 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 Meredith Hughes, Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells Chapter 12. 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 flayed child than anything else in the world. The creature had exactly the mild but repulsive features of a sloth, the same low forehead and slow gestures. As the first shock of the change of light passed, I saw about me more distinctly. The little sloth-like creature was standing and staring at me. My conductor had vanished. The place was a narrow passage between high walls of lava, a crack in its knotted flow, and on either side interwoven heaps of seamat, palm fans and reeds leaning 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 my eight-man reappeared at the aperture of the nearest of these dens and beckoned me in. As he did so, a slouching monster wriggled out of one of the places further up this strange street and stood up in featureless silhouette against the bright green beyond, staring at me. I hesitated, had half a mind to bolt the way I had come, and then, determined to go through with the adventure, gripped my nailed stick about the middle, and crawled into the little evil-smelling lean-to after my conductor. It was a semi-circular space shaped like the half of a beehive, and against the rocky wall that formed the inner side of it was a pile of variegated fruits, coconuts, and others. Some rough vessels of 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 shapeless mass of darkness that grunted, hey, as I came in, and my eight-man stood in the dim light of the doorway and held out a split coconut to 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 my tense 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 over its 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 live man! Like me! Shut up! said the voice from the dark and grunted. I nod my coconut amid an impressive silence. 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 whistling overtone that struck me as peculiar, but the English accent was strangely good. The eight-man looked at me as though he had 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 noticed the opening of the place was darkened by two more 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 eight-man, repeating, and the figures in the doorway echoed this with a threat in the tone of their voices. I realized I had to repeat this idiotic formula, and then began the insane-est ceremony. The voice in the dark began intoning a mad litany, line by line, and I and the rest to repeat it. As they did so, they swayed from side to side, and beat their hands upon their knees, and I followed their example. I could have imagined I was already dead and in another world. The dark hut, these grotesque, dim figures just flecked here and there by a glimmer of light, and all of them swaying in unison and chanting. 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 flesh or fish! That is the law! are we not men? Not to claw 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 fervor fell on all of us. We gabbled and swayed faster and faster, repeating this amazing law. Superficially the contagion of these brute men was upon me, but deep down within me laughter and disgust struggled together. We ran through a long list of prohibitions, and then the chant swung round 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 incomprehensible gibberish to me about him, whoever he might be. I could have fancied it 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 animalizing these men, had infected their dwarfed brains with a kind of deification of himself. However, I was too keenly aware of white teeth and strong claws about me to stop my chanting on that account. His are the stars in the sky. At last the song ended. I saw the eight man's face shining with 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 gray hair, almost like a sky terrier. What was it? What were they all? Imagine yourself surrounded by all the most horrible cripples and maniacs it is possible to conceive, and you may understand a little of my feelings with these grotesque caricatures of humanity about me. He is a five man, a five man, a five man, like me, said the eight man. I held out my hands. The gray creature in the corner leaned 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 came forward and peered at my nails, came forward into the light of the opening of the hut, and I saw with a quivering disgust that it was like the face of neither man nor beast, but a mere shock of gray hair with three shadowy over-archings to mark the eyes and the mouth. He has little nails, said this grizzly creature in his hairy beard. It is well. Many are troubled with big nails. He threw my hand down and instinctively I gripped my stick. Eat roots and herbs. It is his will, said the eight man. I am the sayer of the law, said the gray figure. Here come all that be new to learn the law. I sit in the darkness and say the 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 each other. None, none, said the eight 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 great creature in the corner. None escape, said the beast people, looking scant at one another. For everyone, the want that is bad, said the gray sayer of the law. What you will want, we do not know. We shall know. Some want to 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 nor fish, that is the law. Are we not men? None escape, said a dappled brute standing in the doorway. For everyone, the want that is bad, said the gray 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 those 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 a new 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 someone, who I think was one of the two swine men I had seen, thrust his head over the little pink sloth creature and shouted something excitedly, something that I did not catch. Incontinently those at the opening of the hut vanished. My ape-man rushed out, the thing that had sat in the dark followed him. I only observed it was big and clumsy and covered with silvery hair, and I was left alone. Then, before I reached the aperture, I heard the yelp of a stag hound. In another moment I was standing outside the hovel, my chair rail in my hand, every muscle of me quivering. Before me were the clumsy backs of perhaps a scorer of these beast-people, their misshapen heads half hidden by their shoulder blades. They were gesticulating excitedly. Other half-animal faces glared in interrogation out of the hovels. Looking in the direction in which they faced, I saw, coming through the haze under the trees beyond the end of the passage of dens, the dark figure and awful white face of Moreau. He was holding the leaping stag hound back, and close behind him came Montgomery, revolver in hand. For a moment I stood, horror struck. I turned and saw the passages behind me, blocked by another heavy brute with a huge grey face and twinkling little eyes, advancing towards me. I looked round and saw to the right of me, and half a dozen yards in front of me, a narrow gap in the wall of rock through which a ray of light slanted into the shadows. Stop! cried Moreau, as I strode toward this, and then hold him. At that first one face turned toward me, and then others. Their bestial minds were happily slow. I dashed my shoulder into 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 creature dashed at me, and I cut it over, gashed down its ugly face with the nail in my stick, and in another minute I was scrambling up a steep side 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 face creature appeared behind me and jammed his huge bulk into the cleft. Go on! Go on! they howled. I clambered up the narrow cleft in the rock, and came out upon the sulphur on the westward side of the village of the beast men. I ran over the white space, and down a steep slope through a scattered growth of trees, and came to a low lying stretch of tall reeds. Through this I pushed into a dark, thick undergrowth that was black and succulent underfoot. That gap was altogether fortunate for me, for the narrow way slanting obliquely upward must have impeded the nearer pursuers. As I plunged into the reeds the foremost had only just 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 and the gap up the slope, then the crashing of the reeds, and every now and then the crackling of a branch. Some of the creatures roared like excited beasts of prey. The stag hound yelped to the left. I heard morrow and Montgomery shouting in the same direction. I turned sharply to the right. It seemed to me even then that I heard Montgomery shouting for me to run for my life. Presently the ground gave, rich and oozy under my feet. But I was desperate, and went headlong into it, struggled through knee deep, and so came to a winding path among tall canes. The noise of my pursuers passed away to my left. In one place three strange pink hopping animals about the size of cats bolted before my footsteps. The pathway ran uphill across another open space covered with white encrestation and plunged into a cane break 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 turned with unexpected abruptness. I was still running with all my might, and I never saw this drop until I was flying headlong through the air. I fell on my forearms and head among thorns and rose with a torn ear and bleeding face. I had fallen into a precipitous ravine, rocky and thorny, full of a hazy mist that drifted about me in wisps, and with a narrow streamlet from which this mist came meandering down the center. I was astonished at this thin fog in the full blaze of daylight, but I had no time to stand wondering then. I turned to my right downstream hoping to come to the sea in that direction, and so have my way open to drown myself. It was only later I found that I had dropped my nailed stick in my fall. Presently the ravine grew narrower for a space, and carelessly I stepped into the stream. I jumped out again pretty quickly, for the water was almost boiling. I noticed too there was a thin sulfurous scum drifting upon its coiling water. Almost immediately came 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. I felt more than a touch of exultation, too, at having distanced my pursuers. It was not in me then to go out and drown myself. My blood was too warm. I stared back the way I had come. I listened. Saved for the hum of gnats and the chirp of some small insects that hopped above 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 chase was over. But I knew now how much hope of help for me lay in the beast's people. End of Chapter 12 CHAPTER XIII. A Pali. I turned again, and went on down towards the sea. I found the hot stream broadened out to a shallow, weedy sand, in which an abundance of crabs and long-bodied, many-legged creatures started from my footfall. I walked to the very edge of the saltwater, and then I felt I was safe. I turned and stared, arms a kimbo, 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 desperate to die. Then it came into my head that there was one chance before me yet. While Moro and Montgomery and their bestial rabble chased me through the island, might I not go round the beach until I came to 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 round upon my right hand. Then, suddenly, far in front of me, I saw first one, and then several figures emerging from the bushes. Moro, with his grey stag-hound, then Montgomery, and two others, at that I stopped. They saw me, and began gesticulating and advancing. I stood watching them approach. The two beast-men came running forward to cut me off from the undergrowth inland. Montgomery came running also, but straight towards me. Moro followed slower with the dog. At last I roused myself for my inaction, and turning seaward walked straight into the water. The water was very shallow at first. I was thirty yards out before the waves reached my waist. Dimly, I could see the intertidal creatures darting away from my 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 face was bright red with exertion, his long flaxen hair blown about his head, and his dropping nether lip showed his irregular teeth. Moro was just coming up, his face pale and firm, and the dog at his hand barked at me. Both men had heavy whips. Father up the beach stared the beast-men. What am I doing? I'm going to drown myself, said I. Montgomery and Moro looked at each other. Why? asked Moro. Because that is better than being tortured by you. I told you so, said Montgomery, and Moro said something in a low tone. What makes you think I shall torture you? asked Moro. What I saw, I said, and those yonder. Hush, said Moro, 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 Maling, Montgomery's attendant, and one of the white-swayed brutes from the boat. Father 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 raising my voice more and more that it might reach them. They were men, men like yourselves, whom you have infected with some bestial taint, men whom you have enslaved, and whom you still fear. You who listen, I cried, pointing now to Moro, and shouting past him to the beast-men. You who listen, do you not see these men still 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 Moro. They both shouted together, as if to drown my voice, and behind them 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 Moro and 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 on the evening of my arrival, come out from among the trees, and others followed him to hear me better. At last, for want of breath, I paused. Listen to me for a moment, said the steady voice of Moro, and then say what you will. Well, said I. He coughed, thought, then shouted, Latin, Prendick, bad Latin, schoolboy Latin, but try and understand. He non-sunt hominase, 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 back the sun, and dropped the object at his feet. That's a loaded revolver, said he. Montgomery here will do the same. Now we are going up 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 you drugged last night, had we wanted to work you any mischief, and in the next, now your first panic is over, and you can think a little, is Montgomery here quite up to the character you give him. We have chased you for your good, because this island is full of inimicable phenomena. Besides, why should we want to shoot you when you've just offered to drown yourself? Why did you set your people on to 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'm used. It seemed just possible. Then I remembered something again. But I saw, said I, in the enclosure. That was the puma. Look here, Prendic, 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 distrusted and dreaded Moreau. But Montgomery was a man I felt I understood. Go up the beach, said I, after thinking, and added, holding your hands up. Can't do that, said Montgomery, with an explanatory nod over his 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, held a 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 at a round lump of lava, and had the satisfaction of seeing the stone pulverised, and the beach splashed with lead. Still I hesitated for a moment. I'll take the risk, said I at last, and with a revolver in each hand I walked up the beach towards them. Facts better, said Moreau, without affectation. As it is you have wasted the best part of my day with your confounded imagination, and with a touch of contempt which humiliated me, he and Montgomery turned, 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 rest stood silent, watching. They may once have been animals, but I never before saw an animal trying to think. End of chapter 13 Chapter 14 Dr. Moreau explains And now, Prendic, I will explain. Said Dr. Moreau, as soon as we had eaten and drunk, I must confess that you 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't do, 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 his white hair. He stared through the little window out at the starlight. I sat as far away from him as possible, the table between us and 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 call it, is, after all, only a puma? Said Moreau. He had made me visit that horror in the inner room to assure myself of its inhumanity. It is the puma, I said, still alive. But so cut and mutilated as I pray I may never see living flesh again. Of all, vile, never mind that. Said Moreau. At least spare me those youthful horrors. Montgomery used to be just the same. You admit that it is the puma. Now be quiet, while I reel off my 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 touch of sarcasm in his voice. Presently I found myself hot with shame at our mutual positions. The creatures I had seen were not men, had never been men. They were animals. Humanized animals. Triumphs of vivisection. You forget all that a skilled vivisector can do with living things, said Moreau. For my own part I puzzled why the things I 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, in the secretion of fatty tissue. I have no doubt you have heard of these things. Of course, had 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 things than that. There is building up as well as breaking down and changing. You have heard perhaps of a common surgical operation resorted to in cases where the nose has been destroyed. A flap of skin is cut from the forehead. Turn down on the nose and heels in the new position. This is a kind of grafting in a new position as part of an animal upon itself. Grafting of freshly obtained material from another animal 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 snipped from another animal or fragments of bone from a victim freshly killed. Hunters' coxspur, possibly you've heard of that, flourished on the bull's neck. And the rhinoceros rats of the Algerian Zoos are also to be thought of. Monsters manufactured by transferring a slip from the tail of an ordinary rat to its snout and allowing it to heal in that position. Monsters manufactured, said I. Then you mean to tell me, yes. These creatures you have seen are animals, carven and wrought into new shapes. To that, to the study of the plasticity of living forms my life has been devoted. I've studied for years, gaining in knowledge as I go, I see you look horrified, and yet I tell you nothing new. It all lay in the surface of practical anatomy 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 made to undergo an enduring modification, of which vaccination and other methods of inoculation with living or dead matter are examples that will no doubt be familiar to you. A similar operation is the transfusion of blood, with which subject indeed I began. These are all familiar cases, less so, and probably far more extensive, with the operations of those medieval practitioners who made dwarves and beggar cripples, show monsters, some vestiges of whose art still remain the preliminary manipulation of the young mountain banker or contortionist. Victor Hugo gives an account of them in Le Homme Crérit, but perhaps my meaning grows plain now. You begin to see that it is a possible thing to transplant tissue from one part of an animal to another, or from one animal to another, to alter its chemical reactions and methods of growth to modify the articulation of its limbs, and indeed to change it in its most intimate structure. And yet this extraordinary branch of knowledge has never been sought as 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 been demonstrated, as it were by accident, by tyrants, by criminals, by the breeders of horses and dogs, by all kinds of untrained, clumsy-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. It one would imagine it must have been practised in secret before, such creatures as the Siamese twins and in the vaults of the Inquisition. No doubt their chief aim was artistic torture, but some, at least of the Inquisitors, must have had a touch of scientific curiosity. But, said I, these things, these animals, talk. He said that it was so, and proceeded to point out that the possibility of vivisection does not stop at a mere physical metamorphosis. A pig may be educated. The mental structure is even less determinate than the bodily. In our growing science of hypnotism we find that the promise of a possibility of superseding old inherent instincts by new 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 suppress sexuality into religious emotion. And the great difference between man and monkey is in the larynx. He continued, in the capacity to frame delicately different sound syllables by which thought could be sustained. In this I fail 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 of his 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 strange wickedness for that choice. He confessed that he had chosen that form by chance. I might just as well have worked to form sheep into llamas or llamas into sheep. I suppose there is something in the human form that appeals to the artistic turn of mind more powerfully than any animal shape can. But I have 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 hour explaining myself. But, said I, I still do not understand where is your justification for inflicting all this pain. The only thing that could excuse vivisection 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 hardly. In my view, in my view, for it is just this question of pain that parts us. So long as visible or audible pain turns you sick, so long as your own pains drive you, so long as pain underlies your propositions about sin, so long, I tell you, you are an 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 open to what science has to teach must see that it is a little thing. It may be that save in this little planet the speck of cosmic dust invisible long before the nearest star could be attained. It may be, I say, that nowhere else does this thing called pain occur. But the laws we feel our way towards, why, even on this earth, even among living things, what pain is there? As he spoke, he drew a little pen-knife from his pocket, opened the smaller blade, and moved his chair so that I could see his thigh. Then, choosing the place deliberately, he drove the blade into his leg and withdrew it. No doubt, he said, you have seen that before. It does not hurt a pinprick, but what does it show? The capacity for pain is not needed in the muscle, and it is not placed there. It is but little needed in the skin, and only here or there over the thighs a spot capable of feeling pain. Pain is simply our intrinsic medical adviser to warn us and stimulate us. Not all living flesh is painful, nor is all nerve, not even all sensory nerve. There's no taint of pain, real pain, in the sensations of the optic nerve. If you wound the optic nerve, you merely see flashes of light. Just as disease of the auditory nerve merely means a humming in our ears. Plants do not feel pain nor the lower animals. It's possible that such animals as the starfish and crayfish do not feel pain at all. Then with men, the more intelligent they become, the more intelligently they will see after their own welfare, and the less they will need the goad to keep them out of danger. I never yet heard of a useless thing that was not ground out of existence by evolution sooner or later. Did you? And pain gets needless. Then I am a religious man, Prendick, as every sane man must be. It may be, I fancy, that I've seen more of the ways of this world's maker than you. For I have sought his laws in my way all my life, while you, I understand, have been collecting butterflies. And I tell you, pleasure and pain have nothing to do with heaven or hell. Pleasure and pain... What is your theologian's ecstasy? But Mahomet's ory in the dark. This store, which many women set upon pleasure and pain, Prendick, is the mark of the beast upon them, the mark of the beast from which they came, pain. Pain and pleasure, they are for us only so long as we wriggle in the dust. You see, I went on with this research just the way it led me. That is the only way I ever heard of true research going. I asked a question, devised some method of obtaining an answer, and got a fresh question. Was this possible or that possible? You cannot imagine what this means to an investigator. What an intellectual passion grows upon him. You cannot imagine the strange, colorless delight of these intellectual desires. The thing before you is no longer an animal, a fellow creature, but a problem. Sympathetic pain, all I know of it. I remember as a thing I used to suffer years ago. I wanted. It was the one thing I wanted to find out the extreme limit of plasticity in a living shape. But, said I, that thing is an abomination. To this day I have never troubled about the ethics of the matter. He continued. The way of nature makes a man at last as remorseless as nature. I have gone on, not heeding anything, but the question I was pursuing, and the material has dripped into the haciander. It is nearly eleven years since we came here. I, and Montgomery, and six Kanakas. I remember the green stillness of the island and the empty ocean about us, as though it was yesterday. The place seemed waiting for me. The stores were landed and the house was built. The Kanakas found some huts near the ravine. I went to work here upon what I had brought with me. There were some disagreeable things happened at first. I began with a sheep and killed it after a day and a half by a slip over the scalpel. I took another sheep and made a thing of pain and fear and left it bound up to here. It looked quite human to me when I had finished it. But I went to it. I was discontented with it. It remembered me and was terrified beyond imagination, and it had no more than the wits of a sheep. The more I looked at it, the clumsier it seemed until at last I put the monster out of its misery. These animals without courage, these fear-haunted, pain-driven things without a spark of pugnacious energy to face torment, they are no good for man-making. Then I took a gorilla I had, and upon that, working with infinite care and mastering difficulty after difficulty, I made my first man. All the week, night and day, I molded him. With him it was chiefly the brain that needed molding. Much had to be added, much changed. I thought I'm a fair specimen of the Negroid type when I finished him, and he laid bandaged, bound, and motionless before me. It was only when his life was assured that I left him and came into this room again and found Montgomery much as you are. He had heard some of the cries as the thing grew human, cries like those that disturbed you, so... I didn't take him completely into my confidence at first. And the Kanakas too had realized something of it. They were scared out of their wits by the sight of me. I got Montgomery over to me, in a way, but I and he had the hardest job to vent the Kanakas deserting. Finally they did, and so we lost the yacht. I spent many days educating the brute. Altogether I had him for three or four months. I taught him the rudiments of English, gave him ideas of counting, even made the thing read the alphabet. But at that he was slow, though I've met with idiots slower. He began with a clean sheet mentally, had no memories left in his mind of what he had been. When his scars were quite healed and he was no longer anything but painful and stiff and able to converse a little, I took him yonder and introduced him to the Kanakas as an interesting stowaway. They were horribly afraid of him at first, somehow, which offended me rather, for I was conceited about him. But his ways seemed so mild and he was so abject that after a time they received him and took his education in hand. He was quick to learn very imitative and adaptive and built himself a hovel, rather better, it seemed to me, than their own shanties. There was one among the boys, a bit of a missionary, and he taught the thing to read, or at least pick out letters, and gave him some rudimentary ideas of morality, and the same the beast habits were not all that desirable. I rested from work some days after this and was in a mind to write an account of the whole affair to wake up English physiology. Then I came upon the creature squatting up in a tree and gibbering it to 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 and 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 still. I mean to conquer that, this puma. But that's the story. All the Kanaka boys are dead now. One fell overboard of the launch and one died of a wounded heal that he had poisoned in some way with plant juice. I went away in the yacht and I suppose in hope were drowned. The other one was killed. Well, I have replaced them. Montgomery went on as much as you are disposed to do at first and then what became of the other one? Said I sharply. The other Kanaka who was killed. The fact is, after I had made a number of human creatures, I made a thing. He hesitated. Yes, said I. It was killed. I don't understand, said I. Do you mean to say it killed the Kanaka? Yes. It killed several of the things that it caught. We chased it for a couple days. It only got loose by accident. I never meant it to get away. It wasn't finished. It was purely an experiment. It was a limbless thing with a horrible face that writhed along the ground in a serpentine fashion. It was immensely strong and in infuriating pain. It lurked in the woods for some days until we hunted it and then it wriggled into the northern part of the island and we divided the party to close in upon it. Montgomery insisted upon coming with me. The man had a rifle and when his body was found one of the barrels was curved into a shape of an S and very nearly bitten through. Montgomery shot the thing. After that I stuck to the ideal of humanity except for little things. He became silent. I sat in silence watching his face. So for twenty years altogether, counting nine years in England, I had been going on. And there is still something in everything I do that defeats me. Makes me dissatisfied. Challenges me to further effort. Sometimes I rise above my level. Sometimes I fall below it. But I always 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. Often there is trouble with the hands and the claws. Painful things that I dare not shape too freely. But it is in the subtle grafting and reshaping one must needs do to the brain that my trouble lies. The intelligence is often oddly low with unaccountable blank ends, unexpected gaps. At least satisfactory of all is something that I cannot touch somewhere. I cannot determine where. In the seat of the emotions, cravings, instincts, desires that harm humanity, a strange hidden reservoir to burst forth suddenly and inundate the whole being of the creature with anger, hate or fear. These creatures of mine seem strange and uncanny to you so soon as you began to observe them. But to me, just after I make them, they seem to be indisputably human beings. It's afterwards as I observe them that the persuasion fades. First one animal trait, then another creeps to the surface and stares out at me. But I will conquer yet. Each time I dip a living creature into the bath of burning pain, I say this time I will burn out all the animal. This time I will make a rational creature of my own. After all, what is it, ten years? After all, what is ten years? Men have been a hundred thousand in the making. He thought darkly. But I'm drawing near the fastness. This puma of mine, after a silence, and they revert. As soon as my hand is taken from them, the beast begins to creep back, begins to assert itself again. Another long silence. Then you take the things you make into those dens that 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's a kind of travesty in them. Montgomery knows about it, for he interferes in their affairs. He's trained one or two of them to our service. He's ashamed of it. But I believe he half likes some of those beasts. It's his business, not mine. They only sicken me with a sense of failure. I take no interest in them. I fancy they follow with the lines of the Kanaka missionary marked out, and have a kind of mockery of rational life, pork beasts. There's something they call the law. Sing hymns about all thine. They build themselves their dens, gather fruit and pull herbs, marry even, but I can see through it all. See into their very souls, and see there is nothing but the souls of beasts, beasts that perish, anger and lust to live and gratify themselves. Yet they're odd. Complex like everything else alive. There is a kind of upward striving in them. Part vanity, part waste, sexual emotion, part waste curiosity. It only mocks me. I have some hope of this puma. I have worked hard at her head and brain. And now, said he, standing up after a long gap of silence during which we had each pursued our own thoughts. What do you think? Are you in fear of me still? I looked at him, and saw but a white-faced, white-haired man with calm eyes. Safe for his serenity, the touch almost of beauty that resulted from his set tranquility and his magnificent build, he might have passed muster among a hundred other comfortable old gentlemen. Then I shivered. By way of answer to his second question I handed him a revolver with either hand. Keep them, he said, and snatched at the yawn. He stood up, stared at me for a moment, and smiled. You have had two eventful days, said he. I should advise some sleep. I'm glad it's all clear. Good night. He thought me over for a moment and then went out by the inner door. I immediately turned the key in the outer one. I sat down again, sat for a time in a kind of stagnant mood, so weary emotionally, mentally, and physically that I could not think beyond the point at which he had left me. The black window stared at me like an eye. At last, with an effort, I put out the light and got into the hammock. Soon I was asleep. End of Chapter 14 of The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells. I woke early. Moreau's explanation stood before my mind, clear and definite, from the moment of my awakening. I got out of the hammock and went to the door to assure myself that the key was turned. Then I tried the window-bar and found it firmly fixed that these men-like creatures were in truth only bestial monsters mere grotesque travesties of men filled me with a vague uncertainty of their possibilities which was far worse than any definite fear. A tapping came at the door and I heard the glutinous aspects mling speaking. I pocketed one of the revolvers, keeping one hand upon it, and opened to him. Good morning, sir. He said, bringing in, in addition to the customary herb breakfast, an ill-cooked rabbit. Montgomery followed him. His roving eye caught the position of my arm and he smiled askew. The pumeau was resting to heal that day, but Moreau, who was singularly solitary in his habits, did not join us. I talked with Montgomery to clear any ideas of the way in which the beast-folk lived. In particular, I was urgent to know how these inhuman monsters were kept from falling upon Moreau and Montgomery and from rending one other. He explained to me that the comparative safety of Moreau and himself was due to the limited mental scope of these monsters. In spite of their increased intelligence and the tendency of their animal instincts to reawaken, they had certain fixed ideas implanted by Moreau in their minds which absolutely bounded their imaginations. They were really hypnotised, had been told that certain things were impossible and that certain things were not to be done, and these prohibitions were woven into the texture of their minds beyond any possibility of disobedience or dispute. Certain matters, however, in which old instinct was at war with Moreau's convenience were in a less stable condition. A series of propositions called the law, I had already heard them recited, battled in their minds with a deep-seated, ever-rebellious cravings of their animal natures. This law they were ever repeating I found at ever-breaking. Both Montgomery and Moreau displayed peculiar solitude to keep them ignorant of the taste of blood. They feared the inevitable suggestions of that flavour. Montgomery told me that the law, especially amongst the feline beast-people, became oddly weakened about nightfall, that then the animal was at its strongest, that a spirit of adventure sprang up in them at the dusk when they would dare things they never seemed to dream about by day. To that I owed my stalking by the leopard-man on the night of my arrival. But during these earlier days of my stay they broke the law only furtively and after dark. In the daylight there was a general atmosphere of respect for its multifarious prohibitions. And here perhaps I may give a few general facts about the island and the beast-people. The island, which was of irregular outline and lay low upon the wide sea, had a total area, I suppose, of seven or eight square miles. It was volcanic in origin and was now fringed on three sides by coral reefs. Some fumaroles to the northward and a hot spring were the only vestiges of the forces that had long since originated it. Now and then a faint quiver of earthquake would be sensible, and sometimes the ascent of the spire of smoke would be rendered tumultuous by gusts of steam. But that was all. The population of the island, Montgomery informed me, now numbered rather more than sixty of these strange creations of Morro's art, not counting the smaller monstrosities which lived in the undergrowth and were without human form. Altogether he had made nearly a hundred and twenty, but many had died and others, like the writhing footless thing of which he had told me, had come by violent ends. In answer to my question, Aunt Montgomery said they actually bore offspring, but that these generally died. When they lived, Morro took them and stamped the human form upon them. There was no evidence of the inheritance of their acquired human characteristics. The females were less numerous than the males and liable to much furtive persecution in spite of the monogamy the law enjoined. It would be impossible for me to describe these beast-people in detail. My eyes had no training in details and unhappily I cannot sketch. Most striking perhaps in their general appearance was the disproportion between the legs of these creatures and the length of their bodies. And yet so relative is our idea of grace. My eye became habituated to their forms and at last I even fell in with their persuasion that my own long thighs were ungainly. Another point was the forward carriage of the head and the clumsy and inhuman curvature of the spine. The ape-man lacked that inward, sinuous curve of the back which makes the human figure so graceful. Most had their shoulders hunched clumsily and their short forearms hung weakly at their sides. Few of them were conspicuously hairy, at least until the end of my time upon the island. The next most obvious deformity was in their faces, almost all of which were prognathus, 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 peculiar species. The human mark distorted but did not hide the leopard, the ox or the sow, or other animal or animals from which the creature had been moulded. The voices too varied exceedingly. The hands were always malformed and though some surprised me by their unexpected human appearance, almost all were deficient in the number of the digits, clumsy about the fingernails, and lacking any tactile sensibility. The two most formidable animal-men were my leopard-man and a creature made of hyena and swine. Larger than these were the three bull-creatures who pulled in the boat. Then came the silvery hairy-man, who was also the seer of the law, mling and a satyr-like creature of ape and goat. There were three swine-men and a swine-woman, a mere rhinoceros creature and several other females whose sources I did not ascertain. There were several wolf-creatures, a bear-bull and a saint-burnered man. I've already described the ape-man and there was a particularly hateful and evil-smelling old woman made of vixen and bear whom I hated from the beginning. She was said to be a passionate votary of the law. Smaller creatures were certain dappled youths and my little sloth-creature. But enough of this catalogue. At first I had a shivering horror of the brutes, felt all too keenly that they were still brutes. But insensibly I became a little habituated to the idea of them and, moreover, I was affected by Montgomery's attitude towards them. He had been with them so long that he'd come to regard them as almost normal human beings. His London days seemed a glorious, impossible pass to him. Only once in a year or so did he go to Areca to deal with Morro's agent, a traitor in animals there. He hardly met the finest type of mankind in that seafaring village of Spanish Mongrels. The men aboard ship, he told me, seemed at first just as strange to him as the beast-men seemed to me, unnaturally long in the leg, flat in the face, prominent in the forehead, suspicious, dangerous and cold-hearted. In fact, he did not like men. His heart had warmed to me, he thought, because he had saved my life. I fancied even then that he had a sneaking kindness for some of those metamorphosed brutes, a vicious sympathy with some of their ways, but that he attempted to veil it from me at first. Milling, the black-faced man, Montgomery's attendant, the first of the beast-folk I had encountered, did not live with the others across the island, but in a small kennel at the back of the enclosure. The creature was scarcely so intelligent as the ape-man, but far more docile and the most human-looking of all the beast-folk. And Montgomery had trained it to prepare food and indeed to discharge all the trivial domestic offices that were required. It was a complex trophy of Morro's horrible skill, a bear tainted with dog and ox, and one of the most elaborately made of all of his creatures. It treated Montgomery with a strange tenderness and devotion. Sometimes he would notice it, pat it, call it half-mulking, half-jocular names, and so make it caper with extraordinary delight. Sometimes he would ill-treat it, especially after he'd been at the whisky, kicking it, beating it, pelting it with stones or lighted fuses. But whether he treated it well or ill, it loved nothing so much as to be near him. I say I became habituated to the beast-people that a thousand things which had seemed unnatural and repulsive speedily became natural and ordinary to me. I suppose everything in existence takes its colour from the average hue of our surroundings. Montgomery and Morro were too peculiar and individual to keep my general impressions of humanity well-defined. I would see one of the clumsy bovine creatures who worked the launch treading heavily through the undergrowth, and found myself asking, trying hard to recall how he differed from some real human yokel trudging home from his mechanical labours. Or I would meet the fox-bear woman's vulpi and shifty face, strangely human in its speculative cunning, and even imagine I had met it before in some city by way. Yet every now and then, the beast would flash out upon me beyond doubt or denial. An ugly-looking man, a hunchbacked human savage to all appearance, squatting in the aperture of one of the dens, would stretch his arms and yawn, showing with startling suddenness scissor-edged incisors and sabre-like canines, keen and brilliant as knives. Or in some narrow pathway, glancing with a transitory daring into the eyes of some lithe, white-swayed female figure, I would suddenly see with a spasmodic revulsion that she had slit-like pupils. Or glancing down, note the curving nail with which she held her shapeless wrap about her. It's a curious thing, by the by, for which I am quite unable to account that these weird creatures, the females, I mean, had in the earlier days of my stay an instinctive sense of their own repulsive clumsiness and displayed in consequence a far more human regard for the decency and decorum of extensive costume. End of Chapter 15 Recorded in Nottingham, on 22 November 2006 by Alex Foster, www.alexfoster.me.uk This is a LibriVox recording. Our LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Gemma Blythe, The Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells Chapter 16 How the Beast Folk Tastes Blood My inexperience as a writer betrays me and I wander from the thread of my story. After I had breakfasted with Montgomery he took me across the island to see the fume roll and the source of the hot spring into scalding waters I had blundered on the previous day. Both of us carried whips and loaded revolvers. While going through a leafy jungle on our road with her we heard a rabid squealing. We stopped and listened, but we heard no more and presently we went on our way and the incident dropped out of our minds. Montgomery called my attention to certain little pink animals with long iron 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 rabid-like habit of devouring their young had defeated this intention. I had already encountered some of these creatures once during my moonlight flight from the Leopard Man and once during my pursuit of Moreau on the previous day. By chance one arping to avoid us leapt into the hole by the uprooting of a wind-loan tree. Before it could extricate itself we managed to catch it. It spat like a cat, scratched and kicked vigorously with its iron legs and made an attempt to bite. But its teeth were too feeble to inflict more than a painless pinch. It seemed to me rather a pretty little creature. And as Montgomery stated that it never destroyed the earth by burrowing and was very cleanly in its habits I should imagine it might prove a convenient substitute for the common rabid in Gentleman's box. We also saw in our way the drunk of a tree barked in long strips and splintered deeply. Montgomery called my attention to this. Not to claw a bark of trees. That is the law, he said. Much some of them care for it. It was after this I think that we met the satyr and the ape man. The satyr was a gleam of classical memory and part of morrow. His face over in an expression like the Corsa Hebrew type. His voice a harsh bleed. His nether extremity satanic. He was gnawing the husk of a pod-like brute as he passed us. Both of them saluted Montgomery. Hail, they said, to the other with the whip. There's a third with a whip now, said Montgomery. So you'd better mind. Was he not maids in the ape man? He said. He said he was maid. 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, bled and wept, said the satyr. You never bleed, nor weep. A master does not bleed or weep. Billendorfian beggar, said Montgomery. You'll bleed and weep if you don't look out. He has five fingers. He is a five man, like me, said the ape man. Come along, Bryndic, said Montgomery, taking my arm, and I went on with him. The satyr and the ape man stood watching us and making other remarks to each other. He says nothing, said the satyr. Men have voices. Yesterday he asked me of things to eat, so the ape man, he did not know. Then they spoke inaudible things, and I heard the satyr laughing. It was on our way back that we came upon the dead rabbit. The red body of the wretched little beast was rent to pieces. Many of the ribs dripped 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. His backbone has been bitten through. He stood staring with his face white and his lip pulled a skew. 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, and the undergrowth at the back of the enclosure when I went out in the evening, the head was completely rung off. You 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. The right came on the rabbit. I saw one of your monsters drinking in the stream. Sucking his drink, yes. Not to suck your drink, that is the law. Much of the brutes care for the law. Oh, when morose, not about. It was the brute who chased me. Of course, said Montgomery. It's just the way with carnivores. After a kill, they drink. It's the taste of blood, you know. What was the brute like, he continued. Would you know him again? He glanced about us, standing astride over the mess of dead rabbit. His eyes roving among the shadows and screens of greenery, the lurking places and emboscades of the forest that bounded us in. The taste of blood, he said again. He took out his revolver, examined the cartridges in it, and replaced it. Then he began to pull at his dropping lip. I think I should know the brute again, I said. I stunned him. He ought to have a handsome bruise on the forehead of him. But then we have to prove that he killed the rabbit, said Montgomery. I wish I'd never brought the things here. I should have gone on, but he stayed there thinking over the mangled rabbit in a puzzled way. As it was, I went to such a distance that the rabbits remains were hidden. Come on, I said. Presently he woke up and came towards me. You see, he said, almost in a whisper. They're all supposed to have a fixed idea against eating anything that runs on land. If some brute as my accident tasted blood, we went on some time in silence. I wonder what can have happened, he said to himself. Then, after a pause again, I did a foolish thing the other day. That servant of mine, I showed him how to skin and cook a rabbit. It's odd. I saw him licking his hands. It never occurred to me. Then we must put a stop to this. I must tell Moreau. He could think of nothing else on our homeward journey. Moreau did the matter even more seriously than Montgomery. And I need scarcely say that I was affected by their evident consternation. We must make an example, said Moreau. I've no doubt in my own mind that the leopard man was the sinner. But how can we prove it? I wish, Montgomery, you had kept your taste for meat in hand and gone without these exciting novelties. We may find ourselves in a mess yet, through it. I was a silly ass, said Montgomery. But the thing's done now, and you said I might have them, you know. We must see to the thing at once, said Moreau. I suppose if anything should turn up, Montgomery can take care of himself. I'm not so sure of Moreau, said Montgomery. I think I ought to know him. In the afternoon, Moreau, Montgomery, myself and Moreau went across the island of the huts in the ravine. We three were armed. Moreau carried the little hatchet he used in dropping firewood. And some coils of wire. Moreau had a huge gala as horns lung over his shoulder. You will see a gathering of the beast-people, Montgomery, it is a pretty sight. Moreau said not a word on the way, but the expression of his heavy white fringe face was grimly set. We crossed the ravine down which smoked the stream of hot water and followed the winding pathway through the cane breaks until we reached a wide area covered over with a thick powdery yellow substance which I believe was sulfur above the shoulder of a weedy bank the sea glittered. We came to a kind of shallow natural amphitheater and near the four of us halted. Then Moreau sounded the horn and broke the sleeping stillness of the tropical afternoon. He must have had strong lungs. The hooting note rose and rose amidst its echoes to at last an ear-penetrating intensity. Ah, said Moreau, letting the curved instrument fall to his side again. Immediately there was a crashing through the yellow gains and a sound of voices from the dense green jungle that marked the Moreau through which I had run on the previous day. Then at three or four points on the edge of the sulfurous area appeared the grotesque forms of the beast-people hurrying towards us. I could not help a creeping aura as I perceived first one and then another tried out from the trees or reeds and came shambling along over the hot dust. But Moreau and Montgomery stood calmly enough then perforce. I stalked beside them. First to arrive was a setter, strangely unreal for all that he cast a shadow and tossed the dust with his oeuvres. After him from the break came a monstrous, louder thing of horse and rhinoceros chewing straw as it came. Then appeared this wine woman and two wolf women. Then the fox there which, with her red eyes and a peaked red face and then others all hurrying eagerly. As they came forward they began to cringe towards Moreau and chant quite regardless of one another fragments of the latter half of the litany of the law. His is the an that wounds, his is the an that heals and so forth. As soon as they had approached within a distance of perhaps thirty yards they halted and your knees and elbows began flinging the white dust upon their heads. Imagine the scene if you can. We three blue clad men with our misshapen black-faced attendant standing in a wide expanse of some lit yellow dust under the blazing blue sky and surrounded by this circle of crouching and gesticulating monstrosities some almost human save in their subtle expression and gestures some like ripples some so strangely distorted as to resemble nothing but the denizens of our wildest dreams and beyond the real lines of a cane break in one direction a dense angle of palm trees on the other separating us from the ravine with the arts into the north the easy horizon of the Pacific Ocean sixty-two sixty-three counted Moreau there are four more we cannot see the leopard man said I presently Moreau sounded the great horn again and at the sound of it all the beast people arrived and groveled in the dust then slinking out of the cane break stooping near the ground and trying to join the dust throwing circle behind Moreau's back came the leopard man the last of the beast people to arrive was the little ape man with their groveling shot vicious glances at him sees said Moreau in his firm loud voice and the beast people sat back upon their hands and rested from their worshipping where is the seer of the law said Moreau and the airy grey monster bowed his face in the dust say the words said Moreau forthwith all of the kneeling assembly swaying from side to side putting up the silver with their hands first the right hand above of dust and then the left began once more to chant their strange litany when they reached not to eat flesh or fish that is the law Moreau held up his blank white end 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 saw their wincing attitudes and the photo of dread in their bright eyes I wondered that I had ever believed them to be men that law has been broken said Moreau none escape from the faceless creature with the silvery air 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 hyenas wine 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 say of the law Moreau looked into the eyes of the leopard man and seemed to be dragging the very soul out of the creature who breaks the law said Moreau taking his eyes off his victim and turning towards us it seemed to me there was a touch of exultation in his voice goes back to the house of pain they all clamored goes back to the house of pain or master back to the house of pain back to the house of pain gappled the ape man as though the idea was sweet to him do you hear said Moreau turning back to the criminal So the leopard man released from Moreau's eye had ridden straight from his knees and now with eyes of flame and his huge feline tusks flashing out from under his curling lips leapt towards his tormenter I am convinced that only the madness of unendurable fear could have prompted this attack the whole circle of three score monsters seemed to rise above us I drew my revolver I saw Moreau reeling back from the leopard man's blow there was a furious yelling and howling all about us everyone was moving rapidly for a moment I thought it was a general revolt the furious pace of the leopard man flashed by mine with mulling glows in pursuit I saw the yellow eyes of the Ienus wine blazing with excitement his attitude as if he were half resolved to attack me I was glad at me over the Ienus wine behind his shoulders I heard the crack of Moreau's pistol and saw the pink flash dart across the tumult the whole crowd seemed to swing round in the direction of the glint of fire and I too was one round by the magnetism of the movement in another second I was running one of a tumultuous shouting crowd in pursuit of the escaping leopard man well definitely I saw the leopard man strike Moreau and then everything spun about me until I was running headlong the thing was aired close in pursuit of the fugitive behind their tongues already lolling out ran the wolf women in great leaping strides the swine folk followed squealing with excitement and the two bullmen in their swathings of white then gay Moreau in a cluster of the beast people with blank white hair streaming out the Ienus wine ran beside me keeping base with me and glancing furtively at me out of his feline eyes and the others came battering and shouting behind us the leopard man went bursting his way through the long canes which sprang back as he passed and rattled in Moreau's face the others in the rear found a trampled path for us when we reached the break the chase lay through the break and then plunged into a dense thicket which retorted our movement succeedingly that we went through it in a crowd together bronze flicking into our faces ropey creepers catching us under the chin or gripping our ankles funny plants hooking into and airing cloth and flesh together he has guide on all fours through this panted Moreau now just ahead of me none escape said the wolf bear laughing into my face with the exultation of hunting we burst out again among rocks and saw the quarry ahead running lightly on all fours and snarling at us over his shoulder at that the wolf folk held 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 vert of droop of its shoulder was distinctly that of a hunted animal it leapt over some thorny yellow flowering bushes and was hidden the lean was halfway across the space most of us now had lost the first speed of the chase and had fallen into a longer and steadiest stride I saw as we traversed the open that the pursuit was now spreading from a column into a line the hyenas wine 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 realizing that he was making for the projecting cape upon which he had stalked me on the night of my arrival had doubled in the undergrowth but Montgomery had seen the maneuver and turned him again so panting tumbling against rocks torn by brambles impeded by ferns and reeds I helped to pursue the leopard man who had broken the law the hyenas wine ran laughing savagely by my side I staggered on my head reeling and my heart beating against my ribs tired almost to death and yet not daring to lose sight of the chase lest I should be left alone with this horrible companion I staggered on in spite of infinite fatigue in the dense heat of the tropical afternoon at last the fury of the hunts blackened the wretched brood into a corner of the island morrow, whip in hand marshaled us all into an irregular line and we advanced now slowly shouting to one another as we advanced and tightening the cordon about our victim he looked noiseless and invisible in the bushes through which I had run from him during the midnight pursuit deady, cried morrow deady as the ends of the line crept round the angle of undergrowth in him the brood in where a rush came the voice of Montgomery from beyond the thicket I was on the slope above the bushes Montgomery and morrow beat along the beach beneath slowly we pushed in among the fretted network of branches and leaves the quarry was silent back to the house of pain the house of pain the house of pain yelped the voice of the eight pan eons to the right when I heard that I forgave the poor wretch all the fear he had inspired in me I heard the twig snap and the boughs wish aside before the heavy tread of the horse rhinoceros upon my right then suddenly threw a polygon of green in the off darkness under the luxuriant growth I saw the creature we were hunting I altered he was grouched together into the smallest possible compass his luminous green eyes turned over his shoulder regarding me it may seem a strange contradiction in me I cannot explain the fact but now seeing the creature there in a perfectly animal attitude with the light gleaming in its eyes and its imperfectly human face distorted with terror I realized again the fact of its humanity in another moment other of its pursuers would see it and it would be empowered and captured to experience once more the horrible tortures of the enclosure abruptly I slipped out my revolver aimed between its terror struck eyes and fired as I did so the Ienus wine saw the thing and flung itself upon it with an eager cry thrusting thirsty teeth into its neck all about me the green masses of the thicket was swaying and cracking as the beast all came rushing together one face and then another appeared don't kill it Bryndic cried morrow don't kill it and as I am stooping as he pushed through under the fronds of the big ferns in another moment he had beaten off the Ienus wine with the handle of his whip and he and Montgomery were keeping away the excited coniferous beast people and particularly Maling from the still quivering body the very great thing came sniffing at the corpse under my arm the other animals in their animal larger jostled me to get a nearer view confound you Bryndic said morrow I wanted him I am sorry said I though I was not it was the impulse of the moment I felt sick with exertion and excitement turning I pushed my way out of the crowding beast people and went up alone towards the higher part of the headland under the shouted directions of morrow I had the three white swathed bullmen begin dragging the victim down towards the water it was easy now for me to be alone the beast people manifested a quite human curiosity about the dead body and followed it in a thick knot sniffing and crowling at it as the bullmen dragged it down on the beach I went to the headland and watched the bullmen black against the evening sky as they carried the weighted dead body out to sea and like a wave across my mind came the realization of the unspeakable aimlessness of things upon the island upon the beach among the rocks beneath me were the apen, myenus, wine and several other of the beast people standing about one comery and morrow they were all still intensely excited and all overflowing with discussions of their loyalties and law yet I felt an absolute assurance in my own mind that the hyenas wine was implicated in the rabbit killing a strange persuasion came upon me that say for the grossness of the lion the grotesqueness of the forms I had ear before me the whole balance of human life and many other the whole interplay of instinct reason and fate home the leopard man had happened to go under that was all the difference poor brute poor brute I began to see the vile aspect of morrow's cruelty I had not thought before of the pain and trouble that came to these poor victims after they had passed from morrow's hands I had shivered only at the days of actual torment and the enclosure before they had been beasts their instincts fitly adapted to their surroundings and happiest living things may be now they stumbled in the shackles of humanity lived in a fear that never died fretted by a law they could not understand their mock human existence begun in an agony was one long internal struggle one long dread of morrow it was the wantonness of it that stood me had morrow had any indeligible object I could have sympathized at least a little with him I am not so squeamish about pain as that I could have forgiven him a little even and his motive been only hate but he was so irresponsible so utterly careless his curiosity his mad aimless investigations drove him on so to struggle and blunder and suffer and at last to die painfully they were wretched in themselves the old animal ate moved them to trouble one another the law held them back from a brief heart struggle and a decisive end to their natural animosities in those days my fear of the beast people went the way of my personal fear from the morrow I fell indeed into a morbid state deep in enduring an alien fear which has left permanent scars upon my mind I must confess that I lost faith in the sanity of the world when I saw it suffering the painful disorder of this island a blind fate a vast pitiless mechanism seemed to cut and shape the fabric of existence and I morrow by his passion for research Montgomery by his passion for drink the beast people with their instincts and mental restrictions were torn and crushed ruthlessly, inevitably amid the infinite complexity of its incessant wheels but this condition did not come all at once I think indeed that I anticipate a little in speaking of it now end of chapter 16 this is a LibraVox recording all LibraVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibraVox.org recording by Gemma Blythe the island of Dr. Morrow by H.G. Wells Chapter 17 The Catastrophe Scarcely six weeks past before I had lost every feeling but dislike and abhorrence for this infamous experiment of morows my one idea was to get away from these horrible caricatures of my maker's image back to the sweet and wholesome intercourse of men my fellow creatures from whom I was thus separated began to assume a delict virtue and beauty in my memory my first friendship with Montgomery did not increase his long separation from humanity his secret vise 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 sale that never appeared until one day they fell upon us an appalling disaster which put an altogether different aspect upon my strains surroundings it was about seven or eight weeks ago after my landing rather more I think though I had not trouble to keep count of the time when this catastrophe occurred it happened in the early morning I should think about six I had risen and breakfasted early having been aroused by the noise of three beast men carrying wood into the enclosure after breakfast I went to the open gateway of the enclosure and stood there smoking a cigarette and enjoying the freshness of the early morning Moreau presently came round the corner of the enclosure and greeted me he passed me by and I heard him behind me unlock and enter his laboratory I was excited was I at that time to the abomination of the place that I heard without a touch of emotion the puma victim begin another day of torture it met its persecutor with a shriek almost exactly like that of an angry Virago then suddenly something happened I do not know what to this day I heard a short sharp cry behind me I saw an awful face rushing upon me not human not animal but hellish brown seamed with red bronching scars red drops dotting out upon it and the lidless eyes ablaze I threw up my arm to defend myself from the blow that flung me headlong with a broken forearm and the great monster swathed lint and with red stained bandages fluttering about it leapt over me in past I rolled over and over down the beach tried to sit up and collapsed upon my broken arm then morrow appeared his massive white face all the more terrible for the blood that trickled from his forehead he carried a revolver in one hand he scarcely glanced at me but rushed off at once in pursuit of the puma I tried the other arm and sat up a muffled figure in front ran and great striding leaps along the beach and morrow followed her she turned her head and saw him then doubling abruptly made for the bushes she gained upon him at every stride I saw her plunge into them and morrow running slantingly to intercept her fired and missed as she disappeared then he too vanished in the green confusion I stared after them and then the pain in my arm blamed up and with a groan I staggered to my feet Montgomery appeared in the doorway dressed and with his revolver in his hand great god, Prendick, he said not noticing I was hurt that brute's loose tore the fetter out of the wall have you seen them? then sharply, seeing I gripped my arm what's the matter? I was standing in the doorway said I he came forward and took my arm blood on the sleeve said he and rolled back the flannel he pocketed his weapon felt my arm about painfully and led me inside your arm is broken he said and then tell me exactly how it happened what happened I told him what I had seen told him in broken sentences with gasps of pain between them and very dexterously and swiftly he bound my arm meanwhile he slung it from my shoulder stood back and looked at me you'll do he said and now he thought and 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 to merely one more of many horrible things I sat down in the deck chair and I must admit swore heartily at the island the first dull feeling of injury in my arm had already given way to a burning pain when Montgomery re-appeared his face was rather pale and he showed more of his lower gums than ever I can neither see nor hear anything of him he said I've been thinking he may want my help he stared at me with his expressionless eyes that was a strange brute he said it simply wrenched its fetter out of the wall he went to the window and then to the door and there turned to me I shall go after him he said there's another revolver I can leave with you to tell you the truth I feel anxious somehow he obtained the weapon and put it ready to my hand on the table then went out leaving a restless contagion in the air I did not sit long after he left but took the revolver in hand and went to the doorway the morning was as still as death not a whisper of wind was stirring the sea was like polished glass the sky empty the beach desolate in my half excited half feverish state the stillness of things oppressed me I tried to whistle and the tune died away I swore again the second time that morning then I went to the corner of the enclosure and stared inland at the green bush that had swallowed up Murrow and Montgomery when would they return and how then far away up the beach a little gray 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 falling whoo Murrow 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 when Murrow and Montgomery never return we seabirds began fighting for some stranded treasure then from far away behind the enclosure I heard a pistol shot a long silence and then came another then a yelling cry nearer and another dismal gap of silence my unfortunate imaginations had to work to torment me then suddenly a shot closed by I went to the corner startled and saw Montgomery his face scarlet his hair disordered and the knee of his trousers torn his face expressed profound consternation behind him slouched the beast man emling and ran emling's jaws where some queer dark stains as he comes in Montgomery Murrow said I no my god the man was panting almost sobbing go back in he said taking my arm they're mad they're all rushing about mad what can have happened I don't know I'll tell you when my breath comes where's some brandy Montgomery limped before me into the room and sat down in the deck chair emling flung himself down just outside the doorway and began panting like a dog I got Montgomery some brand in water he sat staring in front of him at nothing recovering his breath after some minutes he began to tell me what had happened he had followed their track for some time it was plain enough at first on account of the crushed and broken bushes white rags foreign from the puma's bandages and occasional smears of blood on the leaves of the shrubs and undergrowth he lost the track however on the stony ground beyond the stream where I had seen the beast man drinking and went wandering aimlessly westward shouting Murrow's name then emling had come to him carrying a light hatchet and emling had seen nothing of the puma there had been felling wood and heard him calling they went on shouting together two beast men came crouching and peering at them through the undergrowth with gestures and a furtive carriage that alarm Montgomery by their strangeness he hailed them and they fled guiltily he stopped shouting after that and after wandering some time farther in an undecided way determined to visit the huts he found the ravine deserted growing more alarmed every minute he began to retrace his steps then it was he encountered the two swatman I had seen dancing on the night of my arrival blood stained they were about the mouth and intensely excited they came crashing through the ferns and stopped with fierce faces when they saw him he cracked his whip in some trepidation and forthwith they rushed at him never before had a beast man dared to do that one he shot through the head emling flung himself upon the other and the two rolled grappling emling got his brute under and with his teeth in its throat and Montgomery shot that too as it struggled in emling's grip he had some difficult in inducing emling to come on with him thence they had hurried back to me on the way emling had suddenly rushed into the thicket and driven out an undecided oscillate man also blood stained and lame through a wound in the foot this brute had run a little way and then turned savagely at bay and Montgomery with a certain wantonness I thought had shot him what does it all mean I said he shook his head and turned once more to the brandy end of chapter 17 a catastrophe the island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells chapter 18 the finding of Moreau when I saw Montgomery swallow a third dose of brandy I took it upon myself to interfere he was already more than half fuddled I told him that some serious thing must have happened to Moreau by this time or he would have returned before this and that it behoved us to ascertain what that catastrophe was Montgomery raised some feeble objections and at last agreed we had some food and then all three of us started it is possibly due to the tension of my mind at the time but even now that start into the hot stillness of the tropical afternoon is a singularly vivid impression Milling went first his shoulder hunched his strange black head moving with quick starts as he peered first on his side of the way and then on that he was unarmed his ax he had dropped when he encountered the swine man for his weapons when it came to fighting Montgomery followed with sumbling footsteps his hands in his pockets his face downcast he was in a state of muddled sullenness with me on account of the brandy my left arm was in a sling and it was lucky it was my left and I carried my revolver in my right soon we traced a narrow path through the wild exurience of the island going northwestward and presently Milling stopped and became rigid with watchfulness Montgomery almost staggered into him then listening intently we heard coming through the trees the sound of voices and footsteps approaching us he is dead said a deep vibrating voice he is not dead he is not dead jabbered another we saw we saw said several voices hello suddenly shouted Montgomery hello there confound you said I and gripped my pistol there was a silence crashing among the interlacing vegetation first here then there and then half a dozen faces appeared strange faces lit by a strange light Ling made a growling noisiness throat I recognized the ape man I had indeed already identified his voice and two of the white swapped brown featured creatures I had seen in Montgomery's boat with these were the two dappled brutes and that gray horribly crooked creature who said the law with gray hair streaming down its cheeks heavy gray brows and gray locks pouring off from a central parting upon its sloping forehead a heavy faceless thing with strange red eyes looking at us curiously from amidst the green for a space no one spoke then Montgomery Hickey who said he was dead the monkey man looked guiltily at the Harry Gray thing he is dead said this monster they saw there was nothing threatening about this detachment at any rate lost trick and puzzled where is he said Montgomery beyond said the gray creature pointed is there a law now as the monkey man is it still to be this and that is he dead indeed is there a law repeated the man in white is there a law thou other with the whip he is dead said the Harry Gray thing and they all stood watching us Montgomery turning his doll eyes to me he's dead evidently I had been standing behind him during this colloquy I began to see how things lay with them I suddenly stepped in front of Montgomery and lifted up my voice children of the law I said he is not dead Maling 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 eight man peering fiercely upward among the dense trees and the other thing I demanded the thing that bled and ran screaming and sobbing that is dead too said the gray thing still regarding me well grunted Montgomery the other with the whip began the gray thing well said I said he was dead but Montgomery was still sober enough to understand my motive in denying Murrow's death he is not dead he said slowly not dead at all no more dead than I am some said I have broken the law they will die some have died show us now where his old body lies the body he cast away because he had no more need of it it is this way man who walked in the sea said the gray thing and with these six creatures guiding us we went through the tumult of ferns and creepers and tree stems toward the northwest then came a yelling a crashing among the branches and a little pink homunculus rushed by us shrieking immediately after appeared a monster in headlong pursuit blood bedabbled who was amongst us almost before we could stop his career the gray thing leapt aside mulling with a snarl flew at it and was struck aside Montgomery fired and missed bowed his head threw up his arm and turned to run I fired and the thing still came on fired again point blank into its ugly face I saw its features vanish in a flash its face was driven in yet it passed me gripped Montgomery and holding him fell headlong beside him and pulled him sprawling upon itself in its death agony I found myself alone with mulling the dead brute and the prostrate man Montgomery raised himself slowly and stared in a muddled way at the shattered beast man beside him it more than half sobered him he scrambled to his feet then I saw the gray thing returning cautiously through the trees see said I pointing to the dead brute is the law not alive this came of breaking the law he peered at the body he sends the fire that kills said he in his deep voice repeating part of the ritual the others gathered round and started for a space at last we drew near the westward extremity of the island we came upon the gnawed and mutilated body of the puma its shoulder bone smashed by a bullet and perhaps twenty yards farther found at last what we sought Morro lay face downward in a trampled space and a cane break one hand was almost severed at the wrist and his silvery hair was dabbled in blood his head had been battered in by the fetters of the puma the broken canes beneath him were smeared with blood his revolver we could not find Montgomery turned him over resting at intervals and with the help of the seven beast people for he was a heavy man we carried Morro back to the enclosure the night was darkling twice we heard unseen creatures howling and shrieking past our little band and once the little pink sloth creature appeared and stared at us and vanished again but we were not attacked again at the gates of the enclosure our company of beast people left us bling going with the rest we locked ourselves in and then took Morro's mangled body into the yard and laid it upon a pile of brushwood then we went into the laboratory and put an end to all we found living there End of Chapter 18