 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Alan Di Benedetto. The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells. Chapter 19 When this was accomplished and we had washed and eaten, when Gumri and I went into my little room and seriously discussed our position for the first time, it was then near midnight. He was almost sober, but greatly disturbed in his mind. He had been strangely under the influence of Moreau's personality. I did not think it had ever occurred to him that Moreau could die. This disaster was a sudden collapse of the habits that had become part of his nature in the ten or more monotonous years he had spent on the island. He talked vaguely, answered my questions crookedly, wandered into general questions. The 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 school masters at their own sweet will. Five in London grinding hard at medicine, bad food, shabby lobbings, shabby clothes, shabby vise, a blunder. I didn't know any better, and hustled off to this beastly island. Ten years here. What's it all for, Prendic? Are we bubbles blown by a baby? It was hard to deal with such ravings. The thing we have to think of now, said I, is how to get away from this island. What's the good of getting away? I'm an outcast. Where am I to join on? It's all very well for you, Prendic. Poor old Moreau. We can't leave him here to have his bones picked. And besides, what will become of the decent part of the beastfolk? Well, said I. That will do tomorrow. I've been thinking we might make the brushwood into a pyre and burn his body, and those other things. Then what will happen with the beastfolk? I don't know. I suppose those that were made of beasts of prey will make silly asses of themselves sooner or later. We can't massacre the lot, can we? I suppose that's what your humanity would suggest, but they'll change. They're sure to change. He talked thus inconclusively until at last I felt my temper going. Damnation, he exclaimed at some petulance of mine. Can't you see I'm in a worse hole than you are? And he got up and went for the brandy. Drink, he said, returning. You logic chomping, chalky face, saint of an atheist. Drink! Not I, said I, and sat grimly watching his face under the yellow paraffin flare as he drank himself into a garrulous misery. I have a memory of infantidium. He wandered into a maudlin defense of the beast people and of emling. Emling, he said, was the only thing that had ever really cared for him, and suddenly an idea came to him. I'm damned, said he, staggering to his feet and clutching the brandy bottle. By some flash of intuition I knew what it was he intended. You don't give drink to that beast, I said, rising and facing him. Beast, said he, you're the beast. He takes his liquor like a Christian. Come out of the way, Prendic. For God's sake, said I, get out of the way. He roared and suddenly whipped out his revolver. Very well, said I, instead of sighed, half-minded to fall upon him as he put his hand upon the latch, but deterred by the thought of my useless arm. You made a beast of yourself. To the beasts you may go. I flung the doorway open and stood half-facing me between the yellow lamplight and the pallid glare of the moon. His eye sockets were blotches of black under his stubbly eyebrows. You're solemn, Prendic, silly ass. You're always fearing and fancying. We're on the edge of things, bound to cut my throat tomorrow. I'm going to have a damned bank holiday tonight. He turned and went out into the moonlight. Emling, he cried. Emling, old friend. Three dim creatures in the silvery light came along the edge of the wan beach. One a white-wrapped creature, the other two blotches of blackness following it. They halted, staring. Then I saw Emling's hunched shoulders as he came round the corner of the house. Drink, cried Montgomery. Drink, you brutes. Drink and be men. Dame, I'm the cleverest. Moro forgot this. This is the last touch. Drink, I tell you. Waving the bottle in his hand, he started off at a kind of quick trot to the westward. Emling ranging himself between him and the three dim creatures who followed. I went to the doorway. They were already indistinct, mist of the moonlight before Montgomery halted. I saw him administer a dose to the raw brandy to Emling and saw the five figures melt into one big patch. Sing, I heard Montgomery shout. Sing altogether, confound, old Prendic. That's right. Now, again, confound, old Prendic. 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 vent this new inspiration of brandy demanded. Presently I heard Montgomery's voice shouting, Right turn! And they passed for their shouts and howls and the blackness of the landward trees. Slowly, very slowly, they receded into silence. A peaceful splendor of the night healed again. The moon was now past the meridian traveling down the west. It was at its full and very bright, riding through the empty blue sky. The shadow of the wall lay yard wide in a binky blackness at my feet. The eastward sea was a featureless gray, dark and mysterious. And between the sea and the shadow of the gray sands of volcanic glass and crystals flashed and shone like a beach of diamonds. Behind me the paraffin lamp flared hot and ruddy. Then I shut the door, locked it, and went into the enclosure where Murrow lay beside its latest victims. The stag hounds of the llama and some other wretched brutes with his massive face calm even after his terrible death. And with the hard eyes open staring at the dead white moon above I sat down upon the edge of the sink and with my eyes upon that ghastly pile of silverly light and ominous shadows began to turn over my plans. In the morning I would gather some provisions in the dinghy and after setting fire to the pyre before me push out into the desolation of the high sea once more. I felt that for Montgomery there was no help, that he was, in truth, half akin to these beast folk, unfended for humankind. I do not know how long I sat there scheming. It must have been an hour or so. Then my planning was interrupted by the return of Montgomery to my neighborhood. I heard a yelling from many throats, a tumult of exalted cries passing down towards the beach, whooping and howling and excited shrieks that seemed to come to a stop near the water's edge. The riot rose and fell. I heard a heavy blows and a 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, an open one. I saw something at the tail of my eye, a red figure, and turned sharply. Behind me lay the yard, vividly black and white in the moonlight, and the pile of wooden faggots on which Moro and his mutilated victims lay, one over another. They seemed to be gripping one another in this 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 fandom, a ruddy glow that came and danced and went upon the wall opposite. I misinterpreted this, fancied it was a reflection of my flickering lamp, and turned again to the stores in the shed. I went unrummaging among them, as well as a one-armed man could, finding this convenient thing in that, and putting them aside for tomorrow's launch. My movements were slow, and the time passed quickly, insensibly the daylight crept upon me. The chanting died down, giving place to a clamor. Then it began again, and suddenly broke into a tumult. I heard cries of more, more, a sound like quarreling, and a sudden wild shriek. The quality of the sounds changed so greatly that it arrested my attention. I went out into the yard and listened. Then, cutting like a knife across the confusion came the crack of a revolver. I rushed at once through my room to the little doorway. As I did so, I heard some of the packing cases behind me go sliding down and smashed together with a clatter of glass on the floor of the shed. But I did not heed these. I flung the door open and looked out. Up the beach, by the boathouse, a bonfire was burning, raining up sparks into the indistinctness of the dawn. Around this struggled a mass of black figures. I heard Montgomery call my name. I began to run at once toward this fire, revolver in hand. I saw the pink tongue of Montgomery's pistol look at once, close to the ground. He was down. I shouted with all my strength and fired into the air. I heard someone cry, The master! The knotted black struggle broke into scattering units. The fire leapt and sank down. The crowd of beast people fled and sounding panic before me up the beach. In my excitement, I fired at their retreating backs as they disappeared among the bushes. Then I turned to the black heaps upon the ground. Montgomery lay on his back, the hairy gray beast man sprawling across his body. The brute was dead, but still gripping Montgomery's throat with his curving claws. Nearby lay Enling on his face and quite still, his neck bitten open in the upper part of the smashed brandy bottle in his hand. Two other figures lay near the fire. The one motionless, the other groaning fitfully, every now and then raising its head slowly and dropping it again. I caught hold of the gray man and pulled him off Montgomery's body. His claws drew down the torn coat reluctantly as I dragged him away. Montgomery was dark in the face and scarcely breathing. I splashed seawater on his face and pillowed his head on my rolled-up coat. Enling was dead. The wounded creature by the fire was a wolf brute with a bearded gray face. Lay, I found, with the fork part of its body upon the still-gloaming timber. The wretched thing was injured so dreadfully that in mercy I blew its brains out at once. The other brute was one of the bullmen swabbed in white. He too was dead. The rest of the beast people had vanished from the beach. I went to Montgomery again and knelt beside him, cursing my ignorance of medicine. The fire beside me had sunk down and only charred beams of timber glowing at the central ends and mixed with the gray ash of brushwood remained. I wondered casually where Montgomery had got his wood. Then I saw that the dawn was upon us. The sky had grown brighter. The setting moon is becoming pale and opaque and the luminous blue of the day. The sky of the eastward was rimmed with red. Suddenly I heard a thud and a hissing behind me and, looking round, a sprang to my feet with a cry of horror. Against a warm dawn, great tumultuous masses of black smoke were boiling up out of the enclosure and through their stormy darkness shot flickering threads of blood red flame. Then the thatched roof caught. I saw the curving charge of the flames across the sloping straw. A spur of fire jetted from the window of my room. I knew at once what had happened. I remember the crash I had heard. When I had rushed out to Montgomery's assistance I had overturned the lamp. The hopelessness of saving any of the contents of the enclosure stared me in the face. My mind came back to my plan of flight and, turning swiftly, I looked to see where the two boats lay upon the beach. They were gone. Two axes lay upon the sands beside me. Chips and splinters were scattered broadcast and the ashes of the bonfire were blackening and smoking under the dawn. Montgomery had burnt the boats to revenge himself upon me and prevent our return to mankind. A sudden convulsion of rage shook me. I was almost moved to batter his foolish head as he lay there helpless on my feet. Then suddenly his hand moved. So feebly, so pitifully that my wrath vanished. He groaned and opened his eyes for a minute. I knelt beside him and raised his head. He opened his eyes again, staring silently at the dawn and they meant mine. The lutes fell. Sorry, he said presently with an effort. He seemed trying to think. The last, he murmured, the last of the silly universe. What a mess. I listened. His head fell helplessly to one side. I thought some drink might revive him, but there was neither drink nor vessel in which to bring drink at hand. He seemed suddenly heavier. My heart went cold. I bent down to his face, put my hand through the runt's blouse. He was dead. And even as he died, a line of white heat, the limb of the sun, rose eastward beyond the projection of the bay, splashing its radiance across the sky and turning the dark sea into a weltering tumult of dazzling light. Felt like a glory upon his death, shrunken face. I let his head fall gently upon the rough pillow I had made for him and stood up. Performing was the glittering desolation of the sea, the awful solitude upon which I had already suffered so much. Behind me the island, hushed under the dawn. Its beast people silent and unseen. The enclosure, with all its provisions and ammunition, born noisily with seven gusts of flame, fitful crackling, and now and then a crash. The heavy smoke drove up the beach away from me, rolling low over the distant tree tops towards the huts and the ravine. Beside me were the charred vestiges of the boats and these five dead bodies. Then out of the bushes came three beast people with hunched shoulders, protruding heads, misshaping hands awkwardly held, and inquisitive, unfriendly eyes and advanced toward me with hesitating gestures. End of chapter nineteen. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are on the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells. Chapter twenty, alone with the beast folk. I faced these people, facing my fate in them, single-handed now, literally single-handed for I had a broken arm. In my pocket was a revolver with two empty chambers. Among the chips scattered about the beach lay the two axes that had been used to chop up the boats. The tide was creeping in behind me. There was nothing for it but courage. I looked squarely into the faces of the advancing monsters. They avoided my eyes and their quivering nostrils investigated the bodies that lay beyond me on the beach. I took half a dozen steps, picked up the blood-stained whip that lay beneath the body of the wolf-men and cracked it. They stopped and stared at me. Salute! said I. Bow down! They hesitated. One bent his knees. I repeated my command with my heart in my mouth and advanced upon them. One knelt, then the other two. I turned and walked towards the dead body, skipping my face towards the three kneeling beast-men, very much as an actor passing up the stage faces the audience. They broke the law, said I, putting my foot on the chair of the law. They have been slain, even the chair of the law, even the other with the whip. Great is the law, come and see. None escape, said one of them, advancing and peering. None escape, said I, therefore hear and do as I command. They stood up, looking questioningly at one another. Stand there, said I. I picked up the hatchets and swung them by their heads from the sling of my arm. Montgomerie over picked up his revolver still loaded in two chambers and, bending down to rummage, found half a dozen cartridges in his pocket. Take them, said I, standing up again and pointing with the whip. Take them and carry them out and cast them into the sea. They came forward, evidently still afraid of Montgomerie, but still more afraid of my cracking red whiplash. And after some thumbling and hesitation, some whip-cracking and shouting, they lifted him gingerly, carried him and splashing into the dazzling welter of the sea. On, said I, on, carry him far. They went in up to their armpits and stood regarding me. Let go, said I, and the body of Montgomerie vanished with a splash. Something seemed to tighten across my chest. Good, said I, with a break in my voice. And they came back, hurrying and fearful to the margin of the water, leaving long wakes of black and the silver. At the water's edge they stopped, turning and glaring into the sea as though they presently expected Montgomerie to arise there from an exact vengeance. Now these, said I, pointing to the other bodies. They took care not to approach the place where they had thrown Montgomerie into the water, but instead carried the four dead beast-people slantingly along the beach for perhaps a hundred yards before they waited out and cast them away. As I watched them disposing of the mangled remains of Malin, I heard a swine perhaps a dozen yards away. His head was bent down, his bright eyes were fixed upon me, his stumpy hands clenched and held close by his side. He stopped in this crouching attitude when I turned, his eyes a little averted. For a moment we stood eye to eye. I dropped the whip and snatched the pistol on my pocket, for I meant to kill this brute, the most formidable of any left now upon the island, at the first excuse. It may seem treacherous, but so I was resolved. I was far more concerned of any other two of the beast-folk. His continued life was, I knew, a threat against mine. I was perhaps a dozen seconds collecting myself, then cried I, Salute! Bow down! His teeth flashed upon me in a snarl. Who are you that I should? Perhaps a little too spasmodically I drew my revolver, aimed quickly and fired. I heard him yelp, saw him run sideways and turn. Knew I had missed and clicked back to the cock with my thumb for the next time, already running headlong, jumping from side to side and I dared not risk another miss. Every now and then he looked back at me over his shoulder. He went slanting along the beach and vanished beneath the driving masses of dense smoke that were still pouring out from the burning enclosure. For some time I stood staring after him. I turned to my three obedient beast-folk again and signaled them to drop the body they still carried. Then I went back to the place by the fire where the bodies had fallen and kicked the skin. I dismissed my three serfs with a wave of the hand and went up the beach into the thickets. I carried my pistol in my hand, my whip thrust with the hatchets in the sling of my arm. I was anxious to be alone, to think out the position in which I was now placed. A dreadful thing that I was only beginning to realize was that over all this island there was now no safe place where I could be alone insecure to rest or sleep. I had recovered strength amazingly since my landing, but I was still inclined down under any great stress. I felt that I ought to cross the island and establish myself with the beast-people and make myself secure in their confidence, but my heart failed me. I went back to the beach and turning eastward past the burning enclosure made for a point where a shallow spit of coral sand ran out towards the reef. Here I could sit down and think, my back to the sea and my face against my surprise. And there I sat, shen on knees, the sun beating down upon my head, and an unspeakable dread clotting how I could live on against the hour of my rescue, if ever rescue came. I tried to review the whole situation as calmly as I could, but it was difficult to clear the thing of emotion. I began turning over in my mind the reason of Montgomery's despair. They will change, he said. They are sure to change. And Marot, what was it that Marot had said? The stubborn beast flesh grows day by day back again. Then I came round to the hyena swan. I felt sure that if I did not kill that brute he would kill me. The seer of the law was dead, worse luck. They knew now that we of the whips could be killed even as they themselves were killed. Were they peering at me already out of the green masses of ferns and palms over yonder watching until I came within their spring? Were they plotting against me? What was the hyena swan telling them? My imagination was running away with me into a morass of unsubstantial fears. My thoughts were disturbed by a crying of sea birds hurrying towards some black object that had been stranded by the waves on the beach near the enclosure. I knew what that object was, but I had not the heart to go back and drive them off. I began walking along the beach in the opposite direction, designing to come around the eastward corner of the island and so approach the ravine of the huts without traversing the possible ambuscades of the thickets. Perhaps half a mile along the beach I became aware of one of my three beast folk advancing out of the landward bushes towards me. I was now so nervous with my own feelings that I immediately drew my revolver. Even the propitiatory gestures of the creature fell to disarm me. He hesitated as he approached. Go away, cried I. There was something very suggestive of a dog and the cringing attitude of the creature. It retreated a little way very like a dog being sent home and stopped, looking at me imploringly with canine brown eyes. Go away, said I. Do not come near. May I not come near you? It said. Go away, I insisted and snapped my whip. Then putting my whip in my teeth I stooped for a stone and with that threat drove the creature away. So in solitude I came round by the ravine of the beast people and hiding among the weeds and reeds that separated the crevice from the sea I watched such of them as appeared, trying to judge from their gestures and appearance how the death of Meroan Montgomery and the destruction of the house of pain had affected them. I know now the folly of my cowardice. Had I kept my courage up to the level of the dawn, had I not allowed it to ebb away in solitary thought I might have grasped the vacant sceptre of Meroan ruled over the beast people, as it was I lost the opportunity and sank to the position of a mere leader among my fellows. Towards noon certain of them came and squatted basking in the hot sand. The imperious voices of hunger and thirst prevailed over my dread. I came out of the bushes and revolver in hand walked down towards these seated figures. One a wolf woman turned her head towards 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-born man, drowsily and looking away from me. I passed them and went down into the shadow and odors of the almost deserted ravine. In an empty hut I feasted on some specked and half-decayed fruit, and then after I had propped some branches and sticks about the opening and placed myself with my face towards it in my hand upon my revolver, the exhaustion of the last thirty hours claimed its own, and I fell into a light slumber, hoping that the flimsy barricade I had erected would cause sufficient noise in its removal to save me from surprise. CHAPTER XXI THE REVERSION OF THE BEASTFOLK In this way I became one among the beast-people on the island of Dr. Moreau. When I awoke, it was dark about me. My arm ached in its bandages. I sat up, wondering at first where I might be. I heard coarse voices talking outside. Then I saw that my barricade had gone and that the opening of the hut stood clear. My revolver was still in my hand. I heard something breathing, saw something crouch together close beside me. I held my breath, trying to see what it was. It began to move slowly, interminably. Then something soft and warm and moist passed across my hand. All my muscles contracted. I snatched my hand away. A cry of alarm began and was stifled in my throat. Then I just realized what had happened sufficiently to stay my fingers on the revolver. Who was that? I said in a hoarse whisper. The revolver still pointed. I, master. Who are you? They say there's no master now. But I know, I know. I carried the bodies into the sea. Oh, Walker in the seal. 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, but it might have fallen upon me as I slept. It is well, I said, extending my hand for another licking kiss. I began to realize what its presence meant and the tide of my courage flowed. Where are the others? I asked. They are mad. They are fools, said the dog-man. Even now they talk together beyond there. They say, the master is dead. The other with the whip is dead. That other who walked in the sea is as we are. We have no master, no whips, no house of pain any more. There is an end. We love the law and will keep it, but there is no pain, no master, no whips for ever again. So they say, but I know, master, I know. I felt in the darkness and patted the dog-man's head. It is well, I said again. Presently you will slay them all, said the dog-man. Presently, I answered, I will slay them all. After certain days and certain things have come to pass. Every one of them save those you spare. Every one of them shall be slain. What the master wishes to kill, the master kills, said the dog-man with a certain satisfaction in his voice. And that their sins may grow, I said. Let them live in their folly until their time is ripe. Let them not know that I am the master. The master's will is sweet, said the dog-man, but I will not be taked of his canine blood. But one has sinned, said I, him I will kill whenever I may meet him. When I say to you, that is he, see that you fall upon him. And now I will go to the men and women who are assembled together. For a moment the opening of the hut was blackened by the exit of the dog-man. Then I followed and stood up, almost in the exact spot where I had been when I had heard Moro and his stag hound pursuing me. My asthmatic ravine about me was black, and beyond, instead of a green, sunlit slope, I saw a red fire before which hunched grotesque figures move to and fro. Farther were the thick trees, a bank of darkness, fringed above with the black lace of the upper branches. The moon was just riding up on the edge of the ravine, and like a bar across its face drove the spire of vapor that was forever streaming from the fumaroles of the island. Walk by me, said I, and side by side we walked down the narrow way, taking little heed of the dim things that peered at us out of the huts. None about the fire attempted to salute me. Most of them disregarded me ostentatiously. I looked round for the hyena swine, but he was not there. Altogether perhaps twenty of the beast folk squatted, staring into the fire or talking to one another. He is dead! He is dead! The master is dead! said the voice of the eight man to the right of me. The house of pain! There is no house of pain! He is not dead! said I, in a loud voice. Even now he watches us. The startled them. Twenty pairs of eyes regarded me. The house of pain is gone! said I. It will come again. The master you cannot see, yet even now he listens among you. True, true! said the dog-man. They were staggered at my assurance. An animal may be ferocious and cunning enough, but it takes a real man to tell a lie. The man with a bandaged arm speaks a strange thing! said one of the beast folk. I tell you it is so, I said. The master and the house of pain will come again. Woe be to him who breaks the law! They looked curiously at one another. With an affectation of indifference I began to chop idly at the ground in front of me with my hatchet. They looked, I noticed, at the deep cuts I made in the turf. Then the satyr raised a doubt. I answered him. Then one of the dappled things objected and sprang up round the fire. Every moment I began to feel more convinced of my present security. I talked now without the catching in my breath due to the intensity of my excitement that had troubled me at first. In the course of about an hour I had really convinced several of the beast folk of the truth of my assertions and talked most of the others into a dubious state. I kept a sharp eye for my enemy, the hyena swine, but he never appeared. Every now and then a suspicious movement would startle me but my confidence grew rapidly. Then as the moon crept down from the zenith one by one the listeners began to yawn, showing the oddest teeth in the light of the sinking fire. And first one and then another retired towards the dens in the ravine and I, dreading the silence and darkness, went with them, knowing I was safer with several of them than with one alone. And this manner began the longer part of my sojourn upon the island of Dr. Moreau. But from that night until the end came there was but one thing happened to tell, save a series of innumerable small unpleasant details and the fretting of an incessant uneasiness. So that I prefer to make no chronicle for that gap of time, to tell only one cardinal incident of the ten months I spent as an intimate of these half humanized brutes. There is much that sticks in my memory that I could write, things that I would cheerfully give my right hand to forget, but they do not help the telling of the story. In the retrospect it is strange to remember how soon I fell in these monstrous ways and gained my confidence again. I had my quarrels with them, of course, and could show some of their teeth marks still. But they soon gained a wholesome respect for my trick of throwing stones and for the bite of my hatchet. And my St. Bernard man's loyalty was of infinite service to me. I found their simple scale of honour was based mainly on the capacity for inflicting trenchant wounds. Indeed, I may say without vanity, I hope, that I held something one or two whom in a rare axis of high spirits I had scarred rather badly bore me a grudge, but it vented itself chiefly behind my back and at a safe distance from my missiles and grimaces. The hyenas swine avoided me and I was always on the alert for him. My inseparable dog-man hated and dreaded him intensely. I really believed 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 tasted the leopard man. He formed a lair somewhere on the forest and became solitary. Once I tried to induce the beast-folk to hunt him, but I lacked the authority to make them cooperate for one end. Again and again I tried to approach his den and come upon him unaware, but always he was too acute for me and saw or winded me and got away. He too made every forest pathway dangerous to me and my ally with his lurking ambuscades. The dog-man scarcely dared to leave my side. In the first month or so the beast-folk, compared with their latter condition, were human enough and for one or two besides my canine friend I even conceived of 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 forever jabbering at me, jabbering the most errant nonsense. One thing about him entertained me a trick of coining new words. He had an idea, I believe, that to gabble about names that meant nothing was the proper use of speech. He called it big thanks to distinguish it from little thanks, the sane everyday interests of life. If ever I made a remark he did not understand he would praise it very much, ask me to say it again, learn it by heart and go off repeating it with a word wrong here or there to all the milder of the beast-people. He thought nothing of what was plain and comprehensible. I invented some very curious big thanks for his special use. I think now that he was the silliest creature I ever met. He had developed in the most wonderful way the distinctive silliness of man without losing one jot of the natural folly of a monkey. This, I say, was on the earlier weeks of my solitude among these brutes. During that time they respected the usage established by the law and behaved with General Decorum. Once I found another rabbit torn to pieces, by the hyenas whine I am assured, but that was all. It was about May when I first distinctly perceived a growing difference in their speech and carriage, a growing coarseness of articulation, a growing disinclination to talk. My monkey-man's jabber multiplied in volume but grew less and less comprehensible more and more simian. Some of the others seemed altogether slipping their hold upon speech, though they still understood what I had said to them at that time. Can you imagine language once clear, cut and exact softening and guttering, losing shape and import, becoming mere lumps of sound again? And they walked quite erect with an increasing difficulty, though they evidently felt ashamed of themselves. Every now and then I would come upon one or another running on toes and fingertips and quite unable to recover the vertical attitude. They held things more clumsily, drinking by suction, feeding by gnawing, grew commoner every day. I realized more keenly than ever what Maroh had told me about the stubborn flesh. They were reverting and reverting very rapidly. Some of them, the pioneers of this I noticed with some surprise were all females, began to disregard the injunction of decency deliberately for the most part. Others even attempted public outrages upon the institution of monogamy. The tradition of the law was clearly losing its force. I cannot pursue this disagreeable subject. My dog-man imperceptibly slipped back to the dog again. Day by day he became dumb, quadrupedal, hairy. I scarcely noticed the transition from the companion on my right hand to the lurching dog at my side. As the carelessness and disorganization increased from day to day, the lane of dwelling places, at no time very sweet, became so loathsome that I left it, and going across the island made myself a hovel of bows amid the black ruins of Maroh's enclosure. Some memory of pain, I found, still made that place the safest from the beastfolk. It would be impossible to detail every step of the lapsing of these monsters to tell how, day by day, the human semblance left them, how they gave up bandageings and wrappings, abandoned at last every stitch of clothing, how the hair began to spread over the exposed limbs, how their foreheads fell away and their faces projected, how the quasi-human intimacy I had permitted myself with some of them in the first month of my loneliness became a shuddering horror to recall. The change was slow and inevitable. For them and for me it came without any definite shock. I still went among them in safety, because no jolt in the downward glide had released the increasing charge of explosive animalism that ousted the human day by day. But I began to fear that soon now that shock must come. My Saint Bernard Brute followed me to the enclosure every night, and his vigilance enabled me to sleep at times in something like peace. The little pink sloth thing became shy and left me to crawl back to its natural life once we were in just the state of equilibrium that would remain in one of those happy family cages, which animal tamers exhibit, if the tamer were to leave it forever. Of course these creatures did not decline into such beasts as the reader has seen in zoological gardens, and to ordinary bears, wolves, tigers, oxen, swine, and apes. There was still something strange about each, and each morrow had blended this animal with that. One perhaps was Ursine chiefly, another feline chiefly, another bovine chiefly, but each was tainted with the other creatures, a kind of generalized animalism appearing through the specific dispositions. And the dwindling sheds of the humanity still startled me every now and then. A momentary recredescence of speech perhaps, an unexpected dexterity of the forefeet, a pitiful attempt to walk erect. I too must have undergone strange changes. My clothes hung about me as yellow rags through whose wrents showed the tan skin. My hair grew long and became matted together. I am told that even now my eyes have a strained brightness, a swift alertness of movement. At first I spent the daylight hours on the southward beach watching for a ship, hoping and praying for a ship. I counted on the Ipeca Quana returning as a year wore on, but she never came. Five times I saw sails and thrice smoke, but nothing ever touched the island. I always had a bonfire ready, but no doubt the volcanic reputation of the island was taken to account for that. It was only about September or October that I began to think of making a raft. By that time my arm had healed and both my hands were at my service again. At first I found my helplessness appalling. I had never done any carpentry or such like work in my life, and I spent day after day on 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 education I could not devise any way of making them so. I spent more than a fortnight grubbing among the black ruins of the enclosure and on the beach where the boats had been burnt, looking for nails and other stray pieces of metal that might prove of service. Now and then some beast creature would watch me and go leaping off when I called to it. There came a season of thunderstorms and heavy rain which greatly retarded my work, but at last the raft was completed. I was delighted with it. But with a always been my bane, I had made it a mile or more from the sea, and before I had dragged it down to the beach the thing had fallen to pieces. Perhaps it is as well that I was saved from launching it, but at the time my misery at my failure was so acute that for some days I simply moped on the beach and stared at the water and thought of death. I did not however mean to die, and an incident occurred that warned me unmistakably of the folly of letting the days pass so, for each fresh day was fraught with increasing danger from the beast I was lying in the shade of the enclosure wall staring out to sea when I was startled by something cold touching the skin of my heel, and starting round found the little pink sloth creature blinking into my face. He had long since lost speech and active movement, and the lank hair of the little brute grew thicker every day in his stumpy claws more askew. He made a moaning noise when he saw he had attracted my attention, went a little way towards the bushes and looked back at me. At first I did not understand, but presently it wished me to follow him, and this I did at last, slowly, for the day was hot. When he reached the trees he clambered into them, for he could travel better among their swinging creepers than on the ground. And suddenly, in a trampled space I came upon a ghastly group. My St. Bernard creature lay on the ground dead, and near his body crafts a hyena swine, gripping the quivering flesh with its misshapen claws gnawing at it and snarling with delight. As I approached the monster lifted its glaring eyes to mine. Its lips went trembling back from its red-stained teeth, and it growled menacingly. It was not afraid, and not ashamed. The last vestige of the human taint had vanished. I advanced to step farther, stopped, and pulled out my revolver. At last I had him face to face. The brute made no sign of retreat, but its ears went back, its hair bristled, and its body crouched together. I aimed between the eyes and fired. As I did so the thing rose straight at me in a leap, and I was knocked over like a nine-pin. It clutched at me with its crippled hand and struck me in the face. Its spring carried it over me. I fell into the hind part of its body, but luckily I had hit as I meant, and it had died even as it leapt. I crawled out from under its unclean weight and stood up trembling, staring at its quivering body. That danger at least was over, but this I knew was only the first of the series of relapses that must come. I burnt both of the bodies on the pyre of brushwood, but after that I saw that unless I left the island my death was only a question of time. The beast people by that time had, with one or two exceptions, left the ravine and made themselves layers according to their taste among the thickets of the island. Few prowled by day, most of them slept, and the island might have seemed deserted to a newcomer, 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 there could now be scarcely a score left of the dangerous carnivores, the braver of these were already dead. After the death of this poor dog of mine, my last friend, I too adopted to some extent the practice of slumbering in the daytime in order to be on my guard at night. I built my den in the walls of the enclosure, with such a narrow opening that anything attempting to enter must necessarily make a considerable noise. The creatures had lost the Art of Fire too and recovered their fear of it. I turned once more, almost passionately now, to hammering together steaks and branches to form a raft for my escape. I found a thousand difficulties. I am an extremely unhandy man. My schooling was over before the days have slowed, but most of the requirements of a raft I met at last in some clumsy circuitous way or other, and this time I took care of the strength. The only insurmountable obstacle was that I had no vessel to contain the water I should need if I floated forth upon these untraveled seas. I would have even tried pottery, but the island contained no clay. I used to go moping about the island trying with all my might to solve this one last difficulty. Sometimes I would give way to wild outbursts of rage and hack and splinter some unlucky tree in my intolerable vexation, but I could think of nothing. And then came a day, a wonderful day which I spent next to see. I saw a sail to the southwest, a small sail like that of a little schooner and forewith. I lit a great pile of brushwood and stood by it at the heat of it in the heat of the midday sun, watching. All day I watched that sail eating or drinking nothing so that my head reeled and the beast came and glared at me and seemed to wonder and went away. It was still distant when night came and swallowed it up. And all night I toiled to keep my blaze bright and high and the eyes of the beasts shone out of the darkness marveling. And the dawn the sail was nearer and I saw it was the dirty lug sail of a small boat, but it sailed strangely. My eyes were weary with watching and could not believe them. Two men were in the boat, sitting low down, one by the bowels, the other at the rudder. The head was not kept to the wind, it yawned and fell away. As the day grew brighter I began waving the last rag of my jacket to them, but they did not notice me and sat still facing each other. I went to the lowest point of the low headland and gesticulated and shouted. There was no response and the boat kept on her aimless course making slowly very slowly for the bay. Suddenly a great white bird flew up out of the boat and neither of the men stirred nor noticed it. It circled round and then came sweeping overhead with its strong wings outspread. Then I stopped shouting and sat down on the headland and rested my chin on my hands and stared. Slowly, slowly the boat drove past towards the west. I would have swum out to it, but something, a cold, vague fear kept me back. And the afternoon the tide stranded the boat and left it a hundred yards or so to the westward side of the enclosure. The men in it were dead, had been dead so long that they fell to pieces when I tilted the boat on its side and dragged them out. One had a shock of red hair like the captain of the Ipaquana and a dirty white cap lay in the bottom of the boat. As I stood beside the boat, three of the beasts came slinking out of the bushes and sniffing towards me. One of my spasms of disgust came upon me. I thrust the little boat down the beach and clambered on board her. Two of the beasts were wolf beasts and came forward with quivering nostrils and glittering eyes. The third was the horrible nondescript of bear and bull. When I saw them approaching those wretched remains, heard them snarling at one another and caught the gleam of their teeth, a frantic horror succeeded my repulsion. I turned my back upon them, struck the lug and began paddling out to sea. I could not bring myself to look behind me. I lay, however, between the reef and the island that night and the next morning went round twenty-keg aboard with water. Then, with such patience as I could command, I collected a quantity of fruit and waylaid and killed two rabbits with my last three cartridges. While I was doing this, I left the boat moored to an inward projection of the reef, for fear of the beast-people. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, want to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Gemma Blythe, The Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells Chapter Twenty-Two Man Alone In the evening, I started and drove out to sea before a gentle wind from the southwest, slowly, steadily, and the island grew smaller and smaller, and the lank-spire of smoke dwindled to a finer and finer line against the hot sunset. The ocean rose up around me, hiding that low dark patch from my eyes. The daylight, the trailing glory of the sun when streaming out of the sky, was drawn aside like some luminous curtain, and at last I looked into the blue gulf of immensity, which the sun's shine hides and saw the floating hosts of the stars. The sea was silent, the sky was silent. I was alone with the night and silence. So I drifted for three days, eating and drinking sparingly and meditating upon all that had happened to me, not desiring very greatly to see men again. One unglean rag was about me. My hair was 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 in San Francisco. Neither the captain nor the mate would believe my story. Judging that solitude and danger had made me mad, and fearing their opinion might be that of others. I refrained from telling my adventure further and professed to recall nothing that had happened to me between the loss of the Lady Vane and the time when I was picked up again, the space of a year. I had to act with the utmost circumspection to save myself from the suspicion of insanity, my memory of the law of the two dead sailors, of the emboscades of the darkness of the body of the cane brick haunted me and unnatural as it seems. With my return to mankind came, instead of that confidence in sympathy I had expected, a strange enhancement of the uncertainty in dread I had experienced during my stay upon the island. No one would believe me. I was almost as queer to men as I had been to the beast people. I may have caught something of the natural wildness of my companions. They say that terror is a disease, and anyhow I can witness that for several years now a restless fear has dwelt in my mind. Such a restless fear as as half tamed lion cub may feel. My trouble took the strangest form I could not perzoid myself that the men and women I met were not also another beast people. Animals half wrought into the outward image of human souls, and that they would presently begin to revert to show first this beastial mark and then that. But I have confided my case to a strangely able man a man who had known Marot and seemed half to credit my story a mental specialist and he has helped me mightily though I do not expect that the terror of that island will ever, altogether leave me. At most times it lies far in the back of my mind a mere distant cloud and a faint distrust but there are times when the little glad spreads until it obscures the whole sky then I look about me at my fellow men and I go in fear I see faces keen and bright others dull or dangerous others unsteady insincere none that has the calm authority of a reasonable soul I feel as though the animal surging up through them that presently the degradation of the islanders will be played over again on a larger scale I know this is an illusion that these seeming men and women about me are indeed men and women men and women forever perfectly reasonable creatures full of human desires and tender solicitude from instinct and the slaves of no fantastic law beings altogether different from the beast folk yet I shrink from them from their curious glances their inquiries and assistance and long to be away from them and alone for that reason I live near the broad free downland and can escape the other when this shadow is over my soul and very sweet as the empty downland men only the wind swept sky when I lived in London the horror wasn't well nigh insupportable I could not get away from men their voices came through the windows locked doors were flimsy safeguards I would go out into the streets to fight with my delusion and growling women would mew after me furtive graving men glanced jealously at me weary pale workers go coughing by me with tired eyes and eager paces like wounded deer dripping blood old people bent and dull past murmuring to themselves and all un-eating a ragged ale of jiving children then I would turn aside into some chapel and even there such was my disturbance it seemed that the preacher gibbered big things even as the ape-an had done or into some library and there the intent faces over the books seemed but patient creatures waiting for prey particularly nauseous were the blank expressionless faces of people in trains and omnibuses they seemed no more my fellow creatures than dead bodies would be so that I did not dare to travel unless I was assured of being alone and even it seemed that I too was not a reasonable creature but only an animal tormented with some strange disorder in its brain which sent it to wander alone like a sheep stricken with jid this is a mood however for me now I thank God more rarely I have withdrawn myself from the confusion of cities and multitudes and spend my days surrounded by wise books bright windows in this life of albums 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 and chemistry in the study of astronomy there is although I do not know how there is or why there is a sense of infinite peace and protection in the glittering hosts of heaven there it must be I think in the vast and eternal laws of matter and not in the daily cares and sins and troubles of men that whatever is more than possible 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 Brindick End of Chapter 22 Man Alone End of the Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. 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