaxen hair blown about\nhis head, and his dropping nether lip showed his irregular teeth.\nMoreau was just coming up, his face pale and firm, and the dog at his\nhand barked at me.  Both men had heavy whips.  Farther up the beach\nstared the Beast Men.\n\n\"What am I doing?  I am going to drown myself,\" said I.\n\nMontgomery and Moreau looked at each other.  \"Why?\" asked Moreau.\n\n\"Because that is better than being tortured by you.\"\n\n\"I told you so,\" said Montgomery, and Moreau said something\nin a low tone.\n\n\"What makes you think I shall torture you?\" asked Moreau.\n\n\"What I saw,\" I said.  \"And those--yonder.\"\n\n\"Hush!\" said Moreau, and held up his hand.\n\n\"I will not,\" said I. \"They were men:  what are they now?\nI at least will not be like them.\"\n\nI looked past my interlocutors.  Up the beach were M'ling, Montgomery's\nattendant, and one of the white-swathed brutes from the boat.\nFarther up, in the shadow of the trees, I saw my little Ape-man,\nand behind him some other dim figures.\n\n\"Who are these creatures?\" said I, pointing to them and raising\nmy voice more and more that it might reach them.  \"They were men,\nmen like yourselves, whom you have infected with some bestial\ntaint,--men whom you have enslaved, and whom you still fear.\n\n\"You who listen,\" I cried, pointing now to Moreau and shouting past\nhim to the Beast Men,--\"You who listen!  Do you not see these men\nstill fear you, go in dread of you?  Why, then, do you fear them?\nYou are many--\"\n\n\"For God's sake,\" cried Montgomery, \"stop that, Prendick!\"\n\n\"Prendick!\" cried Moreau.\n\nThey both shouted together, as if to drown my voice; and behind\nthem lowered the staring faces of the Beast Men, wondering,\ntheir deformed hands hanging down, their shoulders hunched up.\nThey seemed, as I fancied, to be trying to understand me, to remember,\nI thought, something of their human past.\n\nI went on shouting, I scarcely remember what,--that Moreau\nand Montgomery could be killed, that they were not to be feared:\nthat was the burden of what I put into the heads of the Beast People.\nI saw the green-eyed man in the dark rags, who had met me on\nthe evening of my arrival, come out from among the trees, and others\nfollowed him, to hear me better.  At last for want of breath\nI paused.\n\n\"Listen to me for a moment,\" said the steady voice of Moreau;\n\"and then say what you will.\"\n\n\"Well?\" said I.\n\nHe coughed, thought, then shouted:  \"Latin, Prendick! bad Latin,\nschoolboy Latin; but try and understand.  Hi non sunt homines;\nsunt animalia qui nos habemus--vivisected.  A humanising process.\nI will explain.  Come ashore.\"\n\nI laughed.  \"A pretty story,\" said I. \"They talk, build houses.\nThey were men.  It's likely I'll come ashore.\"\n\n\"The water just beyond where you stand is deep--and full of sharks.\"\n\n\"That's my way,\" said I. \"Short and sharp.  Presently.\"\n\n\"Wait a minute.\"  He took something out of his pocket that flashed back\nthe sun, and dropped the object at his feet.  \"That's a loaded revolver,\"\nsaid he.  \"Montgomery here will do the same.  Now we are going\nup the beach until you are satisfied the distance is safe.\nThen come and take the revolvers.\"\n\n\"Not I!  You have a third between you.\"\n\n\"I want you to think over things, Prendick.  In the first place,\nI never asked you to come upon this island.  If we vivisected men,\nwe should import men, not beasts.  In the next, we had you\ndrugged last night, had we wanted to work you any mischief;\nand in the next, now your first panic is over and you can think\na little, is Montgomery here quite up to the character you give him?\nWe have chased you for your good.  Because this island is full\nof inimical phenomena.  Besides, why should we want to shoot you\nwhen you have just offered to drown yourself?\"\n\n\"Why did you set--your people onto me when I was in the hut?\"\n\n\"We felt sure of catching you, and bringing you out of danger.\nAfterwards we drew away from the scent, for your good.\"\n\nI mused.  It seemed just possible.  Then I remembered something again.\n\"But I saw,\" said I, \"in the enclosure--\"\n\n\"That was the puma.\"\n\n\"Look here, Prendick,\" said Montgomery, \"you're a silly ass!\nCome out of the water and take these revolvers, and talk.\nWe can't do anything more than we could do now.\"\n\nI will confess that then, and indeed always, I distrusted\nand dreaded Moreau; but Montgomery was a man I felt I understood.\n\n\"Go up the beach,\" said I, after thinking, and added, \"holding your\nhands up.\"\n\n\"Can't do that,\" said Montgomery, with an explanatory nod over\nhis shoulder.  \"Undignified.\"\n\n\"Go up to the trees, then,\" said I, \"as you please.\"\n\n\"It's a damned silly ceremony,\" said Montgomery.\n\nBoth turned and faced the six or seven grotesque creatures,\nwho stood there in the sunlight, solid, casting shadows, moving,\nand yet so incredibly unreal.  Montgomery cracked his whip at them,\nand forthwith they all turned and fled helter-skelter into the trees;\nand when Montgomery and Moreau were at a distance I judged sufficient,\nI waded ashore, and picked up and examined the revolvers.\nTo satisfy myself against the subtlest trickery, I discharged one at\na round lump of lava, and had the satisfaction of seeing the stone\npulverised and the beach splashed with lead.  Still I hesitated for\na moment.\n\n\"I'll take the risk,\" said I, at last; and with a revolver in each\nhand I walked up the beach towards them.\n\n\"That's better,\" said Moreau, without affectation.  \"As it is, you have\nwasted the best part of my day with your confounded imagination.\"\nAnd with a touch of contempt which humiliated me, he and Montgomery\nturned and went on in silence before me.\n\nThe knot of Beast Men, still wondering, stood back among the trees.\nI passed them as serenely as possible.  One started to follow me,\nbut retreated again when Montgomery cracked his whip.  The rest\nstood silent--watching.  They may once have been animals; but I never\nbefore saw an animal trying to think.\n\n\n\n\nXIV.  DOCTOR MOREAU EXPLAINS.\n\n\n\"AND now, Prendick, I will explain,\" said Doctor Moreau,\nso soon as we had eaten and drunk.  \"I must confess that\nyou are the most dictatorial guest I ever entertained.\nI warn you that this is the last I shall do to oblige you.\nThe next thing you threaten to commit suicide about, I shan't\ndo,--even at some personal inconvenience.\"\n\nHe sat in my deck chair, a cigar half consumed in his white,\ndexterous-looking fingers.  The light of the swinging lamp fell on his\nwhite hair; he stared through the little window out at the starlight.\nI sat as far away from him as possible, the table between us\nand the revolvers to hand.  Montgomery was not present.\nI did not care to be with the two of them in such a little room.\n\n\"You admit that the vivisected human being, as you called it, is,\nafter all, only the puma?\" said Moreau.  He had made me visit\nthat horror in the inner room, to assure myself of its inhumanity.\n\n\"It is the puma,\" I said, \"still alive, but so cut and mutilated\nas I pray I may never see living flesh again.  Of all vile--\"\n\n\"Never mind that,\" said Moreau; \"at least, spare me those\nyouthful horrors.  Montgomery used to be just the same.\nYou admit that it is the puma.  Now be quiet, while I reel off\nmy physiological lecture to you.\"\n\nAnd forthwith, beginning in the tone of a man supremely bored,\nbut presently warming a little, he explained his work to me.\nHe was very simple and convincing.  Now and then there was a touch\nof sarcasm in his voice.  Presently I found myself hot with shame at our\nmutual positions.\n\nThe creatures I had seen were not men, had never been men.\nThey were animals, humanised animals,--triumphs of vivisection.\n\n\"You forget all that a skilled vivisector can do with living things,\"\nsaid Moreau.  \"For my own part, I'm puzzled why the things\nI have done here have not been done before.  Small efforts,\nof course, have been made,--amputation, tongue-cutting, excisions.\nOf course you know a squint may be induced or cured by surgery?\nThen in the case of excisions you have all kinds of secondary changes,\npigmentary disturbances, modifications of the passions, alterations in\nthe secretion of fatty tissue.  I have no doubt you have heard of\nthese things?\"\n\n\"Of course,\" said I. \"But these foul creatures of yours--\"\n\n\"All in good time,\" said he, waving his hand at me; \"I am only beginning.\nThose are trivial cases of alteration.  Surgery can do better things\nthan that.  There is building up as well as breaking down and changing.\nYou have heard, perhaps, of a common surgical operation resorted to in\ncases where the nose has been destroyed:  a flap of skin is cut from\nthe forehead, turned down on the nose, and heals in the new position.\nThis is a kind of grafting in a new position of part of an animal\nupon itself.  Grafting of freshly obtained material from another\nanimal is also possible,--the case of teeth, for example.\nThe grafting of skin and bone is done to facilitate healing:\nthe surgeon places in the middle of the wound pieces of skin snipped\nfrom another animal, or fragments of bone from a victim freshly killed.\nHunter's cock-spur--possibly you have heard of that--flourished on\nthe bull's neck; and the rhinoceros rats of the Algerian zouaves are\nalso to be thought of,--monsters manufactured by transferring a slip\nfrom the tail of an ordinary rat to its snout, and allowing it to heal in\nthat position.\"\n\n\"Monsters manufactured!\" said I. \"Then you mean to tell me--\"\n\n\"Yes.  These creatures you have seen are animals carven and wrought\ninto new shapes.  To that, to the study of the plasticity of\nliving forms, my life has been devoted.  I have studied for years,\ngaining in knowledge as I go.  I see you look horrified, and yet I\nam telling you nothing new.  It all lay in the surface of practical\nanatomy years ago, but no one had the temerity to touch it.\nIt is not simply the outward form of an animal which I can change.\nThe physiology, the chemical rhythm of the creature, may also be made\nto undergo an enduring modification,--of which vaccination and other\nmethods of inoculation with living or dead matter are examples\nthat will, no doubt, be familiar to you.  A similar operation is\nthe transfusion of blood,--with which subject, indeed, I began.\nThese are all familiar cases.  Less so, and probably far more extensive,\nwere the operations of those mediaeval practitioners who made\ndwarfs and beggar-cripples, show-monsters,--some vestiges of whose\nart still remain in the preliminary manipulation of the young\nmountebank or contortionist.  Victor Hugo gives an account of them\nin 'L'Homme qui Rit.'--But perhaps my meaning grows plain now.\nYou begin to see that it is a possible thing to transplant tissue\nfrom one part of an animal to another, or from one animal to another;\nto alter its chemical reactions and methods of growth; to modify\nthe articulations of its limbs; and, indeed, to change it in its most\nintimate structure.\n\n\"And yet this extraordinary branch of knowledge has never been sought\nas an end, and systematically, by modern investigators until I took it up!\nSome such things have been hit upon in the last resort of surgery;\nmost of the kindred evidence that will recur to your mind has been\ndemonstrated as it were by accident,--by tyrants, by criminals,\nby the breeders of horses and dogs, by all kinds of untrained\nclumsy-handed men working for their own immediate ends.\nI was the first man to take up this question armed with antiseptic surgery,\nand with a really scientific knowledge of the laws of growth.\nYet one would imagine it must have been practised in secret before.\nSuch creatures as the Siamese Twins--And in the vaults of\nthe Inquisition.  No doubt their chief aim was artistic torture,\nbut some at least of the inquisitors must have had a touch of\nscientific curiosity.\"\n\n\"But,\" said I, \"these things--these animals talk!\"\n\nHe said that was so, and proceeded to point out that the possibility\nof vivisection does not stop at a mere physical metamorphosis.\nA pig may be educated.  The mental structure is even less determinate\nthan the bodily.  In our growing science of hypnotism we find\nthe promise of a possibility of superseding old inherent instincts by\nnew suggestions, grafting upon or replacing the inherited fixed ideas.\nVery much indeed of what we call moral education, he said,\nis such an artificial modification and perversion of instinct;\npugnacity is trained into courageous self-sacrifice, and suppressed\nsexuality into religious emotion.  And the great difference\nbetween man and monkey is in the larynx, he continued,--in the\nincapacity to frame delicately different sound-symbols by which\nthought could be sustained.  In this I failed to agree with him,\nbut with a certain incivility he declined to notice my objection.\nHe repeated that the thing was so, and continued his account of\nhis work.\n\nI asked him why he had taken the human form as a model.\nThere seemed to me then, and there still seems to me now, a strange\nwickedness for that choice.\n\nHe confessed that he had chosen that form by chance.  \"I might just\nas well have worked to form sheep into llamas and llamas into sheep.\nI suppose there is something in the human form that appeals to\nthe artistic turn of mind more powerfully than any animal shape can.\nBut I've not confined myself to man-making. Once or twice--\" He was silent,\nfor a minute perhaps.  \"These years!  How they have slipped by!\nAnd here I have wasted a day saving your life, and am now wasting an hour\nexplaining myself!\"\n\n\"But,\" said I, \"I still do not understand.  Where is your justification\nfor inflicting all this pain?  The only thing that could excuse\nvivisection to me would be some application--\"\n\n\"Precisely,\" said he.  \"But, you see, I am differently constituted.\nWe are on different platforms.  You are a materialist.\"\n\n\"I am _not_ a materialist,\" I began hotly.\n\n\"In my view--in my view.  For it is just this question of pain\nthat parts us.  So long as visible or audible pain turns you sick;\nso long as your own pains drive you; so long as pain underlies\nyour propositions about sin,--so long, I tell you, you are\nan animal, thinking a little less obscurely what an animal feels.\nThis pain--\"\n\nI gave an impatient shrug at such sophistry.\n\n\"Oh, but it is such a little thing!  A mind truly opened to\nwhat science has to teach must see that it is a little thing.\nIt may be that save in this little planet, this speck of cosmic dust,\ninvisible long before the nearest star could be attained--it may be,\nI say, that nowhere else does this thing called pain occur.\nBut the laws we feel our way towards--Why, even on this earth, even among\nliving things, what pain is there?\"\n\nAs he spoke he drew a little penknife from his pocket, opened the\nsmaller blade, and moved his chair so that I could see his thigh.\nThen, choosing the place deliberately, he drove the blade into\nhis leg and withdrew it.\n\n\"No doubt,\" he said, \"you have seen that before.  It does not hurt\na pin-prick. But what does it show?  The capacity for pain is not\nneeded in the muscle, and it is not placed there,--is but little\nneeded in the skin, and only here and there over the thigh is\na spot capable of feeling pain.  Pain is simply our intrinsic\nmedical adviser to warn us and stimulate us.  Not all living\nflesh is painful; nor is all nerve, not even all sensory nerve.\nThere's no taint of pain, real pain, in the sensations of the optic\nnerve.  If you wound the optic nerve, you merely see flashes of\nlight,--just as disease of the auditory nerve merely means a humming\nin our ears.  Plants do not feel pain, nor the lower animals;\nit's possible that such animals as the starfish and crayfish do not\nfeel pain at all.  Then with men, the more intelligent they become,\nthe more intelligently they will see after their own welfare,\nand the less they will need the goad to keep them out of danger.\nI never yet heard of a useless thing that was not ground out\nof existence by evolution sooner or later.  Did you?  And pain\ngets needless.\n\n\"Then I am a religious man, Prendick, as every sane man must be.\nIt may be, I fancy, that I have seen more of the ways of this world's\nMaker than you,--for I have sought his laws, in _my_ way, all my life,\nwhile you, I understand, have been collecting butterflies.\nAnd I tell you, pleasure and pain have nothing to do with heaven or hell.\nPleasure and pain--bah!  What is your theologian's ecstasy but\nMahomet's houri in the dark?  This store which men and women set\non pleasure and pain, Prendick, is the mark of the beast upon\nthem,--the mark of the beast from which they came!  Pain, pain and\npleasure, they are for us only so long as we wriggle in the dust.\n\n\"You see, I went on with this research just the way it led me.\nThat is the only way I ever heard of true research going.\nI asked a question, devised some method of obtaining an answer,\nand got a fresh question.  Was this possible or that possible?\nYou cannot imagine what this means to an investigator,\nwhat an intellectual passion grows upon him!  You cannot imagine\nthe strange, colourless delight of these intellectual desires!\nThe thing before you is no longer an animal, a fellow-creature,\nbut a problem!  Sympathetic pain,--all I know of it I remember\nas a thing I used to suffer from years ago.  I wanted--it was\nthe one thing I wanted--to find out the extreme limit of plasticity\nin a living shape.\"\n\n\"But,\" said I, \"the thing is an abomination--\"\n\n\"To this day I have never troubled about the ethics of the matter,\"\nhe continued.  \"The study of Nature makes a man at last as remorseless\nas Nature.  I have gone on, not heeding anything but the question I\nwas pursuing; and the material has--dripped into the huts yonder.\nIt is nearly eleven years since we came here, I and Montgomery\nand six Kanakas.  I remember the green stillness of the island\nand the empty ocean about us, as though it was yesterday.\nThe place seemed waiting for me.\n\n\"The stores were landed and the house was built.  The Kanakas founded\nsome huts near the ravine.  I went to work here upon what I had brought\nwith me.  There were some disagreeable things happened at first.\nI began with a sheep, and killed it after a day and a half by a slip\nof the scalpel.  I took another sheep, and made a thing of pain and fear\nand left it bound up to heal.  It looked quite human to me when I\nhad finished it; but when I went to it I was discontented with it.\nIt remembered me, and was terrified beyond imagination; and it had no\nmore than the wits of a sheep.  The more I looked at it the clumsier\nit seemed, until at last I put the monster out of its misery.\nThese animals without courage, these fear-haunted, pain-driven things,\nwithout a spark of pugnacious energy to face torment,--they are no good for\nman-making.\n\n\"Then I took a gorilla I had; and upon that, working with infinite\ncare and mastering difficulty after difficulty, I made my first man.\nAll the week, night and day, I moulded him.  With him it was chiefly\nthe brain that needed moulding; much had to be added, much changed.\nI thought him a fair specimen of the negroid type when I had\nfinished him, and he lay bandaged, bound, and motionless before me.\nIt was only when his life was assured that I left him and came\ninto this room again, and found Montgomery much as you are.\nHe had heard some of the cries as the thing grew human,--cries\nlike those that disturbed _you_ so.  I didn't take him\ncompletely into my confidence at first.  And the Kanakas too,\nhad realised something of it.  They were scared out of their wits\nby the sight of me.  I got Montgomery over to me--in a way;\nbut I and he had the hardest job to prevent the Kanakas deserting.\nFinally they did; and so we lost the yacht.  I spent many days\neducating the brute,--altogether I had him for three or four months.\nI taught him the rudiments of English; gave him ideas of counting;\neven made the thing read the alphabet.  But at that he was slow,\nthough I've met with idiots slower.  He began with a clean sheet,\nmentally; had no memories left in his mind of what he had been.\nWhen his scars were quite healed, and he was no longer anything\nbut painful and stiff, and able to converse a little, I took\nhim yonder and introduced him to the Kanakas as an interesting\nstowaway.\n\n\"They were horribly afraid of him at first, somehow,--which offended\nme rather, for I was conceited about him; but his ways seemed so mild,\nand he was so abject, that after a time they received him and took his\neducation in hand.  He was quick to learn, very imitative and adaptive,\nand built himself a hovel rather better, it seemed to me, than their\nown shanties.  There was one among the boys a bit of a missionary,\nand he taught the thing to read, or at least to pick out letters,\nand gave him some rudimentary ideas of morality; but it seems\nthe beast's habits were not all that is desirable.\n\n\"I rested from work for some days after this, and was in a mind to\nwrite an account of the whole affair to wake up English physiology.\nThen I came upon the creature squatting up in a tree and gibbering\nat two of the Kanakas who had been teasing him.  I threatened him,\ntold him the inhumanity of such a proceeding, aroused his sense of shame,\nand came home resolved to do better before I took my work back to England.\nI have been doing better.  But somehow the things drift back again:\nthe stubborn beast-flesh grows day by day back again.\nBut I mean to do better things still.  I mean to conquer that.\nThis puma--\n\n\"But that's the story.  All the Kanaka boys are dead now;\none fell overboard of the launch, and one died of a wounded\nheel that he poisoned in some way with plant-juice. Three\nwent away in the yacht, and I suppose and hope were drowned.\nThe other one--was killed.  Well, I have replaced them.\nMontgomery went on much as you are disposed to do at first,\nand then--\n\n\"What became of the other one?\" said I, sharply,--\"the other Kanaka\nwho was killed?\"\n\n\"The fact is, after I had made a number of human creatures I made\na Thing--\"  He hesitated.\n\n\"Yes?\" said I.\n\n\"It was killed.\"\n\n\"I don't understand,\" said I; \"do you mean to say--\"\n\n\"It killed the Kanaka--yes.  It killed several other things that\nit caught.  We chased it for a couple of days.  It only got loose\nby accident--I never meant it to get away.  It wasn't finished.\nIt was purely an experiment.  It was a limbless thing, with a\nhorrible face, that writhed along the ground in a serpentine fashion.\nIt was immensely strong, and in infuriating pain.  It lurked in\nthe woods for some days, until we hunted it; and then it wriggled\ninto the northern part of the island, and we divided the party\nto close in upon it.  Montgomery insisted upon coming with me.\nThe man had a rifle; and when his body was found, one of the barrels\nwas curved into the shape of an S and very nearly bitten through.\nMontgomery shot the thing.  After that I stuck to the ideal of\nhumanity--except for little things.\"\n\nHe became silent.  I sat in silence watching his face.\n\n\"So for twenty years altogether--counting nine years in England--I\nhave been going on; and there is still something in everything I do\nthat defeats me, makes me dissatisfied, challenges me to further effort.\nSometimes I rise above my level, sometimes I fall below it; but always\nI fall short of the things I dream.  The human shape I can get now,\nalmost with ease, so that it is lithe and graceful, or thick and strong;\nbut often there is trouble with the hands and the claws,--painful things,\nthat I dare not shape too freely.  But it is in the subtle grafting\nand reshaping one must needs do to the brain that my trouble lies.\nThe intelligence is often oddly low, with unaccountable blank ends,\nunexpected gaps.  And least satisfactory of all is something that I\ncannot touch, somewhere--I cannot determine where--in the seat\nof the emotions.  Cravings, instincts, desires that harm humanity,\na strange hidden reservoir to burst forth suddenly and inundate\nthe whole being of the creature with anger, hate, or fear.\nThese creatures of mine seemed strange and uncanny to you so soon\nas you began to observe them; but to me, just after I make them,\nthey seem to be indisputably human beings.  It's afterwards, as I\nobserve them, that the persuasion fades.  First one animal trait,\nthen another, creeps to the surface and stares out at me.\nBut I will conquer yet!  Each time I dip a living creature into the bath\nof burning pain, I say, 'This time I will burn out all the animal;\nthis time I will make a rational creature of my own!'  After all,\nwhat is ten years?  Men have been a hundred thousand in the making.\"\nHe thought darkly.  \"But I am drawing near the fastness.\nThis puma of mine--\" After a silence, \"And they revert.\nAs soon as my hand is taken from them the beast begins\nto creep back, begins to assert itself again.\"  Another long\nsilence.\n\n\"Then you take the things you make into those dens?\" said I.\n\n\"They go.  I turn them out when I begin to feel the beast in them,\nand presently they wander there.  They all dread this house and me.\nThere is a kind of travesty of humanity over there.  Montgomery knows\nabout it, for he interferes in their affairs.  He has trained one\nor two of them to our service.  He's ashamed of it, but I believe\nhe half likes some of those beasts.  It's his business, not mine.\nThey only sicken me with a sense of failure.  I take no interest in them.\nI fancy they follow in the lines the Kanaka missionary marked out,\nand have a kind of mockery of a rational life, poor beasts!\nThere's something they call the Law.  Sing hymns about 'all thine.'\nThey build themselves their dens, gather fruit, and pull herbs--marry\neven.  But I can see through it all, see into their very souls,\nand see there nothing but the souls of beasts, beasts that perish,\nanger and the lusts to live and gratify themselves.--Yet they're odd;\ncomplex, like everything else alive.  There is a kind of upward\nstriving in them, part vanity, part waste sexual emotion,\npart waste curiosity.  It only mocks me.  I have some hope of this puma.\nI have worked hard at her head and brain--\n\n\"And now,\" said he, standing up after a long gap of silence, during\nwhich we had each pursued our own thoughts, \"what do you think?  Are\nyou in fear of me still?\"\n\nI looked at him, and saw but a white-faced, white-haired man,\nwith calm eyes.  Save for his serenity, the touch almost of beauty that\nresulted from his set tranquillity and his magnificent build, he might\nhave passed muster among a hundred other comfortable old gentlemen.\nThen I shivered.  By way of answer to his second question, I handed\nhim a revolver with either hand.\n\n\"Keep them,\" he said, and snatched at a yawn.  He stood up, stared at\nme for a moment, and smiled.  \"You have had two eventful days,\"\nsaid he.  \"I should advise some sleep.  I'm glad it's all clear.\nGood-night.\" He thought me over for a moment, then went out by\nthe inner door.\n\nI immediately turned the key in the outer one.  I sat down again;\nsat for a time in a kind of stagnant mood, so weary, emotionally,\nmentally, and physically, that I could not think beyond the point\nat which he had left me.  The black window stared at me like an eye.\nAt last with an effort I put out the light and got into the hammock.\nVery soon I was asleep.\n\n\n\n\nXV.  CONCERNING THE BEAST FOLK.\n\n\nI WOKE early.  Moreau's explanation stood before my mind,\nclear and definite, from the moment of my awakening.  I got out\nof the hammock and went to the door to assure myself that the key\nwas turned.  Then I tried the window-bar, and found it firmly fixed.\nThat these man-like creatures were in truth only bestial monsters,\nmere grotesque travesties of men, filled me with a vague uncertainty\nof their possibilities which was far worse than any definite fear.\n\nA tapping came at the door, and I heard the glutinous accents\nof M'ling speaking.  I pocketed one of the revolvers (keeping one\nhand upon it), and opened to him.\n\n\"Good-morning, sair,\" he said, bringing in, in addition to the customary\nherb-breakfast, an ill-cooked rabbit.  Montgomery followed him.\nHis roving eye caught the position of my arm and he smiled askew.\n\nThe puma was resting to heal that day; but Moreau, who was singularly\nsolitary in his habits, did not join us.  I talked with Montgomery\nto clear my ideas of the way in which the Beast Folk lived.\nIn particular, I was urgent to know how these inhuman monsters were kept\nfrom falling upon Moreau and Montgomery and from rending one another.\nHe explained to me that the comparative safety of Moreau and\nhimself was due to the limited mental scope of these monsters.\nIn spite of their increased intelligence and the tendency of their\nanimal instincts to reawaken, they had certain fixed ideas implanted\nby Moreau in their minds, which absolutely bounded their imaginations.\nThey were really hypnotised; had been told that certain things\nwere impossible, and that certain things were not to be done,\nand these prohibitions were woven into the texture of their minds beyond\nany possibility of disobedience or dispute.\n\nCertain matters, however, in which old instinct was at war\nwith Moreau's convenience, were in a less stable condition.\nA series of propositions called the Law (I had already heard them recited)\nbattled in their minds with the deep-seated, ever-rebellious cravings\nof their animal natures.  This Law they were ever repeating,\nI found, and ever breaking.  Both Montgomery and Moreau displayed\nparticular solicitude to keep them ignorant of the taste of blood;\nthey feared the inevitable suggestions of that flavour.\nMontgomery told me that the Law, especially among the feline Beast People,\nbecame oddly weakened about nightfall; that then the animal was at\nits strongest; that a spirit of adventure sprang up in them at the dusk,\nwhen they would dare things they never seemed to dream about by day.\nTo that I owed my stalking by the Leopard-man, on the night of my arrival.\nBut during these earlier days of my stay they broke the Law only\nfurtively and after dark; in the daylight there was a general\natmosphere of respect for its multifarious prohibitions.\n\nAnd here perhaps I may give a few general facts about the island\nand the Beast People.  The island, which was of irregular outline\nand lay low upon the wide sea, had a total area, I suppose,\nof seven or eight square miles.{2} It was volcanic in origin,\nand was now fringed on three sides by coral reefs; some fumaroles\nto the northward, and a hot spring, were the only vestiges of\nthe forces that had long since originated it.  Now and then a faint\nquiver of earthquake would be sensible, and sometimes the ascent\nof the spire of smoke would be rendered tumultuous by gusts of steam;\nbut that was all.  The population of the island, Montgomery informed me,\nnow numbered rather more than sixty of these strange creations\nof Moreau's art, not counting the smaller monstrosities\nwhich lived in the undergrowth and were without human form.\nAltogether he had made nearly a hundred and twenty; but many had died,\nand others--like the writhing Footless Thing of which he had told\nme--had come by violent ends.  In answer to my question, Montgomery\nsaid that they actually bore offspring, but that these generally died.\nWhen they lived, Moreau took them and stamped the human form upon them.\nThere was no evidence of the inheritance of their acquired\nhuman characteristics.  The females were less numerous than the males,\nand liable to much furtive persecution in spite of the monogamy the\nLaw enjoined.\n\n     {2} This description corresponds in every respect to Noble's Isle.\n         -- C. E. P.\n\nIt would be impossible for me to describe these Beast People in detail;\nmy eye has had no training in details, and unhappily I cannot sketch.\nMost striking, perhaps, in their general appearance was the\ndisproportion between the legs of these creatures and the length\nof their bodies; and yet--so relative is our idea of grace--my\neye became habituated to their forms, and at last I even fell\nin with their persuasion that my own long thighs were ungainly.\nAnother point was the forward carriage of the head and the clumsy\nand inhuman curvature of the spine.  Even the Ape-man lacked\nthat inward sinuous curve of the back which makes the human\nfigure so graceful.  Most had their shoulders hunched clumsily,\nand their short forearms hung weakly at their sides.  Few of them\nwere conspicuously hairy, at least until the end of my time upon\nthe island.\n\nThe next most obvious deformity was in their faces,\nalmost all of which were prognathous, malformed about the ears,\nwith large and protuberant noses, very furry or very bristly hair,\nand often strangely-coloured or strangely-placed eyes.\nNone could laugh, though the Ape-man had a chattering titter.\nBeyond these general characters their heads had little in common;\neach preserved the quality of its particular species:\nthe human mark distorted but did not hide the leopard, the ox,\nor the sow, or other animal or animals, from which the creature\nhad been moulded.  The voices, too, varied exceedingly.\nThe hands were always malformed; and though some surprised me by their\nunexpected human appearance, almost all were deficient in the number\nof the digits, clumsy about the finger-nails, and lacking any\ntactile sensibility.\n\nThe two most formidable Animal Men were my Leopard-man and a creature\nmade of hyena and swine.  Larger than these were the three bull-creatures\nwho pulled in the boat.  Then came the silvery-hairy-man, who was also\nthe Sayer of the Law, M'ling, and a satyr-like creature of ape and goat.\nThere were three Swine-men and a Swine-woman, a mare-rhinoceros-creature,\nand several other females whose sources I did not ascertain.\nThere were several wolf-creatures, a bear-bull, and a Saint-Bernard-man. I\nhave already described the Ape-man, and there was a particularly hateful\n(and evil-smelling) old woman made of vixen and bear, whom I hated\nfrom the beginning.  She was said to be a passionate votary of the Law.\nSmaller creatures were certain dappled youths and my little\nsloth-creature. But enough of this catalogue.\n\nAt first I had a shivering horror of the brutes, felt all too keenly\nthat they were still brutes; but insensibly I became a little\nhabituated to the idea of them, and moreover I was affected by\nMontgomery's attitude towards them.  He had been with them so long\nthat he had come to regard them as almost normal human beings.\nHis London days seemed a glorious, impossible past to him.\nOnly once in a year or so did he go to Arica to deal with\nMoreau's agent, a trader in animals there.  He hardly met the finest\ntype of mankind in that seafaring village of Spanish mongrels.\nThe men aboard-ship, he told me, seemed at first just as strange\nto him as the Beast Men seemed to me,--unnaturally long in the leg,\nflat in the face, prominent in the forehead, suspicious, dangerous,\nand cold-hearted. In fact, he did not like men:  his heart\nhad warmed to me, he thought, because he had saved my life.\nI fancied even then that he had a sneaking kindness for some of these\nmetamorphosed brutes, a vicious sympathy with some of their ways,\nbut that he attempted to veil it from me at first.\n\nM'ling, the black-faced man, Montgomery's attendant, the first of\nthe Beast Folk I had encountered, did not live with the others across\nthe island, but in a small kennel at the back of the enclosure.\nThe creature was scarcely so intelligent as the Ape-man, but far\nmore docile, and the most human-looking of all the Beast Folk;\nand Montgomery had trained it to prepare food, and indeed to\ndischarge all the trivial domestic offices that were required.\nIt was a complex trophy of Moreau's horrible skill,--a bear, tainted with\ndog and ox, and one of the most elaborately made of all his creatures.\nIt treated Montgomery with a strange tenderness and devotion.\nSometimes he would notice it, pat it, call it half-mocking, half-jocular\nnames, and so make it caper with extraordinary delight; sometimes he\nwould ill-treat it, especially after he had been at the whiskey,\nkicking it, beating it, pelting it with stones or lighted fusees.\nBut whether he treated it well or ill, it loved nothing so much as to be\nnear him.\n\nI say I became habituated to the Beast People, that a thousand\nthings which had seemed unnatural and repulsive speedily became\nnatural and ordinary to me.  I suppose everything in existence\ntakes its colour from the average hue of our surroundings.\nMontgomery and Moreau were too peculiar and individual\nto keep my general impressions of humanity well defined.\nI would see one of the clumsy bovine-creatures who worked the launch\ntreading heavily through the undergrowth, and find myself asking,\ntrying hard to recall, how he differed from some really human\nyokel trudging home from his mechanical labours; or I would meet\nthe Fox-bear woman's vulpine, shifty face, strangely human in its\nspeculative cunning, and even imagine I had met it before in some\ncity byway.\n\nYet every now and then the beast would flash out upon me beyond\ndoubt or denial.  An ugly-looking man, a hunch-backed human savage\nto all appearance, squatting in the aperture of one of the dens,\nwould stretch his arms and yawn, showing with startling suddenness\nscissor-edged incisors and sabre-like canines, keen and brilliant\nas knives.  Or in some narrow pathway, glancing with a transitory\ndaring into the eyes of some lithe, white-swathed female figure,\nI would suddenly see (with a spasmodic revulsion) that she had\nslit-like pupils, or glancing down note the curving nail with which\nshe held her shapeless wrap about her.  It is a curious thing, by\nthe bye, for which I am quite unable to account, that these weird\ncreatures--the females, I mean--had in the earlier days of my stay an\ninstinctive sense of their own repulsive clumsiness, and displayed\nin consequence a more than human regard for the decency and decorum\nof extensive costume.\n\n\n\n\nXVI.  HOW THE BEAST FOLK TASTE BLOOD.\n\n\nMY inexperience as a writer betrays me, and I wander from the thread\nof my story.\n\nAfter I had breakfasted with Montgomery, he took me across\nthe island to see the fumarole and the source of the hot spring\ninto whose scalding waters I had blundered on the previous day.\nBoth of us carried whips and loaded revolvers.  While going through\na leafy jungle on our road thither, we heard a rabbit squealing.\nWe stopped and listened, but we heard no more; and presently we\nwent on our way, and the incident dropped out of our minds.\nMontgomery called my attention to certain little pink animals\nwith long hind-legs, that went leaping through the undergrowth.\nHe told me they were creatures made of the offspring of the Beast People,\nthat Moreau had invented.  He had fancied they might serve for meat,\nbut a rabbit-like habit of devouring their young had defeated\nthis intention.  I had already encountered some of these\ncreatures,--once during my moonlight flight from the Leopard-man,\nand once during my pursuit by Moreau on the previous day.\nBy chance, one hopping to avoid us leapt into the hole caused\nby the uprooting of a wind-blown tree; before it could extricate\nitself we managed to catch it.  It spat like a cat, scratched and\nkicked vigorously with its hind-legs, and made an attempt to bite;\nbut its teeth were too feeble to inflict more than a painless pinch.\nIt seemed to me rather a pretty little creature; and as Montgomery stated\nthat it never destroyed the turf by burrowing, and was very cleanly\nin its habits, I should imagine it might prove a convenient substitute\nfor the common rabbit in gentlemen's parks.\n\nWe also saw on our way the trunk of a tree barked in long strips\nand splintered deeply.  Montgomery called my attention to this.\n\"Not to claw bark of trees, _that_ is the Law,\" he said.\n\"Much some of them care for it!\"  It was after this, I think, that we\nmet the Satyr and the Ape-man. The Satyr was a gleam of classical memory\non the part of Moreau,--his face ovine in expression, like the coarser\nHebrew type; his voice a harsh bleat, his nether extremities Satanic.\nHe was gnawing the husk of a pod-like fruit as he passed us.\nBoth of them saluted Montgomery.\n\n\"Hail,\" said they, \"to the Other with the Whip!\"\n\n\"There's a Third with a Whip now,\" said Montgomery.  \"So you'd\nbetter mind!\"\n\n\"Was he not made?\" said the Ape-man. \"He said--he said he was made.\"\n\nThe Satyr-man looked curiously at me.  \"The Third with the Whip,\nhe that walks weeping into the sea, has a thin white face.\"\n\n\"He has a thin long whip,\" said Montgomery.\n\n\"Yesterday he bled and wept,\" said the Satyr.  \"You never bleed nor weep.\nThe Master does not bleed or weep.\"\n\n\"Ollendorffian beggar!\" said Montgomery, \"you'll bleed and weep\nif you don't look out!\"\n\n\"He has five fingers, he is a five-man like me,\" said the Ape-man.\n\n\"Come along, Prendick,\" said Montgomery, taking my arm; and I went\non with him.\n\nThe Satyr and the Ape-man stood watching us and making other remarks\nto each other.\n\n\"He says nothing,\" said the Satyr.  \"Men have voices.\"\n\n\"Yesterday he asked me of things to eat,\" said the Ape-man. \"He\ndid not know.\"\n\nThen they spoke inaudible things, and I heard the Satyr laughing.\n\nIt was on our way back that we came upon the dead rabbit.\nThe red body of the wretched little beast was rent to pieces, many of\nthe ribs stripped white, and the backbone indisputably gnawed.\n\nAt that Montgomery stopped.  \"Good God!\" said he, stooping down,\nand picking up some of the crushed vertebrae to examine them more closely.\n\"Good God!\" he repeated, \"what can this mean?\"\n\n\"Some carnivore of yours has remembered its old habits,\"\nI said after a pause.  \"This backbone has been bitten through.\"\n\nHe stood staring, with his face white and his lip pulled askew.\n\"I don't like this,\" he said slowly.\n\n\"I saw something of the same kind,\" said I, \"the first day I came here.\"\n\n\"The devil you did!  What was it?\"\n\n\"A rabbit with its head twisted off.\"\n\n\"The day you came here?\"\n\n\"The day I came here.  In the undergrowth at the back of the enclosure,\nwhen I went out in the evening.  The head was completely wrung off.\"\n\nHe gave a long, low whistle.\n\n\"And what is more, I have an idea which of your brutes did the thing.\nIt's only a suspicion, you know.  Before I came on the rabbit I saw one\nof your monsters drinking in the stream.\"\n\n\"Sucking his drink?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"'Not to suck your drink; that is the Law.'  Much the brutes care\nfor the Law, eh? when Moreau's not about!\"\n\n\"It was the brute who chased me.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" said Montgomery; \"it's just the way with carnivores.\nAfter a kill, they drink.  It's the taste of blood, you know.--What\nwas the brute like?\" he continued.  \"Would you know him again?\"\nHe glanced about us, standing astride over the mess of dead rabbit,\nhis eyes roving among the shadows and screens of greenery,\nthe lurking-places and ambuscades of the forest that bounded us in.\n\"The taste of blood,\" he said again.\n\nHe took out his revolver, examined the cartridges in it and replaced it.\nThen he began to pull at his dropping lip.\n\n\"I think I should know the brute again,\" I said.  \"I stunned him.\nHe ought to have a handsome bruise on the forehead of him.\"\n\n\"But then we have to _prove_ that he killed the rabbit,\" said\nMontgomery. \"I wish I'd never brought the things here.\"\n\nI should have gone on, but he stayed there thinking over the mangled\nrabbit in a puzzle-headed way.  As it was, I went to such a distance\nthat the rabbit's remains were hidden.\n\n\"Come on!\" I said.\n\nPresently he woke up and came towards me.  \"You see,\" he said,\nalmost in a whisper, \"they are all supposed to have a fixed idea\nagainst eating anything that runs on land.  If some brute has\nby any accident tasted blood--\"\n\nWe went on some way in silence.  \"I wonder what can have happened,\"\nhe said to himself.  Then, after a pause again:  \"I did a foolish\nthing the other day.  That servant of mine--I showed him how to skin\nand cook a rabbit.  It's odd--I saw him licking his hands--It never\noccurred to me.\"\n\nThen:  \"We must put a stop to this.  I must tell Moreau.\"\n\nHe could think of nothing else on our homeward journey.\n\nMoreau took the matter even more seriously than Montgomery, and I\nneed scarcely say that I was affected by their evident consternation.\n\n\"We must make an example,\" said Moreau.  \"I've no doubt in my own\nmind that the Leopard-man was the sinner.  But how can we prove it?\nI wish, Montgomery, you had kept your taste for meat in hand, and gone\nwithout these exciting novelties.  We may find ourselves in a mess yet,\nthrough it.\"\n\n\"I was a silly ass,\" said Montgomery.  \"But the thing's done now;\nand you said I might have them, you know.\"\n\n\"We must see to the thing at once,\" said Moreau.  \"I suppose\nif anything should turn up, M'ling can take care of himself?\"\n\n\"I'm not so sure of M'ling,\" said Montgomery.  \"I think I ought\nto know him.\"\n\nIn the afternoon, Moreau, Montgomery, myself, and M'ling went\nacross the island to the huts in the ravine.  We three were armed;\nM'ling carried the little hatchet he used in chopping firewood,\nand some coils of wire.  Moreau had a huge cowherd's horn slung over\nhis shoulder.\n\n\"You will see a gathering of the Beast People,\" said Montgomery.\n\"It is a pretty sight!\"\n\nMoreau said not a word on the way, but the expression of his heavy,\nwhite-fringed face was grimly set.\n\nWe crossed the ravine down which smoked the stream of hot water,\nand followed the winding pathway through the canebrakes\nuntil we reached a wide area covered over with a thick,\npowdery yellow substance which I believe was sulphur.\nAbove the shoulder of a weedy bank the sea glittered.  We came to a kind\nof shallow natural amphitheatre, and here the four of us halted.\nThen Moreau sounded the horn, and broke the sleeping stillness\nof the tropical afternoon.  He must have had strong lungs.\nThe hooting note rose and rose amidst its echoes, to at last an\near-penetrating intensity.\n\n\"Ah!\" said Moreau, letting the curved instrument fall to his side again.\n\nImmediately there was a crashing through the yellow canes,\nand a sound of voices from the dense green jungle that marked\nthe morass through which I had run on the previous day.\nThen at three or four points on the edge of the sulphurous area\nappeared the grotesque forms of the Beast People hurrying towards us.\nI could not help a creeping horror, as I perceived first one and then\nanother trot out from the trees or reeds and come shambling along\nover the hot dust.  But Moreau and Montgomery stood calmly enough;\nand, perforce, I stuck beside them.\n\nFirst to arrive was the Satyr, strangely unreal for all that he cast\na shadow and tossed the dust with his hoofs.  After him from\nthe brake came a monstrous lout, a thing of horse and rhinoceros,\nchewing a straw as it came; then appeared the Swine-woman\nand two Wolf-women; then the Fox-bear witch, with her red eyes\nin her peaked red face, and then others,--all hurrying eagerly.\nAs they came forward they began to cringe towards Moreau and chant,\nquite regardless of one another, fragments of the latter half\nof the litany of the Law,--\"His is the Hand that wounds;\nHis is the Hand that heals,\" and so forth.  As soon as they had\napproached within a distance of perhaps thirty yards they halted,\nand bowing on knees and elbows began flinging the white dust upon\ntheir heads.\n\nImagine the scene if you can!  We three blue-clad men, with our\nmisshapen black-faced attendant, standing in a wide expanse\nof sunlit yellow dust under the blazing blue sky, and surrounded\nby this circle of crouching and gesticulating monstrosities,--some\nalmost human save in their subtle expression and gestures,\nsome like cripples, some so strangely distorted as to resemble nothing\nbut the denizens of our wildest dreams; and, beyond, the reedy\nlines of a canebrake in one direction, a dense tangle of palm-trees\non the other, separating us from the ravine with the huts,\nand to the north the hazy horizon of the Pacific Ocean.\n\n\"Sixty-two, sixty-three,\" counted Moreau.  \"There are four more.\"\n\n\"I do not see the Leopard-man,\" said I.\n\nPresently Moreau sounded the great horn again, and at the sound\nof it all the Beast People writhed and grovelled in the dust.\nThen, slinking out of the canebrake, stooping near the ground\nand trying to join the dust-throwing circle behind Moreau's back,\ncame the Leopard-man. The last of the Beast People to arrive was the little\nApe-man. The earlier animals, hot and weary with their grovelling,\nshot vicious glances at him.\n\n\"Cease!\" said Moreau, in his firm, loud voice; and the Beast People\nsat back upon their hams and rested from their worshipping.\n\n\"Where is the Sayer of the Law?\" said Moreau, and the hairy-grey\nmonster bowed his face in the dust.\n\n\"Say the words!\" said Moreau.\n\nForthwith all in the kneeling assembly, swaying from side to side\nand dashing up the sulphur with their hands,--first the right hand\nand a puff of dust, and then the left,--began once more to chant\ntheir strange litany.  When they reached, \"Not to eat Flesh or Fish,\nthat is the Law,\" Moreau held up his lank white hand.\n\n\"Stop!\" he cried, and there fell absolute silence upon them all.\n\nI think they all knew and dreaded what was coming.\nI looked round at their strange faces.  When I saw their wincing\nattitudes and the furtive dread in their bright eyes, I wondered\nthat I had ever believed them to be men.\n\n\"That Law has been broken!\" said Moreau.\n\n\"None escape,\" from the faceless creature with the silvery hair.\n\"None escape,\" repeated the kneeling circle of Beast People.\n\n\"Who is he?\" cried Moreau, and looked round at their faces,\ncracking his whip.  I fancied the Hyena-swine looked dejected,\nso too did the Leopard-man. Moreau stopped, facing this creature,\nwho cringed towards him with the memory and dread of infinite torment.\n\n\"Who is he?\" repeated Moreau, in a voice of thunder.\n\n\"Evil is he who breaks the Law,\" chanted the Sayer of the Law.\n\nMoreau looked into the eyes of the Leopard-man, and seemed to be\ndragging the very soul out of the creature.\n\n\"Who breaks the Law--\" said Moreau, taking his eyes off his victim,\nand turning towards us (it seemed to me there was a touch of exultation\nin his voice).\n\n\"Goes back to the House of Pain,\" they all clamoured,--\"goes back\nto the House of Pain, O Master!\"\n\n\"Back to the House of Pain,--back to the House of Pain,\"\ngabbled the Ape-man, as though the idea was sweet to him.\n\n\"Do you hear?\" said Moreau, turning back to the criminal,\n\"my friend--Hullo!\"\n\nFor the Leopard-man, released from Moreau's eye, had risen straight\nfrom his knees, and now, with eyes aflame and his huge feline tusks\nflashing out from under his curling lips, leapt towards his tormentor.\nI am convinced that only the madness of unendurable fear could have\nprompted this attack.  The whole circle of threescore monsters seemed\nto rise about us.  I drew my revolver.  The two figures collided.\nI saw Moreau reeling back from the Leopard-man's blow.  There was a\nfurious yelling and howling all about us.  Every one was moving rapidly.\nFor a moment I thought it was a general revolt.  The furious face\nof the Leopard-man flashed by mine, with M'ling close in pursuit.\nI saw the yellow eyes of the Hyena-swine blazing with excitement,\nhis attitude as if he were half resolved to attack me.\nThe Satyr, too, glared at me over the Hyena-swine's hunched shoulders.\nI heard the crack of Moreau's pistol, and saw the pink flash\ndart across the tumult.  The whole crowd seemed to swing round\nin the direction of the glint of fire, and I too was swung round\nby the magnetism of the movement.  In another second I was running,\none of a tumultuous shouting crowd, in pursuit of the escaping\nLeopard-man.\n\nThat is all I can tell definitely.  I saw the Leopard-man strike Moreau,\nand then everything spun about me until I was running headlong.\nM'ling was ahead, close in pursuit of the fugitive.  Behind, their tongues\nalready lolling out, ran the Wolf-women in great leaping strides.\nThe Swine folk followed, squealing with excitement, and the two\nBull-men in their swathings of white.  Then came Moreau in a\ncluster of the Beast People, his wide-brimmed straw hat blown off,\nhis revolver in hand, and his lank white hair streaming out.\nThe Hyena-swine ran beside me, keeping pace with me and glancing furtively\nat me out of his feline eyes, and the others came pattering and shouting\nbehind us.\n\nThe Leopard-man went bursting his way through the long canes,\nwhich sprang back as he passed, and rattled in M'ling's face.\nWe others in the rear found a trampled path for us when we reached\nthe brake.  The chase lay through the brake for perhaps a quarter\nof a mile, and then plunged into a dense thicket, which retarded\nour movements exceedingly, though we went through it in a crowd\ntogether,--fronds flicking into our faces, ropy creepers catching\nus under the chin or gripping our ankles, thorny plants hooking into\nand tearing cloth and flesh together.\n\n\"He has gone on all-fours through this,\" panted Moreau, now just\nahead of me.\n\n\"None escape,\" said the Wolf-bear, laughing into my face with\nthe exultation of hunting.  We burst out again among rocks,\nand saw the quarry ahead running lightly on all-fours and snarling\nat us over his shoulder.  At that the Wolf Folk howled with delight.\nThe Thing was still clothed, and at a distance its face still seemed human;\nbut the carriage of its four limbs was feline, and the furtive\ndroop of its shoulder was distinctly that of a hunted animal.\nIt leapt over some thorny yellow-flowering bushes, and was hidden.\nM'ling was halfway across the space.\n\nMost of us now had lost the first speed of the chase, and had fallen\ninto a longer and steadier stride.  I saw as we traversed the open\nthat the pursuit was now spreading from a column into a line.\nThe Hyena-swine still ran close to me, watching me as it ran,\nevery now and then puckering its muzzle with a snarling laugh.\nAt the edge of the rocks the Leopard-man, realising that he was\nmaking for the projecting cape upon which he had stalked me\non the night of my arrival, had doubled in the undergrowth;\nbut Montgomery had seen the manoeuvre, and turned him again.\nSo, panting, tumbling against rocks, torn by brambles, impeded by\nferns and reeds, I helped to pursue the Leopard-man who had broken\nthe Law, and the Hyena-swine ran, laughing savagely, by my side.\nI staggered on, my head reeling and my heart beating against my ribs,\ntired almost to death, and yet not daring to lose sight of the chase\nlest I should be left alone with this horrible companion.\nI staggered on in spite of infinite fatigue and the dense heat of the\ntropical afternoon.\n\nAt last the fury of the hunt slackened.  We had pinned the wretched\nbrute into a corner of the island.  Moreau, whip in hand, marshalled us\nall into an irregular line, and we advanced now slowly, shouting to one\nanother as we advanced and tightening the cordon about our victim.\nHe lurked noiseless and invisible in the bushes through which I\nhad run from him during that midnight pursuit.\n\n\"Steady!\" cried Moreau, \"steady!\" as the ends of the line crept\nround the tangle of undergrowth and hemmed the brute in.\n\n\"Ware a rush!\" came the voice of Montgomery from beyond the thicket.\n\nI was on the slope above the bushes; Montgomery and Moreau beat\nalong the beach beneath.  Slowly we pushed in among the fretted\nnetwork of branches and leaves.  The quarry was silent.\n\n\"Back to the House of Pain, the House of Pain, the House of Pain!\"\nyelped the voice of the Ape-man, some twenty yards to the right.\n\nWhen I heard that, I forgave the poor wretch all the fear he had\ninspired in me.  I heard the twigs snap and the boughs swish aside\nbefore the heavy tread of the Horse-rhinoceros upon my right.\nThen suddenly through a polygon of green, in the half darkness\nunder the luxuriant growth, I saw the creature we were hunting.\nI halted.  He was crouched together into the smallest possible compass,\nhis luminous green eyes turned over his shoulder regarding me.\n\nIt may seem a strange contradiction in me,--I cannot explain the\nfact,--but now, seeing the creature there in a perfectly animal\nattitude, with the light gleaming in its eyes and its imperfectly\nhuman face distorted with terror, I realised again the fact of its\nhumanity.  In another moment other of its pursuers would see it,\nand it would be overpowered and captured, to experience once more\nthe horrible tortures of the enclosure.  Abruptly I slipped out\nmy revolver, aimed between its terror-struck eyes, and fired.\nAs I did so, the Hyena-swine saw the Thing, and flung itself upon\nit with an eager cry, thrusting thirsty teeth into its neck.\nAll about me the green masses of the thicket were swaying and cracking\nas the Beast People came rushing together.  One face and then\nanother appeared.\n\n\"Don't kill it, Prendick!\" cried Moreau.  \"Don't kill it!\"\nand I saw him stooping as he pushed through under the fronds\nof the big ferns.\n\nIn another moment he had beaten off the Hyena-swine with the handle of\nhis whip, and he and Montgomery were keeping away the excited carnivorous\nBeast People, and particularly M'ling, from the still quivering body.\nThe hairy-grey Thing came sniffing at the corpse under my arm.\nThe other animals, in their animal ardour, jostled me to get a\nnearer view.\n\n\"Confound you, Prendick!\" said Moreau.  \"I wanted him.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" said I, though I was not.  \"It was the impulse\nof the moment.\"  I felt sick with exertion and excitement.\nTurning, I pushed my way out of the crowding Beast People and went\non alone up the slope towards the higher part of the headland.\nUnder the shouted directions of Moreau I heard the three white-swathed\nBull-men begin dragging the victim down towards the water.\n\nIt was easy now for me to be alone.  The Beast People manifested a quite\nhuman curiosity about the dead body, and followed it in a thick knot,\nsniffing and growling at it as the Bull-men dragged it down the beach.\nI went to the headland and watched the bull-men, black against\nthe evening sky as they carried the weighted dead body out to sea;\nand like a wave across my mind came the realisation of the unspeakable\naimlessness of things upon the island.  Upon the beach among\nthe rocks beneath me were the Ape-man, the Hyena-swine, and several\nother of the Beast People, standing about Montgomery and Moreau.\nThey were all still intensely excited, and all overflowing with noisy\nexpressions of their loyalty to the Law; yet I felt an absolute\nassurance in my own mind that the Hyena-swine was implicated\nin the rabbit-killing. A strange persuasion came upon me, that,\nsave for the grossness of the line, the grotesqueness of the forms,\nI had here before me the whole balance of human life in miniature,\nthe whole interplay of instinct, reason, and fate in its simplest form.\nThe Leopard-man had happened to go under:  that was all the difference.\nPoor brute!\n\nPoor brutes!  I began to see the viler aspect of Moreau's cruelty.\nI had not thought before of the pain and trouble that came\nto these poor victims after they had passed from Moreau's hands.\nI had shivered only at the days of actual torment in the enclosure.\nBut now that seemed to me the lesser part.  Before, they had\nbeen beasts, their instincts fitly adapted to their surroundings,\nand happy as living things may be.  Now they stumbled in the shackles\nof humanity, lived in a fear that never died, fretted by a law they\ncould not understand; their mock-human existence, begun in an agony,\nwas one long internal struggle, one long dread of Moreau--and for what?\nIt was the wantonness of it that stirred me.\n\nHad Moreau had any intelligible object, I could have sympathised at\nleast a little with him.  I am not so squeamish about pain as that.\nI could have forgiven him a little even, had his motive been only hate.\nBut he was so irresponsible, so utterly careless!  His curiosity,\nhis mad, aimless investigations, drove him on; and the Things were\nthrown out to live a year or so, to struggle and blunder and suffer,\nand at last to die painfully.  They were wretched in themselves;\nthe old animal hate moved them to trouble one another; the Law held\nthem back from a brief hot struggle and a decisive end to their\nnatural animosities.\n\nIn those days my fear of the Beast People went the way of my personal\nfear for Moreau.  I fell indeed into a morbid state, deep and enduring,\nand alien to fear, which has left permanent scars upon my mind.\nI must confess that I lost faith in the sanity of the world\nwhen I saw it suffering the painful disorder of this island.\nA blind Fate, a vast pitiless mechanism, seemed to cut and\nshape the fabric of existence and I, Moreau (by his passion\nfor research), Montgomery (by his passion for drink), the Beast\nPeople with their instincts and mental restrictions, were torn\nand crushed, ruthlessly, inevitably, amid the infinite complexity\nof its incessant wheels.  But this condition did not come all at once:\nI think indeed that I anticipate a little in speaking of\nit now.\n\n\n\n\nXVII.  A CATASTROPHE.\n\n\nSCARCELY six weeks passed before I had lost every feeling but\ndislike and abhorrence for this infamous experiment of Moreau's.\nMy one idea was to get away from these horrible caricatures of my\nMaker's image, back to the sweet and wholesome intercourse of men.\nMy fellow-creatures, from whom I was thus separated, began to assume\nidyllic virtue and beauty in my memory.  My first friendship with\nMontgomery did not increase.  His long separation from humanity,\nhis secret vice of drunkenness, his evident sympathy with the Beast People,\ntainted him to me.  Several times I let him go alone among them.\nI avoided intercourse with them in every possible way.\nI spent an increasing proportion of my time upon the beach,\nlooking for some liberating sail that never appeared,--until one day\nthere fell upon us an appalling disaster, which put an altogether\ndifferent aspect upon my strange surroundings.\n\nIt was about seven or eight weeks after my landing,--rather more,\nI think, though I had not troubled to keep account of the time,--when\nthis catastrophe occurred.  It happened in the early morning--I\nshould think about six.  I had risen and breakfasted early, having\nbeen aroused by the noise of three Beast Men carrying wood into the\nenclosure.\n\nAfter breakfast I went to the open gateway of the enclosure,\nand stood there smoking a cigarette and enjoying the freshness\nof the early morning.  Moreau presently came round the corner\nof the enclosure and greeted me.  He passed by me, and I heard him\nbehind me unlock and enter his laboratory.  So indurated was I\nat that time to the abomination of the place, that I heard without\na touch of emotion the puma victim begin another day of torture.\nIt met its persecutor with a shriek, almost exactly like that of an\nangry virago.\n\nThen suddenly something happened,--I do not know what,\nto this day.  I heard a short, sharp cry behind me, a fall,\nand turning saw an awful face rushing upon me,--not human,\nnot animal, but hellish, brown, seamed with red branching scars,\nred drops starting out upon it, and the lidless eyes ablaze.\nI threw up my arm to defend myself from the blow that flung\nme headlong with a broken forearm; and the great monster,\nswathed in lint and with red-stained bandages fluttering about it,\nleapt over me and passed.  I rolled over and over down the beach,\ntried to sit up, and collapsed upon my broken arm.  Then Moreau appeared,\nhis massive white face all the more terrible for the blood that\ntrickled from his forehead.  He carried a revolver in one hand.\nHe scarcely glanced at me, but rushed off at once in pursuit of\nthe puma.\n\nI tried the other arm and sat up.  The muffled figure in front ran\nin great striding leaps along the beach, and Moreau followed her.\nShe turned her head and saw him, then doubling abruptly made\nfor the bushes.  She gained upon him at every stride.  I saw her\nplunge into them, and Moreau, running slantingly to intercept her,\nfired and missed as she disappeared.  Then he too vanished\nin the green confusion.  I stared after them, and then the pain\nin my arm flamed up, and with a groan I staggered to my feet.\nMontgomery appeared in the doorway, dressed, and with his revolver in\nhis hand.\n\n\"Great God, Prendick!\" he said, not noticing that I was hurt,\n\"that brute's loose!  Tore the fetter out of the wall!\nHave you seen them?\"  Then sharply, seeing I gripped my arm,\n\"What's the matter?\"\n\n\"I was standing in the doorway,\" said I.\n\nHe came forward and took my arm.  \"Blood on the sleeve,\"\nsaid he, and rolled back the flannel.  He pocketed his weapon,\nfelt my arm about painfully, and led me inside.  \"Your arm\nis broken,\" he said, and then, \"Tell me exactly how it\nhappened--what happened?\"\n\nI told him what I had seen; told him in broken sentences,\nwith gasps of pain between them, and very dexterously and swiftly\nhe bound my arm meanwhile.  He slung it from my shoulder,\nstood back and looked at me.\n\n\"You'll do,\" he said.  \"And now?\"\n\nHe thought.  Then he went out and locked the gates of the enclosure.\nHe was absent some time.\n\nI was chiefly concerned about my arm.  The incident seemed merely\none more of many horrible things.  I sat down in the deck chair,\nand I must admit swore heartily at the island.  The first dull\nfeeling of injury in my arm had already given way to a burning pain\nwhen Montgomery reappeared.  His face was rather pale, and he showed\nmore of his lower gums than ever.\n\n\"I can neither see nor hear anything of him,\" he said.\n\"I've been thinking he may want my help.\"  He stared at me with\nhis expressionless eyes.  \"That was a strong brute,\" he said.\n\"It simply wrenched its fetter out of the wall.\"  He went to the window,\nthen to the door, and there turned to me.  \"I shall go after him,\"\nhe said.  \"There's another revolver I can leave with you.\nTo tell you the truth, I feel anxious somehow.\"\n\nHe obtained the weapon, and put it ready to my hand on the table;\nthen went out, leaving a restless contagion in the air.\nI did not sit long after he left, but took the revolver in hand and went\nto the doorway.\n\nThe morning was as still as death.  Not a whisper of wind was stirring;\nthe sea was like polished glass, the sky empty, the beach desolate.\nIn my half-excited, half-feverish state, this stillness of things\noppressed me.  I tried to whistle, and the tune died away.\nI swore again,--the second time that morning.  Then I went to the corner\nof the enclosure and stared inland at the green bush that had\nswallowed up Moreau and Montgomery.  When would they return, and how?\nThen far away up the beach a little grey Beast Man appeared,\nran down to the water's edge and began splashing about.\nI strolled back to the doorway, then to the corner again,\nand so began pacing to and fro like a sentinel upon duty.\nOnce I was arrested by the distant voice of Montgomery bawling,\n\"Coo-ee--Moreau!\"  My arm became less painful, but very hot.\nI got feverish and thirsty.  My shadow grew shorter.\nI watched the distant figure until it went away again.  Would Moreau\nand Montgomery never return?  Three sea-birds began fighting for some\nstranded treasure.\n\nThen from far away behind the enclosure I heard a pistol-shot. A\nlong silence, and then came another.  Then a yelling cry nearer,\nand another dismal gap of silence.  My unfortunate imagination\nset to work to torment me.  Then suddenly a shot close by.\nI went to the corner, startled, and saw Montgomery,--his face scarlet,\nhis hair disordered, and the knee of his trousers torn.\nHis face expressed profound consternation.  Behind him slouched\nthe Beast Man, M'ling, and round M'ling's jaws were some queer\ndark stains.\n\n\"Has he come?\" said Montgomery.\n\n\"Moreau?\" said I. \"No.\"\n\n\"My God!\"  The man was panting, almost sobbing.  \"Go back in,\" he said,\ntaking my arm.  \"They're mad.  They're all rushing about mad.  What can\nhave happened?  I don't know.  I'll tell you, when my breath comes.\nWhere's some brandy?\"\n\nMontgomery limped before me into the room and sat down in the deck chair.\nM'ling flung himself down just outside the doorway and began\npanting like a dog.  I got Montgomery some brandy-and-water. He\nsat staring in front of him at nothing, recovering his breath.\nAfter some minutes he began to tell me what had happened.\n\nHe had followed their track for some way.  It was plain enough at\nfirst on account of the crushed and broken bushes, white rags torn\nfrom the puma's bandages, and occasional smears of blood on the leaves\nof the shrubs and undergrowth.  He lost the track, however, on the stony\nground beyond the stream where I had seen the Beast Man drinking,\nand went wandering aimlessly westward shouting Moreau's name.\nThen M'ling had come to him carrying a light hatchet.  M'ling had seen\nnothing of the puma affair; had been felling wood, and heard him calling.\nThey went on shouting together.  Two Beast Men came crouching\nand peering at them through the undergrowth, with gestures and a\nfurtive carriage that alarmed Montgomery by their strangeness.\nHe hailed them, and they fled guiltily.  He stopped shouting\nafter that, and after wandering some time farther in an undecided way,\ndetermined to visit the huts.\n\nHe found the ravine deserted.\n\nGrowing more alarmed every minute, he began to retrace his steps.\nThen it was he encountered the two Swine-men I had seen dancing\non the night of my arrival; blood-stained they were about the mouth,\nand intensely excited.  They came crashing through the ferns,\nand stopped with fierce faces when they saw him.  He cracked his whip\nin some trepidation, and forthwith they rushed at him.  Never before\nhad a Beast Man dared to do that.  One he shot through the head;\nM'ling flung himself upon the other, and the two rolled grappling.\nM'ling got his brute under and with his teeth in its throat,\nand Montgomery shot that too as it struggled in M'ling's grip.\nHe had some difficulty in inducing M'ling to come on with him.\nThence they had hurried back to me.  On the way, M'ling had suddenly\nrushed into a thicket and driven out an under-sized Ocelot-man,\nalso blood-stained, and lame through a wound in the foot.\nThis brute had run a little way and then turned savagely at bay,\nand Montgomery--with a certain wantonness, I thought--had shot\nhim.\n\n\"What does it all mean?\" said I.\n\nHe shook his head, and turned once more to the brandy.\n\n\n\n\nXVIII.  THE FINDING OF MOREAU.\n\n\nWHEN I saw Montgomery swallow a third dose of brandy, I took it\nupon myself to interfere.  He was already more than half fuddled.\nI told him that some serious thing must have happened to\nMoreau by this time, or he would have returned before this,\nand that it behoved us to ascertain what that catastrophe was.\nMontgomery raised some feeble objections, and at last agreed.\nWe had some food, and then all three of us started.\n\nIt is possibly due to the tension of my mind, at the time,\nbut even now that start into the hot stillness of the tropical\nafternoon is a singularly vivid impression.  M'ling went first,\nhis shoulder hunched, his strange black head moving with quick\nstarts as he peered first on this side of the way and then on that.\nHe was unarmed; his axe he had dropped when he encountered\nthe Swine-man. Teeth were _his_ weapons, when it came to fighting.\nMontgomery followed with stumbling footsteps, his hands in his pockets,\nhis face downcast; he was in a state of muddled sullenness\nwith me on account of the brandy.  My left arm was in a sling\n(it was lucky it was my left), and I carried my revolver in my right.\nSoon we traced a narrow path through the wild luxuriance of\nthe island, going northwestward; and presently M'ling stopped,\nand became rigid with watchfulness.  Montgomery almost staggered\ninto him, and then stopped too.  Then, listening intently,\nwe heard coming through the trees the sound of voices and footsteps\napproaching us.\n\n\"He is dead,\" said a deep, vibrating voice.\n\n\"He is not dead; he is not dead,\" jabbered another.\n\n\"We saw, we saw,\" said several voices.\n\n\"Hullo!\" suddenly shouted Montgomery, \"Hullo, there!\"\n\n\"Confound you!\" said I, and gripped my pistol.\n\nThere was a silence, then a crashing among the interlacing vegetation,\nfirst here, then there, and then half-a-dozen faces appeared,--strange\nfaces, lit by a strange light.  M'ling made a growling\nnoise in his throat.  I recognised the Ape-man: I had indeed\nalready identified his voice, and two of the white-swathed\nbrown-featured creatures I had seen in Montgomery's boat.\nWith these were the two dappled brutes and that grey, horribly crooked\ncreature who said the Law, with grey hair streaming down its cheeks,\nheavy grey eyebrows, and grey locks pouring off from a central\nparting upon its sloping forehead,--a heavy, faceless thing,\nwith strange red eyes, looking at us curiously from amidst\nthe green.\n\nFor a space no one spoke.  Then Montgomery hiccoughed, \"Who--said\nhe was dead?\"\n\nThe Monkey-man looked guiltily at the hairy-grey Thing.  \"He is dead,\"\nsaid this monster.  \"They saw.\"\n\nThere was nothing threatening about this detachment, at any rate.\nThey seemed awestricken and puzzled.\n\n\"Where is he?\" said Montgomery.\n\n\"Beyond,\" and the grey creature pointed.\n\n\"Is there a Law now?\" asked the Monkey-man. \"Is it still to be this\nand that?  Is he dead indeed?\"\n\n\"Is there a Law?\" repeated the man in white.  \"Is there a Law,\nthou Other with the Whip?\"\n\n\"He is dead,\" said the hairy-grey Thing.  And they all stood\nwatching us.\n\n\"Prendick,\" said Montgomery, turning his dull eyes to me.\n\"He's dead, evidently.\"\n\nI had been standing behind him during this colloquy.\nI began to see how things lay with them.  I suddenly stepped in front\nof Montgomery and lifted up my voice:--\"Children of the Law,\"\nI said, \"he is _not_ dead!\"  M'ling turned his sharp eyes on me.\n\"He has changed his shape; he has changed his body,\" I went on.\n\"For a time you will not see him.  He is--there,\" I pointed upward,\n\"where he can watch you.  You cannot see him, but he can see you.\nFear the Law!\"\n\nI looked at them squarely.  They flinched.\n\n\"He is great, he is good,\" said the Ape-man, peering fearfully\nupward among the dense trees.\n\n\"And the other Thing?\"  I demanded.\n\n\"The Thing that bled, and ran screaming and sobbing,--that is dead too,\"\nsaid the grey Thing, still regarding me.\n\n\"That's well,\" grunted Montgomery.\n\n\"The Other with the Whip--\" began the grey Thing.\n\n\"Well?\" said I.\n\n\"Said he was dead.\"\n\nBut Montgomery was still sober enough to understand my motive in denying\nMoreau's death.  \"He is not dead,\" he said slowly, \"not dead at all.\nNo more dead than I am.\"\n\n\"Some,\" said I, \"have broken the Law:  they will die.  Some have died.\nShow us now where his old body lies,--the body he cast away because\nhe had no more need of it.\"\n\n\"It is this way, Man who walked in the Sea,\" said the grey Thing.\n\nAnd with these six creatures guiding us, we went through the tumult\nof ferns and creepers and tree-stems towards the northwest.\nThen came a yelling, a crashing among the branches, and a little\npink homunculus rushed by us shrieking.  Immediately after appeared\na monster in headlong pursuit, blood-bedabbled, who was amongst us\nalmost before he could stop his career.  The grey Thing leapt aside.\nM'ling, with a snarl, flew at it, and was struck aside.  Montgomery fired\nand missed, bowed his head, threw up his arm, and turned to run.\nI fired, and the Thing still came on; fired again, point-blank, into\nits ugly face.  I saw its features vanish in a flash:  its face was\ndriven in.  Yet it passed me, gripped Montgomery, and holding him,\nfell headlong beside him and pulled him sprawling upon itself in its\ndeath-agony.\n\nI found myself alone with M'ling, the dead brute, and the prostrate man.\nMontgomery raised himself slowly and stared in a muddled way at\nthe shattered Beast Man beside him.  It more than half sobered him.\nHe scrambled to his feet.  Then I saw the grey Thing returning cautiously\nthrough the trees.\n\n\"See,\" said I, pointing to the dead brute, \"is the Law not alive?\nThis came of breaking the Law.\"\n\nHe peered at the body.  \"He sends the Fire that kills,\"\nsaid he, in his deep voice, repeating part of the Ritual.\nThe others gathered round and stared for a space.\n\nAt last we drew near the westward extremity of the island.\nWe came upon the gnawed and mutilated body of the puma,\nits shoulder-bone smashed by a bullet, and perhaps twenty yards\nfarther found at last what we sought.  Moreau lay face downward\nin a trampled space in a canebrake.  One hand was almost severed\nat the wrist and his silvery hair was dabbled in blood.\nHis head had been battered in by the fetters of the puma.\nThe broken canes beneath him were smeared with blood.\nHis revolver we could not find.  Montgomery turned him over.\nResting at intervals, and with the help of the seven Beast People\n(for he was a heavy man), we carried Moreau back to the enclosure.\nThe night was darkling.  Twice we heard unseen creatures howling\nand shrieking past our little band, and once the little pink\nsloth-creature appeared and stared at us, and vanished again.\nBut we were not attacked again.  At the gates of the enclosure\nour company of Beast People left us, M'ling going with the rest.\nWe locked ourselves in, and then took Moreau's mangled\nbody into the yard and laid it upon a pile of brushwood.\nThen we went into the laboratory and put an end to all we found living\nthere.\n\n\n\n\nXIX.  MONTGOMERY'S \"BANK HOLIDAY.\"\n\n\nWHEN this was accomplished, and we had washed and eaten,\nMontgomery and I went into my little room and seriously discussed\nour position for the first time.  It was then near midnight.\nHe was almost sober, but greatly disturbed in his mind.\nHe had been strangely under the influence of Moreau's personality:\nI do not think it had ever occurred to him that Moreau could die.\nThis disaster was the sudden collapse of the habits that had become part of\nhis nature in the ten or more monotonous years he had spent on the island.\nHe talked vaguely, answered my questions crookedly, wandered into\ngeneral questions.\n\n\"This silly ass of a world,\" he said; \"what a muddle it all is!\nI haven't had any life.  I wonder when it's going to begin.\nSixteen years being bullied by nurses and schoolmasters at\ntheir own sweet will; five in London grinding hard at medicine,\nbad food, shabby lodgings, shabby clothes, shabby vice, a blunder,--I\ndidn't know any better,--and hustled off to this beastly island.\nTen years here!  What's it all for, Prendick?  Are we bubbles blown by\na baby?\"\n\nIt was hard to deal with such ravings.  \"The thing we have to think\nof now,\" said I, \"is how to get away from this island.\"\n\n\"What's the good of getting away?  I'm an outcast.\nWhere am _I_ to join on?  It's all very well for _you_, Prendick.\nPoor old Moreau!  We can't leave him here to have his bones picked.\nAs it is--And besides, what will become of the decent part of the\nBeast Folk?\"\n\n\"Well,\" said I, \"that will do to-morrow. I've been thinking we might make\nthe brushwood into a pyre and burn his body--and those other things.\nThen what will happen with the Beast Folk?\"\n\n\"_I_ don't know.  I suppose those that were made of beasts of prey will\nmake silly asses of themselves sooner or later.  We can't massacre\nthe lot--can we?  I suppose that's what _your_ humanity would suggest?\nBut they'll change.  They are sure to change.\"\n\nHe talked thus inconclusively until at last I felt my temper going.\n\n\"Damnation!\" he exclaimed at some petulance of mine; \"can't you see I'm\nin a worse hole than you are?\"  And he got up, and went for the brandy.\n\"Drink!\" he said returning, \"you logic-chopping, chalky-faced saint\nof an atheist, drink!\"\n\n\"Not I,\" said I, and sat grimly watching his face under the yellow\nparaffine flare, as he drank himself into a garrulous misery.\n\nI have a memory of infinite tedium.  He wandered into a maudlin\ndefence of the Beast People and of M'ling. M'ling, he said,\nwas the only thing that had ever really cared for him.\nAnd suddenly an idea came to him.\n\n\"I'm damned!\" said he, staggering to his feet and clutching\nthe brandy bottle.\n\nBy some flash of intuition I knew what it was he intended.\n\"You don't give drink to that beast!\"  I said, rising and facing him.\n\n\"Beast!\" said he.  \"You're the beast.  He takes his liquor\nlike a Christian.  Come out of the way, Prendick!\"\n\n\"For God's sake,\" said I.\n\n\"Get--out of the way!\" he roared, and suddenly whipped out his revolver.\n\n\"Very well,\" said I, and stood aside, half-minded to fall upon him\nas he put his hand upon the latch, but deterred by the thought\nof my useless arm.  \"You've made a beast of yourself,--to the beasts\nyou may go.\"\n\nHe flung the doorway open, and stood half facing me between\nthe yellow lamp-light and the pallid glare of the moon;\nhis eye-sockets were blotches of black under his stubbly eyebrows.\n\n\"You're a solemn prig, Prendick, a silly ass!  You're always fearing\nand fancying.  We're on the edge of things.  I'm bound to cut my\nthroat to-morrow. I'm going to have a damned Bank Holiday to-night.\"\nHe turned and went out into the moonlight.  \"M'ling!\" he cried;\n\"M'ling, old friend!\"\n\nThree dim creatures in the silvery light came along the edge\nof the wan beach,--one a white-wrapped creature, the other two\nblotches of blackness following it.  They halted, staring.\nThen I saw M'ling's hunched shoulders as he came round the corner\nof the house.\n\n\"Drink!\" cried Montgomery, \"drink, you brutes!  Drink and be men!\nDamme, I'm the cleverest.  Moreau forgot this; this is the last touch.\nDrink, I tell you!\"  And waving the bottle in his hand he started\noff at a kind of quick trot to the westward, M'ling ranging himself\nbetween him and the three dim creatures who followed.\n\nI went to the doorway.  They were already indistinct in the mist\nof the moonlight before Montgomery halted.  I saw him administer\na dose of the raw brandy to M'ling, and saw the five figures melt\ninto one vague patch.\n\n\"Sing!\"  I heard Montgomery shout,--\"sing all together, 'Confound\nold Prendick!'  That's right; now again, 'Confound old Prendick!'\"\n\nThe black group broke up into five separate figures,\nand wound slowly away from me along the band of shining beach.\nEach went howling at his own sweet will, yelping insults at me,\nor giving whatever other vent this new inspiration of brandy demanded.\nPresently I heard Montgomery's voice shouting, \"Right turn!\"\nand they passed with their shouts and howls into the blackness\nof the landward trees.  Slowly, very slowly, they receded\ninto silence.\n\nThe peaceful splendour of the night healed again.\nThe moon was now past the meridian and travelling down the west.\nIt was at its full, and very bright riding through the empty blue sky.\nThe shadow of the wall lay, a yard wide and of inky blackness, at my feet.\nThe eastward sea was a featureless grey, dark and mysterious;\nand between the sea and the shadow the grey sands (of volcanic\nglass and crystals) flashed and shone like a beach of diamonds.\nBehind me the paraffine lamp flared hot and ruddy.\n\nThen I shut the door, locked it, and went into the enclosure where\nMoreau lay beside his latest victims,--the staghounds and the llama\nand some other wretched brutes,--with his massive face calm even\nafter his terrible death, and with the hard eyes open, staring at\nthe dead white moon above.  I sat down upon the edge of the sink,\nand with my eyes upon that ghastly pile of silvery light and ominous\nshadows began to turn over my plans.  In the morning I would gather\nsome provisions in the dingey, and after setting fire to the pyre\nbefore me, push out into the desolation of the high sea once more.\nI felt that for Montgomery there was no help; that he was, in truth,\nhalf akin to these Beast Folk, unfitted for human kindred.\n\nI do not know how long I sat there scheming.  It must have been\nan hour or so.  Then my planning was interrupted by the return of\nMontgomery to my neighbourhood.  I heard a yelling from many throats,\na tumult of exultant cries passing down towards the beach,\nwhooping and howling, and excited shrieks that seemed to come to a stop\nnear the water's edge.  The riot rose and fell; I heard heavy blows\nand the splintering smash of wood, but it did not trouble me then.\nA discordant chanting began.\n\nMy thoughts went back to my means of escape.  I got up, brought the lamp,\nand went into a shed to look at some kegs I had seen there.\nThen I became interested in the contents of some biscuit-tins, and\nopened one.  I saw something out of the tail of my eye,--a red\nfigure,--and turned sharply.\n\nBehind me lay the yard, vividly black-and-white in the moonlight,\nand the pile of wood and faggots on which Moreau and his mutilated\nvictims lay, one over another.  They seemed to be gripping one another\nin one last revengeful grapple.  His wounds gaped, black as night,\nand the blood that had dripped lay in black patches upon the sand.\nThen I saw, without understanding, the cause of my phantom,--a\nruddy glow that came and danced and went upon the wall opposite.\nI misinterpreted this, fancied it was a reflection of my\nflickering lamp, and turned again to the stores in the shed.\nI went on rummaging among them, as well as a one-armed man could,\nfinding this convenient thing and that, and putting them\naside for to-morrow's launch.  My movements were slow,\nand the time passed quickly.  Insensibly the daylight crept\nupon me.\n\nThe chanting died down, giving place to a clamour; then it\nbegan again, and suddenly broke into a tumult.  I heard cries of,\n\"More! more!\" a sound like quarrelling, and a sudden wild shriek.\nThe quality of the sounds changed so greatly that it arrested\nmy attention.  I went out into the yard and listened.\nThen cutting like a knife across the confusion came the crack of\na revolver.\n\nI rushed at once through my room to the little doorway.\nAs I did so I heard some of the packing-cases behind me go sliding down\nand smash together with a clatter of glass on the floor of the shed.\nBut I did not heed these.  I flung the door open and looked out.\n\nUp the beach by the boathouse a bonfire was burning, raining up\nsparks into the indistinctness of the dawn.  Around this struggled\na mass of black figures.  I heard Montgomery call my name.\nI began to run at once towards this fire, revolver in hand.  I saw the pink\ntongue of Montgomery's pistol lick out once, close to the ground.\nHe was down.  I shouted with all my strength and fired into the air.\nI heard some one cry, \"The Master!\"  The knotted black struggle\nbroke into scattering units, the fire leapt and sank down.\nThe crowd of Beast People fled in sudden panic before me, up the beach.\nIn my excitement I fired at their retreating backs as they\ndisappeared among the bushes.  Then I turned to the black heaps upon\nthe ground.\n\nMontgomery lay on his back, with the hairy-grey Beast-man\nsprawling across his body.  The brute was dead, but still\ngripping Montgomery's throat with its curving claws.\nNear by lay M'ling on his face and quite still, his neck bitten\nopen and the upper part of the smashed brandy-bottle in his hand.\nTwo other figures lay near the fire,--the one motionless, the other\ngroaning fitfully, every now and then raising its head slowly,\nthen dropping it again.\n\nI caught hold of the grey man and pulled him off Montgomery's body;\nhis claws drew down the torn coat reluctantly as I dragged him away.\nMontgomery was dark in the face and scarcely breathing.  I splashed\nsea-water on his face and pillowed his head on my rolled-up coat.\nM'ling was dead.  The wounded creature by the fire--it was a Wolf-brute\nwith a bearded grey face--lay, I found, with the fore part of its\nbody upon the still glowing timber.  The wretched thing was injured\nso dreadfully that in mercy I blew its brains out at once.\nThe other brute was one of the Bull-men swathed in white.\nHe too was dead.  The rest of the Beast People had vanished from\nthe beach.\n\nI went to Montgomery again and knelt beside him, cursing my ignorance\nof medicine.  The fire beside me had sunk down, and only charred\nbeams of timber glowing at the central ends and mixed with a grey\nash of brushwood remained.  I wondered casually where Montgomery\nhad got his wood.  Then I saw that the dawn was upon us.\nThe sky had grown brighter, the setting moon was becoming pale\nand opaque in the luminous blue of the day.  The sky to the eastward\nwas rimmed with red.\n\nSuddenly I heard a thud and a hissing behind me, and, looking round,\nsprang to my feet with a cry of horror.  Against the warm dawn\ngreat tumultuous masses of black smoke were boiling up out of\nthe enclosure, and through their stormy darkness shot flickering\nthreads of blood-red flame.  Then the thatched roof caught.\nI saw the curving charge of the flames across the sloping straw.\nA spurt of fire jetted from the window of my room.\n\nI knew at once what had happened.  I remembered the crash I had heard.\nWhen I had rushed out to Montgomery's assistance, I had overturned\nthe lamp.\n\nThe hopelessness of saving any of the contents of the enclosure\nstared me in the face.  My mind came back to my plan of flight,\nand turning swiftly I looked to see where the two boats lay upon\nthe beach.  They were gone!  Two axes lay upon the sands beside me;\nchips and splinters were scattered broadcast, and the ashes\nof the bonfire were blackening and smoking under the dawn.\nMontgomery had burnt the boats to revenge himself upon me and prevent our\nreturn to mankind!\n\nA sudden convulsion of rage shook me.  I was almost moved to batter\nhis foolish head in, as he lay there helpless at my feet.\nThen suddenly his hand moved, so feebly, so pitifully, that my\nwrath vanished.  He groaned, and opened his eyes for a minute.\nI knelt down beside him and raised his head.  He opened his\neyes again, staring silently at the dawn, and then they met mine.\nThe lids fell.\n\n\"Sorry,\" he said presently, with an effort.  He seemed trying to think.\n\"The last,\" he murmured, \"the last of this silly universe.\nWhat a mess--\"\n\nI listened.  His head fell helplessly to one side.  I thought some drink\nmight revive him; but there was neither drink nor vessel in which to\nbring drink at hand.  He seemed suddenly heavier.  My heart went cold.\nI bent down to his face, put my hand through the rent in his blouse.\nHe was dead; and even as he died a line of white heat, the limb\nof the sun, rose eastward beyond the projection of the bay,\nsplashing its radiance across the sky and turning the dark sea into\na weltering tumult of dazzling light.  It fell like a glory upon his\ndeath-shrunken face.\n\nI let his head fall gently upon the rough pillow I had made for him,\nand stood up.  Before me was the glittering desolation of the sea,\nthe awful solitude upon which I had already suffered so much; behind me\nthe island, hushed under the dawn, its Beast People silent and unseen.\nThe enclosure, with all its provisions and ammunition, burnt noisily,\nwith sudden gusts of flame, a fitful crackling, and now and then a crash.\nThe heavy smoke drove up the beach away from me, rolling low\nover the distant tree-tops towards the huts in the ravine.\nBeside me were the charred vestiges of the boats and these five\ndead bodies.\n\nThen out of the bushes came three Beast People, with hunched shoulders,\nprotruding heads, misshapen hands awkwardly held, and inquisitive,\nunfriendly eyes and advanced towards me with hesitating gestures.\n\n\n\n\nXX.  ALONE WITH THE BEAST FOLK.\n\n\nI FACED these people, facing my fate in them, single-handed\nnow,--literally single-handed, for I had a broken arm.  In my pocket was\na revolver with two empty chambers.  Among the chips scattered about\nthe beach lay the two axes that had been used to chop up the boats.\nThe tide was creeping in behind me.  There was nothing for it but\ncourage.  I looked squarely into the faces of the advancing monsters.\nThey avoided my eyes, and their quivering nostrils investigated\nthe bodies that lay beyond me on the beach.  I took half-a-dozen steps,\npicked up the blood-stained whip that lay beneath the body\nof the Wolf-man, and cracked it.  They stopped and stared\nat me.\n\n\"Salute!\" said I. \"Bow down!\"\n\nThey hesitated.  One bent his knees.  I repeated my command,\nwith my heart in my mouth, and advanced upon them.  One knelt,\nthen the other two.\n\nI turned and walked towards the dead bodies, keeping my face\ntowards the three kneeling Beast Men, very much as an actor passing\nup the stage faces the audience.\n\n\"They broke the Law,\" said I, putting my foot on the Sayer of the Law.\n\"They have been slain,--even the Sayer of the Law; even the Other with\nthe Whip.  Great is the Law!  Come and see.\"\n\n\"None escape,\" said one of them, advancing and peering.\n\n\"None escape,\" said I. \"Therefore hear and do as I command.\"\nThey stood up, looking questioningly at one another.\n\n\"Stand there,\" said I.\n\nI picked up the hatchets and swung them by their heads from\nthe sling of my arm; turned Montgomery over; picked up his revolver\nstill loaded in two chambers, and bending down to rummage,\nfound half-a-dozen cartridges in his pocket.\n\n\"Take him,\" said I, standing up again and pointing with the whip;\n\"take him, and carry him out and cast him into the sea.\"\n\nThey came forward, evidently still afraid of Montgomery,\nbut still more afraid of my cracking red whip-lash; and after\nsome fumbling and hesitation, some whip-cracking and shouting,\nthey lifted him gingerly, carried him down to the beach, and went\nsplashing into the dazzling welter of the sea.\n\n\"On!\" said I, \"on!  Carry him far.\"\n\nThey went in up to their armpits and stood regarding me.\n\n\"Let go,\" said I; and the body of Montgomery vanished with a splash.\nSomething seemed to tighten across my chest.\n\n\"Good!\" said I, with a break in my voice; and they came back,\nhurrying and fearful, to the margin of the water, leaving long\nwakes of black in the silver.  At the water's edge they stopped,\nturning and glaring into the sea as though they presently expected\nMontgomery to arise therefrom and exact vengeance.\n\n\"Now these,\" said I, pointing to the other bodies.\n\nThey took care not to approach the place where they had thrown\nMontgomery into the water, but instead, carried the four dead\nBeast People slantingly along the beach for perhaps a hundred\nyards before they waded out and cast them away.\n\nAs I watched them disposing of the mangled remains of M'ling, I\nheard a light footfall behind me, and turning quickly saw the big\nHyena-swine perhaps a dozen yards away.  His head was bent down,\nhis bright eyes were fixed upon me, his stumpy hands clenched\nand held close by his side.  He stopped in this crouching attitude\nwhen I turned, his eyes a little averted.\n\nFor a moment we stood eye to eye.  I dropped the whip and snatched\nat the pistol in my pocket; for I meant to kill this brute, the most\nformidable of any left now upon the island, at the first excuse.\nIt may seem treacherous, but so I was resolved.  I was far\nmore afraid of him than of any other two of the Beast Folk.\nHis continued life was I knew a threat against mine.\n\nI was perhaps a dozen seconds collecting myself.  Then cried I, \"Salute!\nBow down!\"\n\nHis teeth flashed upon me in a snarl.  \"Who are _you_ that I should--\"\n\nPerhaps a little too spasmodically I drew my revolver, aimed quickly\nand fired.  I heard him yelp, saw him run sideways and turn, knew I\nhad missed, and clicked back the cock with my thumb for the next shot.\nBut he was already running headlong, jumping from side to side,\nand I dared not risk another miss.  Every now and then he looked\nback at me over his shoulder.  He went slanting along the beach,\nand vanished beneath the driving masses of dense smoke that were\nstill pouring out from the burning enclosure.  For some time I\nstood staring after him.  I turned to my three obedient Beast Folk\nagain and signalled them to drop the body they still carried.\nThen I went back to the place by the fire where the bodies had fallen\nand kicked the sand until all the brown blood-stains were absorbed\nand hidden.\n\nI dismissed my three serfs with a wave of the hand, and went up\nthe beach into the thickets.  I carried my pistol in my hand,\nmy whip thrust with the hatchets in the sling of my arm.\nI was anxious to be alone, to think out the position in which I\nwas now placed.  A dreadful thing that I was only beginning\nto realise was, that over all this island there was now no safe\nplace where I could be alone and secure to rest or sleep.\nI had recovered strength amazingly since my landing, but I was still\ninclined to be nervous and to break down under any great stress.\nI felt that I ought to cross the island and establish myself\nwith the Beast People, and make myself secure in their confidence.\nBut my heart failed me.  I went back to the beach, and turning\neastward past the burning enclosure, made for a point where a shallow\nspit of coral sand ran out towards the reef.  Here I could sit down\nand think, my back to the sea and my face against any surprise.\nAnd there I sat, chin on knees, the sun beating down upon my head\nand unspeakable dread in my mind, plotting how I could live on against\nthe hour of my rescue (if ever rescue came). I tried to review the whole\nsituation as calmly as I could, but it was difficult to clear the thing\nof emotion.\n\nI began turning over in my mind the reason of Montgomery's despair.\n\"They will change,\" he said; \"they are sure to change.\"  And Moreau,\nwhat was it that Moreau had said?  \"The stubborn beast-flesh grows\nday by day back again.\"  Then I came round to the Hyena-swine. I\nfelt sure that if I did not kill that brute, he would kill me.\nThe Sayer of the Law was dead:  worse luck.  They knew now that we\nof the Whips could be killed even as they themselves were killed.\nWere they peering at me already out of the green masses of ferns\nand palms over yonder, watching until I came within their spring?\nWere they plotting against me?  What was the Hyena-swine telling them?\nMy imagination was running away with me into a morass of unsubstantial\nfears.\n\nMy thoughts were disturbed by a crying of sea-birds hurrying\ntowards some black object that had been stranded by the waves\non the beach near the enclosure.  I knew what that object was,\nbut I had not the heart to go back and drive them off.\nI began walking along the beach in the opposite direction,\ndesigning to come round the eastward corner of the island and so\napproach the ravine of the huts, without traversing the possible\nambuscades of the thickets.\n\nPerhaps half a mile along the beach I became aware of one of my three\nBeast Folk advancing out of the landward bushes towards me.  I was now\nso nervous with my own imaginings that I immediately drew my revolver.\nEven the propitiatory gestures of the creature failed to disarm me.\nHe hesitated as he approached.\n\n\"Go away!\" cried I.\n\nThere was something very suggestive of a dog in the cringing attitude\nof the creature.  It retreated a little way, very like a dog being\nsent home, and stopped, looking at me imploringly with canine\nbrown eyes.\n\n\"Go away,\" said I. \"Do not come near me.\"\n\n\"May I not come near you?\" it said.\n\n\"No; go away,\" I insisted, and snapped my whip.  Then putting\nmy whip in my teeth, I stooped for a stone, and with that threat\ndrove the creature away.\n\nSo in solitude I came round by the ravine of the Beast People,\nand hiding among the weeds and reeds that separated this\ncrevice from the sea I watched such of them as appeared,\ntrying to judge from their gestures and appearance how the death\nof Moreau and Montgomery and the destruction of the House of Pain\nhad affected them.  I know now the folly of my cowardice.\nHad I kept my courage up to the level of the dawn, had I not\nallowed it to ebb away in solitary thought, I might have grasped\nthe vacant sceptre of Moreau and ruled over the Beast People.\nAs it was I lost the opportunity, and sank to the position of a mere\nleader among my fellows.\n\nTowards noon certain of them came and squatted basking in the hot sand.\nThe imperious voices of hunger and thirst prevailed over my dread.\nI came out of the bushes, and, revolver in hand, walked down towards\nthese seated figures.  One, a Wolf-woman, turned her head and stared\nat me, and then the others.  None attempted to rise or salute me.\nI felt too faint and weary to insist, and I let the moment pass.\n\n\"I want food,\" said I, almost apologetically, and drawing near.\n\n\"There is food in the huts,\" said an Ox-boar-man, drowsily,\nand looking away from me.\n\nI passed them, and went down into the shadow and odours of the almost\ndeserted ravine.  In an empty hut I feasted on some specked\nand half-decayed fruit; and then after I had propped some branches\nand sticks about the opening, and placed myself with my face\ntowards it and my hand upon my revolver, the exhaustion of the last\nthirty hours claimed its own, and I fell into a light slumber,\nhoping that the flimsy barricade I had erected would cause\nsufficient noise in its removal to save me from surprise.\n\n\n\n\nXXI.  THE REVERSION OF THE BEAST FOLK.\n\n\nIN this way I became one among the Beast People in the Island\nof Doctor Moreau.  When I awoke, it was dark about me.  My arm ached\nin its bandages.  I sat up, wondering at first where I might be.\nI heard coarse voices talking outside.  Then I saw that my\nbarricade had gone, and that the opening of the hut stood clear.\nMy revolver was still in my hand.\n\nI heard something breathing, saw something crouched together\nclose beside me.  I held my breath, trying to see what it was.\nIt began to move slowly, interminably.  Then something soft and warm\nand moist passed across my hand.  All my muscles contracted.  I snatched\nmy hand away.  A cry of alarm began and was stifled in my throat.\nThen I just realised what had happened sufficiently to stay my fingers on\nthe revolver.\n\n\"Who is that?\"  I said in a hoarse whisper, the revolver still pointed.\n\n\"I--Master.\"\n\n\"Who are you?\"\n\n\"They say there is no Master now.  But I know, I know.  I carried the\nbodies into the sea, O Walker in the Sea! the bodies of those you slew.\nI am your slave, Master.\"\n\n\"Are you the one I met on the beach?\" I asked.\n\n\"The same, Master.\"\n\nThe Thing was evidently faithful enough, for it might have fallen\nupon me as I slept.  \"It is well,\" I said, extending my hand for\nanother licking kiss.  I began to realise what its presence meant,\nand the tide of my courage flowed.  \"Where are the others?\"\nI asked.\n\n\"They are mad; they are fools,\" said the Dog-man.  \"Even now they\ntalk together beyond there.  They say, 'The Master is dead.\nThe Other with the Whip is dead.  That Other who walked in the Sea is\nas we are.  We have no Master, no Whips, no House of Pain, any more.\nThere is an end.  We love the Law, and will keep it; but there\nis no Pain, no Master, no Whips for ever again.'  So they say.\nBut I know, Master, I know.\"\n\nI felt in the darkness, and patted the Dog-man's head.  \"It is well,\"\nI said again.\n\n\"Presently you will slay them all,\" said the Dog-man.\n\n\"Presently,\" I answered, \"I will slay them all,--after certain\ndays and certain things have come to pass.  Every one of them save\nthose you spare, every one of them shall be slain.\"\n\n\"What the Master wishes to kill, the Master kills,\" said the Dog-man\nwith a certain satisfaction in his voice.\n\n\"And that their sins may grow,\" I said, \"let them live in their folly\nuntil their time is ripe.  Let them not know that I am the Master.\"\n\n\"The Master's will is sweet,\" said the Dog-man, with the ready tact\nof his canine blood.\n\n\"But one has sinned,\" said I. \"Him I will kill, whenever I may meet him.\nWhen I say to you, 'That is he,' see that you fall upon him.\nAnd now I will go to the men and women who are assembled together.\"\n\nFor a moment the opening of the hut was blackened by the exit of\nthe Dog-man. Then I followed and stood up, almost in the exact spot\nwhere I had been when I had heard Moreau and his staghound pursuing me.\nBut now it was night, and all the miasmatic ravine about me was black;\nand beyond, instead of a green, sunlit slope, I saw a red fire,\nbefore which hunched, grotesque figures moved to and fro.\nFarther were the thick trees, a bank of darkness, fringed above\nwith the black lace of the upper branches.  The moon was just riding\nup on the edge of the ravine, and like a bar across its face drove\nthe spire of vapour that was for ever streaming from the fumaroles of\nthe island.\n\n\"Walk by me,\" said I, nerving myself; and side by side we walked\ndown the narrow way, taking little heed of the dim Things that peered\nat us out of the huts.\n\nNone about the fire attempted to salute me.  Most of them\ndisregarded me, ostentatiously.  I looked round for the Hyena-swine,\nbut he was not there.  Altogether, perhaps twenty of the Beast\nFolk squatted, staring into the fire or talking to one another.\n\n\"He is dead, he is dead! the Master is dead!\" said the voice\nof the Ape-man to the right of me.  \"The House of Pain--there\nis no House of Pain!\"\n\n\"He is not dead,\" said I, in a loud voice.  \"Even now he watches us!\"\n\nThis startled them.  Twenty pairs of eyes regarded me.\n\n\"The House of Pain is gone,\" said I. \"It will come again.\nThe Master you cannot see; yet even now he listens among you.\"\n\n\"True, true!\" said the Dog-man.\n\nThey were staggered at my assurance.  An animal may be ferocious\nand cunning enough, but it takes a real man to tell a lie.\n\n\"The Man with the Bandaged Arm speaks a strange thing,\"\nsaid one of the Beast Folk.\n\n\"I tell you it is so,\" I said.  \"The Master and the House of Pain\nwill come again.  Woe be to him who breaks the Law!\"\n\nThey looked curiously at one another.  With an affectation of indifference\nI began to chop idly at the ground in front of me with my hatchet.\nThey looked, I noticed, at the deep cuts I made in the turf.\n\nThen the Satyr raised a doubt.  I answered him.  Then one of the dappled\nthings objected, and an animated discussion sprang up round the fire.\nEvery moment I began to feel more convinced of my present security.\nI talked now without the catching in my breath, due to the intensity\nof my excitement, that had troubled me at first.  In the course of about\nan hour I had really convinced several of the Beast Folk of the truth\nof my assertions, and talked most of the others into a dubious state.\nI kept a sharp eye for my enemy the Hyena-swine, but he never appeared.\nEvery now and then a suspicious movement would startle me, but my\nconfidence grew rapidly.  Then as the moon crept down from the zenith,\none by one the listeners began to yawn (showing the oddest teeth in\nthe light of the sinking fire), and first one and then another retired\ntowards the dens in the ravine; and I, dreading the silence and darkness,\nwent with them, knowing I was safer with several of them than with\none alone.\n\nIn this manner began the longer part of my sojourn upon this\nIsland of Doctor Moreau.  But from that night until the end came,\nthere was but one thing happened to tell save a series of innumerable\nsmall unpleasant details and the fretting of an incessant uneasiness.\nSo that I prefer to make no chronicle for that gap of time,\nto tell only one cardinal incident of the ten months I spent as an\nintimate of these half-humanised brutes.  There is much that sticks\nin my memory that I could write,--things that I would cheerfully\ngive my right hand to forget; but they do not help the telling of\nthe story.\n\nIn the retrospect it is strange to remember how soon I fell\nin with these monsters' ways, and gained my confidence again.\nI had my quarrels with them of course, and could show some of\ntheir teeth-marks still; but they soon gained a wholesome respect\nfor my trick of throwing stones and for the bite of my hatchet.\nAnd my Saint-Bernard-man's loyalty was of infinite service to me.\nI found their simple scale of honour was based mainly on the capacity\nfor inflicting trenchant wounds.  Indeed, I may say--without vanity,\nI hope--that I held something like pre-eminence among them.\nOne or two, whom in a rare access of high spirits I had scarred\nrather badly, bore me a grudge; but it vented itself chiefly\nbehind my back, and at a safe distance from my missiles,\nin grimaces.\n\nThe Hyena-swine avoided me, and I was always on the alert for him.\nMy inseparable Dog-man hated and dreaded him intensely.\nI really believe that was at the root of the brute's attachment to me.\nIt was soon evident to me that the former monster had tasted blood,\nand gone the way of the Leopard-man. He formed a lair somewhere in\nthe forest, and became solitary.  Once I tried to induce the Beast Folk to\nhunt him, but I lacked the authority to make them co-operate for one end.\nAgain and again I tried to approach his den and come upon him unaware;\nbut always he was too acute for me, and saw or winded me and got away.\nHe too made every forest pathway dangerous to me and my ally\nwith his lurking ambuscades.  The Dog-man scarcely dared to leave\nmy side.\n\nIn the first month or so the Beast Folk, compared with their\nlatter condition, were human enough, and for one or two besides\nmy canine friend I even conceived a friendly tolerance.\nThe little pink sloth-creature displayed an odd affection for me,\nand took to following me about.  The Monkey-man bored me, however;\nhe assumed, on the strength of his five digits, that he was my equal,\nand was for ever jabbering at me,--jabbering the most arrant nonsense.\nOne thing about him entertained me a little:  he had a fantastic trick\nof coining new words.  He had an idea, I believe, that to gabble\nabout names that meant nothing was the proper use of speech.\nHe called it \"Big Thinks\" to distinguish it from \"Little Thinks,\"\nthe sane every-day interests of life.  If ever I made a remark\nhe did not understand, he would praise it very much, ask me to say\nit again, learn it by heart, and go off repeating it, with a word\nwrong here or there, to all the milder of the Beast People.\nHe thought nothing of what was plain and comprehensible.\nI invented some very curious \"Big Thinks\" for his especial use.\nI think now that he was the silliest creature I ever met;\nhe had developed in the most wonderful way the distinctive silliness\nof man without losing one jot of the natural folly of a monkey.\n\nThis, I say, was in the earlier weeks of my solitude among these brutes.\nDuring that time they respected the usage established by the Law,\nand behaved with general decorum.  Once I found another rabbit torn\nto pieces,--by the Hyena-swine, I am assured,--but that was all.\nIt was about May when I first distinctly perceived a growing difference\nin their speech and carriage, a growing coarseness of articulation,\na growing disinclination to talk.  My Monkey-man's jabber multiplied\nin volume but grew less and less comprehensible, more and more simian.\nSome of the others seemed altogether slipping their hold upon speech,\nthough they still understood what I said to them at that time.\n(Can you imagine language, once clear-cut and exact, softening and\nguttering, losing shape and import, becoming mere lumps of sound again?)\nAnd they walked erect with an increasing difficulty.  Though they\nevidently felt ashamed of themselves, every now and then I would come\nupon one or another running on toes and finger-tips, and quite unable\nto recover the vertical attitude.  They held things more clumsily;\ndrinking by suction, feeding by gnawing, grew commoner every day.\nI realised more keenly than ever what Moreau had told me about\nthe \"stubborn beast-flesh.\" They were reverting, and reverting very\nrapidly.\n\nSome of them--the pioneers in this, I noticed with some surprise,\nwere all females--began to disregard the injunction of decency,\ndeliberately for the most part.  Others even attempted public outrages\nupon the institution of monogamy.  The tradition of the Law was clearly\nlosing its force.  I cannot pursue this disagreeable subject.\n\nMy Dog-man imperceptibly slipped back to the dog again; day by day\nhe became dumb, quadrupedal, hairy.  I scarcely noticed the transition\nfrom the companion on my right hand to the lurching dog at my side.\n\nAs the carelessness and disorganisation increased from day to day,\nthe lane of dwelling places, at no time very sweet, became so\nloathsome that I left it, and going across the island made myself\na hovel of boughs amid the black ruins of Moreau's enclosure.\nSome memory of pain, I found, still made that place the safest from\nthe Beast Folk.\n\nIt would be impossible to detail every step of the lapsing of\nthese monsters,--to tell how, day by day, the human semblance left them;\nhow they gave up bandagings and wrappings, abandoned at last every\nstitch of clothing; how the hair began to spread over the exposed limbs;\nhow their foreheads fell away and their faces projected;\nhow the quasi-human intimacy I had permitted myself with some\nof them in the first month of my loneliness became a shuddering\nhorror to recall.\n\nThe change was slow and inevitable.  For them and for me it came\nwithout any definite shock.  I still went among them in safety,\nbecause no jolt in the downward glide had released the increasing\ncharge of explosive animalism that ousted the human day by day.\nBut I began to fear that soon now that shock must come.\nMy Saint-Bernard-brute followed me to the enclosure every night,\nand his vigilance enabled me to sleep at times in something like peace.\nThe little pink sloth-thing became shy and left me, to crawl back\nto its natural life once more among the tree-branches. We were in just\nthe state of equilibrium that would remain in one of those \"Happy Family\"\ncages which animal-tamers exhibit, if the tamer were to leave it\nfor ever.\n\nOf course these creatures did not decline into such beasts as\nthe reader has seen in zoological gardens,--into ordinary bears,\nwolves, tigers, oxen, swine, and apes.  There was still something\nstrange about each; in each Moreau had blended this animal with that.\nOne perhaps was ursine chiefly, another feline chiefly, another\nbovine chiefly; but each was tainted with other creatures,--a kind\nof generalised animalism appearing through the specific dispositions.\nAnd the dwindling shreds of the humanity still startled me every\nnow and then,--a momentary recrudescence of speech perhaps,\nan unexpected dexterity of the fore-feet, a pitiful attempt to\nwalk erect.\n\nI too must have undergone strange changes.  My clothes hung about\nme as yellow rags, through whose rents showed the tanned skin.\nMy hair grew long, and became matted together.  I am told that\neven now my eyes have a strange brightness, a swift alertness\nof movement.\n\nAt first I spent the daylight hours on the southward beach\nwatching for a ship, hoping and praying for a ship.\nI counted on the \"Ipecacuanha\" returning as the year wore on;\nbut she never came.  Five times I saw sails, and thrice smoke;\nbut nothing ever touched the island.  I always had a bonfire ready,\nbut no doubt the volcanic reputation of the island was taken to account\nfor that.\n\nIt was only about September or October that I began to think of making\na raft.  By that time my arm had healed, and both my hands were at\nmy service again.  At first, I found my helplessness appalling.\nI had never done any carpentry or such-like work in my life, and I spent\nday after day in experimental chopping and binding among the trees.\nI had no ropes, and could hit on nothing wherewith to make ropes;\nnone of the abundant creepers seemed limber or strong enough,\nand with all my litter of scientific education I could not devise\nany way of making them so.  I spent more than a fortnight\ngrubbing among the black ruins of the enclosure and on\nthe beach where the boats had been burnt, looking for nails\nand other stray pieces of metal that might prove of service.\nNow and then some Beast-creature would watch me, and go leaping\noff when I called to it.  There came a season of thunder-storms\nand heavy rain, which greatly retarded my work; but at last the raft\nwas completed.\n\nI was delighted with it.  But with a certain lack of practical sense\nwhich has always been my bane, I had made it a mile or more from the sea;\nand before I had dragged it down to the beach the thing had fallen\nto pieces.  Perhaps it is as well that I was saved from launching it;\nbut at the time my misery at my failure was so acute that for some\ndays I simply moped on the beach, and stared at the water and thought\nof death.\n\nI did not, however, mean to die, and an incident occurred that warned\nme unmistakably of the folly of letting the days pass so,--for each\nfresh day was fraught with increasing danger from the Beast People.\n\nI was lying in the shade of the enclosure wall, staring out to sea,\nwhen I was startled by something cold touching the skin of my heel,\nand starting round found the little pink sloth-creature blinking\ninto my face.  He had long since lost speech and active movement,\nand the lank hair of the little brute grew thicker every day and his\nstumpy claws more askew.  He made a moaning noise when he saw he had\nattracted my attention, went a little way towards the bushes and looked\nback at me.\n\nAt first I did not understand, but presently it occurred to me that\nhe wished me to follow him; and this I did at last,--slowly, for the day\nwas hot.  When we reached the trees he clambered into them, for he could\ntravel better among their swinging creepers than on the ground.\nAnd suddenly in a trampled space I came upon a ghastly group.\nMy Saint-Bernard-creature lay on the ground, dead; and near\nhis body crouched the Hyena-swine, gripping the quivering flesh\nwith its misshapen claws, gnawing at it, and snarling with delight.\nAs I approached, the monster lifted its glaring eyes to mine,\nits lips went trembling back from its red-stained teeth,\nand it growled menacingly.  It was not afraid and not ashamed;\nthe last vestige of the human taint had vanished.  I advanced a step\nfarther, stopped, and pulled out my revolver.  At last I had him face\nto face.\n\nThe brute made no sign of retreat; but its ears went back,\nits hair bristled, and its body crouched together.\nI aimed between the eyes and fired.  As I did so, the Thing rose\nstraight at me in a leap, and I was knocked over like a ninepin.\nIt clutched at me with its crippled hand, and struck me in the face.\nIts spring carried it over me.  I fell under the hind part of its body;\nbut luckily I had hit as I meant, and it had died even as it leapt.\nI crawled out from under its unclean weight and stood up trembling,\nstaring at its quivering body.  That danger at least was over;\nbut this, I knew was only the first of the series of relapses that\nmust come.\n\nI burnt both of the bodies on a pyre of brushwood; but after that I saw\nthat unless I left the island my death was only a question of time.\nThe Beast People by that time had, with one or two exceptions,\nleft the ravine and made themselves lairs according to their taste\namong the thickets of the island.  Few prowled by day, most of\nthem slept, and the island might have seemed deserted to a new-comer;\nbut at night the air was hideous with their calls and howling.\nI had half a mind to make a massacre of them; to build traps,\nor fight them with my knife.  Had I possessed sufficient cartridges,\nI should not have hesitated to begin the killing.  There could\nnow be scarcely a score left of the dangerous carnivores;\nthe braver of these were already dead.  After the death of this poor\ndog of mine, my last friend, I too adopted to some extent the practice\nof slumbering in the daytime in order to be on my guard at night.\nI rebuilt my den in the walls of the enclosure, with such a narrow\nopening that anything attempting to enter must necessarily make\na considerable noise.  The creatures had lost the art of fire too,\nand recovered their fear of it.  I turned once more, almost passionately\nnow, to hammering together stakes and branches to form a raft for\nmy escape.\n\nI found a thousand difficulties.  I am an extremely unhandy man\n(my schooling was over before the days of Slojd); but most\nof the requirements of a raft I met at last in some clumsy,\ncircuitous way or other, and this time I took care of the strength.\nThe only insurmountable obstacle was that I had no vessel to contain\nthe water I should need if I floated forth upon these untravelled seas.\nI would have even tried pottery, but the island contained no clay.\nI used to go moping about the island trying with all my might\nto solve this one last difficulty.  Sometimes I would give\nway to wild outbursts of rage, and hack and splinter some\nunlucky tree in my intolerable vexation.  But I could think\nof nothing.\n\nAnd then came a day, a wonderful day, which I spent in ecstasy.\nI saw a sail to the southwest, a small sail like that of a little schooner;\nand forthwith I lit a great pile of brushwood, and stood by it in\nthe heat of it, and the heat of the midday sun, watching.  All day I\nwatched that sail, eating or drinking nothing, so that my head reeled;\nand the Beasts came and glared at me, and seemed to wonder,\nand went away.  It was still distant when night came and swallowed\nit up; and all night I toiled to keep my blaze bright and high,\nand the eyes of the Beasts shone out of the darkness, marvelling.\nIn the dawn the sail was nearer, and I saw it was the dirty\nlug-sail of a small boat.  But it sailed strangely.  My eyes were\nweary with watching, and I peered and could not believe them.\nTwo men were in the boat, sitting low down,--one by the bows,\nthe other at the rudder.  The head was not kept to the wind; it yawed and\nfell away.\n\nAs the day grew brighter, I began waving the last rag of my jacket to them;\nbut they did not notice me, and sat still, facing each other.  I went\nto the lowest point of the low headland, and gesticulated and shouted.\nThere was no response, and the boat kept on her aimless course,\nmaking slowly, very slowly, for the bay.  Suddenly a great white bird\nflew up out of the boat, and neither of the men stirred nor noticed it;\nit circled round, and then came sweeping overhead with its strong\nwings outspread.\n\nThen I stopped shouting, and sat down on the headland and rested my chin\non my hands and stared.  Slowly, slowly, the boat drove past towards\nthe west.  I would have swum out to it, but something--a cold, vague\nfear--kept me back.  In the afternoon the tide stranded the boat, and left\nit a hundred yards or so to the westward of the ruins of the enclosure.\nThe men in it were dead, had been dead so long that they fell\nto pieces when I tilted the boat on its side and dragged them out.\nOne had a shock of red hair, like the captain of the \"Ipecacuanha,\" and\na dirty white cap lay in the bottom of the boat.\n\nAs I stood beside the boat, three of the Beasts came slinking\nout of the bushes and sniffing towards me.  One of my spasms\nof disgust came upon me.  I thrust the little boat down the beach\nand clambered on board her.  Two of the brutes were Wolf-beasts,\nand came forward with quivering nostrils and glittering eyes;\nthe third was the horrible nondescript of bear and bull.\nWhen I saw them approaching those wretched remains, heard them\nsnarling at one another and caught the gleam of their teeth,\na frantic horror succeeded my repulsion.  I turned my back upon them,\nstruck the lug and began paddling out to sea.  I could not bring myself\nto look behind me.\n\nI lay, however, between the reef and the island that night,\nand the next morning went round to the stream and filled the empty\nkeg aboard with water.  Then, with such patience as I could command,\nI collected a quantity of fruit, and waylaid and killed two rabbits\nwith my last three cartridges.  While I was doing this I left\nthe boat moored to an inward projection of the reef, for fear\nof the Beast People.\n\n\n\n\nXXII.  THE MAN ALONE.\n\n\nIN the evening I started, and drove out to sea before a gentle wind\nfrom the southwest, slowly, steadily; and the island grew smaller\nand smaller, and the lank spire of smoke dwindled to a finer and\nfiner line against the hot sunset.  The ocean rose up around me,\nhiding that low, dark patch from my eyes.  The daylight, the trailing\nglory of the sun, went streaming out of the sky, was drawn aside\nlike some luminous curtain, and at last I looked into the blue\ngulf of immensity which the sunshine hides, and saw the floating\nhosts of the stars.  The sea was silent, the sky was silent.\nI was alone with the night and silence.\n\nSo I drifted for three days, eating and drinking sparingly, and meditating\nupon all that had happened to me,--not desiring very greatly then to see\nmen again.  One unclean rag was about me, my hair a black tangle:\nno doubt my discoverers thought me a madman.\n\nIt is strange, but I felt no desire to return to mankind.\nI was only glad to be quit of the foulness of the Beast People.\nAnd on the third day I was picked up by a brig from Apia to San Francisco.\nNeither the captain nor the mate would believe my story, judging that\nsolitude and danger had made me mad; and fearing their opinion might\nbe that of others, I refrained from telling my adventure further,\nand professed to recall nothing that had happened to me between\nthe loss of the \"Lady Vain\" and the time when I was picked up again,--the\nspace of a year.\n\nI had to act with the utmost circumspection to save myself from the\nsuspicion of insanity.  My memory of the Law, of the two dead sailors,\nof the ambuscades of the darkness, of the body in the canebrake,\nhaunted me; and, unnatural as it seems, with my return to mankind came,\ninstead of that confidence and sympathy I had expected, a strange\nenhancement of the uncertainty and dread I had experienced\nduring my stay upon the island.  No one would believe me;\nI was almost as queer to men as I had been to the Beast People.\nI may have caught something of the natural wildness of my companions.\nThey say that terror is a disease, and anyhow I can witness that for\nseveral years now a restless fear has dwelt in my mind,--such a restless\nfear as a half-tamed lion cub may feel.\n\nMy trouble took the strangest form.  I could not persuade myself\nthat the men and women I met were not also another Beast People,\nanimals half wrought into the outward image of human souls, and that they\nwould presently begin to revert,--to show first this bestial mark\nand then that.  But I have confided my case to a strangely able\nman,--a man who had known Moreau, and seemed half to credit my story;\na mental specialist,--and he has helped me mightily, though I do not\nexpect that the terror of that island will ever altogether leave me.\nAt most times it lies far in the back of my mind, a mere distant cloud,\na memory, and a faint distrust; but there are times when the little\ncloud spreads until it obscures the whole sky.  Then I look about me\nat my fellow-men; and I go in fear.  I see faces, keen and bright;\nothers dull or dangerous; others, unsteady, insincere,--none that\nhave the calm authority of a reasonable soul.  I feel as though\nthe animal was surging up through them; that presently the degradation\nof the Islanders will be played over again on a larger scale.\nI know this is an illusion; that these seeming men and women about\nme are indeed men and women,--men and women for ever, perfectly\nreasonable creatures, full of human desires and tender solicitude,\nemancipated from instinct and the slaves of no fantastic\nLaw,--beings altogether different from the Beast Folk.  Yet I shrink\nfrom them, from their curious glances, their inquiries and assistance,\nand long to be away from them and alone.  For that reason I live near\nthe broad free downland, and can escape thither when this shadow\nis over my soul; and very sweet is the empty downland then, under the\nwind-swept sky.\n\nWhen I lived in London the horror was well-nigh insupportable.\nI could not get away from men:  their voices came through windows;\nlocked doors were flimsy safeguards.  I would go out into the streets\nto fight with my delusion, and prowling women would mew after me;\nfurtive, craving men glance jealously at me; weary, pale workers\ngo coughing by me with tired eyes and eager paces, like wounded\ndeer dripping blood; old people, bent and dull, pass murmuring\nto themselves; and, all unheeding, a ragged tail of gibing children.\nThen I would turn aside into some chapel,--and even there,\nsuch was my disturbance, it seemed that the preacher gibbered\n\"Big Thinks,\" even as the Ape-man had done; or into some library,\nand there the intent faces over the books seemed but patient\ncreatures waiting for prey.  Particularly nauseous were the blank,\nexpressionless faces of people in trains and omnibuses;\nthey seemed no more my fellow-creatures than dead bodies would be,\nso that I did not dare to travel unless I was assured of being alone.\nAnd even it seemed that I too was not a reasonable creature,\nbut only an animal tormented with some strange disorder in its\nbrain which sent it to wander alone, like a sheep stricken\nwith gid.\n\nThis is a mood, however, that comes to me now, I thank God,\nmore rarely.  I have withdrawn myself from the confusion of cities\nand multitudes, and spend my days surrounded by wise books,--bright\nwindows in this life of ours, lit by the shining souls of men.\nI see few strangers, and have but a small household.\nMy days I devote to reading and to experiments in chemistry,\nand I spend many of the clear nights in the study of astronomy.\nThere is--though I do not know how there is or why there is--a sense\nof infinite peace and protection in the glittering hosts of heaven.\nThere it must be, I think, in the vast and eternal laws of matter,\nand not in the daily cares and sins and troubles of men, that whatever\nis more than animal within us must find its solace and its hope.  I hope,\nor I could not live.\n\nAnd so, in hope and solitude, my story ends.\n\nEDWARD PRENDICK."