“Oh, but it is such a little thing! A mind truly opened to what science
has to teach must see that it is a little thing. It may be that save in
this little planet, this speck of cosmic dust, invisible long before
the nearest star could be attained—it may be, I say, that nowhere else
does this thing called pain occur. But the laws we feel our way
towards—Why, even on this earth, even among living things, what pain is
there?”
As he spoke he drew a little penknife from his pocket, opened the
smaller blade, and moved his chair so that I could see his thigh. Then,
choosing the place deliberately, he drove the blade into his leg and
withdrew it.
“No doubt,” he said, “you have seen that before. It does not hurt a
pin-prick. But what does it show? The capacity for pain is not needed
in the muscle, and it is not placed there,—is but little needed in the
skin, and only here and there over the thigh is a spot capable of
feeling pain. Pain is simply our intrinsic medical adviser to warn us
and stimulate us. Not all living flesh is painful; nor is all nerve,
not even all sensory nerve. There’s no taint of pain, real pain, in the
sensations of the optic nerve. If you wound the optic nerve, you merely
see flashes of light,—just as disease of the auditory nerve merely
means a humming in our ears. Plants do not feel pain, nor the lower
animals; it’s possible that such animals as the starfish and crayfish
do not feel pain at all. Then with men, the more intelligent they
become, the more intelligently they will see after their own welfare,
and the less they will need the goad to keep them out of danger. I
never yet heard of a useless thing that was not ground out of existence
by evolution sooner or later. Did you? And pain gets needless.
“Then I am a religious man, Prendick, as every sane man must be. It may
be, I fancy, that I have seen more of the ways of this world’s Maker
than you,—for I have sought his laws, in _my_ way, all my life, while
you, I understand, have been collecting butterflies. And I tell you,
pleasure and pain have nothing to do with heaven or hell. Pleasure and
pain—bah! What is your theologian’s ecstasy but Mahomet’s houri in the
dark? This store which men and women set on pleasure and pain,
Prendick, is the mark of the beast upon them,—the mark of the beast
from which they came! Pain, pain and pleasure, they are for us only so
long as we wriggle in the dust.
“You see, I went on with this research just the way it led me. That is
the only way I ever heard of true research going. I asked a question,
devised some method of obtaining an answer, and got a fresh question.
Was this possible or that possible? You cannot imagine what this means
to an investigator, what an intellectual passion grows upon him! You
cannot imagine the strange, colourless delight of these intellectual
desires! The thing before you is no longer an animal, a
fellow-creature, but a problem! Sympathetic pain,—all I know of it I
remember as a thing I used to suffer from years ago. I wanted—it was
the one thing I wanted—to find out the extreme limit of plasticity in a
living shape.”
“But,” said I, “the thing is an abomination—”
“To this day I have never troubled about the ethics of the matter,” he
continued. “The study of Nature makes a man at last as remorseless as
Nature. I have gone on, not heeding anything but the question I was
pursuing; and the material has—dripped into the huts yonder. It is
nearly eleven years since we came here, I and Montgomery and six
Kanakas. I remember the green stillness of the island and the empty
ocean about us, as though it was yesterday. The place seemed waiting
for me.
“The stores were landed and the house was built. The Kanakas founded
some huts near the ravine. I went to work here upon what I had brought
with me. There were some disagreeable things happened at first. I began
with a sheep, and killed it after a day and a half by a slip of the
scalpel. I took another sheep, and made a thing of pain and fear and
left it bound up to heal. It looked quite human to me when I had
finished it; but when I went to it I was discontented with it. It
remembered me, and was terrified beyond imagination; and it had no more
than the wits of a sheep. The more I looked at it the clumsier it
seemed, until at last I put the monster out of its misery. These
animals without courage, these fear-haunted, pain-driven things,
without a spark of pugnacious energy to face torment,—they are no good
for man-making.
“Then I took a gorilla I had; and upon that, working with infinite care
and mastering difficulty after difficulty, I made my first man. All the
week, night and day, I moulded him. With him it was chiefly the brain
that needed moulding; much had to be added, much changed. I thought him
a fair specimen of the negroid type when I had finished him, and he lay
bandaged, bound, and motionless before me. It was only when his life
was assured that I left him and came into this room again, and found
Montgomery much as you are. He had heard some of the cries as the thing
grew human,—cries like those that disturbed _you_ so. I didn’t take him
completely into my confidence at first. And the Kanakas too, had
realised something of it. They were scared out of their wits by the
sight of me. I got Montgomery over to me—in a way; but I and he had the
hardest job to prevent the Kanakas deserting. Finally they did; and so
we lost the yacht. I spent many days educating the brute,—altogether I
had him for three or four months. I taught him the rudiments of
English; gave him ideas of counting; even made the thing read the
alphabet. But at that he was slow, though I’ve met with idiots slower.
He began with a clean sheet, mentally; had no memories left in his mind
of what he had been. When his scars were quite healed, and he was no
longer anything but painful and stiff, and able to converse a little, I
took him yonder and introduced him to the Kanakas as an interesting
stowaway.
“They were horribly afraid of him at first, somehow,—which offended me
rather, for I was conceited about him; but his ways seemed so mild, and
he was so abject, that after a time they received him and took his
education in hand. He was quick to learn, very imitative and adaptive,
and built himself a hovel rather better, it seemed to me, than their
own shanties. There was one among the boys a bit of a missionary, and
he taught the thing to read, or at least to pick out letters, and gave
him some rudimentary ideas of morality; but it seems the beast’s habits
were not all that is desirable.
“I rested from work for some days after this, and was in a mind to
write an account of the whole affair to wake up English physiology.
Then I came upon the creature squatting up in a tree and gibbering at
two of the Kanakas who had been teasing him. I threatened him, told him
the inhumanity of such a proceeding, aroused his sense of shame, and
came home resolved to do better before I took my work back to England.
I have been doing better. But somehow the things drift back again: the
stubborn beast-flesh grows day by day back again. But I mean to do
better things still. I mean to conquer that. This puma—
“But that’s the story. All the Kanaka boys are dead now; one fell
overboard of the launch, and one died of a wounded heel that he
poisoned in some way with plant-juice. Three went away in the yacht,
and I suppose and hope were drowned. The other one—was killed. Well, I
have replaced them. Montgomery went on much as you are disposed to do
at first, and then—”
“What became of the other one?” said I, sharply,—“the other Kanaka who
was killed?”
“The fact is, after I had made a number of human creatures I made a
Thing—” He hesitated.
“Yes?” said I.
“It was killed.”
“I don’t understand,” said I; “do you mean to say—”
“It killed the Kanaka—yes. It killed several other things that it
caught. We chased it for a couple of days. It only got loose by
accident—I never meant it to get away. It wasn’t finished. It was
purely an experiment. It was a limbless thing, with a horrible face,
that writhed along the ground in a serpentine fashion. It was immensely
strong, and in infuriating pain. It lurked in the woods for some days,
until we hunted it; and then it wriggled into the northern part of the
island, and we divided the party to close in upon it. Montgomery
insisted upon coming with me. The man had a rifle; and when his body
was found, one of the barrels was curved into the shape of an S and
very nearly bitten through. Montgomery shot the thing. After that I
stuck to the ideal of humanity—except for little things.”
He became silent. I sat in silence watching his face.
“So for twenty years altogether—counting nine years in England—I have
been going on; and there is still something in everything I do that
defeats me, makes me dissatisfied, challenges me to further effort.
Sometimes I rise above my level, sometimes I fall below it; but always
I fall short of the things I dream. The human shape I can get now,
almost with ease, so that it is lithe and graceful, or thick and
strong; but often there is trouble with the hands and the
claws,—painful things, that I dare not shape too freely. But it is in
the subtle grafting and reshaping one must needs do to the brain that
my trouble lies. The intelligence is often oddly low, with
unaccountable blank ends, unexpected gaps. And least satisfactory of
all is something that I cannot touch, somewhere—I cannot determine
where—in the seat of the emotions. Cravings, instincts, desires that
harm humanity, a strange hidden reservoir to burst forth suddenly and
inundate the whole being of the creature with anger, hate, or fear.
These creatures of mine seemed strange and uncanny to you so soon as
you began to observe them; but to me, just after I make them, they seem
to be indisputably human beings. It’s afterwards, as I observe them,
that the persuasion fades. First one animal trait, then another, creeps
to the surface and stares out at me. But I will conquer yet! Each time
I dip a living creature into the bath of burning pain, I say, ‘This
time I will burn out all the animal; this time I will make a rational
creature of my own!’ After all, what is ten years? Men have been a
hundred thousand in the making.” He thought darkly. “But I am drawing
near the fastness. This puma of mine—” After a silence, “And they
revert. As soon as my hand is taken from them the beast begins to creep
back, begins to assert itself again.” Another long silence.
“Then you take the things you make into those dens?” said I.
“They go. I turn them out when I begin to feel the beast in them, and
presently they wander there. They all dread this house and me. There is
a kind of travesty of humanity over there. Montgomery knows about it,
for he interferes in their affairs. He has trained one or two of them
to our service. He’s ashamed of it, but I believe he half likes some of
those beasts. It’s his business, not mine. They only sicken me with a
sense of failure. I take no interest in them. I fancy they follow in
the lines the Kanaka missionary marked out, and have a kind of mockery
of a rational life, poor beasts! There’s something they call the Law.
Sing hymns about ‘all thine.’ They build themselves their dens, gather
fruit, and pull herbs—marry even. But I can see through it all, see
into their very souls, and see there nothing but the souls of beasts,
beasts that perish, anger and the lusts to live and gratify
themselves.—Yet they’re odd; complex, like everything else alive. There
is a kind of upward striving in them, part vanity, part waste sexual
emotion, part waste curiosity. It only mocks me. I have some hope of
this puma. I have worked hard at her head and brain—
“And now,” said he, standing up after a long gap of silence, during
which we had each pursued our own thoughts, “what do you think? Are you
in fear of me still?”
I looked at him, and saw but a white-faced, white-haired man, with calm
eyes. Save for his serenity, the touch almost of beauty that resulted
from his set tranquillity and his magnificent build, he might have
passed muster among a hundred other comfortable old gentlemen. Then I
shivered. By way of answer to his second question, I handed him a
revolver with either hand.
“Keep them,” he said, and snatched at a yawn. He stood up, stared at me
for a moment, and smiled. “You have had two eventful days,” said he. “I
should advise some sleep. I’m glad it’s all clear. Good-night.” He
thought me over for a moment, then went out by the inner door.
I immediately turned the key in the outer one. I sat down again; sat
for a time in a kind of stagnant mood, so weary, emotionally, mentally,
and physically, that I could not think beyond the point at which he had
left me. The black window stared at me like an eye. At last with an
effort I put out the light and got into the hammock. Very soon I was
asleep.
XV.
CONCERNING THE BEAST FOLK.
I woke early. Moreau’s explanation stood before my mind, clear and
definite, from the moment of my awakening. I got out of the hammock and
went to the door to assure myself that the key was turned. Then I tried
the window-bar, and found it firmly fixed. That these man-like
creatures were in truth only bestial monsters, mere grotesque
travesties of men, filled me with a vague uncertainty of their
possibilities which was far worse than any definite fear.
A tapping came at the door, and I heard the glutinous accents of M’ling
speaking. I pocketed one of the revolvers (keeping one hand upon it),
and opened to him.
“Good-morning, sair,” he said, bringing in, in addition to the
customary herb-breakfast, an ill-cooked rabbit. Montgomery followed
him. His roving eye caught the position of my arm and he smiled askew.
The puma was resting to heal that day; but Moreau, who was singularly
solitary in his habits, did not join us. I talked with Montgomery to
clear my ideas of the way in which the Beast Folk lived. In particular,
I was urgent to know how these inhuman monsters were kept from falling
upon Moreau and Montgomery and from rending one another. He explained
to me that the comparative safety of Moreau and himself was due to the
limited mental scope of these monsters. In spite of their increased
intelligence and the tendency of their animal instincts to reawaken,
they had certain fixed ideas implanted by Moreau in their minds, which
absolutely bounded their imaginations. They were really hypnotised; had
been told that certain things were impossible, and that certain things
were not to be done, and these prohibitions were woven into the texture
of their minds beyond any possibility of disobedience or dispute.
Certain matters, however, in which old instinct was at war with
Moreau’s convenience, were in a less stable condition. A series of
propositions called the Law (I had already heard them recited) battled
in their minds with the deep-seated, ever-rebellious cravings of their
animal natures. This Law they were ever repeating, I found, and ever
breaking. Both Montgomery and Moreau displayed particular solicitude to
keep them ignorant of the taste of blood; they feared the inevitable
suggestions of that flavour. Montgomery told me that the Law,
especially among the feline Beast People, became oddly weakened about
nightfall; that then the animal was at its strongest; that a spirit of
adventure sprang up in them at the dusk, when they would dare things
they never seemed to dream about by day. To that I owed my stalking by
the Leopard-man, on the night of my arrival. But during these earlier
days of my stay they broke the Law only furtively and after dark; in
the daylight there was a general atmosphere of respect for its
multifarious prohibitions.
And here perhaps I may give a few general facts about the island and
the Beast People. The island, which was of irregular outline and lay
low upon the wide sea, had a total area, I suppose, of seven or eight
square miles.[2] It was volcanic in origin, and was now fringed on
three sides by coral reefs; some fumaroles to the northward, and a hot
spring, were the only vestiges of the forces that had long since
originated it. Now and then a faint quiver of earthquake would be
sensible, and sometimes the ascent of the spire of smoke would be
rendered tumultuous by gusts of steam; but that was all. The population
of the island, Montgomery informed me, now numbered rather more than
sixty of these strange creations of Moreau’s art, not counting the
smaller monstrosities which lived in the undergrowth and were without
human form. Altogether he had made nearly a hundred and twenty; but
many had died, and others—like the writhing Footless Thing of which he
had told me—had come by violent ends. In answer to my question,
Montgomery said that they actually bore offspring, but that these
generally died. When they lived, Moreau took them and stamped the human
form upon them. There was no evidence of the inheritance of their
acquired human characteristics. The females were less numerous than the
males, and liable to much furtive persecution in spite of the monogamy
the Law enjoined.
[2]This description corresponds in every respect to Noble’s Isle.—C.
E. P.
It would be impossible for me to describe these Beast People in detail;
my eye has had no training in details, and unhappily I cannot sketch.
Most striking, perhaps, in their general appearance was the
disproportion between the legs of these creatures and the length of
their bodies; and yet—so relative is our idea of grace—my eye became
habituated to their forms, and at last I even fell in with their
persuasion that my own long thighs were ungainly. Another point was the
forward carriage of the head and the clumsy and inhuman curvature of
the spine. Even the Ape-man lacked that inward sinuous curve of the
back which makes the human figure so graceful. Most had their shoulders
hunched clumsily, and their short forearms hung weakly at their sides.
Few of them were conspicuously hairy, at least until the end of my time
upon the island.
The next most obvious deformity was in their faces, almost all of which
were prognathous, malformed about the ears, with large and protuberant
noses, very furry or very bristly hair, and often strangely-coloured or
strangely-placed eyes. None could laugh, though the Ape-man had a
chattering titter. Beyond these general characters their heads had
little in common; each preserved the quality of its particular species:
the human mark distorted but did not hide the leopard, the ox, or the
sow, or other animal or animals, from which the creature had been
moulded. The voices, too, varied exceedingly. The hands were always
malformed; and though some surprised me by their unexpected human
appearance, almost all were deficient in the number of the digits,
clumsy about the finger-nails, and lacking any tactile sensibility.
The two most formidable Animal Men were my Leopard-man and a creature
made of hyena and swine. Larger than these were the three
bull-creatures who pulled in the boat. Then came the silvery-hairy-man,
who was also the Sayer of the Law, M’ling, and a satyr-like creature of
ape and goat. There were three Swine-men and a Swine-woman, a
mare-rhinoceros-creature, and several other females whose sources I did
not ascertain. There were several wolf-creatures, a bear-bull, and a
Saint-Bernard-man. I have already described the Ape-man, and there was
a particularly hateful (and evil-smelling) old woman made of vixen and
bear, whom I hated from the beginning. She was said to be a passionate
votary of the Law. Smaller creatures were certain dappled youths and my
little sloth-creature. But enough of this catalogue.
At first I had a shivering horror of the brutes, felt all too keenly
that they were still brutes; but insensibly I became a little
habituated to the idea of them, and moreover I was affected by
Montgomery’s attitude towards them. He had been with them so long that
he had come to regard them as almost normal human beings. His London
days seemed a glorious, impossible past to him. Only once in a year or
so did he go to Africa to deal with Moreau’s agent, a trader in animals
there. He hardly met the finest type of mankind in that seafaring
village of Spanish mongrels. The men aboard-ship, he told me, seemed at
first just as strange to him as the Beast Men seemed to me,—unnaturally
long in the leg, flat in the face, prominent in the forehead,
suspicious, dangerous, and cold-hearted. In fact, he did not like men:
his heart had warmed to me, he thought, because he had saved my life. I
fancied even then that he had a sneaking kindness for some of these
metamorphosed brutes, a vicious sympathy with some of their ways, but
that he attempted to veil it from me at first.
M’ling, the black-faced man, Montgomery’s attendant, the first of the
Beast Folk I had encountered, did not live with the others across the
island, but in a small kennel at the back of the enclosure. The
creature was scarcely so intelligent as the Ape-man, but far more
docile, and the most human-looking of all the Beast Folk; and
Montgomery had trained it to prepare food, and indeed to discharge all
the trivial domestic offices that were required. It was a complex
trophy of Moreau’s horrible skill,—a bear, tainted with dog and ox, and
one of the most elaborately made of all his creatures. It treated
Montgomery with a strange tenderness and devotion. Sometimes he would
notice it, pat it, call it half-mocking, half-jocular names, and so
make it caper with extraordinary delight; sometimes he would ill-treat
it, especially after he had been at the whiskey, kicking it, beating
it, pelting it with stones or lighted fusees. But whether he treated it
well or ill, it loved nothing so much as to be near him.
I say I became habituated to the Beast People, that a thousand things
which had seemed unnatural and repulsive speedily became natural and
ordinary to me. I suppose everything in existence takes its colour from
the average hue of our surroundings. Montgomery and Moreau were too
peculiar and individual to keep my general impressions of humanity well
defined. I would see one of the clumsy bovine-creatures who worked the
launch treading heavily through the undergrowth, and find myself
asking, trying hard to recall, how he differed from some really human
yokel trudging home from his mechanical labours; or I would meet the
Fox-bear woman’s vulpine, shifty face, strangely human in its
speculative cunning, and even imagine I had met it before in some city
byway.
Yet every now and then the beast would flash out upon me beyond doubt
or denial. An ugly-looking man, a hunch-backed human savage to all
appearance, squatting in the aperture of one of the dens, would stretch
his arms and yawn, showing with startling suddenness scissor-edged
incisors and sabre-like canines, keen and brilliant as knives. Or in
some narrow pathway, glancing with a transitory daring into the eyes of
some lithe, white-swathed female figure, I would suddenly see (with a
spasmodic revulsion) that she had slit-like pupils, or glancing down
note the curving nail with which she held her shapeless wrap about her.
It is a curious thing, by the bye, for which I am quite unable to
account, that these weird creatures—the females, I mean—had in the
earlier days of my stay an instinctive sense of their own repulsive
clumsiness, and displayed in consequence a more than human regard for
the decency and decorum of extensive costume.
XVI.
HOW THE BEAST FOLK TASTE BLOOD.
My inexperience as a writer betrays me, and I wander from the thread of
my story.
After I had breakfasted with Montgomery, he took me across the island
to see the fumarole and the source of the hot spring into whose
scalding waters I had blundered on the previous day. Both of us carried
whips and loaded revolvers. While going through a leafy jungle on our
road thither, we heard a rabbit squealing. We stopped and listened, but
we heard no more; and presently we went on our way, and the incident
dropped out of our minds. Montgomery called my attention to certain
little pink animals with long hind-legs, that went leaping through the
undergrowth. He told me they were creatures made of the offspring of
the Beast People, that Moreau had invented. He had fancied they might
serve for meat, but a rabbit-like habit of devouring their young had
defeated this intention. I had already encountered some of these
creatures,—once during my moonlight flight from the Leopard-man, and
once during my pursuit by Moreau on the previous day. By chance, one
hopping to avoid us leapt into the hole caused by the uprooting of a
wind-blown tree; before it could extricate itself we managed to catch
it. It spat like a cat, scratched and kicked vigorously with its
hind-legs, and made an attempt to bite; but its teeth were too feeble
to inflict more than a painless pinch. It seemed to me rather a pretty
little creature; and as Montgomery stated that it never destroyed the
turf by burrowing, and was very cleanly in its habits, I should imagine
it might prove a convenient substitute for the common rabbit in
gentlemen’s parks.
We also saw on our way the trunk of a tree barked in long strips and
splintered deeply. Montgomery called my attention to this. “Not to claw
bark of trees, _that_ is the Law,” he said. “Much some of them care for
it!” It was after this, I think, that we met the Satyr and the Ape-man.
The Satyr was a gleam of classical memory on the part of Moreau,—his
face ovine in expression, like the coarser Hebrew type; his voice a
harsh bleat, his nether extremities Satanic. He was gnawing the husk of
a pod-like fruit as he passed us. Both of them saluted Montgomery.
“Hail,” said they, “to the Other with the Whip!”
“There’s a Third with a Whip now,” said Montgomery. “So you’d better
mind!”
“Was he not made?” said the Ape-man. “He said—he said he was made.”
The Satyr-man looked curiously at me. “The Third with the Whip, he that
walks weeping into the sea, has a thin white face.”
“He has a thin long whip,” said Montgomery.
“Yesterday he bled and wept,” said the Satyr. “You never bleed nor
weep. The Master does not bleed or weep.”
“Ollendorffian beggar!” said Montgomery, “you’ll bleed and weep if you
don’t look out!”
“He has five fingers, he is a five-man like me,” said the Ape-man.
“Come along, Prendick,” said Montgomery, taking my arm; and I went on
with him.
The Satyr and the Ape-man stood watching us and making other remarks to
each other.
“He says nothing,” said the Satyr. “Men have voices.”
“Yesterday he asked me of things to eat,” said the Ape-man. “He did not
know.”
Then they spoke inaudible things, and I heard the Satyr laughing.
It was on our way back that we came upon the dead rabbit. The red body
of the wretched little beast was rent to pieces, many of the ribs
stripped white, and the backbone indisputably gnawed.
At that Montgomery stopped. “Good God!” said he, stooping down, and
picking up some of the crushed vertebrae to examine them more closely.
“Good God!” he repeated, “what can this mean?”
“Some carnivore of yours has remembered its old habits,” I said after a
pause. “This backbone has been bitten through.”
He stood staring, with his face white and his lip pulled askew. “I
don’t like this,” he said slowly.
“I saw something of the same kind,” said I, “the first day I came
here.”
“The devil you did! What was it?”
“A rabbit with its head twisted off.”
“The day you came here?”
“The day I came here. In the undergrowth at the back of the enclosure,
when I went out in the evening. The head was completely wrung off.”
He gave a long, low whistle.
“And what is more, I have an idea which of your brutes did the thing.
It’s only a suspicion, you know. Before I came on the rabbit I saw one
of your monsters drinking in the stream.”
“Sucking his drink?”
“Yes.”
“‘Not to suck your drink; that is the Law.’ Much the brutes care for
the Law, eh? when Moreau’s not about!”
“It was the brute who chased me.”
“Of course,” said Montgomery; “it’s just the way with carnivores. After
a kill, they drink. It’s the taste of blood, you know.—What was the
brute like?” he continued. “Would you know him again?” He glanced about
us, standing astride over the mess of dead rabbit, his eyes roving
among the shadows and screens of greenery, the lurking-places and
ambuscades of the forest that bounded us in. “The taste of blood,” he
said again.
He took out his revolver, examined the cartridges in it and replaced
it. Then he began to pull at his dropping lip.
“I think I should know the brute again,” I said. “I stunned him. He
ought to have a handsome bruise on the forehead of him.”
“But then we have to _prove_ that he killed the rabbit,” said
Montgomery. “I wish I’d never brought the things here.”
I should have gone on, but he stayed there thinking over the mangled
rabbit in a puzzle-headed way. As it was, I went to such a distance
that the rabbit’s remains were hidden.
“Come on!” I said.
Presently he woke up and came towards me. “You see,” he said, almost in
a whisper, “they are all supposed to have a fixed idea against eating
anything that runs on land. If some brute has by any accident tasted
blood—”
We went on some way in silence. “I wonder what can have happened,” he
said to himself. Then, after a pause again: “I did a foolish thing the
other day. That servant of mine—I showed him how to skin and cook a
rabbit. It’s odd—I saw him licking his hands—It never occurred to me.”
Then: “We must put a stop to this. I must tell Moreau.”
He could think of nothing else on our homeward journey.
Moreau took the matter even more seriously than Montgomery, and I need
scarcely say that I was affected by their evident consternation.
“We must make an example,” said Moreau. “I’ve no doubt in my own mind
that the Leopard-man was the sinner. But how can we prove it? I wish,
Montgomery, you had kept your taste for meat in hand, and gone without
these exciting novelties. We may find ourselves in a mess yet, through
it.”
“I was a silly ass,” said Montgomery. “But the thing’s done now; and
you said I might have them, you know.”
“We must see to the thing at once,” said Moreau. “I suppose if anything
should turn up, M’ling can take care of himself?”
“I’m not so sure of M’ling,” said Montgomery. “I think I ought to know
him.”
In the afternoon, Moreau, Montgomery, myself, and M’ling went across
the island to the huts in the ravine. We three were armed; M’ling
carried the little hatchet he used in chopping firewood, and some coils
of wire. Moreau had a huge cowherd’s horn slung over his shoulder.
“You will see a gathering of the Beast People,” said Montgomery. “It is
a pretty sight!”
Moreau said not a word on the way, but the expression of his heavy,
white-fringed face was grimly set.
We crossed the ravine down which smoked the stream of hot water, and
followed the winding pathway through the canebrakes until we reached a
wide area covered over with a thick, powdery yellow substance which I
believe was sulphur. Above the shoulder of a weedy bank the sea
glittered. We came to a kind of shallow natural amphitheatre, and here
the four of us halted. Then Moreau sounded the horn, and broke the
sleeping stillness of the tropical afternoon. He must have had strong
lungs. The hooting note rose and rose amidst its echoes, to at last an
ear-penetrating intensity.
“Ah!” said Moreau, letting the curved instrument fall to his side
again.
Immediately there was a crashing through the yellow canes, and a sound
of voices from the dense green jungle that marked the morass through
which I had run on the previous day. Then at three or four points on
the edge of the sulphurous area appeared the grotesque forms of the
Beast People hurrying towards us. I could not help a creeping horror,
as I perceived first one and then another trot out from the trees or
reeds and come shambling along over the hot dust. But Moreau and
Montgomery stood calmly enough; and, perforce, I stuck beside them.
First to arrive was the Satyr, strangely unreal for all that he cast a
shadow and tossed the dust with his hoofs. After him from the brake
came a monstrous lout, a thing of horse and rhinoceros, chewing a straw
as it came; then appeared the Swine-woman and two Wolf-women; then the
Fox-bear witch, with her red eyes in her peaked red face, and then
others,—all hurrying eagerly. As they came forward they began to cringe
towards Moreau and chant, quite regardless of one another, fragments of
the latter half of the litany of the Law,—“His is the Hand that wounds;
His is the Hand that heals,” and so forth. As soon as they had
approached within a distance of perhaps thirty yards they halted, and
bowing on knees and elbows began flinging the white dust upon their
heads.
Imagine the scene if you can! We three blue-clad men, with our
misshapen black-faced attendant, standing in a wide expanse of sunlit
yellow dust under the blazing blue sky, and surrounded by this circle
of crouching and gesticulating monstrosities,—some almost human save in
their subtle expression and gestures, some like cripples, some so
strangely distorted as to resemble nothing but the denizens of our
wildest dreams; and, beyond, the reedy lines of a canebrake in one
direction, a dense tangle of palm-trees on the other, separating us
from the ravine with the huts, and to the north the hazy horizon of the
Pacific Ocean.
“Sixty-two, sixty-three,” counted Moreau. “There are four more.”
“I do not see the Leopard-man,” said I.
Presently Moreau sounded the great horn again, and at the sound of it
all the Beast People writhed and grovelled in the dust. Then, slinking
out of the canebrake, stooping near the ground and trying to join the
dust-throwing circle behind Moreau’s back, came the Leopard-man. The
last of the Beast People to arrive was the little Ape-man. The earlier
animals, hot and weary with their grovelling, shot vicious glances at
him.
“Cease!” said Moreau, in his firm, loud voice; and the Beast People sat
back upon their hams and rested from their worshipping.
“Where is the Sayer of the Law?” said Moreau, and the hairy-grey
monster bowed his face in the dust.
“Say the words!” said Moreau.
Forthwith all in the kneeling assembly, swaying from side to side and
dashing up the sulphur with their hands,—first the right hand and a
puff of dust, and then the left,—began once more to chant their strange
litany. When they reached, “Not to eat Flesh or Fish, that is the Law,”
Moreau held up his lank white hand.
“Stop!” he cried, and there fell absolute silence upon them all.
I think they all knew and dreaded what was coming. I looked round at
their strange faces. When I saw their wincing attitudes and the furtive
dread in their bright eyes, I wondered that I had ever believed them to
be men.
“That Law has been broken!” said Moreau.
“None escape,” from the faceless creature with the silvery hair. “None
escape,” repeated the kneeling circle of Beast People.
“Who is he?” cried Moreau, and looked round at their faces, cracking
his whip. I fancied the Hyena-swine looked dejected, so too did the
Leopard-man. Moreau stopped, facing this creature, who cringed towards
him with the memory and dread of infinite torment.
“Who is he?” repeated Moreau, in a voice of thunder.
“Evil is he who breaks the Law,” chanted the Sayer of the Law.
Moreau looked into the eyes of the Leopard-man, and seemed to be
dragging the very soul out of the creature.
“Who breaks the Law—” said Moreau, taking his eyes off his victim, and
turning towards us (it seemed to me there was a touch of exultation in
his voice).
“Goes back to the House of Pain,” they all clamoured,—“goes back to the
House of Pain, O Master!”
“Back to the House of Pain,—back to the House of Pain,” gabbled the
Ape-man, as though the idea was sweet to him.
“Do you hear?” said Moreau, turning back to the criminal, “my
friend—Hullo!”
For the Leopard-man, released from Moreau’s eye, had risen straight
from his knees, and now, with eyes aflame and his huge feline tusks
flashing out from under his curling lips, leapt towards his tormentor.
I am convinced that only the madness of unendurable fear could have
prompted this attack. The whole circle of threescore monsters seemed to
rise about us. I drew my revolver. The two figures collided. I saw
Moreau reeling back from the Leopard-man’s blow. There was a furious
yelling and howling all about us. Every one was moving rapidly. For a
moment I thought it was a general revolt. The furious face of the
Leopard-man flashed by mine, with M’ling close in pursuit. I saw the
yellow eyes of the Hyena-swine blazing with excitement, his attitude as
if he were half resolved to attack me. The Satyr, too, glared at me
over the Hyena-swine’s hunched shoulders. I heard the crack of Moreau’s
pistol, and saw the pink flash dart across the tumult. The whole crowd
seemed to swing round in the direction of the glint of fire, and I too
was swung round by the magnetism of the movement. In another second I
was running, one of a tumultuous shouting crowd, in pursuit of the
escaping Leopard-man.
That is all I can tell definitely. I saw the Leopard-man strike Moreau,
and then everything spun about me until I was running headlong. M’ling
was ahead, close in pursuit of the fugitive. Behind, their tongues
already lolling out, ran the Wolf-women in great leaping strides. The
Swine folk followed, squealing with excitement, and the two Bull-men in
their swathings of white. Then came Moreau in a cluster of the Beast
People, his wide-brimmed straw hat blown off, his revolver in hand, and
his lank white hair streaming out. The Hyena-swine ran beside me,
keeping pace with me and glancing furtively at me out of his feline
eyes, and the others came pattering and shouting behind us.
The Leopard-man went bursting his way through the long canes, which
sprang back as he passed, and rattled in M’ling’s face. We others in
the rear found a trampled path for us when we reached the brake. The
chase lay through the brake for perhaps a quarter of a mile, and then
plunged into a dense thicket, which retarded our movements exceedingly,
though we went through it in a crowd together,—fronds flicking into our
faces, ropy creepers catching us under the chin or gripping our ankles,
thorny plants hooking into and tearing cloth and flesh together.
“He has gone on all-fours through this,” panted Moreau, now just ahead
of me.
“None escape,” said the Wolf-bear, laughing into my face with the
exultation of hunting. We burst out again among rocks, and saw the
quarry ahead running lightly on all-fours and snarling at us over his
shoulder. At that the Wolf Folk howled with delight. The Thing was
still clothed, and at a distance its face still seemed human; but the
carriage of its four limbs was feline, and the furtive droop of its
shoulder was distinctly that of a hunted animal. It leapt over some
thorny yellow-flowering bushes, and was hidden. M’ling was halfway
across the space.
Most of us now had lost the first speed of the chase, and had fallen
into a longer and steadier stride. I saw as we traversed the open that
the pursuit was now spreading from a column into a line. The
Hyena-swine still ran close to me, watching me as it ran, every now and
then puckering its muzzle with a snarling laugh. At the edge of the
rocks the Leopard-man, realising that he was making for the projecting
cape upon which he had stalked me on the night of my arrival, had
doubled in the undergrowth; but Montgomery had seen the manoeuvre, and
turned him again. So, panting, tumbling against rocks, torn by
brambles, impeded by ferns and reeds, I helped to pursue the
Leopard-man who had broken the Law, and the Hyena-swine ran, laughing
savagely, by my side. I staggered on, my head reeling and my heart
beating against my ribs, tired almost to death, and yet not daring to
lose sight of the chase lest I should be left alone with this horrible
companion. I staggered on in spite of infinite fatigue and the dense
heat of the tropical afternoon.
At last the fury of the hunt slackened. We had pinned the wretched
brute into a corner of the island. Moreau, whip in hand, marshalled us
all into an irregular line, and we advanced now slowly, shouting to one
another as we advanced and tightening the cordon about our victim. He
lurked noiseless and invisible in the bushes through which I had run
from him during that midnight pursuit.
“Steady!” cried Moreau, “steady!” as the ends of the line crept round
the tangle of undergrowth and hemmed the brute in.
“Ware a rush!” came the voice of Montgomery from beyond the thicket.
I was on the slope above the bushes; Montgomery and Moreau beat along
the beach beneath. Slowly we pushed in among the fretted network of
branches and leaves. The quarry was silent.
“Back to the House of Pain, the House of Pain, the House of Pain!”
yelped the voice of the Ape-man, some twenty yards to the right.
When I heard that, I forgave the poor wretch all the fear he had
inspired in me. I heard the twigs snap and the boughs swish aside
before the heavy tread of the Horse-rhinoceros upon my right. Then
suddenly through a polygon of green, in the half darkness under the
luxuriant growth, I saw the creature we were hunting. I halted. He was
crouched together into the smallest possible compass, his luminous
green eyes turned over his shoulder regarding me.
It may seem a strange contradiction in me,—I cannot explain the
fact,—but now, seeing the creature there in a perfectly animal
attitude, with the light gleaming in its eyes and its imperfectly human
face distorted with terror, I realised again the fact of its humanity.
In another moment other of its pursuers would see it, and it would be
overpowered and captured, to experience once more the horrible tortures
of the enclosure. Abruptly I slipped out my revolver, aimed between its
terror-struck eyes, and fired. As I did so, the Hyena-swine saw the
Thing, and flung itself upon it with an eager cry, thrusting thirsty
teeth into its neck. All about me the green masses of the thicket were
swaying and cracking as the Beast People came rushing together. One
face and then another appeared.
“Don’t kill it, Prendick!” cried Moreau. “Don’t kill it!” and I saw him
stooping as he pushed through under the fronds of the big ferns.
In another moment he had beaten off the Hyena-swine with the handle of
his whip, and he and Montgomery were keeping away the excited
carnivorous Beast People, and particularly M’ling, from the still
quivering body. The hairy-grey Thing came sniffing at the corpse under
my arm. The other animals, in their animal ardour, jostled me to get a
nearer view.
“Confound you, Prendick!” said Moreau. “I wanted him.”
“I’m sorry,” said I, though I was not. “It was the impulse of the
moment.” I felt sick with exertion and excitement. Turning, I pushed my
way out of the crowding Beast People and went on alone up the slope
towards the higher part of the headland. Under the shouted directions
of Moreau I heard the three white-swathed Bull-men begin dragging the
victim down towards the water.
It was easy now for me to be alone. The Beast People manifested a quite
human curiosity about the dead body, and followed it in a thick knot,
sniffing and growling at it as the Bull-men dragged it down the beach.
I went to the headland and watched the bull-men, black against the
evening sky as they carried the weighted dead body out to sea; and like
a wave across my mind came the realisation of the unspeakable
aimlessness of things upon the island. Upon the beach among the rocks
beneath me were the Ape-man, the Hyena-swine, and several other of the
Beast People, standing about Montgomery and Moreau. They were all still
intensely excited, and all overflowing with noisy expressions of their
loyalty to the Law; yet I felt an absolute assurance in my own mind
that the Hyena-swine was implicated in the rabbit-killing. A strange
persuasion came upon me, that, save for the grossness of the line, the
grotesqueness of the forms, I had here before me the whole balance of
human life in miniature, the whole interplay of instinct, reason, and
fate in its simplest form. The Leopard-man had happened to go under:
that was all the difference. Poor brute!
Poor brutes! I began to see the viler aspect of Moreau’s cruelty. I had
not thought before of the pain and trouble that came to these poor
victims after they had passed from Moreau’s hands. I had shivered only
at the days of actual torment in the enclosure. But now that seemed to
me the lesser part. Before, they had been beasts, their instincts fitly
adapted to their surroundings, and happy as living things may be. Now
they stumbled in the shackles of humanity, lived in a fear that never
died, fretted by a law they could not understand; their mock-human
existence, begun in an agony, was one long internal struggle, one long
dread of Moreau—and for what? It was the wantonness of it that stirred
me.
Had Moreau had any intelligible object, I could have sympathised at
least a little with him. I am not so squeamish about pain as that. I
could have forgiven him a little even, had his motive been only hate.
But he was so irresponsible, so utterly careless! His curiosity, his
mad, aimless investigations, drove him on; and the Things were thrown
out to live a year or so, to struggle and blunder and suffer, and at
last to die painfully. They were wretched in themselves; the old animal
hate moved them to trouble one another; the Law held them back from a
brief hot struggle and a decisive end to their natural animosities.
In those days my fear of the Beast People went the way of my personal
fear for Moreau. I fell indeed into a morbid state, deep and enduring,
and alien to fear, which has left permanent scars upon my mind. I must
confess that I lost faith in the sanity of the world when I saw it
suffering the painful disorder of this island. A blind Fate, a vast
pitiless mechanism, seemed to cut and shape the fabric of existence and
I, Moreau (by his passion for research), Montgomery (by his passion for
drink), the Beast People with their instincts and mental restrictions,
were torn and crushed, ruthlessly, inevitably, amid the infinite
complexity of its incessant wheels. But this condition did not come all
at once: I think indeed that I anticipate a little in speaking of it
now.
XVII.
A CATASTROPHE.
Scarcely six weeks passed before I had lost every feeling but dislike
and abhorrence for this infamous experiment of Moreau’s. My one idea
was to get away from these horrible caricatures of my Maker’s image,
back to the sweet and wholesome intercourse of men. My
fellow-creatures, from whom I was thus separated, began to assume
idyllic virtue and beauty in my memory. My first friendship with
Montgomery did not increase. His long separation from humanity, his
secret vice of drunkenness, his evident sympathy with the Beast People,
tainted him to me. Several times I let him go alone among them. I
avoided intercourse with them in every possible way. I spent an
increasing proportion of my time upon the beach, looking for some
liberating sail that never appeared,—until one day there fell upon us
an appalling disaster, which put an altogether different aspect upon my
strange surroundings.
It was about seven or eight weeks after my landing,—rather more, I
think, though I had not troubled to keep account of the time,—when this
catastrophe occurred. It happened in the early morning—I should think
about six. I had risen and breakfasted early, having been aroused by
the noise of three Beast Men carrying wood into the enclosure.
After breakfast I went to the open gateway of the enclosure, and stood
there smoking a cigarette and enjoying the freshness of the early
morning. Moreau presently came round the corner of the enclosure and
greeted me. He passed by me, and I heard him behind me unlock and enter
his laboratory. So indurated was I at that time to the abomination of
the place, that I heard without a touch of emotion the puma victim
begin another day of torture. It met its persecutor with a shriek,
almost exactly like that of an angry virago.
Then suddenly something happened,—I do not know what, to this day. I
heard a short, sharp cry behind me, a fall, and turning saw an awful
face rushing upon me,—not human, not animal, but hellish, brown, seamed
with red branching scars, red drops starting out upon it, and the
lidless eyes ablaze. I threw up my arm to defend myself from the blow
that flung me headlong with a broken forearm; and the great monster,
swathed in lint and with red-stained bandages fluttering about it,
leapt over me and passed. I rolled over and over down the beach, tried
to sit up, and collapsed upon my broken arm. Then Moreau appeared, his
massive white face all the more terrible for the blood that trickled
from his forehead. He carried a revolver in one hand. He scarcely
glanced at me, but rushed off at once in pursuit of the puma.
I tried the other arm and sat up. The muffled figure in front ran in
great striding leaps along the beach, and Moreau followed her. She
turned her head and saw him, then doubling abruptly made for the
bushes. She gained upon him at every stride. I saw her plunge into
them, and Moreau, running slantingly to intercept her, fired and missed
as she disappeared. Then he too vanished in the green confusion. I
stared after them, and then the pain in my arm flamed up, and with a
groan I staggered to my feet. Montgomery appeared in the doorway,
dressed, and with his revolver in his hand.
“Great God, Prendick!” he said, not noticing that I was hurt, “that
brute’s loose! Tore the fetter out of the wall! Have you seen them?”
Then sharply, seeing I gripped my arm, “What’s the matter?”
“I was standing in the doorway,” said I.
He came forward and took my arm. “Blood on the sleeve,” said he, and
rolled back the flannel. He pocketed his weapon, felt my arm about
painfully, and led me inside. “Your arm is broken,” he said, and then,
“Tell me exactly how it happened—what happened?”
I told him what I had seen; told him in broken sentences, with gasps of
pain between them, and very dexterously and swiftly he bound my arm
meanwhile. He slung it from my shoulder, stood back and looked at me.
“You’ll do,” he said. “And now?”
He thought. Then he went out and locked the gates of the enclosure. He
was absent some time.
I was chiefly concerned about my arm. The incident seemed merely one
more of many horrible things. I sat down in the deck chair, and I must
admit swore heartily at the island. The first dull feeling of injury in
my arm had already given way to a burning pain when Montgomery
reappeared. His face was rather pale, and he showed more of his lower
gums than ever.
“I can neither see nor hear anything of him,” he said. “I’ve been
thinking he may want my help.” He stared at me with his expressionless
eyes. “That was a strong brute,” he said. “It simply wrenched its
fetter out of the wall.” He went to the window, then to the door, and
there turned to me. “I shall go after him,” he said. “There’s another
revolver I can leave with you. To tell you the truth, I feel anxious
somehow.”
He obtained the weapon, and put it ready to my hand on the table; then
went out, leaving a restless contagion in the air. I did not sit long
after he left, but took the revolver in hand and went to the doorway.
The morning was as still as death. Not a whisper of wind was stirring;
the sea was like polished glass, the sky empty, the beach desolate. In
my half-excited, half-feverish state, this stillness of things
oppressed me. I tried to whistle, and the tune died away. I swore
again,—the second time that morning. Then I went to the corner of the
enclosure and stared inland at the green bush that had swallowed up
Moreau and Montgomery. When would they return, and how? Then far away
up the beach a little grey Beast Man appeared, ran down to the water’s
edge and began splashing about. I strolled back to the doorway, then to
the corner again, and so began pacing to and fro like a sentinel upon
duty. Once I was arrested by the distant voice of Montgomery bawling,
“Coo-ee—Moreau!” My arm became less painful, but very hot. I got
feverish and thirsty. My shadow grew shorter. I watched the distant
figure until it went away again. Would Moreau and Montgomery never
return? Three sea-birds began fighting for some stranded treasure.
Then from far away behind the enclosure I heard a pistol-shot. A long
silence, and then came another. Then a yelling cry nearer, and another
dismal gap of silence. My unfortunate imagination set to work to
torment me. Then suddenly a shot close by. I went to the corner,
startled, and saw Montgomery,—his face scarlet, his hair disordered,
and the knee of his trousers torn. His face expressed profound
consternation. Behind him slouched the Beast Man, M’ling, and round
M’ling’s jaws were some queer dark stains.
“Has he come?” said Montgomery.
“Moreau?” said I. “No.”
“My God!” The man was panting, almost sobbing. “Go back in,” he said,
taking my arm. “They’re mad. They’re all rushing about mad. What can
have happened? I don’t know. I’ll tell you, when my breath comes.
Where’s some brandy?”
Montgomery limped before me into the room and sat down in the deck
chair. M’ling flung himself down just outside the doorway and began
panting like a dog. I got Montgomery some brandy-and-water. He sat
staring in front of him at nothing, recovering his breath. After some
minutes he began to tell me what had happened.
He had followed their track for some way. It was plain enough at first
on account of the crushed and broken bushes, white rags torn from the
puma’s bandages, and occasional smears of blood on the leaves of the
shrubs and undergrowth. He lost the track, however, on the stony ground
beyond the stream where I had seen the Beast Man drinking, and went
wandering aimlessly westward shouting Moreau’s name. Then M’ling had
come to him carrying a light hatchet. M’ling had seen nothing of the
puma affair; had been felling wood, and heard him calling. They went on
shouting together. Two Beast Men came crouching and peering at them
through the undergrowth, with gestures and a furtive carriage that
alarmed Montgomery by their strangeness. He hailed them, and they fled
guiltily. He stopped shouting after that, and after wandering some time
farther in an undecided way, determined to visit the huts.
He found the ravine deserted.
Growing more alarmed every minute, he began to retrace his steps. Then
it was he encountered the two Swine-men I had seen dancing on the night
of my arrival; blood-stained they were about the mouth, and intensely
excited. They came crashing through the ferns, and stopped with fierce
faces when they saw him. He cracked his whip in some trepidation, and
forthwith they rushed at him. Never before had a Beast Man dared to do
that. One he shot through the head; M’ling flung himself upon the
other, and the two rolled grappling. M’ling got his brute under and
with his teeth in its throat, and Montgomery shot that too as it
struggled in M’ling’s grip. He had some difficulty in inducing M’ling
to come on with him. Thence they had hurried back to me. On the way,
M’ling had suddenly rushed into a thicket and driven out an under-sized
Ocelot-man, also blood-stained, and lame through a wound in the foot.
This brute had run a little way and then turned savagely at bay, and
Montgomery—with a certain wantonness, I thought—had shot him.
“What does it all mean?” said I.
He shook his head, and turned once more to the brandy.
XVIII.
THE FINDING OF MOREAU.
When I saw Montgomery swallow a third dose of brandy, I took it upon
myself to interfere. He was already more than half fuddled. I told him
that some serious thing must have happened to Moreau by this time, or
he would have returned before this, and that it behoved us to ascertain
what that catastrophe was. Montgomery raised some feeble objections,
and at last agreed. We had some food, and then all three of us started.
It is possibly due to the tension of my mind, at the time, but even now
that start into the hot stillness of the tropical afternoon is a
singularly vivid impression. M’ling went first, his shoulder hunched,
his strange black head moving with quick starts as he peered first on
this side of the way and then on that. He was unarmed; his axe he had
dropped when he encountered the Swine-man. Teeth were _his_ weapons,
when it came to fighting. Montgomery followed with stumbling footsteps,
his hands in his pockets, his face downcast; he was in a state of
muddled sullenness with me on account of the brandy. My left arm was in
a sling (it was lucky it was my left), and I carried my revolver in my
right. Soon we traced a narrow path through the wild luxuriance of the
island, going northwestward; and presently M’ling stopped, and became
rigid with watchfulness. Montgomery almost staggered into him, and then
stopped too. Then, listening intently, we heard coming through the
trees the sound of voices and footsteps approaching us.
“He is dead,” said a deep, vibrating voice.
“He is not dead; he is not dead,” jabbered another.
“We saw, we saw,” said several voices.
“_Hul_-lo!” suddenly shouted Montgomery, “Hullo, there!”
“Confound you!” said I, and gripped my pistol.
There was a silence, then a crashing among the interlacing vegetation,
first here, then there, and then half-a-dozen faces appeared,—strange
faces, lit by a strange light. M’ling made a growling noise in his
throat. I recognised the Ape-man: I had indeed already identified his
voice, and two of the white-swathed brown-featured creatures I had seen
in Montgomery’s boat. With these were the two dappled brutes and that
grey, horribly crooked creature who said the Law, with grey hair
streaming down its cheeks, heavy grey eyebrows, and grey locks pouring
off from a central parting upon its sloping forehead,—a heavy, faceless
thing, with strange red eyes, looking at us curiously from amidst the
green.
For a space no one spoke. Then Montgomery hiccoughed, “Who—said he was
dead?”
The Monkey-man looked guiltily at the hairy-grey Thing. “He is dead,”
said this monster. “They saw.”
There was nothing threatening about this detachment, at any rate. They
seemed awestricken and puzzled.
“Where is he?” said Montgomery.
“Beyond,” and the grey creature pointed.
“Is there a Law now?” asked the Monkey-man. “Is it still to be this and
that? Is he dead indeed?”
“Is there a Law?” repeated the man in white. “Is there a Law, thou
Other with the Whip?”
“He is dead,” said the hairy-grey Thing. And they all stood watching
us.
“Prendick,” said Montgomery, turning his dull eyes to me. “He’s dead,
evidently.”
I had been standing behind him during this colloquy. I began to see how
things lay with them. I suddenly stepped in front of Montgomery and
lifted up my voice:—“Children of the Law,” I said, “he is _not_ dead!”
M’ling turned his sharp eyes on me. “He has changed his shape; he has
changed his body,” I went on. “For a time you will not see him. He
is—there,” I pointed upward, “where he can watch you. You cannot see
him, but he can see you. Fear the Law!”