THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU

byH. G. Wells

Contents

 INTRODUCTION I. IN THE DINGEY OF THE "LADY VAIN" II. THE MAN WHO WAS GOING NOWHERE III. THE STRANGE FACE IV. AT THE SCHOONER'S RAIL V. THE MAN WHO HAD NOWHERE TO GO VI. THE EVIL-LOOKING BOATMEN VII. THE LOCKED DOOR VIII. THE CRYING OF THE PUMA IX. THE THING IN THE FOREST X. THE CRYING OF THE MAN XI. THE HUNTING OF THE MAN XII. THE SAYERS OF THE LAW XIII. THE PARLEY XIV. DOCTOR MOREAU EXPLAINS XV. CONCERNING THE BEAST FOLK XVI. HOW THE BEAST FOLK TASTE BLOOD XVII. A CATASTROPHEXVIII. THE FINDING OF MOREAU XIX. MONTGOMERY'S BANK HOLIDAY XX. ALONE WITH THE BEAST FOLK XXI. THE REVERSION OF THE BEAST FOLK XXII. THE MAN ALONE

INTRODUCTION. 

ON February the First 1887, the Lady Vain was lost by collisionwith a derelict when about the latitude 1 degree S. And longitude107 degrees W. 

On January the Fifth, 1888--that is eleven months and four days after--myuncle, Edward Prendick, a private gentleman, who certainly wentaboard the Lady Vain at Callao, and who had been considered drowned, was picked up in latitude 5 degrees 3' S. And longitude 101 degrees W. In a small open boat of which the name was illegible, but which issupposed to have belonged to the missing schooner Ipecacuanha. He gave such a strange account of himself that he was supposed demented. Subsequently he alleged that his mind was a blank from the momentof his escape from the Lady Vain. His case was discussed amongpsychologists at the time as a curious instance of the lapseof memory consequent upon physical and mental stress. The following narrative was found among his papers by the undersigned, his nephew and heir, but unaccompanied by any definite requestfor publication. 

The only island known to exist in the region in which my uncle waspicked up is Noble's Isle, a small volcanic islet and uninhabited. It was visited in 1891 by H. M. S. Scorpion. A party of sailorsthen landed, but found nothing living thereon except certain curiouswhite moths, some hogs and rabbits, and some rather peculiar rats. So that this narrative is without confirmation in its mostessential particular. With that understood, there seems no harmin putting this strange story before the public in accordance, as I believe, with my uncle's intentions. There is at least thismuch in its behalf: my uncle passed out of human knowledge aboutlatitude 5 degrees S. And longitude 105 degrees E. , and reappearedin the same part of the ocean after a space of eleven months. In some way he must have lived during the interval. And it seems thata schooner called the Ipecacuanha with a drunken captain, John Davies, did start from Africa with a puma and certain other animals aboardin January, 1887, that the vessel was well known at several portsin the South Pacific, and that it finally disappeared from those seas(with a considerable amount of copra aboard), sailing to its unknownfate from Bayna in December, 1887, a date that tallies entirely with myuncle's story. 

CHARLES EDWARD PRENDICK. 

(The Story written by Edward Prendick. )

I. IN THE DINGEY OF THE "LADY VAIN. "

I DO not propose to add anything to what has already been writtenconcerning the loss of the "Lady Vain. " As everyone knows, she collided with a derelict when ten days out from Callao. The longboat, with seven of the crew, was picked up eighteen days afterby H. M. Gunboat "Myrtle, " and the story of their terrible privationshas become quite as well known as the far more horrible "Medusa" case. But I have to add to the published story of the "Lady Vain"another, possibly as horrible and far stranger. It has hithertobeen supposed that the four men who were in the dingey perished, but this is incorrect. I have the best of evidence for this assertion:I was one of the four men. 

But in the first place I must state that there never were four menin the dingey, --the number was three. Constans, who was "seenby the captain to jump into the gig, "{1} luckily for us and unluckilyfor himself did not reach us. He came down out of the tangleof ropes under the stays of the smashed bowsprit, some small ropecaught his heel as he let go, and he hung for a moment head downward, and then fell and struck a block or spar floating in the water. We pulled towards him, but he never came up. 

{1} Daily News, March 17, 1887. 

I say lucky for us he did not reach us, and I might almostsay luckily for himself; for we had only a small breakerof water and some soddened ship's biscuits with us, so suddenhad been the alarm, so unprepared the ship for any disaster. We thought the people on the launch would be better provisioned(though it seems they were not), and we tried to hail them. They couldnot have heard us, and the next morning when the drizzle cleared, --whichwas not until past midday, --we could see nothing of them. We couldnot stand up to look about us, because of the pitching of the boat. The two other men who had escaped so far with me were a man named Helmar, a passenger like myself, and a seaman whose name I don't know, --a shortsturdy man, with a stammer. 

We drifted famishing, and, after our water had come to an end, tormented by an intolerable thirst, for eight days altogether. After the second day the sea subsided slowly to a glassy calm. It isquite impossible for the ordinary reader to imagine those eight days. He has not, luckily for himself, anything in his memory to imagine with. After the first day we said little to one another, and layin our places in the boat and stared at the horizon, or watched, with eyes that grew larger and more haggard every day, the miseryand weakness gaining upon our companions. The sun became pitiless. The water ended on the fourth day, and we were already thinkingstrange things and saying them with our eyes; but it was, I think, the sixth before Helmar gave voice to the thing we had all been thinking. I remember our voices were dry and thin, so that we bent towardsone another and spared our words. I stood out against it with allmy might, was rather for scuttling the boat and perishing togetheramong the sharks that followed us; but when Helmar said that if hisproposal was accepted we should have drink, the sailor came roundto him. 

I would not draw lots however, and in the night the sailor whisperedto Helmar again and again, and I sat in the bows with my clasp-knifein my hand, though I doubt if I had the stuff in me to fight;and in the morning I agreed to Helmar's proposal, and we handedhalfpence to find the odd man. The lot fell upon the sailor;but he was the strongest of us and would not abide by it, and attackedHelmar with his hands. They grappled together and almost stood up. I crawled along the boat to them, intending to help Helmar by graspingthe sailor's leg; but the sailor stumbled with the swaying of the boat, and the two fell upon the gunwale and rolled overboard together. They sank like stones. I remember laughing at that, and wonderingwhy I laughed. The laugh caught me suddenly like a thingfrom without. 

I lay across one of the thwarts for I know not how long, thinking that if I had the strength I would drink sea-waterand madden myself to die quickly. And even as I lay there I saw, with no more interest than if it had been a picture, a sail comeup towards me over the sky-line. My mind must have been wandering, and yet I remember all that happened, quite distinctly. I remember how my head swayed with the seas, and the horizonwith the sail above it danced up and down; but I also rememberas distinctly that I had a persuasion that I was dead, and that Ithought what a jest it was that they should come too late by sucha little to catch me in my body. 

For an endless period, as it seemed to me, I lay with my headon the thwart watching the schooner (she was a little ship, schooner-rigged fore and aft) come up out of the sea. She kept tacking to and fro in a widening compass, for she wassailing dead into the wind. It never entered my head to attemptto attract attention, and I do not remember anything distinctly afterthe sight of her side until I found myself in a little cabin aft. There's a dim half-memory of being lifted up to the gangway, and ofa big round countenance covered with freckles and surrounded with redhair staring at me over the bulwarks. I also had a disconnectedimpression of a dark face, with extraordinary eyes, close to mine;but that I thought was a nightmare, until I met it again. I fancy I recollect some stuff being poured in between my teeth;and that is all. 

II. THE MAN WHO WAS GOING NOWHERE. 

THE cabin in which I found myself was small and rather untidy. A youngish man with flaxen hair, a bristly straw-coloured moustache, and a dropping nether lip, was sitting and holding my wrist. For a minute we stared at each other without speaking. He had watery grey eyes, oddly void of expression. Then just overhead came a sound like an iron bedstead beingknocked about, and the low angry growling of some large animal. At the same time the man spoke. He repeated his question, --"How do youfeel now?"

I think I said I felt all right. I could not recollect how Ihad got there. He must have seen the question in my face, for my voice was inaccessible to me. 

"You were picked up in a boat, starving. The name on the boatwas the 'Lady Vain, ' and there were spots of blood on the gunwale. "

At the same time my eye caught my hand, so thin that it lookedlike a dirty skin-purse full of loose bones, and all the businessof the boat came back to me. 

"Have some of this, " said he, and gave me a dose of somescarlet stuff, iced. 

It tasted like blood, and made me feel stronger. 

"You were in luck, " said he, "to get picked up by a ship with amedical man aboard. " He spoke with a slobbering articulation, with the ghost of a lisp. 

"What ship is this?" I said slowly, hoarse from my long silence. 

"It's a little trader from Arica and Callao. I never askedwhere she came from in the beginning, --out of the landof born fools, I guess. I'm a passenger myself, from Arica. The silly ass who owns her, --he's captain too, named Davies, --he'slost his certificate, or something. You know the kind of man, --callsthe thing the 'Ipecacuanha, ' of all silly, infernal names;though when there's much of a sea without any wind, she certainlyacts according. "

(Then the noise overhead began again, a snarling growland the voice of a human being together. Then another voice, telling some "Heaven-forsaken idiot" to desist. )

"You were nearly dead, " said my interlocutor. "It was a verynear thing, indeed. But I've put some stuff into you now. Notice your arm's sore? Injections. You've been insensible for nearlythirty hours. "

I thought slowly. (I was distracted now by the yelping of a numberof dogs. ) "Am I eligible for solid food?" I asked. 

"Thanks to me, " he said. "Even now the mutton is boiling. "

"Yes, " I said with assurance; "I could eat some mutton. "

"But, " said he with a momentary hesitation, "you know I'm dying to hearof how you came to be alone in that boat. Damn that howling!"I thought I detected a certain suspicion in his eyes. 

He suddenly left the cabin, and I heard him in violent controversywith some one, who seemed to me to talk gibberish in response to him. The matter sounded as though it ended in blows, but in that I thoughtmy ears were mistaken. Then he shouted at the dogs, and returned tothe cabin. 

"Well?" said he in the doorway. "You were just beginning to tell me. "

I told him my name, Edward Prendick, and how I had taken to NaturalHistory as a relief from the dulness of my comfortable independence. 

He seemed interested in this. "I've done some science myself. I didmy Biology at University College, --getting out the ovary of the earthwormand the radula of the snail, and all that. Lord! It's ten years ago. But go on! go on! tell me about the boat. "

He was evidently satisfied with the frankness of my story, which I told in concise sentences enough, for I felt horribly weak;and when it was finished he reverted at once to the topicof Natural History and his own biological studies. He began toquestion me closely about Tottenham Court Road and Gower Street. "Is Caplatzi still flourishing? What a shop that was!"He had evidently been a very ordinary medical student, and driftedincontinently to the topic of the music halls. He told mesome anecdotes. 

"Left it all, " he said, "ten years ago. How jolly it all used to be!But I made a young ass of myself, --played myself out before I wastwenty-one. I daresay it's all different now. But I must look upthat ass of a cook, and see what he's done to your mutton. "

The growling overhead was renewed, so suddenly and with so much savageanger that it startled me. "What's that?" I called after him, but the door had closed. He came back again with the boiled mutton, and I was so excited by the appetising smell of it that I forgotthe noise of the beast that had troubled me. 

After a day of alternate sleep and feeding I was so far recoveredas to be able to get from my bunk to the scuttle, and see the greenseas trying to keep pace with us. I judged the schooner was runningbefore the wind. Montgomery--that was the name of the flaxen-hairedman--came in again as I stood there, and I asked him for some clothes. He lent me some duck things of his own, for those I had worn in the boathad been thrown overboard. They were rather loose for me, for he waslarge and long in his limbs. He told me casually that the captainwas three-parts drunk in his own cabin. As I assumed the clothes, I began asking him some questions about the destination of the ship. He said the ship was bound to Hawaii, but that it had to landhim first. 

"Where?" said I. 

"It's an island, where I live. So far as I know, it hasn't gota name. "

He stared at me with his nether lip dropping, and looked so wilfullystupid of a sudden that it came into my head that he desiredto avoid my questions. I had the discretion to ask no more. 

III. THE STRANGE FACE. 

WE left the cabin and found a man at the companion obstructingour way. He was standing on the ladder with his back to us, peering over the combing of the hatchway. He was, I could see, a misshapen man, short, broad, and clumsy, with a crooked back, a hairy neck, and a head sunk between his shoulders. He was dressedin dark-blue serge, and had peculiarly thick, coarse, black hair. I heard the unseen dogs growl furiously, and forthwith he duckedback, --coming into contact with the hand I put out to fend him offfrom myself. He turned with animal swiftness. 

In some indefinable way the black face thus flashed upon meshocked me profoundly. It was a singularly deformed one. The facial part projected, forming something dimly suggestiveof a muzzle, and the huge half-open mouth showed as big white teethas I had ever seen in a human mouth. His eyes were blood-shotat the edges, with scarcely a rim of white round the hazel pupils. There was a curious glow of excitement in his face. 

"Confound you!" said Montgomery. "Why the devil don't you getout of the way?"

The black-faced man started aside without a word. I went on up the companion, staring at him instinctivelyas I did so. Montgomery stayed at the foot for a moment. "You have no business here, you know, " he said in a deliberate tone. "Your place is forward. "

The black-faced man cowered. "They--won't have me forward. "He spoke slowly, with a queer, hoarse quality in his voice. 

"Won't have you forward!" said Montgomery, in a menacing voice. "But I tell you to go!" He was on the brink of saying something further, then looked up at me suddenly and followed me up the ladder. 

I had paused half way through the hatchway, looking back, still astonishedbeyond measure at the grotesque ugliness of this black-faced creature. I had never beheld such a repulsive and extraordinary face before, and yet--if the contradiction is credible--I experienced atthe same time an odd feeling that in some way I _had_ alreadyencountered exactly the features and gestures that now amazed me. Afterwards it occurred to me that probably I had seen him as Iwas lifted aboard; and yet that scarcely satisfied my suspicionof a previous acquaintance. Yet how one could have set eyes onso singular a face and yet have forgotten the precise occasion, passed my imagination. 

Montgomery's movement to follow me released my attention, and Iturned and looked about me at the flush deck of the little schooner. I was already half prepared by the sounds I had heard for what I saw. Certainly I never beheld a deck so dirty. It was littered withscraps of carrot, shreds of green stuff, and indescribable filth. Fastened by chains to the mainmast were a number of grisly staghounds, who now began leaping and barking at me, and by the mizzen a huge puma wascramped in a little iron cage far too small even to give it turning room. Farther under the starboard bulwark were some big hutches containinga number of rabbits, and a solitary llama was squeezed in a merebox of a cage forward. The dogs were muzzled by leather straps. The only human being on deck was a gaunt and silent sailor atthe wheel. 

The patched and dirty spankers were tense before the wind, and up aloft the little ship seemed carrying every sail she had. The sky was clear, the sun midway down the western sky;long waves, capped by the breeze with froth, were running with us. We went past the steersman to the taffrail, and saw the water comefoaming under the stern and the bubbles go dancing and vanishingin her wake. I turned and surveyed the unsavoury length ofthe ship. 

"Is this an ocean menagerie?" said I. 

"Looks like it, " said Montgomery. 

"What are these beasts for? Merchandise, curios? Does the captainthink he is going to sell them somewhere in the South Seas?"

"It looks like it, doesn't it?" said Montgomery, and turned towardsthe wake again. 

Suddenly we heard a yelp and a volley of furious blasphemyfrom the companion hatchway, and the deformed man with the blackface came up hurriedly. He was immediately followed by a heavyred-haired man in a white cap. At the sight of the formerthe staghounds, who had all tired of barking at me by this time, became furiously excited, howling and leaping against their chains. The black hesitated before them, and this gave the red-haired mantime to come up with him and deliver a tremendous blow betweenthe shoulder-blades. The poor devil went down like a felled ox, and rolled in the dirt among the furiously excited dogs. It was lucky for him that they were muzzled. The red-haired man gavea yawp of exultation and stood staggering, and as it seemed to mein serious danger of either going backwards down the companion hatchwayor forwards upon his victim. 

So soon as the second man had appeared, Montgomery had started forward. "Steady on there!" he cried, in a tone of remonstrance. A couple of sailors appeared on the forecastle. The black-faced man, howling in a singular voice rolled about under the feet of the dogs. No one attempted to help him. The brutes did their best to worry him, butting their muzzles at him. There was a quick dance of theirlithe grey-figured bodies over the clumsy, prostrate figure. The sailors forward shouted, as though it was admirable sport. Montgomery gave an angry exclamation, and went striding downthe deck, and I followed him. The black-faced man scrambledup and staggered forward, going and leaning over the bulwarkby the main shrouds, where he remained, panting and glaringover his shoulder at the dogs. The red-haired man laughed asatisfied laugh. 

"Look here, Captain, " said Montgomery, with his lisp a little accentuated, gripping the elbows of the red-haired man, "this won't do!"

I stood behind Montgomery. The captain came half round, and regarded him with the dull and solemn eyes of a drunken man. "Wha' won't do?" he said, and added, after looking sleepily intoMontgomery's face for a minute, "Blasted Sawbones!"

With a sudden movement he shook his arms free, and after twoineffectual attempts stuck his freckled fists into his side pockets. 

"That man's a passenger, " said Montgomery. "I'd advise you to keepyour hands off him. "

"Go to hell!" said the captain, loudly. He suddenly turnedand staggered towards the side. "Do what I like on my own ship, "he said. 

I think Montgomery might have left him then, seeing the brute was drunk;but he only turned a shade paler, and followed the captainto the bulwarks. 

"Look you here, Captain, " he said; "that man of mine is not to beill-treated. He has been hazed ever since he came aboard. "

For a minute, alcoholic fumes kept the captain speechless. "Blasted Sawbones!" was all he considered necessary. 

I could see that Montgomery had one of those slow, pertinacious tempersthat will warm day after day to a white heat, and never againcool to forgiveness; and I saw too that this quarrel had beensome time growing. "The man's drunk, " said I, perhaps officiously;"you'll do no good. "

Montgomery gave an ugly twist to his dropping lip. "He's always drunk. Do you think that excuses his assaulting his passengers?"

"My ship, " began the captain, waving his hand unsteadilytowards the cages, "was a clean ship. Look at it now!"It was certainly anything but clean. "Crew, " continued the captain, "clean, respectable crew. "

"You agreed to take the beasts. "

"I wish I'd never set eyes on your infernal island. What thedevil--want beasts for on an island like that? Then, that man ofyours--understood he was a man. He's a lunatic; and he hadn't nobusiness aft. Do you think the whole damned ship belongs to you?"

"Your sailors began to haze the poor devil as soon as he came aboard. "

"That's just what he is--he's a devil! an ugly devil! My mencan't stand him. _I_ can't stand him. None of us can't stand him. Nor _you_ either!"

Montgomery turned away. "_You_ leave that man alone, anyhow, " he said, nodding his head as he spoke. 

But the captain meant to quarrel now. He raised his voice. "If he comesthis end of the ship again I'll cut his insides out, I tell you. Cut out his blasted insides! Who are you, to tell me what I'm to do?I tell you I'm captain of this ship, --captain and owner. I'm the law here, I tell you, --the law and the prophets. I bargained to take a man and his attendant to and from Arica, and bring back some animals. I never bargained to carry a mad deviland a silly Sawbones, a--"

Well, never mind what he called Montgomery. I saw the latter takea step forward, and interposed. "He's drunk, " said I. The captainbegan some abuse even fouler than the last. "Shut up!" I said, turning on him sharply, for I had seen danger in Montgomery's white face. With that I brought the downpour on myself. 

However, I was glad to avert what was uncommonly near a scuffle, even at the price of the captain's drunken ill-will. I do not thinkI have ever heard quite so much vile language come in a continuousstream from any man's lips before, though I have frequented eccentriccompany enough. I found some of it hard to endure, though I ama mild-tempered man; but, certainly, when I told the captain to"shut up" I had forgotten that I was merely a bit of human flotsam, cut off from my resources and with my fare unpaid; a mere casualdependant on the bounty, or speculative enterprise, of the ship. He reminded me of it with considerable vigour; but at any rate I preventeda fight. 

IV. AT THE SCHOONER'S RAIL. 

THAT night land was sighted after sundown, and the schoonerhove to. Montgomery intimated that was his destination. It was too far to see any details; it seemed to me then simplya low-lying patch of dim blue in the uncertain blue-grey sea. An almost vertical streak of smoke went up from it into the sky. The captain was not on deck when it was sighted. After he had ventedhis wrath on me he had staggered below, and I understand he went to sleepon the floor of his own cabin. The mate practically assumed the command. He was the gaunt, taciturn individual we had seen at the wheel. Apparently he was in an evil temper with Montgomery. He tooknot the slightest notice of either of us. We dined with him in asulky silence, after a few ineffectual efforts on my part to talk. It struck me too that the men regarded my companion and his animalsin a singularly unfriendly manner. I found Montgomery very reticentabout his purpose with these creatures, and about his destination;and though I was sensible of a growing curiosity as to both, I did notpress him. 

We remained talking on the quarter deck until the sky was thickwith stars. Except for an occasional sound in the yellow-lit forecastleand a movement of the animals now and then, the night was very still. The puma lay crouched together, watching us with shining eyes, a blackheap in the corner of its cage. Montgomery produced some cigars. He talked to me of London in a tone of half-painful reminiscence, asking all kinds of questions about changes that had taken place. He spoke like a man who had loved his life there, and had beensuddenly and irrevocably cut off from it. I gossiped as well as Icould of this and that. All the time the strangeness of him wasshaping itself in my mind; and as I talked I peered at his odd, pallid face in the dim light of the binnacle lantern behind me. Then Ilooked out at the darkling sea, where in the dimness his little islandwas hidden. 

This man, it seemed to me, had come out of Immensity merely to savemy life. To-morrow he would drop over the side, and vanish again outof my existence. Even had it been under commonplace circumstances, it would have made me a trifle thoughtful; but in the first place wasthe singularity of an educated man living on this unknown little island, and coupled with that the extraordinary nature of his luggage. I found myself repeating the captain's question, What did he wantwith the beasts? Why, too, had he pretended they were not his when Ihad remarked about them at first? Then, again, in his personal attendantthere was a bizarre quality which had impressed me profoundly. These circumstances threw a haze of mystery round the man. They laidhold of my imagination, and hampered my tongue. 

Towards midnight our talk of London died away, and we stoodside by side leaning over the bulwarks and staring dreamilyover the silent, starlit sea, each pursuing his own thoughts. It was the atmosphere for sentiment, and I began upon my gratitude. 

"If I may say it, " said I, after a time, "you have saved my life. "

"Chance, " he answered. "Just chance. "

"I prefer to make my thanks to the accessible agent. "

"Thank no one. You had the need, and I had the knowledge;and I injected and fed you much as I might have collected a specimen. I was bored and wanted something to do. If I'd been jaded that day, or hadn't liked your face, well--it's a curious question where you wouldhave been now!"

This damped my mood a little. "At any rate, " I began. 

"It's a chance, I tell you, " he interrupted, "as everything is ina man's life. Only the asses won't see it! Why am I here now, an outcast from civilisation, instead of being a happy man enjoyingall the pleasures of London? Simply because eleven years ago--Ilost my head for ten minutes on a foggy night. "

He stopped. "Yes?" said I. 

"That's all. "

We relapsed into silence. Presently he laughed. "There's something in this starlight that loosens one's tongue. I'm an ass, and yet somehow I would like to tell you. "

"Whatever you tell me, you may rely upon my keeping to myself--ifthat's it. "

He was on the point of beginning, and then shook his head, doubtfully. 

"Don't, " said I. "It is all the same to me. After all, it is betterto keep your secret. There's nothing gained but a little reliefif I respect your confidence. If I don't--well?"

He grunted undecidedly. I felt I had him at a disadvantage, had caughthim in the mood of indiscretion; and to tell the truth I was not curiousto learn what might have driven a young medical student out of London. I have an imagination. I shrugged my shoulders and turned away. Over the taffrail leant a silent black figure, watching the stars. It was Montgomery's strange attendant. It looked over its shoulderquickly with my movement, then looked away again. 

It may seem a little thing to you, perhaps, but it came like a suddenblow to me. The only light near us was a lantern at the wheel. The creature's face was turned for one brief instant out of the dimnessof the stern towards this illumination, and I saw that the eyesthat glanced at me shone with a pale-green light. I did not know thenthat a reddish luminosity, at least, is not uncommon in human eyes. The thing came to me as stark inhumanity. That black figure with itseyes of fire struck down through all my adult thoughts and feelings, and for a moment the forgotten horrors of childhood came back to my mind. Then the effect passed as it had come. An uncouth black figureof a man, a figure of no particular import, hung over the taffrailagainst the starlight, and I found Montgomery was speakingto me. 

"I'm thinking of turning in, then, " said he, "if you've had enoughof this. "

I answered him incongruously. We went below, and he wished megood-night at the door of my cabin. 

That night I had some very unpleasant dreams. The waningmoon rose late. Its light struck a ghostly white beam acrossmy cabin, and made an ominous shape on the planking by my bunk. Then the staghounds woke, and began howling and baying;so that I dreamt fitfully, and scarcely slept until the approachof dawn. 

V. THE MAN WHO HAD NOWHERE TO GO. 

IN the early morning (it was the second morning after my recovery, and I believe the fourth after I was picked up), I awoke through an avenueof tumultuous dreams, --dreams of guns and howling mobs, --and becamesensible of a hoarse shouting above me. I rubbed my eyes and laylistening to the noise, doubtful for a little while of my whereabouts. Then came a sudden pattering of bare feet, the sound of heavy objectsbeing thrown about, a violent creaking and the rattling of chains. I heard the swish of the water as the ship was suddenly brought round, and a foamy yellow-green wave flew across the little roundwindow and left it streaming. I jumped into my clothes and wenton deck. 

As I came up the ladder I saw against the flushed sky--for the sunwas just rising--the broad back and red hair of the captain, and over his shoulder the puma spinning from a tackle rigged onto the mizzen spanker-boom. 

The poor brute seemed horribly scared, and crouched in the bottomof its little cage. 

"Overboard with 'em!" bawled the captain. "Overboard with 'em!We'll have a clean ship soon of the whole bilin' of 'em. "

He stood in my way, so that I had perforce to tap his shoulderto come on deck. He came round with a start, and staggered backa few paces to stare at me. It needed no expert eye to tellthat the man was still drunk. 

"Hullo!" said he, stupidly; and then with a light coming into his eyes, "Why, it's Mister--Mister?"

"Prendick, " said I. 

"Prendick be damned!" said he. "Shut-up, --that's your name. Mister Shut-up. "

It was no good answering the brute; but I certainly did not expecthis next move. He held out his hand to the gangway by which Montgomerystood talking to a massive grey-haired man in dirty-blue flannels, who had apparently just come aboard. 

"That way, Mister Blasted Shut-up! that way!" roared the captain. 

Montgomery and his companion turned as he spoke. 

"What do you mean?" I said. 

"That way, Mister Blasted Shut-up, --that's what I mean!Overboard, Mister Shut-up, --and sharp! We're cleaning the shipout, --cleaning the whole blessed ship out; and overboard you go!"

I stared at him dumfounded. Then it occurred to me that it wasexactly the thing I wanted. The lost prospect of a journey as solepassenger with this quarrelsome sot was not one to mourn over. I turned towards Montgomery. 

"Can't have you, " said Montgomery's companion, concisely. 

"You can't have me!" said I, aghast. He had the squarest and mostresolute face I ever set eyes upon. 

"Look here, " I began, turning to the captain. 

"Overboard!" said the captain. "This ship aint for beastsand cannibals and worse than beasts, any more. Overboard you go, Mister Shut-up. If they can't have you, you goes overboard. But, anyhow, you go--with your friends. I've done with this blessedisland for evermore, amen! I've had enough of it. "

"But, Montgomery, " I appealed. 

He distorted his lower lip, and nodded his head hopelessly atthe grey-haired man beside him, to indicate his powerlessness to help me. 

"I'll see to _you_, presently, " said the captain. 

Then began a curious three-cornered altercation. Alternately I appealed to one and another of the three men, --firstto the grey-haired man to let me land, and then to the drunkencaptain to keep me aboard. I even bawled entreaties to the sailors. Montgomery said never a word, only shook his head. "You're going overboard, I tell you, " was the captain's refrain. "Law be damned! I'm king here. " At last I must confessmy voice suddenly broke in the middle of a vigorous threat. I felt a gust of hysterical petulance, and went aft and stared dismallyat nothing. 

Meanwhile the sailors progressed rapidly with the task ofunshipping the packages and caged animals. A large launch, with two standing lugs, lay under the lea of the schooner;and into this the strange assortment of goods were swung. I did not then see the hands from the island that were receivingthe packages, for the hull of the launch was hidden from meby the side of the schooner. Neither Montgomery nor his companiontook the slightest notice of me, but busied themselves in assistingand directing the four or five sailors who were unloading the goods. The captain went forward interfering rather than assisting. I was alternately despairful and desperate. Once or twiceas I stood waiting there for things to accomplish themselves, I could not resist an impulse to laugh at my miserable quandary. I felt all the wretcheder for the lack of a breakfast. Hunger and a lack of blood-corpuscles take all the manhood from a man. I perceived pretty clearly that I had not the staminaeither to resist what the captain chose to do to expel me, or to force myself upon Montgomery and his companion. So I waited passively upon fate; and the work of transferringMontgomery's possessions to the launch went on as if I didnot exist. 

Presently that work was finished, and then came a struggle. I was hauled, resisting weakly enough, to the gangway. Even then I noticed the oddness of the brown faces of the men who werewith Montgomery in the launch; but the launch was now fully laden, and was shoved off hastily. A broadening gap of green waterappeared under me, and I pushed back with all my strength to avoidfalling headlong. The hands in the launch shouted derisively, and I heard Montgomery curse at them; and then the captain, the mate, and one of the seamen helping him, ran me aft towardsthe stern. 

The dingey of the "Lady Vain" had been towing behind; it washalf full of water, had no oars, and was quite unvictualled. I refused to go aboard her, and flung myself full length on the deck. In the end, they swung me into her by a rope (for they had nostern ladder), and then they cut me adrift. I drifted slowlyfrom the schooner. In a kind of stupor I watched all hands taketo the rigging, and slowly but surely she came round to the wind;the sails fluttered, and then bellied out as the wind came into them. I stared at her weather-beaten side heeling steeply towards me;and then she passed out of my range of view. 

I did not turn my head to follow her. At first I could scarcelybelieve what had happened. I crouched in the bottom of the dingey, stunned, and staring blankly at the vacant, oily sea. Then I realisedthat I was in that little hell of mine again, now half swamped;and looking back over the gunwale, I saw the schooner standing awayfrom me, with the red-haired captain mocking at me over the taffrail, and turning towards the island saw the launch growing smaller as sheapproached the beach. 

Abruptly the cruelty of this desertion became clear to me. I had no means of reaching the land unless I should chance to drift there. I was still weak, you must remember, from my exposure in the boat;I was empty and very faint, or I should have had more heart. But as it was I suddenly began to sob and weep, as I had never donesince I was a little child. The tears ran down my face. In a passionof despair I struck with my fists at the water in the bottom of the boat, and kicked savagely at the gunwale. I prayed aloud for God to letme die. 

VI. THE EVIL-LOOKING BOATMEN. 

BUT the islanders, seeing that I was really adrift, took pity on me. I drifted very slowly to the eastward, approaching the island slantingly;and presently I saw, with hysterical relief, the launch come round andreturn towards me. She was heavily laden, and I could make out as shedrew nearer Montgomery's white-haired, broad-shouldered companion sittingcramped up with the dogs and several packing-cases in the stern sheets. This individual stared fixedly at me without moving or speaking. The black-faced cripple was glaring at me as fixedly in the bowsnear the puma. There were three other men besides, --three strangebrutish-looking fellows, at whom the staghounds were snarling savagely. Montgomery, who was steering, brought the boat by me, and rising, caught and fastened my painter to the tiller to tow me, for there was noroom aboard. 

I had recovered from my hysterical phase by this timeand answered his hail, as he approached, bravely enough. I told him the dingey was nearly swamped, and he reached me a piggin. I was jerked back as the rope tightened between the boats. For some time I was busy baling. 

It was not until I had got the water under (for the waterin the dingey had been shipped; the boat was perfectly sound)that I had leisure to look at the people in the launch again. 

The white-haired man I found was still regarding me steadfastly, but with an expression, as I now fancied, of some perplexity. When my eyes met his, he looked down at the staghound that satbetween his knees. He was a powerfully-built man, as I have said, with a fine forehead and rather heavy features; but his eyeshad that odd drooping of the skin above the lids which oftencomes with advancing years, and the fall of his heavy mouthat the corners gave him an expression of pugnacious resolution. He talked to Montgomery in a tone too low for me to hear. 

From him my eyes travelled to his three men; and a strange crew they were. I saw only their faces, yet there was something in theirfaces--I knew not what--that gave me a queer spasm of disgust. I looked steadily at them, and the impression did not pass, though I failed to see what had occasioned it. They seemedto me then to be brown men; but their limbs were oddly swathedin some thin, dirty, white stuff down even to the fingers and feet:I have never seen men so wrapped up before, and women so only in the East. They wore turbans too, and thereunder peered out their elfinfaces at me, --faces with protruding lower-jaws and bright eyes. They had lank black hair, almost like horsehair, and seemedas they sat to exceed in stature any race of men I have seen. The white-haired man, who I knew was a good six feet in height, sat a head below any one of the three. I found afterwards that reallynone were taller than myself; but their bodies were abnormally long, and the thigh-part of the leg short and curiously twisted. At any rate, they were an amazingly ugly gang, and over the headsof them under the forward lug peered the black face of the man whoseeyes were luminous in the dark. As I stared at them, they met my gaze;and then first one and then another turned away from my direct stare, and looked at me in an odd, furtive manner. It occurred to me that Iwas perhaps annoying them, and I turned my attention to the islandwe were approaching. 

It was low, and covered with thick vegetation, --chiefly a kind of palm, that was new to me. From one point a thin white thread of vapour roseslantingly to an immense height, and then frayed out like a down feather. We were now within the embrace of a broad bay flanked on eitherhand by a low promontory. The beach was of dull-grey sand, and sloped steeply up to a ridge, perhaps sixty or seventy feet abovethe sea-level, and irregularly set with trees and undergrowth. Half way up was a square enclosure of some greyish stone, which I foundsubsequently was built partly of coral and partly of pumiceous lava. Two thatched roofs peeped from within this enclosure. A man stood awaiting us at the water's edge. I fancied while wewere still far off that I saw some other and very grotesque-lookingcreatures scuttle into the bushes upon the slope; but I saw nothingof these as we drew nearer. This man was of a moderate size, and with a black negroid face. He had a large, almost lipless, mouth, extraordinary lank arms, long thin feet, and bow-legs, and stood with his heavy face thrust forward staring at us. He was dressed like Montgomery and his white-haired companion, in jacket and trousers of blue serge. As we came still nearer, this individual began to run to and fro on the beach, making the mostgrotesque movements. 

At a word of command from Montgomery, the four men in the launchsprang up, and with singularly awkward gestures struck the lugs. Montgomery steered us round and into a narrow little dock excavatedin the beach. Then the man on the beach hastened towards us. This dock, as I call it, was really a mere ditch just longenough at this phase of the tide to take the longboat. I heard the bows ground in the sand, staved the dingey off the rudderof the big boat with my piggin, and freeing the painter, landed. The three muffled men, with the clumsiest movements, scrambled outupon the sand, and forthwith set to landing the cargo, assisted bythe man on the beach. I was struck especially by the curiousmovements of the legs of the three swathed and bandaged boatmen, --notstiff they were, but distorted in some odd way, almost as if theywere jointed in the wrong place. The dogs were still snarling, and strained at their chains after these men, as the white-hairedman landed with them. The three big fellows spoke to one anotherin odd guttural tones, and the man who had waited for us onthe beach began chattering to them excitedly--a foreign language, as I fancied--as they laid hands on some bales piled near the stern. Somewhere I had heard such a voice before, and I could not think where. The white-haired man stood, holding in a tumult of six dogs, and bawlingorders over their din. Montgomery, having unshipped the rudder, landed likewise, and all set to work at unloading. I was too faint, what with my long fast and the sun beating down on my bare head, to offerany assistance. 

Presently the white-haired man seemed to recollect my presence, and came up to me. 

"You look, " said he, "as though you had scarcely breakfasted. "His little eyes were a brilliant black under his heavy brows. "I must apologise for that. Now you are our guest, we mustmake you comfortable, --though you are uninvited, you know. "He looked keenly into my face. "Montgomery says you are an educated man, Mr. Prendick; says you know something of science. May I ask whatthat signifies?"

I told him I had spent some years at the Royal College of Science, and had done some researches in biology under Huxley. He raisedhis eyebrows slightly at that. 

"That alters the case a little, Mr. Prendick, " he said, with a trifle more respect in his manner. "As it happens, we are biologists here. This is a biological station--of a sort. "His eye rested on the men in white who were busily hauling the puma, on rollers, towards the walled yard. "I and Montgomery, at least, "he added. Then, "When you will be able to get away, I can't say. We're off the track to anywhere. We see a ship once in a twelve-monthor so. "

He left me abruptly, and went up the beach past this group, and Ithink entered the enclosure. The other two men were with Montgomery, erecting a pile of smaller packages on a low-wheeled truck. The llama was still on the launch with the rabbit hutches;the staghounds were still lashed to the thwarts. The pile of things completed, all three men laid hold of the truckand began shoving the ton-weight or so upon it after the puma. Presently Montgomery left them, and coming back to me held outhis hand. 

"I'm glad, " said he, "for my own part. That captain was a silly ass. He'd have made things lively for you. "

"It was you, " said I, "that saved me again". 

"That depends. You'll find this island an infernally rum place, I promise you. I'd watch my goings carefully, if I were you. _He_--" He hesitated, and seemed to alter his mind about whatwas on his lips. "I wish you'd help me with these rabbits, "he said. 

His procedure with the rabbits was singular. I wadedin with him, and helped him lug one of the hutches ashore. No sooner was that done than he opened the door of it, and tiltingthe thing on one end turned its living contents out on the ground. They fell in a struggling heap one on the top of the other. He clapped his hands, and forthwith they went off with that hoppingrun of theirs, fifteen or twenty of them I should think, upthe beach. 

"Increase and multiply, my friends, " said Montgomery. "Replenish the island. Hitherto we've had a certain lack of meat here. "

As I watched them disappearing, the white-haired man returned with abrandy-flask and some biscuits. "Something to go on with, Prendick, "said he, in a far more familiar tone than before. I made no ado, but set to work on the biscuits at once, while the white-haired manhelped Montgomery to release about a score more of the rabbits. Three big hutches, however, went up to the house with the puma. The brandy I did not touch, for I have been an abstainer frommy birth. 

VII. THE LOCKED DOOR. 

THE reader will perhaps understand that at first everything was so strangeabout me, and my position was the outcome of such unexpected adventures, that I had no discernment of the relative strangeness of thisor that thing. I followed the llama up the beach, and was overtakenby Montgomery, who asked me not to enter the stone enclosure. I noticed then that the puma in its cage and the pile of packageshad been placed outside the entrance to this quadrangle. 

I turned and saw that the launch had now been unloaded, run out again, and was being beached, and the white-haired man was walking towards us. He addressed Montgomery. 

"And now comes the problem of this uninvited guest. What are weto do with him?"

"He knows something of science, " said Montgomery. 

"I'm itching to get to work again--with this new stuff, "said the white-haired man, nodding towards the enclosure. His eyes grew brighter. 

"I daresay you are, " said Montgomery, in anything but a cordial tone. 

"We can't send him over there, and we can't spare the time to buildhim a new shanty; and we certainly can't take him into our confidencejust yet. "

"I'm in your hands, " said I. I had no idea of what he meantby "over there. "

"I've been thinking of the same things, " Montgomery answered. "There's my room with the outer door--"

"That's it, " said the elder man, promptly, looking at Montgomery;and all three of us went towards the enclosure. "I'm sorry to makea mystery, Mr. Prendick; but you'll remember you're uninvited. Our little establishment here contains a secret or so, is a kindof Blue-Beard's chamber, in fact. Nothing very dreadful, really, to asane man; but just now, as we don't know you--"

"Decidedly, " said I, "I should be a fool to take offence at any wantof confidence. "

He twisted his heavy mouth into a faint smile--he was one of thosesaturnine people who smile with the corners of the mouth down, --andbowed his acknowledgment of my complaisance. The main entranceto the enclosure was passed; it was a heavy wooden gate, framed in ironand locked, with the cargo of the launch piled outside it, and atthe corner we came to a small doorway I had not previously observed. The white-haired man produced a bundle of keys from the pocketof his greasy blue jacket, opened this door, and entered. His keys, and the elaborate locking-up of the place even while itwas still under his eye, struck me as peculiar. I followed him, and found myself in a small apartment, plainly but not uncomfortablyfurnished and with its inner door, which was slightly ajar, opening intoa paved courtyard. This inner door Montgomery at once closed. A hammock was slung across the darker corner of the room, and asmall unglazed window defended by an iron bar looked out towardsthe sea. 

This the white-haired man told me was to be my apartment;and the inner door, which "for fear of accidents, " he said, he would lock on the other side, was my limit inward. He called my attention to a convenient deck-chair before the window, and to an array of old books, chiefly, I found, surgical worksand editions of the Latin and Greek classics (languages Icannot read with any comfort), on a shelf near the hammock. He left the room by the outer door, as if to avoid opening the innerone again. 

"We usually have our meals in here, " said Montgomery, and then, as if in doubt, went out after the other. "Moreau!" I heardhim call, and for the moment I do not think I noticed. Then as I handled the books on the shelf it came up in consciousness:Where had I heard the name of Moreau before? I sat down beforethe window, took out the biscuits that still remained to me, and ate them with an excellent appetite. Moreau!

Through the window I saw one of those unaccountable men in white, lugging apacking-case along the beach. Presently the window-frame hid him. Then I heard a key inserted and turned in the lock behind me. After a little while I heard through the locked door the noiseof the staghounds, that had now been brought up from the beach. They were not barking, but sniffing and growling in a curious fashion. I could hear the rapid patter of their feet, and Montgomery's voicesoothing them. 

I was very much impressed by the elaborate secrecy of these two menregarding the contents of the place, and for some time I was thinkingof that and of the unaccountable familiarity of the name of Moreau;but so odd is the human memory that I could not then recall thatwell-known name in its proper connection. From that my thoughtswent to the indefinable queerness of the deformed man on the beach. I never saw such a gait, such odd motions as he pulled at the box. I recalled that none of these men had spoken to me, though mostof them I had found looking at me at one time or another in apeculiarly furtive manner, quite unlike the frank stare of yourunsophisticated savage. Indeed, they had all seemed remarkably taciturn, and when they did speak, endowed with very uncanny voices. What was wrong with them? Then I recalled the eyes of Montgomery'sungainly attendant. 

Just as I was thinking of him he came in. He was now dressed in white, and carried a little tray with some coffee and boiled vegetables thereon. I could hardly repress a shuddering recoil as he came, bending amiably, and placed the tray before me on the table. Then astonishmentparalysed me. Under his stringy black locks I saw his ear;it jumped upon me suddenly close to my face. The man had pointed ears, covered with a fine brown fur!

"Your breakfast, sair, " he said. 

I stared at his face without attempting to answer him. He turnedand went towards the door, regarding me oddly over his shoulder. I followed him out with my eyes; and as I did so, by some odd trickof unconscious cerebration, there came surging into my head the phrase, "The Moreau Hollows"--was it? "The Moreau--" Ah! It sent my memoryback ten years. "The Moreau Horrors!" The phrase drifted loosein my mind for a moment, and then I saw it in red lettering on a littlebuff-coloured pamphlet, to read which made one shiver and creep. Then I remembered distinctly all about it. That long-forgottenpamphlet came back with startling vividness to my mind. I had been a mere lad then, and Moreau was, I suppose, about fifty, --aprominent and masterful physiologist, well-known in scientificcircles for his extraordinary imagination and his brutal directnessin discussion. 

Was this the same Moreau? He had published some very astonishingfacts in connection with the transfusion of blood, and inaddition was known to be doing valuable work on morbid growths. Then suddenly his career was closed. He had to leave England. A journalist obtained access to his laboratory in the capacityof laboratory-assistant, with the deliberate intention of makingsensational exposures; and by the help of a shocking accident(if it was an accident), his gruesome pamphlet became notorious. On the day of its publication a wretched dog, flayed andotherwise mutilated, escaped from Moreau's house. It was inthe silly season, and a prominent editor, a cousin of the temporarylaboratory-assistant, appealed to the conscience of the nation. It was not the first time that conscience has turned against the methodsof research. The doctor was simply howled out of the country. It may be that he deserved to be; but I still think that the tepidsupport of his fellow-investigators and his desertion by the greatbody of scientific workers was a shameful thing. Yet some ofhis experiments, by the journalist's account, were wantonly cruel. He might perhaps have purchased his social peace by abandoninghis investigations; but he apparently preferred the latter, as most menwould who have once fallen under the overmastering spell of research. He was unmarried, and had indeed nothing but his own interestto consider. 

I felt convinced that this must be the same man. Everything pointedto it. It dawned upon me to what end the puma and the otheranimals--which had now been brought with other luggage into theenclosure behind the house--were destined; and a curious faint odour, the halitus of something familiar, an odour that had been inthe background of my consciousness hitherto, suddenly came forwardinto the forefront of my thoughts. It was the antiseptic odourof the dissecting-room. I heard the puma growling through the wall, and one of the dogs yelped as though it had been struck. 

Yet surely, and especially to another scientific man, there wasnothing so horrible in vivisection as to account for this secrecy;and by some odd leap in my thoughts the pointed ears and luminouseyes of Montgomery's attendant came back again before me withthe sharpest definition. I stared before me out at the green sea, frothing under a freshening breeze, and let these and other strangememories of the last few days chase one another through my mind. 

What could it all mean? A locked enclosure on a lonely island, a notorious vivisector, and these crippled and distorted men?

VIII. THE CRYING OF THE PUMA. 

MONTGOMERY interrupted my tangle of mystification and suspicionabout one o'clock, and his grotesque attendant followed himwith a tray bearing bread, some herbs and other eatables, a flask of whiskey, a jug of water, and three glasses and knives. I glanced askance at this strange creature, and found him watchingme with his queer, restless eyes. Montgomery said he would lunchwith me, but that Moreau was too preoccupied with some workto come. 

"Moreau!" said I. "I know that name. "

"The devil you do!" said he. "What an ass I was to mention it to you!I might have thought. Anyhow, it will give you an inklingof our--mysteries. Whiskey?"

"No, thanks; I'm an abstainer. "

"I wish I'd been. But it's no use locking the doorafter the steed is stolen. It was that infernalstuff which led to my coming here, --that, and a foggy night. I thought myself in luck at the time, when Moreau offered to get me off. It's queer--"

"Montgomery, " said I, suddenly, as the outer door closed, "why hasyour man pointed ears?"

"Damn!" he said, over his first mouthful of food. He stared at mefor a moment, and then repeated, "Pointed ears?"

"Little points to them, " said I, as calmly as possible, with a catchin my breath; "and a fine black fur at the edges?"

He helped himself to whiskey and water with great deliberation. "I was under the impression--that his hair covered his ears. "

"I saw them as he stooped by me to put that coffee you sent to meon the table. And his eyes shine in the dark. "

By this time Montgomery had recovered from the surprise of my question. "I always thought, " he said deliberately, with a certainaccentuation of his flavouring of lisp, "that there _was_ somethingthe matter with his ears, from the way he covered them. What were they like?"

I was persuaded from his manner that this ignorance was a pretence. Still, I could hardly tell the man that I thought him a liar. "Pointed, " I said; "rather small and furry, --distinctly furry. But the whole man is one of the strangest beings I ever seteyes on. "

A sharp, hoarse cry of animal pain came from the enclosure behind us. Its depth and volume testified to the puma. I saw Montgomery wince. 

"Yes?" he said. 

"Where did you pick up the creature?"

"San Francisco. He's an ugly brute, I admit. Half-witted, you know. Can't remember where he came from. But I'm used to him, you know. We both are. How does he strike you?"

"He's unnatural, " I said. "There's something about him--don'tthink me fanciful, but it gives me a nasty little sensation, a tightening of my muscles, when he comes near me. It's a touch--ofthe diabolical, in fact. "

Montgomery had stopped eating while I told him this. "Rum!" he said. "I can't see it. " He resumed his meal. "I had no idea of it, "he said, and masticated. "The crew of the schooner must havefelt it the same. Made a dead set at the poor devil. You sawthe captain?"

Suddenly the puma howled again, this time more painfully. Montgomery swore under his breath. I had half a mind to attack himabout the men on the beach. Then the poor brute within gave ventto a series of short, sharp cries. 

"Your men on the beach, " said I; "what race are they?"

"Excellent fellows, aren't they?" said he, absentmindedly, knitting his brows as the animal yelled out sharply. 

I said no more. There was another outcry worse than the former. He looked at me with his dull grey eyes, and then took somemore whiskey. He tried to draw me into a discussion about alcohol, professing to have saved my life with it. He seemed anxiousto lay stress on the fact that I owed my life to him. I answeredhim distractedly. 

Presently our meal came to an end; the misshapen monster withthe pointed ears cleared the remains away, and Montgomery leftme alone in the room again. All the time he had been in a stateof ill-concealed irritation at the noise of the vivisected puma. He had spoken of his odd want of nerve, and left me to theobvious application. 

I found myself that the cries were singularly irritating, and they grew in depth and intensity as the afternoon wore on. They were painful at first, but their constant resurgence at lastaltogether upset my balance. I flung aside a crib of Horace Ihad been reading, and began to clench my fists, to bite my lips, and to pace the room. Presently I got to stopping my ears withmy fingers. 

The emotional appeal of those yells grew upon me steadily, grew at last to such an exquisite expression of suffering that Icould stand it in that confined room no longer. I steppedout of the door into the slumberous heat of the late afternoon, and walking past the main entrance--locked again, I noticed--turnedthe corner of the wall. 

The crying sounded even louder out of doors. It was as if all the painin the world had found a voice. Yet had I known such pain was inthe next room, and had it been dumb, I believe--I have thought since--Icould have stood it well enough. It is when suffering finds a voiceand sets our nerves quivering that this pity comes troubling us. But in spite of the brilliant sunlight and the green fans of the treeswaving in the soothing sea-breeze, the world was a confusion, blurred with drifting black and red phantasms, until I was out of earshotof the house in the chequered wall. 

IX. THE THING IN THE FOREST. 

I STRODE through the undergrowth that clothed the ridge behind the house, scarcely heeding whither I went; passed on through the shadow of a thickcluster of straight-stemmed trees beyond it, and so presently foundmyself some way on the other side of the ridge, and descending towardsa streamlet that ran through a narrow valley. I paused and listened. The distance I had come, or the intervening masses of thicket, deadened any sound that might be coming from the enclosure. The air was still. Then with a rustle a rabbit emerged, and wentscampering up the slope before me. I hesitated, and sat down in the edgeof the shade. 

The place was a pleasant one. The rivulet was hiddenby the luxuriant vegetation of the banks save at one point, where I caught a triangular patch of its glittering water. On the farther side I saw through a bluish haze a tangle of treesand creepers, and above these again the luminous blue of the sky. Here and there a splash of white or crimson marked the blooming of sometrailing epiphyte. I let my eyes wander over this scene for a while, and then began to turn over in my mind again the strange peculiaritiesof Montgomery's man. But it was too hot to think elaborately, and presently I fell into a tranquil state midway between dozingand waking. 

From this I was aroused, after I know not how long, by arustling amidst the greenery on the other side of the stream. For a moment I could see nothing but the waving summits ofthe ferns and reeds. Then suddenly upon the bank of the streamappeared Something--at first I could not distinguish what it was. It bowed its round head to the water, and began to drink. Then I saw it was a man, going on all-fours like a beast. He was clothedin bluish cloth, and was of a copper-coloured hue, with black hair. It seemed that grotesque ugliness was an invariable character ofthese islanders. I could hear the suck of the water at his lips ashe drank. 

I leant forward to see him better, and a piece of lava, detached bymy hand, went pattering down the slope. He looked up guiltily, and his eyes met mine. Forthwith he scrambled to his feet, and stood wiping his clumsy hand across his mouth and regarding me. His legs were scarcely half the length of his body. So, staring one another out of countenance, we remained for perhapsthe space of a minute. Then, stopping to look back once or twice, he slunk off among the bushes to the right of me, and I heardthe swish of the fronds grow faint in the distance and die away. Long after he had disappeared, I remained sitting up staringin the direction of his retreat. My drowsy tranquillityhad gone. 

I was startled by a noise behind me, and turning suddenly sawthe flapping white tail of a rabbit vanishing up the slope. I jumped to my feet. The apparition of this grotesque, half-bestialcreature had suddenly populated the stillness of the afternoon for me. I looked around me rather nervously, and regretted that I was unarmed. Then I thought that the man I had just seen had been clothedin bluish cloth, had not been naked as a savage would have been;and I tried to persuade myself from that fact that he was after allprobably a peaceful character, that the dull ferocity of his countenancebelied him. 

Yet I was greatly disturbed at the apparition. I walkedto the left along the slope, turning my head about and peeringthis way and that among the straight stems of the trees. Why should a man go on all-fours and drink with his lips? Presently Iheard an animal wailing again, and taking it to be the puma, I turnedabout and walked in a direction diametrically opposite to the sound. This led me down to the stream, across which I stepped and pushedmy way up through the undergrowth beyond. 

I was startled by a great patch of vivid scarlet on the ground, and going up to it found it to be a peculiar fungus, branched andcorrugated like a foliaceous lichen, but deliquescing into slimeat the touch; and then in the shadow of some luxuriant ferns Icame upon an unpleasant thing, --the dead body of a rabbit coveredwith shining flies, but still warm and with the head torn off. I stopped aghast at the sight of the scattered blood. Here at least was one visitor to the island disposed of!There were no traces of other violence about it. It looked as though ithad been suddenly snatched up and killed; and as I stared at the littlefurry body came the difficulty of how the thing had been done. The vague dread that had been in my mind since I had seen the inhumanface of the man at the stream grew distincter as I stood there. I began to realise the hardihood of my expedition among theseunknown people. The thicket about me became altered to my imagination. Every shadow became something more than a shadow, --became an ambush;every rustle became a threat. Invisible things seemed watching me. I resolved to go back to the enclosure on the beach. I suddenlyturned away and thrust myself violently, possibly even frantically, through the bushes, anxious to get a clear space about meagain. 

I stopped just in time to prevent myself emerging upon an open space. It was a kind of glade in the forest, made by a fall; seedlings werealready starting up to struggle for the vacant space; and beyond, the dense growth of stems and twining vines and splashes of fungusand flowers closed in again. Before me, squatting together uponthe fungoid ruins of a huge fallen tree and still unaware of my approach, were three grotesque human figures. One was evidently a female;the other two were men. They were naked, save for swathingsof scarlet cloth about the middle; and their skins were of a dullpinkish-drab colour, such as I had seen in no savages before. They had fat, heavy, chinless faces, retreating foreheads, and a scant bristly hair upon their heads. I never saw suchbestial-looking creatures. 

They were talking, or at least one of the men was talking to the other two, and all three had been too closely interested to heed the rustling ofmy approach. They swayed their heads and shoulders from side to side. The speaker's words came thick and sloppy, and though I couldhear them distinctly I could not distinguish what he said. He seemed to me to be reciting some complicated gibberish. Presently his articulation became shriller, and spreading his handshe rose to his feet. At that the others began to gibber in unison, also rising to their feet, spreading their hands and swaying theirbodies in rhythm with their chant. I noticed then the abnormalshortness of their legs, and their lank, clumsy feet. All three beganslowly to circle round, raising and stamping their feet and wavingtheir arms; a kind of tune crept into their rhythmic recitation, and a refrain, --"Aloola, " or "Balloola, " it sounded like. Their eyes began to sparkle, and their ugly faces to brighten, with an expression of strange pleasure. Saliva dripped from theirlipless mouths. 

Suddenly, as I watched their grotesque and unaccountable gestures, I perceived clearly for the first time what it was that had offended me, what had given me the two inconsistent and conflicting impressionsof utter strangeness and yet of the strangest familiarity. The three creatures engaged in this mysterious rite were human in shape, and yet human beings with the strangest air about them of somefamiliar animal. Each of these creatures, despite its human form, its rag of clothing, and the rough humanity of its bodily form, had woven into it--into its movements, into the expression ofits countenance, into its whole presence--some now irresistiblesuggestion of a hog, a swinish taint, the unmistakable mark ofthe beast. 

I stood overcome by this amazing realisation and then the most horriblequestionings came rushing into my mind. They began leaping in the air, first one and then the other, whooping and grunting. Then one slipped, and for a moment was on all-fours, --to recover, indeed, forthwith. But that transitory gleam of the true animalism of these monsterswas enough. 

I turned as noiselessly as possible, and becoming every nowand then rigid with the fear of being discovered, as a branchcracked or a leaf rustled, I pushed back into the bushes. It was long before I grew bolder, and dared to move freely. My only idea for the moment was to get away from these foul beings, and Iscarcely noticed that I had emerged upon a faint pathway amidst the trees. Then suddenly traversing a little glade, I saw with an unpleasant starttwo clumsy legs among the trees, walking with noiseless footstepsparallel with my course, and perhaps thirty yards away from me. The head and upper part of the body were hidden by a tangle of creeper. I stopped abruptly, hoping the creature did not see me. The feet stopped as I did. So nervous was I that I controlledan impulse to headlong flight with the utmost difficulty. Then looking hard, I distinguished through the interlacing networkthe head and body of the brute I had seen drinking. He moved his head. There was an emerald flash in his eyes as he glanced at me fromthe shadow of the trees, a half-luminous colour that vanished ashe turned his head again. He was motionless for a moment, and thenwith a noiseless tread began running through the green confusion. In another moment he had vanished behind some bushes. I could not see him, but I felt that he had stopped and was watching meagain. 

What on earth was he, --man or beast? What did he want with me?I had no weapon, not even a stick. Flight would be madness. At any rate the Thing, whatever it was, lacked the courage to attack me. Setting my teeth hard, I walked straight towards him. I was anxious not to show the fear that seemed chilling my backbone. I pushed through a tangle of tall white-flowered bushes, and saw him twenty paces beyond, looking over his shoulder at meand hesitating. I advanced a step or two, looking steadfastly intohis eyes. 

"Who are you?" said I. 

He tried to meet my gaze. "No!" he said suddenly, and turning wentbounding away from me through the undergrowth. Then he turnedand stared at me again. His eyes shone brightly out of the duskunder the trees. 

My heart was in my mouth; but I felt my only chance was bluff, and walked steadily towards him. He turned again, and vanishedinto the dusk. Once more I thought I caught the glint of his eyes, and that was all. 

For the first time I realised how the lateness of the hourmight affect me. The sun had set some minutes since, the swiftdusk of the tropics was already fading out of the eastern sky, and a pioneer moth fluttered silently by my head. Unless I wouldspend the night among the unknown dangers of the mysterious forest, I must hasten back to the enclosure. The thought of a returnto that pain-haunted refuge was extremely disagreeable, but stillmore so was the idea of being overtaken in the open by darknessand all that darkness might conceal. I gave one more lookinto the blue shadows that had swallowed up this odd creature, and then retraced my way down the slope towards the stream, going as I judged in the direction from which I had come. 

I walked eagerly, my mind confused with many things, and presently found myself in a level place among scattered trees. The colourless clearness that comes after the sunset flushwas darkling; the blue sky above grew momentarily deeper, and the little stars one by one pierced the attenuated light;the interspaces of the trees, the gaps in the further vegetation, that had been hazy blue in the daylight, grew black and mysterious. I pushed on. The colour vanished from the world. The tree-tops rose against the luminous blue sky in inky silhouette, and all below that outline melted into one formless blackness. Presently the trees grew thinner, and the shrubby undergrowthmore abundant. Then there was a desolate space covered witha white sand, and then another expanse of tangled bushes. I did not remember crossing the sand-opening before. I began to be tormented by a faint rustling upon my right hand. I thought at first it was fancy, for whenever I stopped therewas silence, save for the evening breeze in the tree-tops. Then when I turned to hurry on again there was an echo tomy footsteps. 

I turned away from the thickets, keeping to the more open ground, and endeavouring by sudden turns now and then to surprise somethingin the act of creeping upon me. I saw nothing, and neverthelessmy sense of another presence grew steadily. I increased my pace, and after some time came to a slight ridge, crossed it, and turned sharply, regarding it steadfastly from the further side. It came out blackand clear-cut against the darkling sky; and presently a shapelesslump heaved up momentarily against the sky-line and vanished again. I felt assured now that my tawny-faced antagonist was stalking meonce more; and coupled with that was another unpleasant realisation, that I had lost my way. 

For a time I hurried on hopelessly perplexed, and pursued by thatstealthy approach. Whatever it was, the Thing either lacked the courageto attack me, or it was waiting to take me at some disadvantage. I kept studiously to the open. At times I would turn and listen;and presently I had half persuaded myself that my pursuer had abandonedthe chase, or was a mere creation of my disordered imagination. Then I heard the sound of the sea. I quickened my footstepsalmost into a run, and immediately there was a stumble inmy rear. 

I turned suddenly, and stared at the uncertain trees behind me. One black shadow seemed to leap into another. I listened, rigid, and heard nothing but the creep of the blood in my ears. I thought that my nerves were unstrung, and that my imaginationwas tricking me, and turned resolutely towards the sound of thesea again. 

In a minute or so the trees grew thinner, and I emerged upona bare, low headland running out into the sombre water. The night was calm and clear, and the reflection of the growingmultitude of the stars shivered in the tranquil heaving of the sea. Some way out, the wash upon an irregular band of reef shonewith a pallid light of its own. Westward I saw the zodiacallight mingling with the yellow brilliance of the evening star. The coast fell away from me to the east, and westward it was hiddenby the shoulder of the cape. Then I recalled the fact that Moreau'sbeach lay to the west. 

A twig snapped behind me, and there was a rustle. I turned, and stoodfacing the dark trees. I could see nothing--or else I could see too much. Every dark form in the dimness had its ominous quality, its peculiarsuggestion of alert watchfulness. So I stood for perhaps a minute, and then, with an eye to the trees still, turned westward to crossthe headland; and as I moved, one among the lurking shadows movedto follow me. 

My heart beat quickly. Presently the broad sweep of a bayto the westward became visible, and I halted again. The noiseless shadow halted a dozen yards from me. A little point of light shone on the further bend of the curve, and the grey sweep of the sandy beach lay faint under the starlight. Perhaps two miles away was that little point of light. To get to the beach I should have to go through the trees where theshadows lurked, and down a bushy slope. 

I could see the Thing rather more distinctly now. It was no animal, for it stood erect. At that I opened my mouth to speak, and founda hoarse phlegm choked my voice. I tried again, and shouted, "Who is there?" There was no answer. I advanced a step. The Thing did not move, only gathered itself together. My footstruck a stone. That gave me an idea. Without taking my eyes offthe black form before me, I stooped and picked up this lump of rock;but at my motion the Thing turned abruptly as a dog might have done, and slunk obliquely into the further darkness. Then I recalleda schoolboy expedient against big dogs, and twisted the rock intomy handkerchief, and gave this a turn round my wrist. I heard a movementfurther off among the shadows, as if the Thing was in retreat. Then suddenly my tense excitement gave way; I broke into a profuseperspiration and fell a-trembling, with my adversary routed and thisweapon in my hand. 

It was some time before I could summon resolution to go down throughthe trees and bushes upon the flank of the headland to the beach. At last I did it at a run; and as I emerged from the thicketupon the sand, I heard some other body come crashing after me. At that I completely lost my head with fear, and began runningalong the sand. Forthwith there came the swift patter of softfeet in pursuit. I gave a wild cry, and redoubled my pace. Some dim, black things about three or four times the size of rabbitswent running or hopping up from the beach towards the bushes asI passed. 

So long as I live, I shall remember the terror of that chase. I ran near the water's edge, and heard every now and then the splashof the feet that gained upon me. Far away, hopelessly far, was the yellow light. All the night about us was black and still. Splash, splash, came the pursuing feet, nearer and nearer. I felt my breath going, for I was quite out of training; it whoopedas I drew it, and I felt a pain like a knife at my side. I perceivedthe Thing would come up with me long before I reached the enclosure, and, desperate and sobbing for my breath, I wheeled round upon itand struck at it as it came up to me, --struck with all my strength. The stone came out of the sling of the handkerchief as I did so. As I turned, the Thing, which had been running on all-fours, rose to its feet, and the missile fell fair on its left temple. The skull rang loud, and the animal-man blundered into me, thrust me back with its hands, and went staggering past me to fallheadlong upon the sand with its face in the water; and there it laystill. 

I could not bring myself to approach that black heap. I leftit there, with the water rippling round it, under the still stars, and giving it a wide berth pursued my way towards the yellow glowof the house; and presently, with a positive effect of relief, came the pitiful moaning of the puma, the sound that hadoriginally driven me out to explore this mysterious island. At that, though I was faint and horribly fatigued, I gatheredtogether all my strength, and began running again towards the light. I thought I heard a voice calling me. 

X. THE CRYING OF THE MAN. 

AS I drew near the house I saw that the light shone fromthe open door of my room; and then I heard coming from outof the darkness at the side of that orange oblong of light, the voice of Montgomery shouting, "Prendick!" I continued running. Presently I heard him again. I replied by a feeble "Hullo!"and in another moment had staggered up to him. 

"Where have you been?" said he, holding me at arm's length, so that the light from the door fell on my face. "We have bothbeen so busy that we forgot you until about half an hour ago. "He led me into the room and sat me down in the deck chair. For awhile I was blinded by the light. "We did not think you would startto explore this island of ours without telling us, " he said; and then, "I was afraid--But--what--Hullo!"

My last remaining strength slipped from me, and my head fell forwardon my chest. I think he found a certain satisfaction in givingme brandy. 

"For God's sake, " said I, "fasten that door. "

"You've been meeting some of our curiosities, eh?" said he. 

He locked the door and turned to me again. He asked me no questions, but gave me some more brandy and water and pressed me to eat. I was in a state of collapse. He said something vague about hisforgetting to warn me, and asked me briefly when I left the houseand what I had seen. 

I answered him as briefly, in fragmentary sentences. "Tell mewhat it all means, " said I, in a state bordering on hysterics. 

"It's nothing so very dreadful, " said he. "But I think youhave had about enough for one day. " The puma suddenly gavea sharp yell of pain. At that he swore under his breath. "I'm damned, " said he, "if this place is not as bad as Gower Street, with its cats. "

"Montgomery, " said I, "what was that thing that came after me?Was it a beast or was it a man?"

"If you don't sleep to-night, " he said, "you'll be off yourhead to-morrow. "

I stood up in front of him. "What was that thing that came after me?"I asked. 

He looked me squarely in the eyes, and twisted his mouth askew. His eyes, which had seemed animated a minute before, went dull. "From your account, " said he, "I'm thinking it was a bogle. "

I felt a gust of intense irritation, which passed as quickly as it came. I flung myself into the chair again, and pressed my hands on my forehead. The puma began once more. 

Montgomery came round behind me and put his hand on my shoulder. "Look here, Prendick, " he said, "I had no business to letyou drift out into this silly island of ours. But it's notso bad as you feel, man. Your nerves are worked to rags. Let me give you something that will make you sleep. _That_--will keepon for hours yet. You must simply get to sleep, or I won't answerfor it. "

I did not reply. I bowed forward, and covered my face with my hands. Presently he returned with a small measure containing a dark liquid. This he gave me. I took it unresistingly, and he helped me intothe hammock. 

When I awoke, it was broad day. For a little while I lay flat, staring at the roof above me. The rafters, I observed, were madeout of the timbers of a ship. Then I turned my head, and saw a mealprepared for me on the table. I perceived that I was hungry, and prepared to clamber out of the hammock, which, very politelyanticipating my intention, twisted round and deposited me uponall-fours on the floor. 

I got up and sat down before the food. I had a heavy feelingin my head, and only the vaguest memory at first of the thingsthat had happened over night. The morning breeze blew verypleasantly through the unglazed window, and that and the foodcontributed to the sense of animal comfort which I experienced. Presently the door behind me--the door inward towards the yardof the enclosure--opened. I turned and saw Montgomery's face. 

"All right, " said he. "I'm frightfully busy. " And he shut the door. 

Afterwards I discovered that he forgot to re-lock it. Then I recalled the expression of his face the previous night, and with that the memory of all I had experienced reconstructeditself before me. Even as that fear came back to me came a cryfrom within; but this time it was not the cry of a puma. I put down the mouthful that hesitated upon my lips, and listened. Silence, save for the whisper of the morning breeze. I began to think myears had deceived me. 

After a long pause I resumed my meal, but with my ears still vigilant. Presently I heard something else, very faint and low. I sat as if frozen in my attitude. Though it was faint and low, it moved me more profoundly than all that I had hitherto heard ofthe abominations behind the wall. There was no mistake this time inthe quality of the dim, broken sounds; no doubt at all of their source. For it was groaning, broken by sobs and gasps of anguish. It was no brute this time; it was a human being in torment!

As I realised this I rose, and in three steps had crossed the room, seized the handle of the door into the yard, and flung it openbefore me. 

"Prendick, man! Stop!" cried Montgomery, intervening. 

A startled deerhound yelped and snarled. There was blood, I saw, in the sink, --brown, and some scarlet--and I smelt the peculiarsmell of carbolic acid. Then through an open doorway beyond, in the dim light of the shadow, I saw something bound painfullyupon a framework, scarred, red, and bandaged; and then blottingthis out appeared the face of old Moreau, white and terrible. In a moment he had gripped me by the shoulder with a hand that wassmeared red, had twisted me off my feet, and flung me headlong backinto my own room. He lifted me as though I was a little child. I fell at full length upon the floor, and the door slammedand shut out the passionate intensity of his face. Then I heard the key turn in the lock, and Montgomery's voicein expostulation. 

"Ruin the work of a lifetime, " I heard Moreau say. 

"He does not understand, " said Montgomery. And other thingsthat were inaudible. 

"I can't spare the time yet, " said Moreau. 

The rest I did not hear. I picked myself up and stood trembling, my mind a chaos of the most horrible misgivings. Could it be possible, I thought, that such a thing as the vivisection of men was carriedon here? The question shot like lightning across a tumultuous sky;and suddenly the clouded horror of my mind condensed into a vividrealisation of my own danger. 

XI. THE HUNTING OF THE MAN. 

IT came before my mind with an unreasonable hope of escape thatthe outer door of my room was still open to me. I was convinced now, absolutely assured, that Moreau had been vivisecting a human being. All the time since I had heard his name, I had been trying to linkin my mind in some way the grotesque animalism of the islanderswith his abominations; and now I thought I saw it all. The memory of his work on the transfusion of blood recurred to me. These creatures I had seen were the victims of some hideous experiment. These sickening scoundrels had merely intended to keep me back, to fool me with their display of confidence, and presently to fallupon me with a fate more horrible than death, --with torture;and after torture the most hideous degradation it is possibleto conceive, --to send me off a lost soul, a beast, to the rest of theirComus rout. 

I looked round for some weapon. Nothing. Then with an inspiration Iturned over the deck chair, put my foot on the side of it, and toreaway the side rail. It happened that a nail came away with the wood, and projecting, gave a touch of danger to an otherwise petty weapon. I heard a step outside, and incontinently flung open the door and foundMontgomery within a yard of it. He meant to lock the outer door!I raised this nailed stick of mine and cut at his face;but he sprang back. I hesitated a moment, then turned and fled, round the corner of the house. "Prendick, man!" I heard hisastonished cry, "don't be a silly ass, man!"

Another minute, thought I, and he would have had me locked in, and as ready as a hospital rabbit for my fate. He emerged behindthe corner, for I heard him shout, "Prendick!" Then he began to runafter me, shouting things as he ran. This time running blindly, I went northeastward in a direction at right angles to myprevious expedition. Once, as I went running headlong up the beach, I glanced over my shoulder and saw his attendant with him. I ran furiously up the slope, over it, then turning eastward alonga rocky valley fringed on either side with jungle I ran for perhapsa mile altogether, my chest straining, my heart beating in my ears;and then hearing nothing of Montgomery or his man, and feelingupon the verge of exhaustion, I doubled sharply back towardsthe beach as I judged, and lay down in the shelter of a canebrake. There I remained for a long time, too fearful to move, and indeedtoo fearful even to plan a course of action. The wild scene about melay sleeping silently under the sun, and the only sound near me wasthe thin hum of some small gnats that had discovered me. Presently Ibecame aware of a drowsy breathing sound, the soughing of the sea uponthe beach. 

After about an hour I heard Montgomery shouting my name, far away to the north. That set me thinking of my plan of action. As I interpreted it then, this island was inhabited only by these twovivisectors and their animalised victims. Some of these no doubtthey could press into their service against me if need arose. I knew both Moreau and Montgomery carried revolvers; and, save for a feeblebar of deal spiked with a small nail, the merest mockery of a mace, I was unarmed. 

So I lay still there, until I began to think of food and drink;and at that thought the real hopelessness of my position came home to me. I knew no way of getting anything to eat. I was too ignorant of botanyto discover any resort of root or fruit that might lie about me;I had no means of trapping the few rabbits upon the island. It grew blanker the more I turned the prospect over. At last inthe desperation of my position, my mind turned to the animal men Ihad encountered. I tried to find some hope in what I remembered of them. In turn I recalled each one I had seen, and tried to draw some auguryof assistance from my memory. 

Then suddenly I heard a staghound bay, and at that realised a new danger. I took little time to think, or they would have caught me then, but snatching up my nailed stick, rushed headlong from my hiding-placetowards the sound of the sea. I remember a growth of thorny plants, with spines that stabbed like pen-knives. I emerged bleeding andwith torn clothes upon the lip of a long creek opening northward. I went straight into the water without a minute's hesitation, wading upthe creek, and presently finding myself kneedeep in a little stream. I scrambled out at last on the westward bank, and with my heart beatingloudly in my ears, crept into a tangle of ferns to await the issue. I heard the dog (there was only one) draw nearer, and yelp when it cameto the thorns. Then I heard no more, and presently began to think Ihad escaped. 

The minutes passed; the silence lengthened out, and at lastafter an hour of security my courage began to return to me. By this time I was no longer very much terrified or very miserable. I had, as it were, passed the limit of terror and despair. I felt now that my life was practically lost, and that persuasionmade me capable of daring anything. I had even a certain wishto encounter Moreau face to face; and as I had waded into the water, I remembered that if I were too hard pressed at least one pathof escape from torment still lay open to me, --they could notvery well prevent my drowning myself. I had half a mind to drownmyself then; but an odd wish to see the whole adventure out, a queer, impersonal, spectacular interest in myself, restrained me. I stretched my limbs, sore and painful from the pricks of the spiny plants, and stared around me at the trees; and, so suddenly that it seemedto jump out of the green tracery about it, my eyes lit upon a blackface watching me. I saw that it was the simian creature who hadmet the launch upon the beach. He was clinging to the obliquestem of a palm-tree. I gripped my stick, and stood up facing him. He began chattering. "You, you, you, " was all I could distinguishat first. Suddenly he dropped from the tree, and in anothermoment was holding the fronds apart and staring curiouslyat me. 

I did not feel the same repugnance towards this creature which Ihad experienced in my encounters with the other Beast Men. "You, " he said, "in the boat. " He was a man, then, --at least as muchof a man as Montgomery's attendant, --for he could talk. 

"Yes, " I said, "I came in the boat. From the ship. "

"Oh!" he said, and his bright, restless eyes travelled over me, to my hands, to the stick I carried, to my feet, to the tattered placesin my coat, and the cuts and scratches I had received from the thorns. He seemed puzzled at something. His eyes came back to my hands. He held his own hand out and counted his digits slowly, "One, two, three, four, five--eigh?"

I did not grasp his meaning then; afterwards I was to find thata great proportion of these Beast People had malformed hands, lacking sometimes even three digits. But guessing this wasin some way a greeting, I did the same thing by way of reply. He grinned with immense satisfaction. Then his swift rovingglance went round again; he made a swift movement--and vanished. The fern fronds he had stood between came swishing together, I pushed out of the brake after him, and was astonished to findhim swinging cheerfully by one lank arm from a rope of creepersthat looped down from the foliage overhead. His back was to me. 

"Hullo!" said I. 

He came down with a twisting jump, and stood facing me. 

"I say, " said I, "where can I get something to eat?"

"Eat!" he said. "Eat Man's food, now. " And his eye went backto the swing of ropes. "At the huts. "

"But where are the huts?"

"Oh!"

"I'm new, you know. "

At that he swung round, and set off at a quick walk. All his motions were curiously rapid. "Come along, " said he. 

I went with him to see the adventure out. I guessed the huts were somerough shelter where he and some more of these Beast People lived. I might perhaps find them friendly, find some handle in their mindsto take hold of. I did not know how far they had forgotten theirhuman heritage. 

My ape-like companion trotted along by my side, with his handshanging down and his jaw thrust forward. I wondered what memoryhe might have in him. "How long have you been on this island?"said I. 

"How long?" he asked; and after having the question repeated, he held up three fingers. 

The creature was little better than an idiot. I triedto make out what he meant by that, and it seems I bored him. After another question or two he suddenly left my side and wentleaping at some fruit that hung from a tree. He pulled downa handful of prickly husks and went on eating the contents. I noted this with satisfaction, for here at least was a hint for feeding. I tried him with some other questions, but his chattering, prompt responseswere as often as not quite at cross purposes with my question. Some few were appropriate, others quite parrot-like. 

I was so intent upon these peculiarities that I scarcely noticed the pathwe followed. Presently we came to trees, all charred and brown, and so to a bare place covered with a yellow-white incrustation, across which a drifting smoke, pungent in whiffs to nose and eyes, went drifting. On our right, over a shoulder of bare rock, I sawthe level blue of the sea. The path coiled down abruptly into a narrowravine between two tumbled and knotty masses of blackish scoriae. Into this we plunged. 

It was extremely dark, this passage, after the blinding sunlight reflectedfrom the sulphurous ground. Its walls grew steep, and approachedeach other. Blotches of green and crimson drifted across my eyes. My conductor stopped suddenly. "Home!" said he, and I stoodin a floor of a chasm that was at first absolutely dark to me. I heard some strange noises, and thrust the knuckles of my left handinto my eyes. I became aware of a disagreeable odor, like that ofa monkey's cage ill-cleaned. Beyond, the rock opened again upona gradual slope of sunlit greenery, and on either hand the lightsmote down through narrow ways into the central gloom. 

XII. THE SAYERS OF THE LAW. 

THEN something cold touched my hand. I started violently, and saw close to me a dim pinkish thing, looking more like a flayedchild than anything else in the world. The creature had exactlythe mild but repulsive features of a sloth, the same low foreheadand slow gestures. 

As the first shock of the change of light passed, I saw about memore distinctly. The little sloth-like creature was standing andstaring at me. My conductor had vanished. The place was a narrowpassage between high walls of lava, a crack in the knotted rock, and on either side interwoven heaps of sea-mat, palm-fans, and reedsleaning against the rock formed rough and impenetrably dark dens. The winding way up the ravine between these was scarcely three yards wide, and was disfigured by lumps of decaying fruit-pulp and other refuse, which accounted for the disagreeable stench of the place. 

The little pink sloth-creature was still blinking at me when myApe-man reappeared at the aperture of the nearest of these dens, and beckoned me in. As he did so a slouching monster wriggled outof one of the places, further up this strange street, and stood up infeatureless silhouette against the bright green beyond, staring at me. I hesitated, having half a mind to bolt the way I had come; and then, determined to go through with the adventure, I gripped my nailed stickabout the middle and crawled into the little evil-smelling lean-toafter my conductor. 

It was a semi-circular space, shaped like the half of a bee-hive;and against the rocky wall that formed the inner side of it was a pileof variegated fruits, cocoa-nuts among others. Some rough vesselsof lava and wood stood about the floor, and one on a rough stool. There was no fire. In the darkest corner of the hut sat a shapelessmass of darkness that grunted "Hey!" as I came in, and my Ape-manstood in the dim light of the doorway and held out a split cocoa-nutto me as I crawled into the other corner and squatted down. I took it, and began gnawing it, as serenely as possible, in spite of acertain trepidation and the nearly intolerable closeness of the den. The little pink sloth-creature stood in the aperture of the hut, and something else with a drab face and bright eyes came staring overits shoulder. 

"Hey!" came out of the lump of mystery opposite. "It is a man. "

"It is a man, " gabbled my conductor, "a man, a man, a five-man, like me. "

"Shut up!" said the voice from the dark, and grunted. I gnawed my cocoa-nut amid an impressive stillness. 

I peered hard into the blackness, but could distinguish nothing. 

"It is a man, " the voice repeated. "He comes to live with us?"

It was a thick voice, with something in it--a kind of whistlingovertone--that struck me as peculiar; but the English accent wasstrangely good. 

The Ape-man looked at me as though he expected something. I perceived the pause was interrogative. "He comes to live with you, "I said. 

"It is a man. He must learn the Law. "

I began to distinguish now a deeper blackness in the black, a vague outline of a hunched-up figure. Then I noticedthe opening of the place was darkened by two more black heads. My hand tightened on my stick. 

The thing in the dark repeated in a louder tone, "Say the words. "I had missed its last remark. "Not to go on all-fours; that is the Law, "it repeated in a kind of sing-song. 

I was puzzled. 

"Say the words, " said the Ape-man, repeating, and the figuresin the doorway echoed this, with a threat in the tone of their voices. 

I realised that I had to repeat this idiotic formula; and thenbegan the insanest ceremony. The voice in the dark began intoninga mad litany, line by line, and I and the rest to repeat it. As they did so, they swayed from side to side in the oddest way, and beat their hands upon their knees; and I followed their example. I could have imagined I was already dead and in another world. That dark hut, these grotesque dim figures, just flecked here andthere by a glimmer of light, and all of them swaying in unison andchanting, "Not to go on all-fours; that is the Law. Are we not Men? "Not to suck up Drink; that is the Law. Are we not Men? "Not to eat Fish or Flesh; that is the Law. Are we not Men? "Not to claw the Bark of Trees; that is the Law. Are we not Men? "Not to chase other Men; that is the Law. Are we not Men?"

And so from the prohibition of these acts of folly, on to the prohibition of what I thought then were the maddest, most impossible, and most indecent things one could well imagine. A kind of rhythmic fervour fell on all of us; we gabbledand swayed faster and faster, repeating this amazing Law. Superficially the contagion of these brutes was upon me, but deepdown within me the laughter and disgust struggled together. We ran through a long list of prohibitions, and then the chant swunground to a new formula. 

 "_His_ is the House of Pain. "_His_ is the Hand that makes. "_His_ is the Hand that wounds. "_His_ is the Hand that heals. "

And so on for another long series, mostly quite incomprehensiblegibberish to me about _Him_, whoever he might be. I could have fanciedit was a dream, but never before have I heard chanting in a dream. 

"_His_ is the lightning flash, " we sang. "_His_ is the deep, salt sea. "

A horrible fancy came into my head that Moreau, after animalisingthese men, had infected their dwarfed brains with a kind ofdeification of himself. However, I was too keenly aware of whiteteeth and strong claws about me to stop my chanting on that account. 

"_His_ are the stars in the sky. "

At last that song ended. I saw the Ape-man's face shiningwith perspiration; and my eyes being now accustomed to the darkness, I saw more distinctly the figure in the corner from which the voice came. It was the size of a man, but it seemed covered with a dull greyhair almost like a Skye-terrier. What was it? What were they all?Imagine yourself surrounded by all the most horrible cripplesand maniacs it is possible to conceive, and you may understanda little of my feelings with these grotesque caricatures of humanityabout me. 

"He is a five-man, a five-man, a five-man--like me, " said the Ape-man. 

I held out my hands. The grey creature in the corner leant forward. 

"Not to run on all-fours; that is the Law. Are we not Men?"he said. 

He put out a strangely distorted talon and gripped my fingers. The thing was almost like the hoof of a deer produced into claws. I could have yelled with surprise and pain. His face cameforward and peered at my nails, came forward into the light ofthe opening of the hut and I saw with a quivering disgust that itwas like the face of neither man nor beast, but a mere shockof grey hair, with three shadowy over-archings to mark the eyesand mouth. 

"He has little nails, " said this grisly creature in his hairy beard. "It is well. "

He threw my hand down, and instinctively I gripped my stick. 

"Eat roots and herbs; it is His will, " said the Ape-man. 

"I am the Sayer of the Law, " said the grey figure. "Here comeall that be new to learn the Law. I sit in the darkness and saythe Law. "

"It is even so, " said one of the beasts in the doorway. 

"Evil are the punishments of those who break the Law. None escape. "

"None escape, " said the Beast Folk, glancing furtively at one another. 

"None, none, " said the Ape-man, --"none escape. See! I did a little thing, a wrong thing, once. I jabbered, jabbered, stopped talking. None could understand. I am burnt, branded in the hand. He is great. He is good!"

"None escape, " said the grey creature in the corner. 

"None escape, " said the Beast People, looking askance at one another. 

"For every one the want that is bad, " said the grey Sayer of the Law. "What you will want we do not know; we shall know. Some wantto follow things that move, to watch and slink and wait and spring;to kill and bite, bite deep and rich, sucking the blood. It is bad. 'Not to chase other Men; that is the Law. Are we not Men? Not to eat Flesh or Fish; that is the Law. Are wenot Men?'"

"None escape, " said a dappled brute standing in the doorway. 

"For every one the want is bad, " said the grey Sayer of the Law. "Some want to go tearing with teeth and hands into the roots of things, snuffing into the earth. It is bad. "

"None escape, " said the men in the door. 

"Some go clawing trees; some go scratching at the graves of the dead;some go fighting with foreheads or feet or claws; some bite suddenly, none giving occasion; some love uncleanness. "

"None escape, " said the Ape-man, scratching his calf. 

"None escape, " said the little pink sloth-creature. 

"Punishment is sharp and sure. Therefore learn the Law. Say the words. "

And incontinently he began again the strange litany of the Law, and again I and all these creatures began singing and swaying. My head reeled with this jabbering and the close stench of the place;but I kept on, trusting to find presently some chance of anew development. 

"Not to go on all-fours; that is the Law. Are we not Men?"

We were making such a noise that I noticed nothing of a tumult outside, until some one, who I think was one of the two Swine Men Ihad seen, thrust his head over the little pink sloth-creatureand shouted something excitedly, something that I did not catch. Incontinently those at the opening of the hut vanished; my Ape-manrushed out; the thing that had sat in the dark followed him(I only observed that it was big and clumsy, and covered with silveryhair), and I was left alone. Then before I reached the aperture I heardthe yelp of a staghound. 

In another moment I was standing outside the hovel, my chair-railin my hand, every muscle of me quivering. Before me were the clumsybacks of perhaps a score of these Beast People, their misshapen headshalf hidden by their shoulder-blades. They were gesticulating excitedly. Other half-animal faces glared interrogation out of the hovels. Looking in the direction in which they faced, I saw coming throughthe haze under the trees beyond the end of the passage of dens the darkfigure and awful white face of Moreau. He was holding the leapingstaghound back, and close behind him came Montgomery revolverin hand. 

For a moment I stood horror-struck. I turned and saw the passagebehind me blocked by another heavy brute, with a huge greyface and twinkling little eyes, advancing towards me. I looked round and saw to the right of me and a half-dozen yardsin front of me a narrow gap in the wall of rock through which a rayof light slanted into the shadows. 

"Stop!" cried Moreau as I strode towards this, and then, "Hold him!"

At that, first one face turned towards me and then others. Their bestial minds were happily slow. I dashed my shoulderinto a clumsy monster who was turning to see what Moreau meant, and flung him forward into another. I felt his hands fly round, clutching at me and missing me. The little pink sloth-creaturedashed at me, and I gashed down its ugly face with the nailin my stick and in another minute was scrambling up a steepside pathway, a kind of sloping chimney, out of the ravine. I heard a howl behind me, and cries of "Catch him!" "Hold him!"and the grey-faced creature appeared behind me and jammedhis huge bulk into the cleft. "Go on! go on!" they howled. I clambered up the narrow cleft in the rock and came out uponthe sulphur on the westward side of the village of the Beast Men. 

That gap was altogether fortunate for me, for the narrow chimney, slanting obliquely upward, must have impeded the nearer pursuers. I ran over the white space and down a steep slope, through a scattered growth of trees, and came to a low-lyingstretch of tall reeds, through which I pushed into a dark, thick undergrowth that was black and succulent under foot. As I plunged into the reeds, my foremost pursuers emerged from the gap. I broke my way through this undergrowth for some minutes. The air behind me and about me was soon full of threatening cries. I heard the tumult of my pursuers in the gap up the slope, then thecrashing of the reeds, and every now and then the crackling crashof a branch. Some of the creatures roared like excited beasts of prey. The staghound yelped to the left. I heard Moreau and Montgomery shoutingin the same direction. I turned sharply to the right. It seemedto me even then that I heard Montgomery shouting for me to run formy life. 

Presently the ground gave rich and oozy under my feet; but I wasdesperate and went headlong into it, struggled through kneedeep, and so came to a winding path among tall canes. The noise of mypursuers passed away to my left. In one place three strange, pink, hopping animals, about the size of cats, bolted before my footsteps. This pathway ran up hill, across another open space coveredwith white incrustation, and plunged into a canebrake again. Then suddenly it turned parallel with the edge of a steep-walled gap, which came without warning, like the ha-ha of an English park, --turnedwith an unexpected abruptness. I was still running with allmy might, and I never saw this drop until I was flying headlong throughthe air. 

I fell on my forearms and head, among thorns, and rose with a tornear and bleeding face. I had fallen into a precipitous ravine, rocky and thorny, full of a hazy mist which drifted about me in wisps, and with a narrow streamlet from which this mist came meanderingdown the centre. I was astonished at this thin fog in the fullblaze of daylight; but I had no time to stand wondering then. I turned to my right, down-stream, hoping to come to the seain that direction, and so have my way open to drown myself. It was only later I found that I had dropped my nailed stick inmy fall. 

Presently the ravine grew narrower for a space, and carelesslyI stepped into the stream. I jumped out again pretty quickly, for the water was almost boiling. I noticed too there was a thinsulphurous scum drifting upon its coiling water. Almost immediatelycame a turn in the ravine, and the indistinct blue horizon. The nearer sea was flashing the sun from a myriad facets. I saw my death before me; but I was hot and panting, with the warmblood oozing out on my face and running pleasantly through my veins. I felt more than a touch of exultation too, at having distancedmy pursuers. It was not in me then to go out and drown myself yet. I stared back the way I had come. 

I listened. Save for the hum of the gnats and the chirp of some smallinsects that hopped among the thorns, the air was absolutely still. Then came the yelp of a dog, very faint, and a chattering and gibbering, the snap of a whip, and voices. They grew louder, then fainter again. The noise receded up the stream and faded away. For a while the chasewas over; but I knew now how much hope of help for me lay in theBeast People. 

XIII. A PARLEY. 

I TURNED again and went on down towards the sea. I found the hot streambroadened out to a shallow, weedy sand, in which an abundance of crabsand long-bodied, many-legged creatures started from my footfall. I walked to the very edge of the salt water, and then I felt I was safe. I turned and stared, arms akimbo, at the thick green behind me, into which the steamy ravine cut like a smoking gash. But, as I say, I was too full of excitement and (a true saying, though those who have never known danger may doubt it) too desperateto die. 

Then it came into my head that there was one chance before me yet. While Moreau and Montgomery and their bestial rabble chased methrough the island, might I not go round the beach until I cameto their enclosure, --make a flank march upon them, in fact, and then with a rock lugged out of their loosely-built wall, perhaps, smash in the lock of the smaller door and see what I could find(knife, pistol, or what not) to fight them with when they returned?It was at any rate something to try. 

So I turned to the westward and walked along by the water's edge. The setting sun flashed his blinding heat into my eyes. The slight Pacific tide was running in with a gentle ripple. Presently the shore fell away southward, and the sun came roundupon my right hand. Then suddenly, far in front of me, I sawfirst one and then several figures emerging from the bushes, --Moreau, with his grey staghound, then Montgomery, and two others. At that I stopped. 

They saw me, and began gesticulating and advancing. I stood watchingthem approach. The two Beast Men came running forward to cut meoff from the undergrowth, inland. Montgomery came, running also, but straight towards me. Moreau followed slower with the dog. 

At last I roused myself from my inaction, and turning seaward walkedstraight into the water. The water was very shallow at first. I was thirty yards out before the waves reached to my waist. Dimly I could see the intertidal creatures darting away frommy feet. 

"What are you doing, man?" cried Montgomery. 

I turned, standing waist deep, and stared at them. Montgomery stood panting at the margin of the water. His facewas bright-red with exertion, his long flaxen hair blown abouthis head, and his dropping nether lip showed his irregular teeth. Moreau was just coming up, his face pale and firm, and the dog at hishand barked at me. Both men had heavy whips. Farther up the beachstared the Beast Men. 

"What am I doing? I am going to drown myself, " said I. 

Montgomery and Moreau looked at each other. "Why?" asked Moreau. 

"Because that is better than being tortured by you. "

"I told you so, " said Montgomery, and Moreau said somethingin a low tone. 

"What makes you think I shall torture you?" asked Moreau. 

"What I saw, " I said. "And those--yonder. "

"Hush!" said Moreau, and held up his hand. 

"I will not, " said I. "They were men: what are they now?I at least will not be like them. "

I looked past my interlocutors. Up the beach were M'ling, Montgomery'sattendant, and one of the white-swathed brutes from the boat. Farther up, in the shadow of the trees, I saw my little Ape-man, and behind him some other dim figures. 

"Who are these creatures?" said I, pointing to them and raisingmy voice more and more that it might reach them. "They were men, men like yourselves, whom you have infected with some bestialtaint, --men whom you have enslaved, and whom you still fear. 

"You who listen, " I cried, pointing now to Moreau and shouting pasthim to the Beast Men, --"You who listen! Do you not see these menstill fear you, go in dread of you? Why, then, do you fear them?You are many--"

"For God's sake, " cried Montgomery, "stop that, Prendick!"

"Prendick!" cried Moreau. 

They both shouted together, as if to drown my voice; and behindthem lowered the staring faces of the Beast Men, wondering, their deformed hands hanging down, their shoulders hunched up. They seemed, as I fancied, to be trying to understand me, to remember, I thought, something of their human past. 

I went on shouting, I scarcely remember what, --that Moreauand Montgomery could be killed, that they were not to be feared:that was the burden of what I put into the heads of the Beast People. I saw the green-eyed man in the dark rags, who had met me onthe evening of my arrival, come out from among the trees, and othersfollowed him, to hear me better. At last for want of breathI paused. 

"Listen to me for a moment, " said the steady voice of Moreau;"and then say what you will. "

"Well?" said I. 

He coughed, thought, then shouted: "Latin, Prendick! bad Latin, schoolboy Latin; but try and understand. Hi non sunt homines;sunt animalia qui nos habemus--vivisected. A humanising process. I will explain. Come ashore. "

I laughed. "A pretty story, " said I. "They talk, build houses. They were men. It's likely I'll come ashore. "

"The water just beyond where you stand is deep--and full of sharks. "

"That's my way, " said I. "Short and sharp. Presently. "

"Wait a minute. " He took something out of his pocket that flashed backthe sun, and dropped the object at his feet. "That's a loaded revolver, "said he. "Montgomery here will do the same. Now we are goingup the beach until you are satisfied the distance is safe. Then come and take the revolvers. "

"Not I! You have a third between you. "

"I want you to think over things, Prendick. In the first place, I never asked you to come upon this island. If we vivisected men, we should import men, not beasts. In the next, we had youdrugged last night, had we wanted to work you any mischief;and in the next, now your first panic is over and you can thinka little, is Montgomery here quite up to the character you give him?We have chased you for your good. Because this island is fullof inimical phenomena. Besides, why should we want to shoot youwhen you have just offered to drown yourself?"

"Why did you set--your people onto me when I was in the hut?"

"We felt sure of catching you, and bringing you out of danger. Afterwards we drew away from the scent, for your good. "

I mused. It seemed just possible. Then I remembered something again. "But I saw, " said I, "in the enclosure--"

"That was the puma. "

"Look here, Prendick, " said Montgomery, "you're a silly ass!Come out of the water and take these revolvers, and talk. We can't do anything more than we could do now. "

I will confess that then, and indeed always, I distrustedand dreaded Moreau; but Montgomery was a man I felt I understood. 

"Go up the beach, " said I, after thinking, and added, "holding yourhands up. "

"Can't do that, " said Montgomery, with an explanatory nod overhis shoulder. "Undignified. "

"Go up to the trees, then, " said I, "as you please. "

"It's a damned silly ceremony, " said Montgomery. 

Both turned and faced the six or seven grotesque creatures, who stood there in the sunlight, solid, casting shadows, moving, and yet so incredibly unreal. Montgomery cracked his whip at them, and forthwith they all turned and fled helter-skelter into the trees;and when Montgomery and Moreau were at a distance I judged sufficient, I waded ashore, and picked up and examined the revolvers. To satisfy myself against the subtlest trickery, I discharged one ata round lump of lava, and had the satisfaction of seeing the stonepulverised and the beach splashed with lead. Still I hesitated fora moment. 

"I'll take the risk, " said I, at last; and with a revolver in eachhand I walked up the beach towards them. 

"That's better, " said Moreau, without affectation. "As it is, you havewasted the best part of my day with your confounded imagination. "And with a touch of contempt which humiliated me, he and Montgomeryturned and went on in silence before me. 

The knot of Beast Men, still wondering, stood back among the trees. I passed them as serenely as possible. One started to follow me, but retreated again when Montgomery cracked his whip. The reststood silent--watching. They may once have been animals; but I neverbefore saw an animal trying to think. 

XIV. DOCTOR MOREAU EXPLAINS. 

"AND now, Prendick, I will explain, " said Doctor Moreau, so soon as we had eaten and drunk. "I must confess thatyou are the most dictatorial guest I ever entertained. I warn you that this is the last I shall do to oblige you. The next thing you threaten to commit suicide about, I shan'tdo, --even at some personal inconvenience. "

He sat in my deck chair, a cigar half consumed in his white, dexterous-looking fingers. The light of the swinging lamp fell on hiswhite hair; he stared through the little window out at the starlight. I sat as far away from him as possible, the table between usand the revolvers to hand. Montgomery was not present. I did not care to be with the two of them in such a little room. 

"You admit that the vivisected human being, as you called it, is, after all, only the puma?" said Moreau. He had made me visitthat horror in the inner room, to assure myself of its inhumanity. 

"It is the puma, " I said, "still alive, but so cut and mutilatedas I pray I may never see living flesh again. Of all vile--"

"Never mind that, " said Moreau; "at least, spare me thoseyouthful horrors. Montgomery used to be just the same. You admit that it is the puma. Now be quiet, while I reel offmy physiological lecture to you. "

And forthwith, beginning in the tone of a man supremely bored, but presently warming a little, he explained his work to me. He was very simple and convincing. Now and then there was a touchof sarcasm in his voice. Presently I found myself hot with shame at ourmutual positions. 

The creatures I had seen were not men, had never been men. They were animals, humanised animals, --triumphs of vivisection. 

"You forget all that a skilled vivisector can do with living things, "said Moreau. "For my own part, I'm puzzled why the thingsI have done here have not been done before. Small efforts, of course, have been made, --amputation, tongue-cutting, excisions. Of course you know a squint may be induced or cured by surgery?Then in the case of excisions you have all kinds of secondary changes, pigmentary disturbances, modifications of the passions, alterations inthe secretion of fatty tissue. I have no doubt you have heard ofthese things?"

"Of course, " said I. "But these foul creatures of yours--"

"All in good time, " said he, waving his hand at me; "I am only beginning. Those are trivial cases of alteration. Surgery can do better thingsthan that. There is building up as well as breaking down and changing. You have heard, perhaps, of a common surgical operation resorted to incases where the nose has been destroyed: a flap of skin is cut fromthe forehead, turned down on the nose, and heals in the new position. This is a kind of grafting in a new position of part of an animalupon itself. Grafting of freshly obtained material from anotheranimal is also possible, --the case of teeth, for example. The grafting of skin and bone is done to facilitate healing:the surgeon places in the middle of the wound pieces of skin snippedfrom another animal, or fragments of bone from a victim freshly killed. Hunter's cock-spur--possibly you have heard of that--flourished onthe bull's neck; and the rhinoceros rats of the Algerian zouaves arealso to be thought of, --monsters manufactured by transferring a slipfrom the tail of an ordinary rat to its snout, and allowing it to heal inthat position. "

"Monsters manufactured!" said I. "Then you mean to tell me--"

"Yes. These creatures you have seen are animals carven and wroughtinto new shapes. To that, to the study of the plasticity ofliving forms, my life has been devoted. I have studied for years, gaining in knowledge as I go. I see you look horrified, and yet Iam telling you nothing new. It all lay in the surface of practicalanatomy years ago, but no one had the temerity to touch it. It is not simply the outward form of an animal which I can change. The physiology, the chemical rhythm of the creature, may also be madeto undergo an enduring modification, --of which vaccination and othermethods of inoculation with living or dead matter are examplesthat will, no doubt, be familiar to you. A similar operation isthe transfusion of blood, --with which subject, indeed, I began. These are all familiar cases. Less so, and probably far more extensive, were the operations of those mediaeval practitioners who madedwarfs and beggar-cripples, show-monsters, --some vestiges of whoseart still remain in the preliminary manipulation of the youngmountebank or contortionist. Victor Hugo gives an account of themin 'L'Homme qui Rit. '--But perhaps my meaning grows plain now. You begin to see that it is a possible thing to transplant tissuefrom one part of an animal to another, or from one animal to another;to alter its chemical reactions and methods of growth; to modifythe articulations of its limbs; and, indeed, to change it in its mostintimate structure. 

"And yet this extraordinary branch of knowledge has never been soughtas an end, and systematically, by modern investigators until I took it up!Some such things have been hit upon in the last resort of surgery;most of the kindred evidence that will recur to your mind has beendemonstrated as it were by accident, --by tyrants, by criminals, by the breeders of horses and dogs, by all kinds of untrainedclumsy-handed men working for their own immediate ends. I was the first man to take up this question armed with antiseptic surgery, and with a really scientific knowledge of the laws of growth. Yet one would imagine it must have been practised in secret before. Such creatures as the Siamese Twins--And in the vaults ofthe Inquisition. No doubt their chief aim was artistic torture, but some at least of the inquisitors must have had a touch ofscientific curiosity. "

"But, " said I, "these things--these animals talk!"

He said that was so, and proceeded to point out that the possibilityof vivisection does not stop at a mere physical metamorphosis. A pig may be educated. The mental structure is even less determinatethan the bodily. In our growing science of hypnotism we findthe promise of a possibility of superseding old inherent instincts bynew suggestions, grafting upon or replacing the inherited fixed ideas. Very much indeed of what we call moral education, he said, is such an artificial modification and perversion of instinct;pugnacity is trained into courageous self-sacrifice, and suppressedsexuality into religious emotion. And the great differencebetween man and monkey is in the larynx, he continued, --in theincapacity to frame delicately different sound-symbols by whichthought could be sustained. In this I failed to agree with him, but with a certain incivility he declined to notice my objection. He repeated that the thing was so, and continued his account ofhis work. 

I asked him why he had taken the human form as a model. There seemed to me then, and there still seems to me now, a strangewickedness for that choice. 

He confessed that he had chosen that form by chance. "I might justas well have worked to form sheep into llamas and llamas into sheep. I suppose there is something in the human form that appeals tothe artistic turn of mind more powerfully than any animal shape can. But I've not confined myself to man-making. Once or twice--" He was silent, for a minute perhaps. "These years! How they have slipped by!And here I have wasted a day saving your life, and am now wasting an hourexplaining myself!"

"But, " said I, "I still do not understand. Where is your justificationfor inflicting all this pain? The only thing that could excusevivisection to me would be some application--"

"Precisely, " said he. "But, you see, I am differently constituted. We are on different platforms. You are a materialist. "

"I am _not_ a materialist, " I began hotly. 

"In my view--in my view. For it is just this question of painthat parts us. So long as visible or audible pain turns you sick;so long as your own pains drive you; so long as pain underliesyour propositions about sin, --so long, I tell you, you arean animal, thinking a little less obscurely what an animal feels. This pain--"

I gave an impatient shrug at such sophistry. 

"Oh, but it is such a little thing! A mind truly opened towhat 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 amongliving things, what pain is there?"

As he spoke he drew a little penknife from his pocket, opened thesmaller blade, and moved his chair so that I could see his thigh. Then, choosing the place deliberately, he drove the blade intohis leg and withdrew it. 

"No doubt, " he said, "you have seen that before. It does not hurta pin-prick. But what does it show? The capacity for pain is notneeded in the muscle, and it is not placed there, --is but littleneeded in the skin, and only here and there over the thigh isa spot capable of feeling pain. Pain is simply our intrinsicmedical adviser to warn us and stimulate us. Not all livingflesh is painful; nor is all nerve, not even all sensory nerve. There's no taint of pain, real pain, in the sensations of the opticnerve. If you wound the optic nerve, you merely see flashes oflight, --just as disease of the auditory nerve merely means a hummingin our ears. Plants do not feel pain, nor the lower animals;it's possible that such animals as the starfish and crayfish do notfeel 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 outof existence by evolution sooner or later. Did you? And paingets 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'sMaker 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 butMahomet's houri in the dark? This store which men and women seton pleasure and pain, Prendick, is the mark of the beast uponthem, --the mark of the beast from which they came! Pain, pain andpleasure, 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 imaginethe 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 rememberas a thing I used to suffer from years ago. I wanted--it wasthe one thing I wanted--to find out the extreme limit of plasticityin 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 remorselessas Nature. I have gone on, not heeding anything but the question Iwas pursuing; and the material has--dripped into the huts yonder. It is nearly eleven years since we came here, I and Montgomeryand six Kanakas. I remember the green stillness of the islandand 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 foundedsome huts near the ravine. I went to work here upon what I had broughtwith 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 slipof the scalpel. I took another sheep, and made a thing of pain and fearand left it bound up to heal. It looked quite human to me when Ihad finished it; but when I went to it I was discontented with it. It remembered me, and was terrified beyond imagination; and it had nomore than the wits of a sheep. The more I looked at it the clumsierit 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 forman-making. 

"Then I took a gorilla I had; and upon that, working with infinitecare and mastering difficulty after difficulty, I made my first man. All the week, night and day, I moulded him. With him it was chieflythe brain that needed moulding; much had to be added, much changed. I thought him a fair specimen of the negroid type when I hadfinished him, and he lay bandaged, bound, and motionless before me. It was only when his life was assured that I left him and cameinto this room again, and found Montgomery much as you are. He had heard some of the cries as the thing grew human, --crieslike those that disturbed _you_ so. I didn't take himcompletely into my confidence at first. And the Kanakas too, had realised something of it. They were scared out of their witsby 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 dayseducating 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 anythingbut painful and stiff, and able to converse a little, I tookhim yonder and introduced him to the Kanakas as an interestingstowaway. 

"They were horribly afraid of him at first, somehow, --which offendedme 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 hiseducation in hand. He was quick to learn, very imitative and adaptive, and built himself a hovel rather better, it seemed to me, than theirown 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 seemsthe beast's habits were not all that is desirable. 

"I rested from work for some days after this, and was in a mind towrite an account of the whole affair to wake up English physiology. Then I came upon the creature squatting up in a tree and gibberingat 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 woundedheel that he poisoned in some way with plant-juice. Threewent 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 Kanakawho was killed?"

"The fact is, after I had made a number of human creatures I madea 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 thatit caught. We chased it for a couple of days. It only got looseby accident--I never meant it to get away. It wasn't finished. It was purely an experiment. It was a limbless thing, with ahorrible face, that writhed along the ground in a serpentine fashion. It was immensely strong, and in infuriating pain. It lurked inthe woods for some days, until we hunted it; and then it wriggledinto the northern part of the island, and we divided the partyto close in upon it. Montgomery insisted upon coming with me. The man had a rifle; and when his body was found, one of the barrelswas curved into the shape of an S and very nearly bitten through. Montgomery shot the thing. After that I stuck to the ideal ofhumanity--except for little things. "

He became silent. I sat in silence watching his face. 

"So for twenty years altogether--counting nine years in England--Ihave been going on; and there is still something in everything I dothat defeats me, makes me dissatisfied, challenges me to further effort. Sometimes I rise above my level, sometimes I fall below it; but alwaysI 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 graftingand 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 Icannot touch, somewhere--I cannot determine where--in the seatof the emotions. Cravings, instincts, desires that harm humanity, a strange hidden reservoir to burst forth suddenly and inundatethe whole being of the creature with anger, hate, or fear. These creatures of mine seemed strange and uncanny to you so soonas you began to observe them; but to me, just after I make them, they seem to be indisputably human beings. It's afterwards, as Iobserve 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 bathof 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 beginsto creep back, begins to assert itself again. " Another longsilence. 

"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 knowsabout it, for he interferes in their affairs. He has trained oneor two of them to our service. He's ashamed of it, but I believehe 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--marryeven. 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 upwardstriving 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, duringwhich we had each pursued our own thoughts, "what do you think? Areyou 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 thatresulted from his set tranquillity and his magnificent build, he mighthave passed muster among a hundred other comfortable old gentlemen. Then I shivered. By way of answer to his second question, I handedhim a revolver with either hand. 

"Keep them, " he said, and snatched at a yawn. He stood up, stared atme 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 bythe 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 pointat 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 outof the hammock and went to the door to assure myself that the keywas 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 uncertaintyof their possibilities which was far worse than any definite fear. 

A tapping came at the door, and I heard the glutinous accentsof M'ling speaking. I pocketed one of the revolvers (keeping onehand upon it), and opened to him. 

"Good-morning, sair, " he said, bringing in, in addition to the customaryherb-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 singularlysolitary in his habits, did not join us. I talked with Montgomeryto clear my ideas of the way in which the Beast Folk lived. In particular, I was urgent to know how these inhuman monsters were keptfrom falling upon Moreau and Montgomery and from rending one another. He explained to me that the comparative safety of Moreau andhimself was due to the limited mental scope of these monsters. In spite of their increased intelligence and the tendency of theiranimal instincts to reawaken, they had certain fixed ideas implantedby Moreau in their minds, which absolutely bounded their imaginations. They were really hypnotised; had been told that certain thingswere impossible, and that certain things were not to be done, and these prohibitions were woven into the texture of their minds beyondany possibility of disobedience or dispute. 

Certain matters, however, in which old instinct was at warwith 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 cravingsof their animal natures. This Law they were ever repeating, I found, and ever breaking. Both Montgomery and Moreau displayedparticular 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 atits 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 onlyfurtively and after dark; in the daylight there was a generalatmosphere of respect for its multifarious prohibitions. 

And here perhaps I may give a few general facts about the islandand the Beast People. The island, which was of irregular outlineand 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 fumarolesto the northward, and a hot spring, were the only vestiges ofthe forces that had long since originated it. Now and then a faintquiver of earthquake would be sensible, and sometimes the ascentof 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 creationsof Moreau's art, not counting the smaller monstrositieswhich 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 toldme--had come by violent ends. In answer to my question, Montgomerysaid 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 acquiredhuman characteristics. The females were less numerous than the males, and liable to much furtive persecution in spite of the monogamy theLaw 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 thedisproportion between the legs of these creatures and the lengthof their bodies; and yet--so relative is our idea of grace--myeye became habituated to their forms, and at last I even fellin with their persuasion that my own long thighs were ungainly. Another point was the forward carriage of the head and the clumsyand inhuman curvature of the spine. Even the Ape-man lackedthat inward sinuous curve of the back which makes the humanfigure so graceful. Most had their shoulders hunched clumsily, and their short forearms hung weakly at their sides. Few of themwere conspicuously hairy, at least until the end of my time uponthe 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 creaturehad been moulded. The voices, too, varied exceedingly. The hands were always malformed; and though some surprised me by theirunexpected human appearance, almost all were deficient in the numberof the digits, clumsy about the finger-nails, and lacking anytactile sensibility. 

The two most formidable Animal Men were my Leopard-man and a creaturemade of hyena and swine. Larger than these were the three bull-creatureswho pulled in the boat. Then came the silvery-hairy-man, who was alsothe 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. Ihave already described the Ape-man, and there was a particularly hateful(and evil-smelling) old woman made of vixen and bear, whom I hatedfrom the beginning. She was said to be a passionate votary of the Law. Smaller creatures were certain dappled youths and my littlesloth-creature. But enough of this catalogue. 

At first I had a shivering horror of the brutes, felt all too keenlythat they were still brutes; but insensibly I became a littlehabituated to the idea of them, and moreover I was affected byMontgomery's attitude towards them. He had been with them so longthat he had come to regard them as almost normal human beings. His London days seemed a glorious, impossible past to him. Only once in a year or so did he go to Arica to deal withMoreau's agent, a trader in animals there. He hardly met the finesttype of mankind in that seafaring village of Spanish mongrels. The men aboard-ship, he told me, seemed at first just as strangeto 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 hearthad warmed to me, he thought, because he had saved my life. I fancied even then that he had a sneaking kindness for some of thesemetamorphosed 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 ofthe Beast Folk I had encountered, did not live with the others acrossthe island, but in a small kennel at the back of the enclosure. The creature was scarcely so intelligent as the Ape-man, but farmore docile, and the most human-looking of all the Beast Folk;and Montgomery had trained it to prepare food, and indeed todischarge all the trivial domestic offices that were required. It was a complex trophy of Moreau's horrible skill, --a bear, tainted withdog 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-jocularnames, and so make it caper with extraordinary delight; sometimes hewould 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 benear him. 

I say I became habituated to the Beast People, that a thousandthings which had seemed unnatural and repulsive speedily becamenatural and ordinary to me. I suppose everything in existencetakes its colour from the average hue of our surroundings. Montgomery and Moreau were too peculiar and individualto keep my general impressions of humanity well defined. I would see one of the clumsy bovine-creatures who worked the launchtreading heavily through the undergrowth, and find myself asking, trying hard to recall, how he differed from some really humanyokel trudging home from his mechanical labours; or I would meetthe Fox-bear woman's vulpine, shifty face, strangely human in itsspeculative cunning, and even imagine I had met it before in somecity byway. 

Yet every now and then the beast would flash out upon me beyonddoubt or denial. An ugly-looking man, a hunch-backed human savageto all appearance, squatting in the aperture of one of the dens, would stretch his arms and yawn, showing with startling suddennessscissor-edged incisors and sabre-like canines, keen and brilliantas knives. Or in some narrow pathway, glancing with a transitorydaring into the eyes of some lithe, white-swathed female figure, I would suddenly see (with a spasmodic revulsion) that she hadslit-like pupils, or glancing down note the curving nail with whichshe held her shapeless wrap about her. It is a curious thing, bythe bye, for which I am quite unable to account, that these weirdcreatures--the females, I mean--had in the earlier days of my stay aninstinctive sense of their own repulsive clumsiness, and displayedin consequence a more than human regard for the decency and decorumof extensive costume. 

XVI. HOW THE BEAST FOLK TASTE BLOOD. 

MY inexperience as a writer betrays me, and I wander from the threadof my story. 

After I had breakfasted with Montgomery, he took me acrossthe island to see the fumarole and the source of the hot springinto whose scalding waters I had blundered on the previous day. Both of us carried whips and loaded revolvers. While going througha leafy jungle on our road thither, we heard a rabbit squealing. We stopped and listened, but we heard no more; and presently wewent on our way, and the incident dropped out of our minds. Montgomery called my attention to certain little pink animalswith 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 defeatedthis intention. I had already encountered some of thesecreatures, --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 causedby the uprooting of a wind-blown tree; before it could extricateitself we managed to catch it. It spat like a cat, scratched andkicked 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 statedthat it never destroyed the turf by burrowing, and was very cleanlyin its habits, I should imagine it might prove a convenient substitutefor the common rabbit in gentlemen's parks. 

We also saw on our way the trunk of a tree barked in long stripsand 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 wemet the Satyr and the Ape-man. The Satyr was a gleam of classical memoryon the part of Moreau, --his face ovine in expression, like the coarserHebrew 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'dbetter 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 weepif 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 wenton with him. 

The Satyr and the Ape-man stood watching us and making other remarksto each other. 

"He says nothing, " said the Satyr. "Men have voices. "

"Yesterday he asked me of things to eat, " said the Ape-man. "Hedid 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 ofthe 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 oneof your monsters drinking in the stream. "

"Sucking his drink?"

"Yes. "

"'Not to suck your drink; that is the Law. ' Much the brutes carefor 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. --Whatwas 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, " saidMontgomery. "I wish I'd never brought the things here. "

I should have gone on, but he stayed there thinking over the mangledrabbit in a puzzle-headed way. As it was, I went to such a distancethat 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 ideaagainst eating anything that runs on land. If some brute hasby 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 foolishthing the other day. That servant of mine--I showed him how to skinand cook a rabbit. It's odd--I saw him licking his hands--It neveroccurred 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 Ineed scarcely say that I was affected by their evident consternation. 

"We must make an example, " said Moreau. "I've no doubt in my ownmind 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 gonewithout 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 supposeif anything should turn up, M'ling can take care of himself?"

"I'm not so sure of M'ling, " said Montgomery. "I think I oughtto know him. "

In the afternoon, Moreau, Montgomery, myself, and M'ling wentacross 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 overhis 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 canebrakesuntil 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 kindof shallow natural amphitheatre, and here the four of us halted. Then Moreau sounded the horn, and broke the sleeping stillnessof the tropical afternoon. He must have had strong lungs. The hooting note rose and rose amidst its echoes, to at last anear-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 markedthe morass through which I had run on the previous day. Then at three or four points on the edge of the sulphurous areaappeared the grotesque forms of the Beast People hurrying towards us. I could not help a creeping horror, as I perceived first one and thenanother trot out from the trees or reeds and come shambling alongover 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 casta shadow and tossed the dust with his hoofs. After him fromthe brake came a monstrous lout, a thing of horse and rhinoceros, chewing a straw as it came; then appeared the Swine-womanand two Wolf-women; then the Fox-bear witch, with her red eyesin 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 halfof the litany of the Law, --"His is the Hand that wounds;His is the Hand that heals, " and so forth. As soon as they hadapproached within a distance of perhaps thirty yards they halted, and bowing on knees and elbows began flinging the white dust upontheir heads. 

Imagine the scene if you can! We three blue-clad men, with ourmisshapen black-faced attendant, standing in a wide expanseof sunlit yellow dust under the blazing blue sky, and surroundedby this circle of crouching and gesticulating monstrosities, --somealmost human save in their subtle expression and gestures, some like cripples, some so strangely distorted as to resemble nothingbut the denizens of our wildest dreams; and, beyond, the reedylines of a canebrake in one direction, a dense tangle of palm-treeson 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 soundof it all the Beast People writhed and grovelled in the dust. Then, slinking out of the canebrake, stooping near the groundand 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 littleApe-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 Peoplesat back upon their hams and rested from their worshipping. 

"Where is the Sayer of the Law?" said Moreau, and the hairy-greymonster bowed his face in the dust. 

"Say the words!" said Moreau. 

Forthwith all in the kneeling assembly, swaying from side to sideand dashing up the sulphur with their hands, --first the right handand a puff of dust, and then the left, --began once more to chanttheir 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 wincingattitudes and the furtive dread in their bright eyes, I wonderedthat 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 bedragging 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 exultationin his voice). 

"Goes back to the House of Pain, " they all clamoured, --"goes backto 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 straightfrom his knees, and now, with eyes aflame and his huge feline tusksflashing out from under his curling lips, leapt towards his tormentor. I am convinced that only the madness of unendurable fear could haveprompted this attack. The whole circle of threescore monsters seemedto rise about us. I drew my revolver. The two figures collided. I saw Moreau reeling back from the Leopard-man's blow. There was afurious yelling and howling all about us. Every one was moving rapidly. For a moment I thought it was a general revolt. The furious faceof 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 flashdart across the tumult. The whole crowd seemed to swing roundin the direction of the glint of fire, and I too was swung roundby the magnetism of the movement. In another second I was running, one of a tumultuous shouting crowd, in pursuit of the escapingLeopard-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 tonguesalready lolling out, ran the Wolf-women in great leaping strides. The Swine folk followed, squealing with excitement, and the twoBull-men in their swathings of white. Then came Moreau in acluster 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 furtivelyat me out of his feline eyes, and the others came pattering and shoutingbehind 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 reachedthe brake. The chase lay through the brake for perhaps a quarterof a mile, and then plunged into a dense thicket, which retardedour movements exceedingly, though we went through it in a crowdtogether, --fronds flicking into our faces, ropy creepers catchingus under the chin or gripping our ankles, thorny plants hooking intoand tearing cloth and flesh together. 

"He has gone on all-fours through this, " panted Moreau, now justahead of me. 

"None escape, " said the Wolf-bear, laughing into my face withthe exultation of hunting. We burst out again among rocks, and saw the quarry ahead running lightly on all-fours and snarlingat 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 furtivedroop 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 falleninto a longer and steadier stride. I saw as we traversed the openthat 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 wasmaking for the projecting cape upon which he had stalked meon 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 byferns and reeds, I helped to pursue the Leopard-man who had brokenthe 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 chaselest I should be left alone with this horrible companion. I staggered on in spite of infinite fatigue and the dense heat of thetropical afternoon. 

At last the fury of the hunt slackened. We had pinned the wretchedbrute into a corner of the island. Moreau, whip in hand, marshalled usall into an irregular line, and we advanced now slowly, shouting to oneanother as we advanced and tightening the cordon about our victim. He lurked noiseless and invisible in the bushes through which Ihad run from him during that midnight pursuit. 

"Steady!" cried Moreau, "steady!" as the ends of the line creptround 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 beatalong the beach beneath. Slowly we pushed in among the frettednetwork 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 hadinspired in me. I heard the twigs snap and the boughs swish asidebefore the heavy tread of the Horse-rhinoceros upon my right. Then suddenly through a polygon of green, in the half darknessunder 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 thefact, --but now, seeing the creature there in a perfectly animalattitude, with the light gleaming in its eyes and its imperfectlyhuman face distorted with terror, I realised again the fact of itshumanity. In another moment other of its pursuers would see it, and it would be overpowered and captured, to experience once morethe horrible tortures of the enclosure. Abruptly I slipped outmy revolver, aimed between its terror-struck eyes, and fired. As I did so, the Hyena-swine saw the Thing, and flung itself uponit with an eager cry, thrusting thirsty teeth into its neck. All about me the green masses of the thicket were swaying and crackingas the Beast People came rushing together. One face and thenanother appeared. 

"Don't kill it, Prendick!" cried Moreau. "Don't kill it!"and I saw him stooping as he pushed through under the frondsof the big ferns. 

In another moment he had beaten off the Hyena-swine with the handle ofhis whip, and he and Montgomery were keeping away the excited carnivorousBeast 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 anearer view. 

"Confound you, Prendick!" said Moreau. "I wanted him. "

"I'm sorry, " said I, though I was not. "It was the impulseof the moment. " I felt sick with exertion and excitement. Turning, I pushed my way out of the crowding Beast People and wenton alone up the slope towards the higher part of the headland. Under the shouted directions of Moreau I heard the three white-swathedBull-men begin dragging the victim down towards the water. 

It was easy now for me to be alone. The Beast People manifested a quitehuman 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 againstthe evening sky as they carried the weighted dead body out to sea;and like a wave across my mind came the realisation of the unspeakableaimlessness of things upon the island. Upon the beach amongthe rocks beneath me were the Ape-man, the Hyena-swine, and severalother of the Beast People, standing about Montgomery and Moreau. They were all still intensely excited, and all overflowing with noisyexpressions of their loyalty to the Law; yet I felt an absoluteassurance in my own mind that the Hyena-swine was implicatedin 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 cameto 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 hadbeen beasts, their instincts fitly adapted to their surroundings, and happy as living things may be. Now they stumbled in the shacklesof humanity, lived in a fear that never died, fretted by a law theycould 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 atleast 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 werethrown 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 heldthem back from a brief hot struggle and a decisive end to theirnatural animosities. 

In those days my fear of the Beast People went the way of my personalfear 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 worldwhen I saw it suffering the painful disorder of this island. A blind Fate, a vast pitiless Mechanism, seemed to cut andshape the fabric of existence and I, Moreau (by his passionfor research), Montgomery (by his passion for drink), the BeastPeople with their instincts and mental restrictions, were tornand crushed, ruthlessly, inevitably, amid the infinite complexityof its incessant wheels. But this condition did not come all at once:I think indeed that I anticipate a little in speaking ofit now. 

XVII. A CATASTROPHE. 

SCARCELY six weeks passed before I had lost every feeling butdislike and abhorrence for this infamous experiment of Moreau's. My one idea was to get away from these horrible caricatures of myMaker's image, back to the sweet and wholesome intercourse of men. My fellow-creatures, from whom I was thus separated, began to assumeidyllic virtue and beauty in my memory. My first friendship withMontgomery 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 daythere fell upon us an appalling disaster, which put an altogetherdifferent 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, --whenthis catastrophe occurred. It happened in the early morning--Ishould think about six. I had risen and breakfasted early, havingbeen aroused by the noise of three Beast Men carrying wood into theenclosure. 

After breakfast I went to the open gateway of the enclosure, and stood there smoking a cigarette and enjoying the freshnessof the early morning. Moreau presently came round the cornerof the enclosure and greeted me. He passed by me, and I heard himbehind me unlock and enter his laboratory. So indurated was Iat that time to the abomination of the place, that I heard withouta touch of emotion the puma victim begin another day of torture. It met its persecutor with a shriek, almost exactly like that of anangry 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 flungme 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 thattrickled from his forehead. He carried a revolver in one hand. He scarcely glanced at me, but rushed off at once in pursuit ofthe puma. 

I tried the other arm and sat up. The muffled figure in front ranin great striding leaps along the beach, and Moreau followed her. She turned her head and saw him, then doubling abruptly madefor the bushes. She gained upon him at every stride. I saw herplunge into them, and Moreau, running slantingly to intercept her, fired and missed as she disappeared. Then he too vanishedin the green confusion. I stared after them, and then the painin my arm flamed up, and with a groan I staggered to my feet. Montgomery appeared in the doorway, dressed, and with his revolver inhis 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 armis broken, " he said, and then, "Tell me exactly how ithappened--what happened?"

I told him what I had seen; told him in broken sentences, with gasps of pain between them, and very dexterously and swiftlyhe 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 merelyone more of many horrible things. I sat down in the deck chair, and I must admit swore heartily at the island. The first dullfeeling of injury in my arm had already given way to a burning painwhen Montgomery reappeared. His face was rather pale, and he showedmore 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 withhis 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 wentto 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 thingsoppressed me. I tried to whistle, and the tune died away. I swore again, --the second time that morning. Then I went to the cornerof the enclosure and stared inland at the green bush that hadswallowed 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 Moreauand Montgomery never return? Three sea-birds began fighting for somestranded treasure. 

Then from far away behind the enclosure I heard a pistol-shot. Along silence, and then came another. Then a yelling cry nearer, and another dismal gap of silence. My unfortunate imaginationset 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 slouchedthe Beast Man, M'ling, and round M'ling's jaws were some queerdark 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 canhave 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 beganpanting like a dog. I got Montgomery some brandy-and-water. Hesat 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 atfirst on account of the crushed and broken bushes, white rags tornfrom the puma's bandages, and occasional smears of blood on the leavesof the shrubs and undergrowth. He lost the track, however, on the stonyground 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 seennothing of the puma affair; had been felling wood, and heard him calling. They went on shouting together. Two Beast Men came crouchingand peering at them through the undergrowth, with gestures and afurtive carriage that alarmed Montgomery by their strangeness. He hailed them, and they fled guiltily. He stopped shoutingafter 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 dancingon 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 whipin some trepidation, and forthwith they rushed at him. Never beforehad 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 suddenlyrushed 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 shothim. 

"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 itupon myself to interfere. He was already more than half fuddled. I told him that some serious thing must have happened toMoreau 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 tropicalafternoon is a singularly vivid impression. M'ling went first, his shoulder hunched, his strange black head moving with quickstarts as he peered first on this side of the way and then on that. He was unarmed; his axe he had dropped when he encounteredthe 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 sullennesswith 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 ofthe island, going northwestward; and presently M'ling stopped, and became rigid with watchfulness. Montgomery almost staggeredinto him, and then stopped too. Then, listening intently, we heard coming through the trees the sound of voices and footstepsapproaching 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. 

"Hullo!" 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, --strangefaces, lit by a strange light. M'ling made a growlingnoise in his throat. I recognised the Ape-man: I had indeedalready identified his voice, and two of the white-swathedbrown-featured creatures I had seen in Montgomery's boat. With these were the two dappled brutes and that grey, horribly crookedcreature who said the Law, with grey hair streaming down its cheeks, heavy grey eyebrows, and grey locks pouring off from a centralparting upon its sloping forehead, --a heavy, faceless thing, with strange red eyes, looking at us curiously from amidstthe green. 

For a space no one spoke. Then Montgomery hiccoughed, "Who--saidhe 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 thisand 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 stoodwatching 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 frontof Montgomery and lifted up my voice:--"Children of the Law, "I said, "he is _not_ dead!" M'ling turned his sharp eyes on me. "He has changed his shape; he has changed his body, " I went on. "For a time you will not see him. He is--there, " I pointed upward, "where he can watch you. You cannot see him, but he can see you. Fear the Law!"

I looked at them squarely. They flinched. 

"He is great, he is good, " said the Ape-man, peering fearfullyupward 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 denyingMoreau'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 becausehe 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 tumultof ferns and creepers and tree-stems towards the northwest. Then came a yelling, a crashing among the branches, and a littlepink homunculus rushed by us shrieking. Immediately after appeareda monster in headlong pursuit, blood-bedabbled, who was amongst usalmost before he could stop his career. The grey Thing leapt aside. M'ling, with a snarl, flew at it, and was struck aside. Montgomery firedand missed, bowed his head, threw up his arm, and turned to run. I fired, and the Thing still came on; fired again, point-blank, intoits ugly face. I saw its features vanish in a flash: its face wasdriven in. Yet it passed me, gripped Montgomery, and holding him, fell headlong beside him and pulled him sprawling upon itself in itsdeath-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 atthe shattered Beast Man beside him. It more than half sobered him. He scrambled to his feet. Then I saw the grey Thing returning cautiouslythrough 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 yardsfarther found at last what we sought. Moreau lay face downwardin a trampled space in a canebrake. One hand was almost severedat 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 howlingand shrieking past our little band, and once the little pinksloth-creature appeared and stared at us, and vanished again. But we were not attacked again. At the gates of the enclosureour company of Beast People left us, M'ling going with the rest. We locked ourselves in, and then took Moreau's mangledbody 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 livingthere. 

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 discussedour 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 ofhis nature in the ten or more monotonous years he had spent on the island. He talked vaguely, answered my questions crookedly, wandered intogeneral 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 attheir own sweet will; five in London grinding hard at medicine, bad food, shabby lodgings, shabby clothes, shabby vice, a blunder, --Ididn't know any better, --and hustled off to this beastly island. Ten years here! What's it all for, Prendick? Are we bubbles blown bya baby?"

It was hard to deal with such ravings. "The thing we have to thinkof 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 theBeast Folk?"

"Well, " said I, "that will do to-morrow. I've been thinking we might makethe 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 willmake silly asses of themselves sooner or later. We can't massacrethe 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'min a worse hole than you are?" And he got up, and went for the brandy. "Drink!" he said returning, "you logic-chopping, chalky-faced saintof an atheist, drink!"

"Not I, " said I, and sat grimly watching his face under the yellowparaffine flare, as he drank himself into a garrulous misery. 

I have a memory of infinite tedium. He wandered into a maudlindefence 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 clutchingthe 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 liquorlike 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 himas he put his hand upon the latch, but deterred by the thoughtof my useless arm. "You've made a beast of yourself, --to the beastsyou may go. "

He flung the doorway open, and stood half facing me betweenthe 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 fearingand fancying. We're on the edge of things. I'm bound to cut mythroat 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 edgeof the wan beach, --one a white-wrapped creature, the other twoblotches of blackness following it. They halted, staring. Then I saw M'ling's hunched shoulders as he came round the cornerof 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 startedoff at a kind of quick trot to the westward, M'ling ranging himselfbetween him and the three dim creatures who followed. 

I went to the doorway. They were already indistinct in the mistof the moonlight before Montgomery halted. I saw him administera dose of the raw brandy to M'ling, and saw the five figures meltinto one vague patch. 

"Sing!" I heard Montgomery shout, --"sing all together, 'Confoundold 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 blacknessof the landward trees. Slowly, very slowly, they recededinto 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 volcanicglass 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 whereMoreau lay beside his latest victims, --the staghounds and the llamaand some other wretched brutes, --with his massive face calm evenafter his terrible death, and with the hard eyes open, staring atthe 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 ominousshadows began to turn over my plans. In the morning I would gathersome provisions in the dingey, and after setting fire to the pyrebefore 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 beenan hour or so. Then my planning was interrupted by the return ofMontgomery 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 stopnear the water's edge. The riot rose and fell; I heard heavy blowsand 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, andopened one. I saw something out of the tail of my eye, --a redfigure, --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 mutilatedvictims lay, one over another. They seemed to be gripping one anotherin 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, --aruddy glow that came and danced and went upon the wall opposite. I misinterpreted this, fancied it was a reflection of myflickering 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 themaside for to-morrow's launch. My movements were slow, and the time passed quickly. Insensibly the daylight creptupon me. 

The chanting died down, giving place to a clamour; then itbegan 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 arrestedmy attention. I went out into the yard and listened. Then cutting like a knife across the confusion came the crack ofa 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 downand 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 upsparks into the indistinctness of the dawn. Around this struggleda 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 pinktongue 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 strugglebroke 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 theydisappeared among the bushes. Then I turned to the black heaps uponthe ground. 

Montgomery lay on his back, with the hairy-grey Beast-mansprawling across his body. The brute was dead, but stillgripping Montgomery's throat with its curving claws. Near by lay M'ling on his face and quite still, his neck bittenopen and the upper part of the smashed brandy-bottle in his hand. Two other figures lay near the fire, --the one motionless, the othergroaning 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 splashedsea-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-brutewith a bearded grey face--lay, I found, with the fore part of itsbody upon the still glowing timber. The wretched thing was injuredso 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 fromthe beach. 

I went to Montgomery again and knelt beside him, cursing my ignoranceof medicine. The fire beside me had sunk down, and only charredbeams of timber glowing at the central ends and mixed with a greyash of brushwood remained. I wondered casually where Montgomeryhad got his wood. Then I saw that the dawn was upon us. The sky had grown brighter, the setting moon was becoming paleand opaque in the luminous blue of the day. The sky to the eastwardwas 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 dawngreat tumultuous masses of black smoke were boiling up out ofthe enclosure, and through their stormy darkness shot flickeringthreads 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 overturnedthe lamp. 

The hopelessness of saving any of the contents of the enclosurestared 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 uponthe beach. They were gone! Two axes lay upon the sands beside me;chips and splinters were scattered broadcast, and the ashesof the bonfire were blackening and smoking under the dawn. Montgomery had burnt the boats to revenge himself upon me and prevent ourreturn to mankind!

A sudden convulsion of rage shook me. I was almost moved to batterhis foolish head in, as he lay there helpless at my feet. Then suddenly his hand moved, so feebly, so pitifully, that mywrath vanished. He groaned, and opened his eyes for a minute. I knelt down beside him and raised his head. He opened hiseyes 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 drinkmight revive him; but there was neither drink nor vessel in which tobring 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 limbof the sun, rose eastward beyond the projection of the bay, splashing its radiance across the sky and turning the dark sea intoa weltering tumult of dazzling light. It fell like a glory upon hisdeath-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 methe 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 lowover the distant tree-tops towards the huts in the ravine. Beside me were the charred vestiges of the boats and these fivedead 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-handednow, --literally single-handed, for I had a broken arm. In my pocket wasa revolver with two empty chambers. Among the chips scattered aboutthe 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 butcourage. I looked squarely into the faces of the advancing monsters. They avoided my eyes, and their quivering nostrils investigatedthe bodies that lay beyond me on the beach. I took half-a-dozen steps, picked up the blood-stained whip that lay beneath the bodyof the Wolf-man, and cracked it. They stopped and staredat 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 facetowards the three kneeling Beast Men, very much as an actor passingup 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 withthe 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 fromthe sling of my arm; turned Montgomery over; picked up his revolverstill 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 aftersome fumbling and hesitation, some whip-cracking and shouting, they lifted him gingerly, carried him down to the beach, and wentsplashing 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 longwakes of black in the silver. At the water's edge they stopped, turning and glaring into the sea as though they presently expectedMontgomery 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 thrownMontgomery into the water, but instead, carried the four deadBeast People slantingly along the beach for perhaps a hundredyards before they waded out and cast them away. 

As I watched them disposing of the mangled remains of M'ling, Iheard a light footfall behind me, and turning quickly saw the bigHyena-swine perhaps a dozen yards away. His head was bent down, his bright eyes were fixed upon me, his stumpy hands clenchedand held close by his side. He stopped in this crouching attitudewhen I turned, his eyes a little averted. 

For a moment we stood eye to eye. I dropped the whip and snatchedat the pistol in my pocket; for I meant to kill this brute, the mostformidable of any left now upon the island, at the first excuse. It may seem treacherous, but so I was resolved. I was farmore 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 quicklyand fired. I heard him yelp, saw him run sideways and turn, knew Ihad 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 lookedback at me over his shoulder. He went slanting along the beach, and vanished beneath the driving masses of dense smoke that werestill pouring out from the burning enclosure. For some time Istood staring after him. I turned to my three obedient Beast Folkagain and signalled them to drop the body they still carried. Then I went back to the place by the fire where the bodies had fallenand kicked the sand until all the brown blood-stains were absorbedand hidden. 

I dismissed my three serfs with a wave of the hand, and went upthe 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 Iwas now placed. A dreadful thing that I was only beginningto realise was, that over all this island there was now no safeplace where I could be alone and secure to rest or sleep. I had recovered strength amazingly since my landing, but I was stillinclined to be nervous and to break down under any great stress. I felt that I ought to cross the island and establish myselfwith the Beast People, and make myself secure in their confidence. But my heart failed me. I went back to the beach, and turningeastward past the burning enclosure, made for a point where a shallowspit of coral sand ran out towards the reef. Here I could sit downand 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 headand unspeakable dread in my mind, plotting how I could live on againstthe hour of my rescue (if ever rescue came). I tried to review the wholesituation as calmly as I could, but it was difficult to clear the thingof 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 growsday by day back again. " Then I came round to the Hyena-swine. Ifelt 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 weof the Whips could be killed even as they themselves were killed. Were they peering at me already out of the green masses of fernsand 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 unsubstantialfears. 

My thoughts were disturbed by a crying of sea-birds hurryingtowards some black object that had been stranded by the waveson 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 soapproach the ravine of the huts, without traversing the possibleambuscades of the thickets. 

Perhaps half a mile along the beach I became aware of one of my threeBeast Folk advancing out of the landward bushes towards me. I was nowso 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 attitudeof the creature. It retreated a little way, very like a dog beingsent home, and stopped, looking at me imploringly with caninebrown 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 puttingmy whip in my teeth, I stooped for a stone, and with that threatdrove 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 thiscrevice from the sea I watched such of them as appeared, trying to judge from their gestures and appearance how the deathof Moreau and Montgomery and the destruction of the House of Painhad affected them. I know now the folly of my cowardice. Had I kept my courage up to the level of the dawn, had I notallowed it to ebb away in solitary thought, I might have graspedthe vacant sceptre of Moreau and ruled over the Beast People. As it was I lost the opportunity, and sank to the position of a mereleader 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 towardsthese seated figures. One, a Wolf-woman, turned her head and staredat 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 almostdeserted ravine. In an empty hut I feasted on some speckedand half-decayed fruit; and then after I had propped some branchesand sticks about the opening, and placed myself with my facetowards it and my hand upon my revolver, the exhaustion of the lastthirty hours claimed its own, and I fell into a light slumber, hoping that the flimsy barricade I had erected would causesufficient 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 Islandof Doctor Moreau. When I awoke, it was dark about me. My arm achedin its bandages. I sat up, wondering at first where I might be. I heard coarse voices talking outside. Then I saw that mybarricade 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 togetherclose beside me. I held my breath, trying to see what it was. It began to move slowly, interminably. Then something soft and warmand moist passed across my hand. All my muscles contracted. I snatchedmy 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 onthe 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 thebodies 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 fallenupon me as I slept. "It is well, " I said, extending my hand foranother 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 theytalk together beyond there. They say, 'The Master is dead. The Other with the Whip is dead. That Other who walked in the Sea isas 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 thereis 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 certaindays and certain things have come to pass. Every one of them savethose you spare, every one of them shall be slain. "

"What the Master wishes to kill, the Master kills, " said the Dog-manwith a certain satisfaction in his voice. 

"And that their sins may grow, " I said, "let them live in their follyuntil 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 tactof 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 ofthe Dog-man. Then I followed and stood up, almost in the exact spotwhere 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 abovewith the black lace of the upper branches. The moon was just ridingup on the edge of the ravine, and like a bar across its face drovethe spire of vapour that was for ever streaming from the fumaroles ofthe island. 

"Walk by me, " said I, nerving myself; and side by side we walkeddown the narrow way, taking little heed of the dim Things that peeredat us out of the huts. 

None about the fire attempted to salute me. Most of themdisregarded me, ostentatiously. I looked round for the Hyena-swine, but he was not there. Altogether, perhaps twenty of the BeastFolk squatted, staring into the fire or talking to one another. 

"He is dead, he is dead! the Master is dead!" said the voiceof the Ape-man to the right of me. "The House of Pain--thereis 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 ferociousand 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 Painwill come again. Woe be to him who breaks the Law!"

They looked curiously at one another. With an affectation of indifferenceI 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 dappledthings 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 intensityof my excitement, that had troubled me at first. In the course of aboutan hour I had really convinced several of the Beast Folk of the truthof 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 myconfidence grew rapidly. Then as the moon crept down from the zenith, one by one the listeners began to yawn (showing the oddest teeth inthe light of the sinking fire), and first one and then another retiredtowards the dens in the ravine; and I, dreading the silence and darkness, went with them, knowing I was safer with several of them than withone alone. 

In this manner began the longer part of my sojourn upon thisIsland of Doctor Moreau. But from that night until the end came, there was but one thing happened to tell save a series of innumerablesmall 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 anintimate of these half-humanised brutes. There is much that sticksin my memory that I could write, --things that I would cheerfullygive my right hand to forget; but they do not help the telling ofthe story. 

In the retrospect it is strange to remember how soon I fellin with these monsters' ways, and gained my confidence again. I had my quarrels with them of course, and could show some oftheir teeth-marks still; but they soon gained a wholesome respectfor 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 capacityfor 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 scarredrather badly, bore me a grudge; but it vented itself chieflybehind 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 inthe forest, and became solitary. Once I tried to induce the Beast Folk tohunt 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 allywith his lurking ambuscades. The Dog-man scarcely dared to leavemy side. 

In the first month or so the Beast Folk, compared with theirlatter condition, were human enough, and for one or two besidesmy 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 trickof coining new words. He had an idea, I believe, that to gabbleabout 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 remarkhe did not understand, he would praise it very much, ask me to sayit again, learn it by heart, and go off repeating it, with a wordwrong 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 sillinessof 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 tornto pieces, --by the Hyena-swine, I am assured, --but that was all. It was about May when I first distinctly perceived a growing differencein their speech and carriage, a growing coarseness of articulation, a growing disinclination to talk. My Monkey-man's jabber multipliedin 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 andguttering, losing shape and import, becoming mere lumps of sound again?)And they walked erect with an increasing difficulty. Though theyevidently felt ashamed of themselves, every now and then I would comeupon one or another running on toes and finger-tips, and quite unableto 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 aboutthe "stubborn beast-flesh. " They were reverting, and reverting veryrapidly. 

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 outragesupon the institution of monogamy. The tradition of the Law was clearlylosing its force. I cannot pursue this disagreeable subject. 

My Dog-man imperceptibly slipped back to the dog again; day by dayhe became dumb, quadrupedal, hairy. I scarcely noticed the transitionfrom 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 soloathsome that I left it, and going across the island made myselfa hovel of boughs amid the black ruins of Moreau's enclosure. Some memory of pain, I found, still made that place the safest fromthe Beast Folk. 

It would be impossible to detail every step of the lapsing ofthese monsters, --to tell how, day by day, the human semblance left them;how they gave up bandagings and wrappings, abandoned at last everystitch 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 someof them in the first month of my loneliness became a shudderinghorror to recall. 

The change was slow and inevitable. For them and for me it camewithout any definite shock. I still went among them in safety, because no jolt in the downward glide had released the increasingcharge 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 backto its natural life once more among the tree-branches. We were in justthe state of equilibrium that would remain in one of those "Happy Family"cages which animal-tamers exhibit, if the tamer were to leave itfor ever. 

Of course these creatures did not decline into such beasts asthe reader has seen in zoological gardens, --into ordinary bears, wolves, tigers, oxen, swine, and apes. There was still somethingstrange about each; in each Moreau had blended this animal with that. One perhaps was ursine chiefly, another feline chiefly, anotherbovine chiefly; but each was tainted with other creatures, --a kindof generalised animalism appearing through the specific dispositions. And the dwindling shreds of the humanity still startled me everynow and then, --a momentary recrudescence of speech perhaps, an unexpected dexterity of the fore-feet, a pitiful attempt towalk erect. 

I too must have undergone strange changes. My clothes hung aboutme as yellow rags, through whose rents showed the tanned skin. My hair grew long, and became matted together. I am told thateven now my eyes have a strange brightness, a swift alertnessof movement. 

At first I spent the daylight hours on the southward beachwatching 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 accountfor that. 

It was only about September or October that I began to think of makinga raft. By that time my arm had healed, and both my hands were atmy service again. At first, I found my helplessness appalling. I had never done any carpentry or such-like work in my life, and I spentday 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 deviseany way of making them so. I spent more than a fortnightgrubbing among the black ruins of the enclosure and onthe beach where the boats had been burnt, looking for nailsand other stray pieces of metal that might prove of service. Now and then some Beast-creature would watch me, and go leapingoff when I called to it. There came a season of thunder-stormsand heavy rain, which greatly retarded my work; but at last the raftwas completed. 

I was delighted with it. But with a certain lack of practical sensewhich 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 fallento 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 somedays I simply moped on the beach, and stared at the water and thoughtof death. 

I did not, however, mean to die, and an incident occurred that warnedme unmistakably of the folly of letting the days pass so, --for eachfresh 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 blinkinginto my face. He had long since lost speech and active movement, and the lank hair of the little brute grew thicker every day and hisstumpy claws more askew. He made a moaning noise when he saw he hadattracted my attention, went a little way towards the bushes and lookedback at me. 

At first I did not understand, but presently it occurred to me thathe wished me to follow him; and this I did at last, --slowly, for the daywas hot. When we reached the trees he clambered into them, for he couldtravel 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 nearhis body crouched the Hyena-swine, gripping the quivering fleshwith 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 stepfarther, stopped, and pulled out my revolver. At last I had him faceto 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 rosestraight 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 thatmust come. 

I burnt both of the bodies on a pyre of brushwood; but after that I sawthat 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 tasteamong the thickets of the island. Few prowled by day, most ofthem 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 couldnow be scarcely a score left of the dangerous carnivores;the braver of these were already dead. After the death of this poordog of mine, my last friend, I too adopted to some extent the practiceof 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 narrowopening that anything attempting to enter must necessarily makea considerable noise. The creatures had lost the art of fire too, and recovered their fear of it. I turned once more, almost passionatelynow, to hammering together stakes and branches to form a raft formy escape. 

I found a thousand difficulties. I am an extremely unhandy man(my schooling was over before the days of Slojd); but mostof 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 containthe 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 mightto solve this one last difficulty. Sometimes I would giveway to wild outbursts of rage, and hack and splinter someunlucky tree in my intolerable vexation. But I could thinkof 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 inthe heat of it, and the heat of the midday sun, watching. All day Iwatched 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 swallowedit 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 dirtylug-sail of a small boat. But it sailed strangely. My eyes wereweary 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 andfell 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 wentto 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 birdflew up out of the boat, and neither of the men stirred nor noticed it;it circled round, and then came sweeping overhead with its strongwings outspread. 

Then I stopped shouting, and sat down on the headland and rested my chinon my hands and stared. Slowly, slowly, the boat drove past towardsthe west. I would have swum out to it, but something--a cold, vaguefear--kept me back. In the afternoon the tide stranded the boat, and leftit 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 fellto 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, " anda dirty white cap lay in the bottom of the boat. 

As I stood beside the boat, three of the Beasts came slinkingout of the bushes and sniffing towards me. One of my spasmsof disgust came upon me. I thrust the little boat down the beachand 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 themsnarling 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 myselfto 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 emptykeg aboard with water. Then, with such patience as I could command, I collected a quantity of fruit, and waylaid and killed two rabbitswith my last three cartridges. While I was doing this I leftthe boat moored to an inward projection of the reef, for fearof the Beast People. 

XXII. THE MAN ALONE. 

IN the evening I started, and drove out to sea before a gentle windfrom the southwest, slowly, steadily; and the island grew smallerand smaller, and the lank spire of smoke dwindled to a finer andfiner line against the hot sunset. The ocean rose up around me, hiding that low, dark patch from my eyes. The daylight, the trailingglory of the sun, went streaming out of the sky, was drawn asidelike some luminous curtain, and at last I looked into the bluegulf of immensity which the sunshine hides, and saw the floatinghosts 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 meditatingupon all that had happened to me, --not desiring very greatly then to seemen 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 thatsolitude and danger had made me mad; and fearing their opinion mightbe that of others, I refrained from telling my adventure further, and professed to recall nothing that had happened to me betweenthe loss of the "Lady Vain" and the time when I was picked up again, --thespace of a year. 

I had to act with the utmost circumspection to save myself from thesuspicion 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 strangeenhancement of the uncertainty and dread I had experiencedduring 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 forseveral years now a restless fear has dwelt in my mind, --such a restlessfear as a half-tamed lion cub may feel. 

My trouble took the strangest form. I could not persuade myselfthat the men and women I met were not also another Beast People, animals half wrought into the outward image of human souls, and that theywould presently begin to revert, --to show first this bestial markand then that. But I have confided my case to a strangely ableman, --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 notexpect 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 littlecloud spreads until it obscures the whole sky. Then I look about meat my fellow-men; and I go in fear. I see faces, keen and bright;others dull or dangerous; others, unsteady, insincere, --none thathave the calm authority of a reasonable soul. I feel as thoughthe animal was surging up through them; that presently the degradationof the Islanders will be played over again on a larger scale. I know this is an illusion; that these seeming men and women aboutme are indeed men and women, --men and women for ever, perfectlyreasonable creatures, full of human desires and tender solicitude, emancipated from instinct and the slaves of no fantasticLaw, --beings altogether different from the Beast Folk. Yet I shrinkfrom them, from their curious glances, their inquiries and assistance, and long to be away from them and alone. For that reason I live nearthe broad free downland, and can escape thither when this shadowis over my soul; and very sweet is the empty downland then, under thewind-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 streetsto fight with my delusion, and prowling women would mew after me;furtive, craving men glance jealously at me; weary, pale workersgo coughing by me with tired eyes and eager paces, like woundeddeer dripping blood; old people, bent and dull, pass murmuringto 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 patientcreatures 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 itsbrain which sent it to wander alone, like a sheep strickenwith gid. 

This is a mood, however, that comes to me now, I thank God, more rarely. I have withdrawn myself from the confusion of citiesand multitudes, and spend my days surrounded by wise books, --brightwindows 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 senseof 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 whateveris more than animal within us must find its solace and its hope. I hope, or I could not live. 

And so, in hope and solitude, my story ends. 

EDWARD PRENDICK. 

NOTE. The substance of the chapter entitled "Doctor Moreau explains, "which contains the essential idea of the story, appeared as a middlearticle in the "Saturday Review" in January, 1895. This isthe only portion of this story that has been previously published, and it has been entirely recast to adapt it to the narrative form.