“He is great, he is good,” said the Ape-man, peering fearfully upward
among the dense trees.
“And the other Thing?” I demanded.
“The Thing that bled, and ran screaming and sobbing,—that is dead too,”
said the grey Thing, still regarding me.
“That’s well,” grunted Montgomery.
“The Other with the Whip—” began the grey Thing.
“Well?” said I.
“Said he was dead.”
But Montgomery was still sober enough to understand my motive in
denying Moreau’s death. “He is not dead,” he said slowly, “not dead at
all. No more dead than I am.”
“Some,” said I, “have broken the Law: they will die. Some have died.
Show us now where his old body lies,—the body he cast away because he
had no more need of it.”
“It is this way, Man who walked in the Sea,” said the grey Thing.
And with these six creatures guiding us, we went through the tumult of
ferns and creepers and tree-stems towards the northwest. Then came a
yelling, a crashing among the branches, and a little pink homunculus
rushed by us shrieking. Immediately after appeared a monster in
headlong pursuit, blood-bedabbled, who was amongst us almost before he
could stop his career. The grey Thing leapt aside. M’ling, with a
snarl, flew at it, and was struck aside. Montgomery fired and missed,
bowed his head, threw up his arm, and turned to run. I fired, and the
Thing still came on; fired again, point-blank, into its ugly face. I
saw its features vanish in a flash: its face was driven in. Yet it
passed me, gripped Montgomery, and holding him, fell headlong beside
him and pulled him sprawling upon itself in its death-agony.
I found myself alone with M’ling, the dead brute, and the prostrate
man. Montgomery raised himself slowly and stared in a muddled way at
the shattered Beast Man beside him. It more than half sobered him. He
scrambled to his feet. Then I saw the grey Thing returning cautiously
through the trees.
“See,” said I, pointing to the dead brute, “is the Law not alive? This
came of breaking the Law.”
He peered at the body. “He sends the Fire that kills,” said he, in his
deep voice, repeating part of the Ritual. The others gathered round and
stared for a space.
At last we drew near the westward extremity of the island. We came upon
the gnawed and mutilated body of the puma, its shoulder-bone smashed by
a bullet, and perhaps twenty yards farther found at last what we
sought. Moreau lay face downward in a trampled space in a canebrake.
One hand was almost severed at the wrist and his silvery hair was
dabbled in blood. His head had been battered in by the fetters of the
puma. The broken canes beneath him were smeared with blood. His
revolver we could not find. Montgomery turned him over. Resting at
intervals, and with the help of the seven Beast People (for he was a
heavy man), we carried Moreau back to the enclosure. The night was
darkling. Twice we heard unseen creatures howling and shrieking past
our little band, and once the little pink sloth-creature appeared and
stared at us, and vanished again. But we were not attacked again. At
the gates of the enclosure our company of Beast People left us, M’ling
going with the rest. We locked ourselves in, and then took Moreau’s
mangled body into the yard and laid it upon a pile of brushwood. Then
we went into the laboratory and put an end to all we found living
there.
XIX.
MONTGOMERY’S “BANK HOLIDAY.”
When this was accomplished, and we had washed and eaten, Montgomery and
I went into my little room and seriously discussed our position for the
first time. It was then near midnight. He was almost sober, but greatly
disturbed in his mind. He had been strangely under the influence of
Moreau’s personality: I do not think it had ever occurred to him that
Moreau could die. This disaster was the sudden collapse of the habits
that had become part of his nature in the ten or more monotonous years
he had spent on the island. He talked vaguely, answered my questions
crookedly, wandered into general questions.
“This silly ass of a world,” he said; “what a muddle it all is! I
haven’t had any life. I wonder when it’s going to begin. Sixteen years
being bullied by nurses and schoolmasters at their own sweet will; five
in London grinding hard at medicine, bad food, shabby lodgings, shabby
clothes, shabby vice, a blunder,—_I_ didn’t know any better,—and
hustled off to this beastly island. Ten years here! What’s it all for,
Prendick? Are we bubbles blown by a baby?”
It was hard to deal with such ravings. “The thing we have to think of
now,” said I, “is how to get away from this island.”
“What’s the good of getting away? I’m an outcast. Where am _I_ to join
on? It’s all very well for _you_, Prendick. Poor old Moreau! We can’t
leave him here to have his bones picked. As it is—And besides, what
will become of the decent part of the Beast Folk?”
“Well,” said I, “that will do to-morrow. I’ve been thinking we might
make the brushwood into a pyre and burn his body—and those other
things. Then what will happen with the Beast Folk?”
“_I_ don’t know. I suppose those that were made of beasts of prey will
make silly asses of themselves sooner or later. We can’t massacre the
lot—can we? I suppose that’s what _your_ humanity would suggest? But
they’ll change. They are sure to change.”
He talked thus inconclusively until at last I felt my temper going.
“Damnation!” he exclaimed at some petulance of mine; “can’t you see I’m
in a worse hole than you are?” And he got up, and went for the brandy.
“Drink!” he said returning, “you logic-chopping, chalky-faced saint of
an atheist, drink!”
“Not I,” said I, and sat grimly watching his face under the yellow
paraffine flare, as he drank himself into a garrulous misery.
I have a memory of infinite tedium. He wandered into a maudlin defence
of the Beast People and of M’ling. M’ling, he said, was the only thing
that had ever really cared for him. And suddenly an idea came to him.
“I’m damned!” said he, staggering to his feet and clutching the brandy
bottle.
By some flash of intuition I knew what it was he intended. “You don’t
give drink to that beast!” I said, rising and facing him.
“Beast!” said he. “You’re the beast. He takes his liquor like a
Christian. Come out of the way, Prendick!”
“For God’s sake,” said I.
“Get—out of the way!” he roared, and suddenly whipped out his revolver.
“Very well,” said I, and stood aside, half-minded to fall upon him as
he put his hand upon the latch, but deterred by the thought of my
useless arm. “You’ve made a beast of yourself,—to the beasts you may
go.”
He flung the doorway open, and stood half facing me between the yellow
lamp-light and the pallid glare of the moon; his eye-sockets were
blotches of black under his stubbly eyebrows.
“You’re a solemn prig, Prendick, a silly ass! You’re always fearing and
fancying. We’re on the edge of things. I’m bound to cut my throat
to-morrow. I’m going to have a damned Bank Holiday to-night.” He turned
and went out into the moonlight. “M’ling!” he cried; “M’ling, old
friend!”
Three dim creatures in the silvery light came along the edge of the wan
beach,—one a white-wrapped creature, the other two blotches of
blackness following it. They halted, staring. Then I saw M’ling’s
hunched shoulders as he came round the corner of the house.
“Drink!” cried Montgomery, “drink, you brutes! Drink and be men! Damme,
I’m the cleverest. Moreau forgot this; this is the last touch. Drink, I
tell you!” And waving the bottle in his hand he started off at a kind
of quick trot to the westward, M’ling ranging himself between him and
the three dim creatures who followed.
I went to the doorway. They were already indistinct in the mist of the
moonlight before Montgomery halted. I saw him administer a dose of the
raw brandy to M’ling, and saw the five figures melt into one vague
patch.
“Sing!” I heard Montgomery shout,—“sing all together, ‘Confound old
Prendick!’ That’s right; now again, ‘Confound old Prendick!’”
The black group broke up into five separate figures, and wound slowly
away from me along the band of shining beach. Each went howling at his
own sweet will, yelping insults at me, or giving whatever other vent
this new inspiration of brandy demanded. Presently I heard Montgomery’s
voice shouting, “Right turn!” and they passed with their shouts and
howls into the blackness of the landward trees. Slowly, very slowly,
they receded into silence.
The peaceful splendour of the night healed again. The moon was now past
the meridian and travelling down the west. It was at its full, and very
bright riding through the empty blue sky. The shadow of the wall lay, a
yard wide and of inky blackness, at my feet. The eastward sea was a
featureless grey, dark and mysterious; and between the sea and the
shadow the grey sands (of volcanic glass and crystals) flashed and
shone like a beach of diamonds. Behind me the paraffine lamp flared hot
and ruddy.
Then I shut the door, locked it, and went into the enclosure where
Moreau lay beside his latest victims,—the staghounds and the llama and
some other wretched brutes,—with his massive face calm even after his
terrible death, and with the hard eyes open, staring at the dead white
moon above. I sat down upon the edge of the sink, and with my eyes upon
that ghastly pile of silvery light and ominous shadows began to turn
over my plans. In the morning I would gather some provisions in the
dingey, and after setting fire to the pyre before me, push out into the
desolation of the high sea once more. I felt that for Montgomery there
was no help; that he was, in truth, half akin to these Beast Folk,
unfitted for human kindred.
I do not know how long I sat there scheming. It must have been an hour
or so. Then my planning was interrupted by the return of Montgomery to
my neighbourhood. I heard a yelling from many throats, a tumult of
exultant cries passing down towards the beach, whooping and howling,
and excited shrieks that seemed to come to a stop near the water’s
edge. The riot rose and fell; I heard heavy blows and the splintering
smash of wood, but it did not trouble me then. A discordant chanting
began.
My thoughts went back to my means of escape. I got up, brought the
lamp, and went into a shed to look at some kegs I had seen there. Then
I became interested in the contents of some biscuit-tins, and opened
one. I saw something out of the tail of my eye,—a red figure,—and
turned sharply.
Behind me lay the yard, vividly black-and-white in the moonlight, and
the pile of wood and faggots on which Moreau and his mutilated victims
lay, one over another. They seemed to be gripping one another in one
last revengeful grapple. His wounds gaped, black as night, and the
blood that had dripped lay in black patches upon the sand. Then I saw,
without understanding, the cause of my phantom,—a ruddy glow that came
and danced and went upon the wall opposite. I misinterpreted this,
fancied it was a reflection of my flickering lamp, and turned again to
the stores in the shed. I went on rummaging among them, as well as a
one-armed man could, finding this convenient thing and that, and
putting them aside for to-morrow’s launch. My movements were slow, and
the time passed quickly. Insensibly the daylight crept upon me.
The chanting died down, giving place to a clamour; then it began again,
and suddenly broke into a tumult. I heard cries of, “More! more!” a
sound like quarrelling, and a sudden wild shriek. The quality of the
sounds changed so greatly that it arrested my attention. I went out
into the yard and listened. Then cutting like a knife across the
confusion came the crack of a revolver.
I rushed at once through my room to the little doorway. As I did so I
heard some of the packing-cases behind me go sliding down and smash
together with a clatter of glass on the floor of the shed. But I did
not heed these. I flung the door open and looked out.
Up the beach by the boathouse a bonfire was burning, raining up sparks
into the indistinctness of the dawn. Around this struggled a mass of
black figures. I heard Montgomery call my name. I began to run at once
towards this fire, revolver in hand. I saw the pink tongue of
Montgomery’s pistol lick out once, close to the ground. He was down. I
shouted with all my strength and fired into the air. I heard some one
cry, “The Master!” The knotted black struggle broke into scattering
units, the fire leapt and sank down. The crowd of Beast People fled in
sudden panic before me, up the beach. In my excitement I fired at their
retreating backs as they disappeared among the bushes. Then I turned to
the black heaps upon the ground.
Montgomery lay on his back, with the hairy-grey Beast-man sprawling
across his body. The brute was dead, but still gripping Montgomery’s
throat with its curving claws. Near by lay M’ling on his face and quite
still, his neck bitten open and the upper part of the smashed
brandy-bottle in his hand. Two other figures lay near the fire,—the one
motionless, the other groaning fitfully, every now and then raising its
head slowly, then dropping it again.
I caught hold of the grey man and pulled him off Montgomery’s body; his
claws drew down the torn coat reluctantly as I dragged him away.
Montgomery was dark in the face and scarcely breathing. I splashed
sea-water on his face and pillowed his head on my rolled-up coat.
M’ling was dead. The wounded creature by the fire—it was a Wolf-brute
with a bearded grey face—lay, I found, with the fore part of its body
upon the still glowing timber. The wretched thing was injured so
dreadfully that in mercy I blew its brains out at once. The other brute
was one of the Bull-men swathed in white. He too was dead. The rest of
the Beast People had vanished from the beach.
I went to Montgomery again and knelt beside him, cursing my ignorance
of medicine. The fire beside me had sunk down, and only charred beams
of timber glowing at the central ends and mixed with a grey ash of
brushwood remained. I wondered casually where Montgomery had got his
wood. Then I saw that the dawn was upon us. The sky had grown brighter,
the setting moon was becoming pale and opaque in the luminous blue of
the day. The sky to the eastward was rimmed with red.
Suddenly I heard a thud and a hissing behind me, and, looking round,
sprang to my feet with a cry of horror. Against the warm dawn great
tumultuous masses of black smoke were boiling up out of the enclosure,
and through their stormy darkness shot flickering threads of blood-red
flame. Then the thatched roof caught. I saw the curving charge of the
flames across the sloping straw. A spurt of fire jetted from the window
of my room.
I knew at once what had happened. I remembered the crash I had heard.
When I had rushed out to Montgomery’s assistance, I had overturned the
lamp.
The hopelessness of saving any of the contents of the enclosure stared
me in the face. My mind came back to my plan of flight, and turning
swiftly I looked to see where the two boats lay upon the beach. They
were gone! Two axes lay upon the sands beside me; chips and splinters
were scattered broadcast, and the ashes of the bonfire were blackening
and smoking under the dawn. Montgomery had burnt the boats to revenge
himself upon me and prevent our return to mankind!
A sudden convulsion of rage shook me. I was almost moved to batter his
foolish head in, as he lay there helpless at my feet. Then suddenly his
hand moved, so feebly, so pitifully, that my wrath vanished. He
groaned, and opened his eyes for a minute. I knelt down beside him and
raised his head. He opened his eyes again, staring silently at the
dawn, and then they met mine. The lids fell.
“Sorry,” he said presently, with an effort. He seemed trying to think.
“The last,” he murmured, “the last of this silly universe. What a
mess—”
I listened. His head fell helplessly to one side. I thought some drink
might revive him; but there was neither drink nor vessel in which to
bring drink at hand. He seemed suddenly heavier. My heart went cold. I
bent down to his face, put my hand through the rent in his blouse. He
was dead; and even as he died a line of white heat, the limb of the
sun, rose eastward beyond the projection of the bay, splashing its
radiance across the sky and turning the dark sea into a weltering
tumult of dazzling light. It fell like a glory upon his death-shrunken
face.
I let his head fall gently upon the rough pillow I had made for him,
and stood up. Before me was the glittering desolation of the sea, the
awful solitude upon which I had already suffered so much; behind me the
island, hushed under the dawn, its Beast People silent and unseen. The
enclosure, with all its provisions and ammunition, burnt noisily, with
sudden gusts of flame, a fitful crackling, and now and then a crash.
The heavy smoke drove up the beach away from me, rolling low over the
distant tree-tops towards the huts in the ravine. Beside me were the
charred vestiges of the boats and these five dead bodies.
Then out of the bushes came three Beast People, with hunched shoulders,
protruding heads, misshapen hands awkwardly held, and inquisitive,
unfriendly eyes, and advanced towards me with hesitating gestures.
XX.
ALONE WITH THE BEAST FOLK.
I faced these people, facing my fate in them, single-handed
now,—literally single-handed, for I had a broken arm. In my pocket was
a revolver with two empty chambers. Among the chips scattered about the
beach lay the two axes that had been used to chop up the boats. The
tide was creeping in behind me. There was nothing for it but courage. I
looked squarely into the faces of the advancing monsters. They avoided
my eyes, and their quivering nostrils investigated the bodies that lay
beyond me on the beach. I took half-a-dozen steps, picked up the
blood-stained whip that lay beneath the body of the Wolf-man, and
cracked it. They stopped and stared at me.
“Salute!” said I. “Bow down!”
They hesitated. One bent his knees. I repeated my command, with my
heart in my mouth, and advanced upon them. One knelt, then the other
two.
I turned and walked towards the dead bodies, keeping my face towards
the three kneeling Beast Men, very much as an actor passing up the
stage faces the audience.
“They broke the Law,” said I, putting my foot on the Sayer of the Law.
“They have been slain,—even the Sayer of the Law; even the Other with
the Whip. Great is the Law! Come and see.”
“None escape,” said one of them, advancing and peering.
“None escape,” said I. “Therefore hear and do as I command.” They stood
up, looking questioningly at one another.
“Stand there,” said I.
I picked up the hatchets and swung them by their heads from the sling
of my arm; turned Montgomery over; picked up his revolver still loaded
in two chambers, and bending down to rummage, found half-a-dozen
cartridges in his pocket.
“Take him,” said I, standing up again and pointing with the whip; “take
him, and carry him out and cast him into the sea.”
They came forward, evidently still afraid of Montgomery, but still more
afraid of my cracking red whip-lash; and after some fumbling and
hesitation, some whip-cracking and shouting, they lifted him gingerly,
carried him down to the beach, and went splashing into the dazzling
welter of the sea.
“On!” said I, “on! Carry him far.”
They went in up to their armpits and stood regarding me.
“Let go,” said I; and the body of Montgomery vanished with a splash.
Something seemed to tighten across my chest.
“Good!” said I, with a break in my voice; and they came back, hurrying
and fearful, to the margin of the water, leaving long wakes of black in
the silver. At the water’s edge they stopped, turning and glaring into
the sea as though they presently expected Montgomery to arise therefrom
and exact vengeance.
“Now these,” said I, pointing to the other bodies.
They took care not to approach the place where they had thrown
Montgomery into the water, but instead, carried the four dead Beast
People slantingly along the beach for perhaps a hundred yards before
they waded out and cast them away.
As I watched them disposing of the mangled remains of M’ling, I heard a
light footfall behind me, and turning quickly saw the big Hyena-swine
perhaps a dozen yards away. His head was bent down, his bright eyes
were fixed upon me, his stumpy hands clenched and held close by his
side. He stopped in this crouching attitude when I turned, his eyes a
little averted.
For a moment we stood eye to eye. I dropped the whip and snatched at
the pistol in my pocket; for I meant to kill this brute, the most
formidable of any left now upon the island, at the first excuse. It may
seem treacherous, but so I was resolved. I was far more afraid of him
than of any other two of the Beast Folk. His continued life was I knew
a threat against mine.
I was perhaps a dozen seconds collecting myself. Then cried I, “Salute!
Bow down!”
His teeth flashed upon me in a snarl. “Who are _you_ that I should—”
Perhaps a little too spasmodically I drew my revolver, aimed quickly
and fired. I heard him yelp, saw him run sideways and turn, knew I had
missed, and clicked back the cock with my thumb for the next shot. But
he was already running headlong, jumping from side to side, and I dared
not risk another miss. Every now and then he looked back at me over his
shoulder. He went slanting along the beach, and vanished beneath the
driving masses of dense smoke that were still pouring out from the
burning enclosure. For some time I stood staring after him. I turned to
my three obedient Beast Folk again and signalled them to drop the body
they still carried. Then I went back to the place by the fire where the
bodies had fallen and kicked the sand until all the brown blood-stains
were absorbed and hidden.
I dismissed my three serfs with a wave of the hand, and went up the
beach into the thickets. I carried my pistol in my hand, my whip thrust
with the hatchets in the sling of my arm. I was anxious to be alone, to
think out the position in which I was now placed. A dreadful thing that
I was only beginning to realise was, that over all this island there
was now no safe place where I could be alone and secure to rest or
sleep. I had recovered strength amazingly since my landing, but I was
still inclined to be nervous and to break down under any great stress.
I felt that I ought to cross the island and establish myself with the
Beast People, and make myself secure in their confidence. But my heart
failed me. I went back to the beach, and turning eastward past the
burning enclosure, made for a point where a shallow spit of coral sand
ran out towards the reef. Here I could sit down and think, my back to
the sea and my face against any surprise. And there I sat, chin on
knees, the sun beating down upon my head and unspeakable dread in my
mind, plotting how I could live on against the hour of my rescue (if
ever rescue came). I tried to review the whole situation as calmly as I
could, but it was difficult to clear the thing of emotion.
I began turning over in my mind the reason of Montgomery’s despair.
“They will change,” he said; “they are sure to change.” And Moreau,
what was it that Moreau had said? “The stubborn beast-flesh grows day
by day back again.” Then I came round to the Hyena-swine. I felt sure
that if I did not kill that brute, he would kill me. The Sayer of the
Law was dead: worse luck. They knew now that we of the Whips could be
killed even as they themselves were killed. Were they peering at me
already out of the green masses of ferns and palms over yonder,
watching until I came within their spring? Were they plotting against
me? What was the Hyena-swine telling them? My imagination was running
away with me into a morass of unsubstantial fears.
My thoughts were disturbed by a crying of sea-birds hurrying towards
some black object that had been stranded by the waves on the beach near
the enclosure. I knew what that object was, but I had not the heart to
go back and drive them off. I began walking along the beach in the
opposite direction, designing to come round the eastward corner of the
island and so approach the ravine of the huts, without traversing the
possible ambuscades of the thickets.
Perhaps half a mile along the beach I became aware of one of my three
Beast Folk advancing out of the landward bushes towards me. I was now
so nervous with my own imaginings that I immediately drew my revolver.
Even the propitiatory gestures of the creature failed to disarm me. He
hesitated as he approached.
“Go away!” cried I.
There was something very suggestive of a dog in the cringing attitude
of the creature. It retreated a little way, very like a dog being sent
home, and stopped, looking at me imploringly with canine brown eyes.
“Go away,” said I. “Do not come near me.”
“May I not come near you?” it said.
“No; go away,” I insisted, and snapped my whip. Then putting my whip in
my teeth, I stooped for a stone, and with that threat drove the
creature away.
So in solitude I came round by the ravine of the Beast People, and
hiding among the weeds and reeds that separated this crevice from the
sea I watched such of them as appeared, trying to judge from their
gestures and appearance how the death of Moreau and Montgomery and the
destruction of the House of Pain had affected them. I know now the
folly of my cowardice. Had I kept my courage up to the level of the
dawn, had I not allowed it to ebb away in solitary thought, I might
have grasped the vacant sceptre of Moreau and ruled over the Beast
People. As it was I lost the opportunity, and sank to the position of a
mere leader among my fellows.
Towards noon certain of them came and squatted basking in the hot sand.
The imperious voices of hunger and thirst prevailed over my dread. I
came out of the bushes, and, revolver in hand, walked down towards
these seated figures. One, a Wolf-woman, turned her head and stared at
me, and then the others. None attempted to rise or salute me. I felt
too faint and weary to insist, and I let the moment pass.
“I want food,” said I, almost apologetically, and drawing near.
“There is food in the huts,” said an Ox-boar-man, drowsily, and looking
away from me.
I passed them, and went down into the shadow and odours of the almost
deserted ravine. In an empty hut I feasted on some specked and
half-decayed fruit; and then after I had propped some branches and
sticks about the opening, and placed myself with my face towards it and
my hand upon my revolver, the exhaustion of the last thirty hours
claimed its own, and I fell into a light slumber, hoping that the
flimsy barricade I had erected would cause sufficient noise in its
removal to save me from surprise.
XXI.
THE REVERSION OF THE BEAST FOLK.
In this way I became one among the Beast People in the Island of Doctor
Moreau. When I awoke, it was dark about me. My arm ached in its
bandages. I sat up, wondering at first where I might be. I heard coarse
voices talking outside. Then I saw that my barricade had gone, and that
the opening of the hut stood clear. My revolver was still in my hand.
I heard something breathing, saw something crouched together close
beside me. I held my breath, trying to see what it was. It began to
move slowly, interminably. Then something soft and warm and moist
passed across my hand. All my muscles contracted. I snatched my hand
away. A cry of alarm began and was stifled in my throat. Then I just
realised what had happened sufficiently to stay my fingers on the
revolver.
“Who is that?” I said in a hoarse whisper, the revolver still pointed.
“_I_—Master.”
“Who are _you?_”
“They say there is no Master now. But I know, I know. I carried the
bodies into the sea, O Walker in the Sea! the bodies of those you slew.
I am your slave, Master.”
“Are you the one I met on the beach?” I asked.
“The same, Master.”
The Thing was evidently faithful enough, for it might have fallen upon
me as I slept. “It is well,” I said, extending my hand for another
licking kiss. I began to realise what its presence meant, and the tide
of my courage flowed. “Where are the others?” I asked.
“They are mad; they are fools,” said the Dog-man. “Even now they talk
together beyond there. They say, ‘The Master is dead. The Other with
the Whip is dead. That Other who walked in the Sea is as we are. We
have no Master, no Whips, no House of Pain, any more. There is an end.
We love the Law, and will keep it; but there is no Pain, no Master, no
Whips for ever again.’ So they say. But I know, Master, I know.”
I felt in the darkness, and patted the Dog-man’s head. “It is well,” I
said again.
“Presently you will slay them all,” said the Dog-man.
“Presently,” I answered, “I will slay them all,—after certain days and
certain things have come to pass. Every one of them save those you
spare, every one of them shall be slain.”
“What the Master wishes to kill, the Master kills,” said the Dog-man
with a certain satisfaction in his voice.
“And that their sins may grow,” I said, “let them live in their folly
until their time is ripe. Let them not know that I am the Master.”
“The Master’s will is sweet,” said the Dog-man, with the ready tact of
his canine blood.
“But one has sinned,” said I. “Him I will kill, whenever I may meet
him. When I say to you, ‘_That is he_,’ see that you fall upon him. And
now I will go to the men and women who are assembled together.”
For a moment the opening of the hut was blackened by the exit of the
Dog-man. Then I followed and stood up, almost in the exact spot where I
had been when I had heard Moreau and his staghound pursuing me. But now
it was night, and all the miasmatic ravine about me was black; and
beyond, instead of a green, sunlit slope, I saw a red fire, before
which hunched, grotesque figures moved to and fro. Farther were the
thick trees, a bank of darkness, fringed above with the black lace of
the upper branches. The moon was just riding up on the edge of the
ravine, and like a bar across its face drove the spire of vapour that
was for ever streaming from the fumaroles of the island.
“Walk by me,” said I, nerving myself; and side by side we walked down
the narrow way, taking little heed of the dim Things that peered at us
out of the huts.
None about the fire attempted to salute me. Most of them disregarded
me, ostentatiously. I looked round for the Hyena-swine, but he was not
there. Altogether, perhaps twenty of the Beast Folk squatted, staring
into the fire or talking to one another.
“He is dead, he is dead! the Master is dead!” said the voice of the
Ape-man to the right of me. “The House of Pain—there is no House of
Pain!”
“He is not dead,” said I, in a loud voice. “Even now he watches us!”
This startled them. Twenty pairs of eyes regarded me.
“The House of Pain is gone,” said I. “It will come again. The Master
you cannot see; yet even now he listens among you.”
“True, true!” said the Dog-man.
They were staggered at my assurance. An animal may be ferocious and
cunning enough, but it takes a real man to tell a lie.
“The Man with the Bandaged Arm speaks a strange thing,” said one of the
Beast Folk.
“I tell you it is so,” I said. “The Master and the House of Pain will
come again. Woe be to him who breaks the Law!”
They looked curiously at one another. With an affectation of
indifference I began to chop idly at the ground in front of me with my
hatchet. They looked, I noticed, at the deep cuts I made in the turf.
Then the Satyr raised a doubt. I answered him. Then one of the dappled
things objected, and an animated discussion sprang up round the fire.
Every moment I began to feel more convinced of my present security. I
talked now without the catching in my breath, due to the intensity of
my excitement, that had troubled me at first. In the course of about an
hour I had really convinced several of the Beast Folk of the truth of
my assertions, and talked most of the others into a dubious state. I
kept a sharp eye for my enemy the Hyena-swine, but he never appeared.
Every now and then a suspicious movement would startle me, but my
confidence grew rapidly. Then as the moon crept down from the zenith,
one by one the listeners began to yawn (showing the oddest teeth in the
light of the sinking fire), and first one and then another retired
towards the dens in the ravine; and I, dreading the silence and
darkness, went with them, knowing I was safer with several of them than
with one alone.
In this manner began the longer part of my sojourn upon this Island of
Doctor Moreau. But from that night until the end came, there was but
one thing happened to tell save a series of innumerable small
unpleasant details and the fretting of an incessant uneasiness. So that
I prefer to make no chronicle for that gap of time, to tell only one
cardinal incident of the ten months I spent as an intimate of these
half-humanised brutes. There is much that sticks in my memory that I
could write,—things that I would cheerfully give my right hand to
forget; but they do not help the telling of the story.
In the retrospect it is strange to remember how soon I fell in with
these monsters’ ways, and gained my confidence again. I had my quarrels
with them of course, and could show some of their teeth-marks still;
but they soon gained a wholesome respect for my trick of throwing
stones and for the bite of my hatchet. And my Saint-Bernard-man’s
loyalty was of infinite service to me. I found their simple scale of
honour was based mainly on the capacity for inflicting trenchant
wounds. Indeed, I may say—without vanity, I hope—that I held something
like pre-eminence among them. One or two, whom in a rare access of high
spirits I had scarred rather badly, bore me a grudge; but it vented
itself chiefly behind my back, and at a safe distance from my missiles,
in grimaces.
The Hyena-swine avoided me, and I was always on the alert for him. My
inseparable Dog-man hated and dreaded him intensely. I really believe
that was at the root of the brute’s attachment to me. It was soon
evident to me that the former monster had tasted blood, and gone the
way of the Leopard-man. He formed a lair somewhere in the forest, and
became solitary. Once I tried to induce the Beast Folk to hunt him, but
I lacked the authority to make them co-operate for one end. Again and
again I tried to approach his den and come upon him unaware; but always
he was too acute for me, and saw or winded me and got away. He too made
every forest pathway dangerous to me and my ally with his lurking
ambuscades. The Dog-man scarcely dared to leave my side.
In the first month or so the Beast Folk, compared with their latter
condition, were human enough, and for one or two besides my canine
friend I even conceived a friendly tolerance. The little pink
sloth-creature displayed an odd affection for me, and took to following
me about. The Monkey-man bored me, however; he assumed, on the strength
of his five digits, that he was my equal, and was for ever jabbering at
me,—jabbering the most arrant nonsense. One thing about him entertained
me a little: he had a fantastic trick of coining new words. He had an
idea, I believe, that to gabble about names that meant nothing was the
proper use of speech. He called it “Big Thinks” to distinguish it from
“Little Thinks,” the sane every-day interests of life. If ever I made a
remark he did not understand, he would praise it very much, ask me to
say it again, learn it by heart, and go off repeating it, with a word
wrong here or there, to all the milder of the Beast People. He thought
nothing of what was plain and comprehensible. I invented some very
curious “Big Thinks” for his especial use. I think now that he was the
silliest creature I ever met; he had developed in the most wonderful
way the distinctive silliness of man without losing one jot of the
natural folly of a monkey.
This, I say, was in the earlier weeks of my solitude among these
brutes. During that time they respected the usage established by the
Law, and behaved with general decorum. Once I found another rabbit torn
to pieces,—by the Hyena-swine, I am assured,—but that was all. It was
about May when I first distinctly perceived a growing difference in
their speech and carriage, a growing coarseness of articulation, a
growing disinclination to talk. My Monkey-man’s jabber multiplied in
volume but grew less and less comprehensible, more and more simian.
Some of the others seemed altogether slipping their hold upon speech,
though they still understood what I said to them at that time. (Can you
imagine language, once clear-cut and exact, softening and guttering,
losing shape and import, becoming mere lumps of sound again?) And they
walked erect with an increasing difficulty. Though they evidently felt
ashamed of themselves, every now and then I would come upon one or
another running on toes and finger-tips, and quite unable to recover
the vertical attitude. They held things more clumsily; drinking by
suction, feeding by gnawing, grew commoner every day. I realised more
keenly than ever what Moreau had told me about the “stubborn
beast-flesh.” They were reverting, and reverting very rapidly.
Some of them—the pioneers in this, I noticed with some surprise, were
all females—began to disregard the injunction of decency, deliberately
for the most part. Others even attempted public outrages upon the
institution of monogamy. The tradition of the Law was clearly losing
its force. I cannot pursue this disagreeable subject.
My Dog-man imperceptibly slipped back to the dog again; day by day he
became dumb, quadrupedal, hairy. I scarcely noticed the transition from
the companion on my right hand to the lurching dog at my side.
As the carelessness and disorganisation increased from day to day, the
lane of dwelling places, at no time very sweet, became so loathsome
that I left it, and going across the island made myself a hovel of
boughs amid the black ruins of Moreau’s enclosure. Some memory of pain,
I found, still made that place the safest from the Beast Folk.
It would be impossible to detail every step of the lapsing of these
monsters,—to tell how, day by day, the human semblance left them; how
they gave up bandagings and wrappings, abandoned at last every stitch
of clothing; how the hair began to spread over the exposed limbs; how
their foreheads fell away and their faces projected; how the
quasi-human intimacy I had permitted myself with some of them in the
first month of my loneliness became a shuddering horror to recall.
The change was slow and inevitable. For them and for me it came without
any definite shock. I still went among them in safety, because no jolt
in the downward glide had released the increasing charge of explosive
animalism that ousted the human day by day. But I began to fear that
soon now that shock must come. My Saint-Bernard-brute followed me to
the enclosure every night, and his vigilance enabled me to sleep at
times in something like peace. The little pink sloth-thing became shy
and left me, to crawl back to its natural life once more among the
tree-branches. We were in just the state of equilibrium that would
remain in one of those “Happy Family” cages which animal-tamers
exhibit, if the tamer were to leave it for ever.
Of course these creatures did not decline into such beasts as the
reader has seen in zoological gardens,—into ordinary bears, wolves,
tigers, oxen, swine, and apes. There was still something strange about
each; in each Moreau had blended this animal with that. One perhaps was
ursine chiefly, another feline chiefly, another bovine chiefly; but
each was tainted with other creatures,—a kind of generalised animalism
appearing through the specific dispositions. And the dwindling shreds
of the humanity still startled me every now and then,—a momentary
recrudescence of speech perhaps, an unexpected dexterity of the
fore-feet, a pitiful attempt to walk erect.
I too must have undergone strange changes. My clothes hung about me as
yellow rags, through whose rents showed the tanned skin. My hair grew
long, and became matted together. I am told that even now my eyes have
a strange brightness, a swift alertness of movement.
At first I spent the daylight hours on the southward beach watching for
a ship, hoping and praying for a ship. I counted on the _Ipecacuanha_
returning as the year wore on; but she never came. Five times I saw
sails, and thrice smoke; but nothing ever touched the island. I always
had a bonfire ready, but no doubt the volcanic reputation of the island
was taken to account for that.
It was only about September or October that I began to think of making
a raft. By that time my arm had healed, and both my hands were at my
service again. At first, I found my helplessness appalling. I had never
done any carpentry or such-like work in my life, and I spent day after
day in experimental chopping and binding among the trees. I had no
ropes, and could hit on nothing wherewith to make ropes; none of the
abundant creepers seemed limber or strong enough, and with all my
litter of scientific education I could not devise any way of making
them so. I spent more than a fortnight grubbing among the black ruins
of the enclosure and on the beach where the boats had been burnt,
looking for nails and other stray pieces of metal that might prove of
service. Now and then some Beast-creature would watch me, and go
leaping off when I called to it. There came a season of thunder-storms
and heavy rain, which greatly retarded my work; but at last the raft
was completed.
I was delighted with it. But with a certain lack of practical sense
which has always been my bane, I had made it a mile or more from the
sea; and before I had dragged it down to the beach the thing had fallen
to pieces. Perhaps it is as well that I was saved from launching it;
but at the time my misery at my failure was so acute that for some days
I simply moped on the beach, and stared at the water and thought of
death.
I did not, however, mean to die, and an incident occurred that warned
me unmistakably of the folly of letting the days pass so,—for each
fresh day was fraught with increasing danger from the Beast People.
I was lying in the shade of the enclosure wall, staring out to sea,
when I was startled by something cold touching the skin of my heel, and
starting round found the little pink sloth-creature blinking into my
face. He had long since lost speech and active movement, and the lank
hair of the little brute grew thicker every day and his stumpy claws
more askew. He made a moaning noise when he saw he had attracted my
attention, went a little way towards the bushes and looked back at me.
At first I did not understand, but presently it occurred to me that he
wished me to follow him; and this I did at last,—slowly, for the day
was hot. When we reached the trees he clambered into them, for he could
travel better among their swinging creepers than on the ground. And
suddenly in a trampled space I came upon a ghastly group. My
Saint-Bernard-creature lay on the ground, dead; and near his body
crouched the Hyena-swine, gripping the quivering flesh with its
misshapen claws, gnawing at it, and snarling with delight. As I
approached, the monster lifted its glaring eyes to mine, its lips went
trembling back from its red-stained teeth, and it growled menacingly.
It was not afraid and not ashamed; the last vestige of the human taint
had vanished. I advanced a step farther, stopped, and pulled out my
revolver. At last I had him face to face.
The brute made no sign of retreat; but its ears went back, its hair
bristled, and its body crouched together. I aimed between the eyes and
fired. As I did so, the Thing rose straight at me in a leap, and I was
knocked over like a ninepin. It clutched at me with its crippled hand,
and struck me in the face. Its spring carried it over me. I fell under
the hind part of its body; but luckily I had hit as I meant, and it had
died even as it leapt. I crawled out from under its unclean weight and
stood up trembling, staring at its quivering body. That danger at least
was over; but this, I knew was only the first of the series of relapses
that must come.
I burnt both of the bodies on a pyre of brushwood; but after that I saw
that unless I left the island my death was only a question of time. The
Beast People by that time had, with one or two exceptions, left the
ravine and made themselves lairs according to their taste among the
thickets of the island. Few prowled by day, most of them slept, and the
island might have seemed deserted to a new-comer; but at night the air
was hideous with their calls and howling. I had half a mind to make a
massacre of them; to build traps, or fight them with my knife. Had I
possessed sufficient cartridges, I should not have hesitated to begin
the killing. There could now be scarcely a score left of the dangerous
carnivores; the braver of these were already dead. After the death of
this poor dog of mine, my last friend, I too adopted to some extent the
practice of slumbering in the daytime in order to be on my guard at
night. I rebuilt my den in the walls of the enclosure, with such a
narrow opening that anything attempting to enter must necessarily make
a considerable noise. The creatures had lost the art of fire too, and
recovered their fear of it. I turned once more, almost passionately
now, to hammering together stakes and branches to form a raft for my
escape.
I found a thousand difficulties. I am an extremely unhandy man (my
schooling was over before the days of Slöjd); but most of the
requirements of a raft I met at last in some clumsy, circuitous way or
other, and this time I took care of the strength. The only
insurmountable obstacle was that I had no vessel to contain the water I
should need if I floated forth upon these untravelled seas. I would
have even tried pottery, but the island contained no clay. I used to go
moping about the island trying with all my might to solve this one last
difficulty. Sometimes I would give way to wild outbursts of rage, and
hack and splinter some unlucky tree in my intolerable vexation. But I
could think of nothing.
And then came a day, a wonderful day, which I spent in ecstasy. I saw a
sail to the southwest, a small sail like that of a little schooner; and
forthwith I lit a great pile of brushwood, and stood by it in the heat
of it, and the heat of the midday sun, watching. All day I watched that
sail, eating or drinking nothing, so that my head reeled; and the
Beasts came and glared at me, and seemed to wonder, and went away. It
was still distant when night came and swallowed it up; and all night I
toiled to keep my blaze bright and high, and the eyes of the Beasts
shone out of the darkness, marvelling. In the dawn the sail was nearer,
and I saw it was the dirty lug-sail of a small boat. But it sailed
strangely. My eyes were weary with watching, and I peered and could not
believe them. Two men were in the boat, sitting low down,—one by the
bows, the other at the rudder. The head was not kept to the wind; it
yawed and fell away.
As the day grew brighter, I began waving the last rag of my jacket to
them; but they did not notice me, and sat still, facing each other. I
went to the lowest point of the low headland, and gesticulated and
shouted. There was no response, and the boat kept on her aimless
course, making slowly, very slowly, for the bay. Suddenly a great white
bird flew up out of the boat, and neither of the men stirred nor
noticed it; it circled round, and then came sweeping overhead with its
strong wings outspread.
Then I stopped shouting, and sat down on the headland and rested my
chin on my hands and stared. Slowly, slowly, the boat drove past
towards the west. I would have swum out to it, but something—a cold,
vague fear—kept me back. In the afternoon the tide stranded the boat,
and left it a hundred yards or so to the westward of the ruins of the
enclosure. The men in it were dead, had been dead so long that they
fell to pieces when I tilted the boat on its side and dragged them out.
One had a shock of red hair, like the captain of the _Ipecacuanha_, and
a dirty white cap lay in the bottom of the boat.
As I stood beside the boat, three of the Beasts came slinking out of
the bushes and sniffing towards me. One of my spasms of disgust came
upon me. I thrust the little boat down the beach and clambered on board
her. Two of the brutes were Wolf-beasts, and came forward with
quivering nostrils and glittering eyes; the third was the horrible
nondescript of bear and bull. When I saw them approaching those
wretched remains, heard them snarling at one another and caught the
gleam of their teeth, a frantic horror succeeded my repulsion. I turned
my back upon them, struck the lug and began paddling out to sea. I
could not bring myself to look behind me.
I lay, however, between the reef and the island that night, and the
next morning went round to the stream and filled the empty keg aboard
with water. Then, with such patience as I could command, I collected a
quantity of fruit, and waylaid and killed two rabbits with my last
three cartridges. While I was doing this I left the boat moored to an
inward projection of the reef, for fear of the Beast People.
XXII.
THE MAN ALONE.
In the evening I started, and drove out to sea before a gentle wind
from the southwest, slowly, steadily; and the island grew smaller and
smaller, and the lank spire of smoke dwindled to a finer and finer line
against the hot sunset. The ocean rose up around me, hiding that low,
dark patch from my eyes. The daylight, the trailing glory of the sun,
went streaming out of the sky, was drawn aside like some luminous
curtain, and at last I looked into the blue gulf of immensity which the
sunshine hides, and saw the floating hosts of the stars. The sea was
silent, the sky was silent. I was alone with the night and silence.
So I drifted for three days, eating and drinking sparingly, and
meditating upon all that had happened to me,—not desiring very greatly
then to see men again. One unclean rag was about me, my hair a black
tangle: no doubt my discoverers thought me a madman.
It is strange, but I felt no desire to return to mankind. I was only
glad to be quit of the foulness of the Beast People. And on the third
day I was picked up by a brig from Apia to San Francisco. Neither the
captain nor the mate would believe my story, judging that solitude and
danger had made me mad; and fearing their opinion might be that of
others, I refrained from telling my adventure further, and professed to
recall nothing that had happened to me between the loss of the _Lady
Vain_ and the time when I was picked up again,—the space of a year.
I had to act with the utmost circumspection to save myself from the
suspicion of insanity. My memory of the Law, of the two dead sailors,
of the ambuscades of the darkness, of the body in the canebrake,
haunted me; and, unnatural as it seems, with my return to mankind came,
instead of that confidence and sympathy I had expected, a strange
enhancement of the uncertainty and dread I had experienced during my
stay upon the island. No one would believe me; I was almost as queer to
men as I had been to the Beast People. I may have caught something of
the natural wildness of my companions. They say that terror is a
disease, and anyhow I can witness that for several years now a restless
fear has dwelt in my mind,—such a restless fear as a half-tamed lion
cub may feel.
My trouble took the strangest form. I could not persuade myself that
the men and women I met were not also another Beast People, animals
half wrought into the outward image of human souls, and that they would
presently begin to revert,—to show first this bestial mark and then
that. But I have confided my case to a strangely able man,—a man who
had known Moreau, and seemed half to credit my story; a mental
specialist,—and he has helped me mightily, though I do not expect that
the terror of that island will ever altogether leave me. At most times
it lies far in the back of my mind, a mere distant cloud, a memory, and
a faint distrust; but there are times when the little cloud spreads
until it obscures the whole sky. Then I look about me at my fellow-men;
and I go in fear. I see faces, keen and bright; others dull or
dangerous; others, unsteady, insincere,—none that have the calm
authority of a reasonable soul. I feel as though the animal was surging
up through them; that presently the degradation of the Islanders will
be played over again on a larger scale. I know this is an illusion;
that these seeming men and women about me are indeed men and women,—men
and women for ever, perfectly reasonable creatures, full of human
desires and tender solicitude, emancipated from instinct and the slaves
of no fantastic Law,—beings altogether different from the Beast Folk.
Yet I shrink from them, from their curious glances, their inquiries and
assistance, and long to be away from them and alone. For that reason I
live near the broad free downland, and can escape thither when this
shadow is over my soul; and very sweet is the empty downland then,
under the wind-swept sky.
When I lived in London the horror was well-nigh insupportable. I could
not get away from men: their voices came through windows; locked doors
were flimsy safeguards. I would go out into the streets to fight with
my delusion, and prowling women would mew after me; furtive, craving
men glance jealously at me; weary, pale workers go coughing by me with
tired eyes and eager paces, like wounded deer dripping blood; old
people, bent and dull, pass murmuring to themselves; and, all
unheeding, a ragged tail of gibing children. Then I would turn aside
into some chapel,—and even there, such was my disturbance, it seemed
that the preacher gibbered “Big Thinks,” even as the Ape-man had done;
or into some library, and there the intent faces over the books seemed
but patient creatures waiting for prey. Particularly nauseous were the
blank, expressionless faces of people in trains and omnibuses; they
seemed no more my fellow-creatures than dead bodies would be, so that I
did not dare to travel unless I was assured of being alone. And even it
seemed that I too was not a reasonable creature, but only an animal
tormented with some strange disorder in its brain which sent it to
wander alone, like a sheep stricken with gid.
This is a mood, however, that comes to me now, I thank God, more
rarely. I have withdrawn myself from the confusion of cities and
multitudes, and spend my days surrounded by wise books,—bright windows
in this life of ours, lit by the shining souls of men. I see few
strangers, and have but a small household. My days I devote to reading
and to experiments in chemistry, and I spend many of the clear nights
in the study of astronomy. There is—though I do not know how there is
or why there is—a sense of infinite peace and protection in the
glittering hosts of heaven. There it must be, I think, in the vast and
eternal laws of matter, and not in the daily cares and sins and
troubles of men, that whatever is more than animal within us must find
its solace and its hope. I _hope_, or I could not live.
And so, in hope and solitude, my story ends.