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the island of doctor moreau by h. g. wells introduction. on february the first 1887, the lady vainwas lost by collision with a derelict when about the latitude 1â° s. and longitude 107â°w. on january the fifth, 1888—that is elevenmonths and four days after—my uncle, edward prendick, a private gentleman, who certainlywent aboard the lady vain at callao, and who had been considered drowned, was picked upin latitude 5â° 3′ s. and longitude 101â° w. in a small open boat of which the namewas illegible, but which is supposed to have belonged to the missing schooner ipecacuanha.he gave such a strange account of himself

that he was supposed demented. subsequentlyhe alleged that his mind was a blank from the moment of his escape from the lady vain.his case was discussed among psychologists at the time as a curious instance of the lapseof memory consequent upon physical and mental stress. the following narrative was foundamong his papers by the undersigned, his nephew and heir, but unaccompanied by any definiterequest for publication. the only island known to exist in the regionin which my uncle was picked up is noble's isle, a small volcanic islet and uninhabited.it was visited in 1891 by h. m. s. scorpion. a party of sailors then landed, but foundnothing living thereon except certain curious white moths, some hogs and rabbits, and somerather peculiar rats. so that this narrative

is without confirmation in its most essentialparticular. with that understood, there seems no harm in putting this strange story beforethe public in accordance, as i believe, with my uncle's intentions. there is at least thismuch in its behalf: my uncle passed out of human knowledge about latitude 5â° s. andlongitude 105â° e., and reappeared in the same part of the ocean after a space of elevenmonths. in some way he must have lived during the interval. and it seems that a schoonercalled the ipecacuanha with a drunken captain, john davies, did start from africa with apuma and certain other animals aboard in january, 1887, that the vessel was well known at severalports in the south pacific, and that it finally disappeared from those seas (with a considerableamount of copra aboard), sailing to its unknown

fate from bayna in december, 1887, a datethat tallies entirely with my uncle's story. charles edward prendick. (the story written by edward prendick.) chapter i. in the dingey of the “lady vain.” i do not propose to add anything to what hasalready been written concerning the loss of the lady vain. as everyone knows, she collidedwith a derelict when ten days out from callao. the longboat, with seven of the crew, waspicked up eighteen days after by h. m. gunboat myrtle, and the story of their terrible privationshas become quite as well known as the far more horrible medusa case. but i have to addto the published story of the lady vain another,

possibly as horrible and far stranger. ithas hitherto been supposed that the four men who were in the dingey perished, but thisis incorrect. i have the best of evidence for this assertion: i was one of the fourmen. but in the first place i must state that therenever were four men in the dingey,—the number was three. constans, who was “seen by thecaptain to jump into the gig,”{1} luckily for us and unluckily for himself did not reachus. he came down out of the tangle of ropes under the stays of the smashed bowsprit, somesmall rope caught his heel as he let go, and he hung for a moment head downward, and thenfell and struck a block or spar floating in the water. we pulled towards him, but he nevercame up.

{1} daily news, march 17, 1887. i say luckily for us he did not reach us,and i might almost say luckily for himself; for we had only a small beaker of water andsome soddened ship's biscuits with us, so sudden had been the alarm, so unprepared theship for any disaster. we thought the people on the launch would be better provisioned(though it seems they were not), and we tried to hail them. they could not have heard us,and the next morning when the drizzle cleared,—which was not until past midday,—we could seenothing of them. we could not stand up to look about us, because of the pitching ofthe boat. the two other men who had escaped so far with me were a man named helmar, apassenger like myself, and a seaman whose

name i don't know,—a short sturdy man, witha stammer. we drifted famishing, and, after our waterhad come to an end, tormented by an intolerable thirst, for eight days altogether. after thesecond day the sea subsided slowly to a glassy calm. it is quite impossible for the ordinaryreader to imagine those eight days. he has not, luckily for himself, anything in hismemory to imagine with. after the first day we said little to one another, and lay inour places in the boat and stared at the horizon, or watched, with eyes that grew larger andmore haggard every day, the misery and weakness gaining upon our companions. the sun becamepitiless. the water ended on the fourth day, and we were already thinking strange thingsand saying them with our eyes; but it was,

i think, the sixth before helmar gave voiceto the thing we had all been thinking. i remember our voices were dry and thin, so that we benttowards one another and spared our words. i stood out against it with all my might,was rather for scuttling the boat and perishing together among the sharks that followed us;but when helmar said that if his proposal was accepted we should have drink, the sailorcame round to him. i would not draw lots however, and in thenight the sailor whispered to helmar again and again, and i sat in the bows with my clasp-knifein my hand, though i doubt if i had the stuff in me to fight; and in the morning i agreedto helmar's proposal, and we handed halfpence to find the odd man. the lot fell upon thesailor; but he was the strongest of us and

would not abide by it, and attacked helmarwith his hands. they grappled together and almost stood up. i crawled along the boatto them, intending to help helmar by grasping the sailor's leg; but the sailor stumbledwith the swaying of the boat, and the two fell upon the gunwale and rolled overboardtogether. they sank like stones. i remember laughing at that, and wondering why i laughed.the laugh caught me suddenly like a thing from without. i lay across one of the thwarts for i knownot how long, thinking that if i had the strength i would drink sea-water and madden myselfto die quickly. and even as i lay there i saw, with no more interest than if it hadbeen a picture, a sail come up towards me

over the sky-line. my mind must have beenwandering, and yet i remember all that happened, quite distinctly. i remember how my head swayedwith the seas, and the horizon with the sail above it danced up and down; but i also rememberas distinctly that i had a persuasion that i was dead, and that i thought what a jestit was that they should come too late by such a little to catch me in my body. for an endless period, as it seemed to me,i lay with my head on the thwart watching the schooner (she was a little ship, schooner-riggedfore and aft) come up out of the sea. she kept tacking to and fro in a widening compass,for she was sailing dead into the wind. it never entered my head to attempt to attractattention, and i do not remember anything

distinctly after the sight of her side untili found myself in a little cabin aft. there's a dim half-memory of being lifted up to thegangway, and of a big round countenance covered with freckles and surrounded with red hairstaring at me over the bulwarks. i also had a disconnected impression of a dark face,with extraordinary eyes, close to mine; but that i thought was a nightmare, until i metit again. i fancy i recollect some stuff being poured in between my teeth; and that is all. chapter ii. the man who was going nowhere. the cabin in which i found myself was smalland rather untidy. a youngish man with flaxen hair, a bristly straw-coloured moustache,and a dropping nether lip, was sitting and

holding my wrist. for a minute we stared ateach other without speaking. he had watery grey eyes, oddly void of expression. thenjust overhead came a sound like an iron bedstead being knocked about, and the low angry growlingof some large animal. at the same time the man spoke. he repeated his question,—“howdo you feel now?” i think i said i felt all right. i could notrecollect how i had got there. he must have seen the question in my face, for my voicewas inaccessible to me. “you were picked up in a boat, starving.the name on the boat was the lady vain, and there were spots of blood on the gunwale.” at the same time my eye caught my hand, sothin that it looked like a dirty skin-purse

full of loose bones, and all the businessof the boat came back to me. “have some of this,” said he, and gaveme a dose of some scarlet stuff, iced. it tasted like blood, and made me feel stronger. “you were in luck,” said he, “to getpicked up by a ship with a medical man aboard.” he spoke with a slobbering articulation, withthe ghost of a lisp. “what ship is this?” i said slowly, hoarsefrom my long silence. “it's a little trader from arica and callao.i never asked where she came from in the beginning,—out of the land of born fools, i guess. i'm apassenger myself, from arica. the silly ass who owns her,—he's captain too, named davies,—he'slost his certificate, or something. you know

the kind of man,—calls the thing the ipecacuanha,of all silly, infernal names; though when there's much of a sea without any wind, shecertainly acts according.” (then the noise overhead began again, a snarlinggrowl and the voice of a human being together. then another voice, telling some “heaven-forsakenidiot” to desist.) “you were nearly dead,” said my interlocutor.“it was a very near thing, indeed. but i've put some stuff into you now. notice your arm'ssore? injections. you've been insensible for nearly thirty hours.” i thought slowly. (i was distracted now bythe yelping of a number of dogs.) “am i eligible for solid food?” i asked.

“thanks to me,” he said. “even now themutton is boiling.” “yes,” i said with assurance; “i couldeat some mutton.” “but,” said he with a momentary hesitation,“you know i'm dying to hear of how you came to be alone in that boat. damn that howling!”i thought i detected a certain suspicion in his eyes. he suddenly left the cabin, and i heard himin violent controversy with some one, who seemed to me to talk gibberish in responseto him. the matter sounded as though it ended in blows, but in that i thought my ears weremistaken. then he shouted at the dogs, and returned to the cabin.

“well?” said he in the doorway. “youwere just beginning to tell me.” i told him my name, edward prendick, and howi had taken to natural history as a relief from the dulness of my comfortable independence. he seemed interested in this. “i've donesome science myself. i did my biology at university college,—getting out the ovary of the earthwormand the radula of the snail, and all that. lord! it's ten years ago. but go on! go on!tell me about the boat.” he was evidently satisfied with the franknessof my story, which i told in concise sentences enough, for i felt horribly weak; and whenit was finished he reverted at once to the topic of natural history and his own biologicalstudies. he began to question me closely about

tottenham court road and gower street. “iscaplatzi still flourishing? what a shop that was!” he had evidently been a very ordinarymedical student, and drifted incontinently to the topic of the music halls. he told mesome anecdotes. “left it all,” he said, “ten years ago.how jolly it all used to be! but i made a young ass of myself,—played myself out beforei was twenty-one. i daresay it's all different now. but i must look up that ass of a cook,and see what he's done to your mutton.” the growling overhead was renewed, so suddenlyand with so much savage anger that it startled me. “what's that?” i called after him,but the door had closed. he came back again with the boiled mutton, and i was so excitedby the appetising smell of it that i forgot

the noise of the beast that had troubled me. after a day of alternate sleep and feedingi was so far recovered as to be able to get from my bunk to the scuttle, and see the greenseas trying to keep pace with us. i judged the schooner was running before the wind.montgomery—that was the name of the flaxen-haired man—came in again as i stood there, andi asked him for some clothes. he lent me some duck things of his own, for those i had wornin the boat had been thrown overboard. they were rather loose for me, for he was largeand long in his limbs. he told me casually that the captain was three-parts drunk inhis own cabin. as i assumed the clothes, i began asking him some questions about thedestination of the ship. he said the ship

was bound to hawaii, but that it had to landhim first. “where?” said i. “it's an island, where i live. so far asi know, it hasn't got a name.” he stared at me with his nether lip dropping,and looked so wilfully stupid of a sudden that it came into my head that he desiredto avoid my questions. i had the discretion to ask no more. chapter iii. the strange face. we left the cabin and found a man at the companionobstructing our way. he was standing on the ladder with his back to us, peering over thecombing of the hatchway. he was, i could see,

a misshapen man, short, broad, and clumsy,with a crooked back, a hairy neck, and a head sunk between his shoulders. he was dressedin dark-blue serge, and had peculiarly thick, coarse, black hair. i heard the unseen dogsgrowl furiously, and forthwith he ducked back,—coming into contact with the hand i put out to fendhim off from myself. he turned with animal swiftness. in some indefinable way the black face thusflashed upon me shocked me profoundly. it was a singularly deformed one. the facialpart projected, forming something dimly suggestive of a muzzle, and the huge half-open mouthshowed as big white teeth as i had ever seen in a human mouth. his eyes were blood-shotat the edges, with scarcely a rim of white

round the hazel pupils. there was a curiousglow of excitement in his face. “confound you!” said montgomery. “whythe devil don't you get out of the way?” the black-faced man started aside withouta word. i went on up the companion, staring at him instinctively as i did so. montgomerystayed at the foot for a moment. “you have no business here, you know,” he said ina deliberate tone. “your place is forward.” the black-faced man cowered. “they—won'thave me forward.” he spoke slowly, with a queer, hoarse quality in his voice. “won't have you forward!” said montgomery,in a menacing voice. “but i tell you to go!” he was on the brink of saying somethingfurther, then looked up at me suddenly and

followed me up the ladder. i had paused half way through the hatchway,looking back, still astonished beyond measure at the grotesque ugliness of this black-facedcreature. i had never beheld such a repulsive and extraordinary face before, and yet—ifthe contradiction is credible—i experienced at the same time an odd feeling that in someway i had already encountered exactly the features and gestures that now amazed me.afterwards it occurred to me that probably i had seen him as i was lifted aboard; andyet that scarcely satisfied my suspicion of a previous acquaintance. yet how one couldhave set eyes on so singular a face and yet have forgotten the precise occasion, passedmy imagination.

montgomery's movement to follow me releasedmy attention, and i turned and looked about me at the flush deck of the little schooner.i was already half prepared by the sounds i had heard for what i saw. certainly i neverbeheld a deck so dirty. it was littered with scraps of carrot, shreds of green stuff, andindescribable filth. fastened by chains to the mainmast were a number of grisly staghounds,who now began leaping and barking at me, and by the mizzen a huge puma was cramped in alittle iron cage far too small even to give it turning room. farther under the starboardbulwark were some big hutches containing a number of rabbits, and a solitary llama wassqueezed in a mere box of a cage forward. the dogs were muzzled by leather straps. theonly human being on deck was a gaunt and silent

sailor at the wheel. the patched and dirty spankers were tensebefore the wind, and up aloft the little ship seemed carrying every sail she had. the skywas clear, the sun midway down the western sky; long waves, capped by the breeze withfroth, were running with us. we went past the steersman to the taffrail, and saw thewater come foaming under the stern and the bubbles go dancing and vanishing in her wake.i turned and surveyed the unsavoury length of the ship. “is this an ocean menagerie?” said i. “looks like it,” said montgomery.

“what are these beasts for? merchandise,curios? does the captain think he is going to sell them somewhere in the south seas?” “it looks like it, doesn't it?” said montgomery,and turned towards the wake again. suddenly we heard a yelp and a volley of furiousblasphemy from the companion hatchway, and the deformed man with the black face cameup hurriedly. he was immediately followed by a heavy red-haired man in a white cap.at the sight of the former the staghounds, who had all tired of barking at me by thistime, became furiously excited, howling and leaping against their chains. the black hesitatedbefore them, and this gave the red-haired man time to come up with him and deliver atremendous blow between the shoulder-blades.

the poor devil went down like a felled ox,and rolled in the dirt among the furiously excited dogs. it was lucky for him that theywere muzzled. the red-haired man gave a yawp of exultation and stood staggering, and asit seemed to me in serious danger of either going backwards down the companion hatchwayor forwards upon his victim. so soon as the second man had appeared, montgomeryhad started forward. “steady on there!” he cried, in a tone of remonstrance. a coupleof sailors appeared on the forecastle. the black-faced man, howling in a singular voicerolled about under the feet of the dogs. no one attempted to help him. the brutes didtheir best to worry him, butting their muzzles at him. there was a quick dance of their lithegrey-figured bodies over the clumsy, prostrate

figure. the sailors forward shouted, as thoughit was admirable sport. montgomery gave an angry exclamation, and went striding downthe deck, and i followed him. the black-faced man scrambled up and staggered forward, goingand leaning over the bulwark by the main shrouds, where he remained, panting and glaring overhis shoulder at the dogs. the red-haired man laughed a satisfied laugh. “look here, captain,” said montgomery,with his lisp a little accentuated, gripping the elbows of the red-haired man, “thiswon't do!” i stood behind montgomery. the captain camehalf round, and regarded him with the dull and solemn eyes of a drunken man. “wha'won't do?” he said, and added, after looking

sleepily into montgomery's face for a minute,“blasted sawbones!” with a sudden movement he shook his arms free,and after two ineffectual attempts stuck his freckled fists into his side pockets. “that man's a passenger,” said montgomery.“i'd advise you to keep your hands off him.” “go to hell!” said the captain, loudly.he suddenly turned and staggered towards the side. “do what i like on my own ship,”he said. i think montgomery might have left him then,seeing the brute was drunk; but he only turned a shade paler, and followed the captain tothe bulwarks. “look you here, captain,” he said; “thatman of mine is not to be ill-treated. he has

been hazed ever since he came aboard.” for a minute, alcoholic fumes kept the captainspeechless. “blasted sawbones!” was all he considered necessary. i could see that montgomery had one of thoseslow, pertinacious tempers that will warm day after day to a white heat, and never againcool to forgiveness; and i saw too that this quarrel had been some time growing. “theman's drunk,” said i, perhaps officiously; “you'll do no good.” montgomery gave an ugly twist to his droppinglip. “he's always drunk. do you think that excuses his assaulting his passengers?”

“my ship,” began the captain, waving hishand unsteadily towards the cages, “was a clean ship. look at it now!” it was certainlyanything but clean. “crew,” continued the captain, “clean, respectable crew.” “you agreed to take the beasts.” “i wish i'd never set eyes on your infernalisland. what the devil—want beasts for on an island like that? then, that man of yours—understoodhe was a man. he's a lunatic; and he hadn't no business aft. do you think the whole damnedship belongs to you?” “your sailors began to haze the poor devilas soon as he came aboard.” “that's just what he is—he's a devil!an ugly devil! my men can't stand him. i can't

stand him. none of us can't stand him. noryou either!” montgomery turned away. “you leave thatman alone, anyhow,” he said, nodding his head as he spoke. but the captain meant to quarrel now. he raisedhis voice. “if he comes this end of the ship again i'll cut his insides out, i tellyou. cut out his blasted insides! who are you, to tell me what i'm to do? i tell youi'm captain of this ship,—captain and owner. i'm the law here, i tell you,—the law andthe prophets. i bargained to take a man and his attendant to and from arica, and bringback some animals. i never bargained to carry a mad devil and a silly sawbones, a—”

well, never mind what he called montgomery.i saw the latter take a step forward, and interposed. “he's drunk,” said i. thecaptain began some abuse even fouler than the last. “shut up!” i said, turning onhim sharply, for i had seen danger in montgomery's white face. with that i brought the downpouron myself. however, i was glad to avert what was uncommonlynear a scuffle, even at the price of the captain's drunken ill-will. i do not think i have everheard quite so much vile language come in a continuous stream from any man's lips before,though i have frequented eccentric company enough. i found some of it hard to endure,though i am a mild-tempered man; but, certainly, when i told the captain to “shut up” ihad forgotten that i was merely a bit of human

flotsam, cut off from my resources and withmy fare unpaid; a mere casual dependant on the bounty, or speculative enterprise, ofthe ship. he reminded me of it with considerable vigour; but at any rate i prevented a fight. chapter iv. at the schooner's rail. that night land was sighted after sundown,and the schooner hove to. montgomery intimated that was his destination. it was too far tosee any details; it seemed to me then simply a low-lying patch of dim blue in the uncertainblue-grey sea. an almost vertical streak of smoke went up from it into the sky. the captainwas not on deck when it was sighted. after he had vented his wrath on me he had staggeredbelow, and i understand he went to sleep on

the floor of his own cabin. the mate practicallyassumed the command. he was the gaunt, taciturn individual we had seen at the wheel. apparentlyhe was in an evil temper with montgomery. he took not the slightest notice of eitherof us. we dined with him in a sulky silence, after a few ineffectual efforts on my partto talk. it struck me too that the men regarded my companion and his animals in a singularlyunfriendly manner. i found montgomery very reticent about his purpose with these creatures,and about his destination; and though i was sensible of a growing curiosity as to both,i did not press him. we remained talking on the quarter deck untilthe sky was thick with stars. except for an occasional sound in the yellow-lit forecastleand a movement of the animals now and then,

the night was very still. the puma lay crouchedtogether, watching us with shining eyes, a black heap in the corner of its cage. montgomeryproduced some cigars. he talked to me of london in a tone of half-painful reminiscence, askingall kinds of questions about changes that had taken place. he spoke like a man who hadloved his life there, and had been suddenly and irrevocably cut off from it. i gossipedas well as i could of this and that. all the time the strangeness of him was shaping itselfin my mind; and as i talked i peered at his odd, pallid face in the dim light of the binnaclelantern behind me. then i looked out at the darkling sea, where in the dimness his littleisland was hidden. this man, it seemed to me, had come out ofimmensity merely to save my life. to-morrow

he would drop over the side, and vanish againout of my existence. even had it been under commonplace circumstances, it would have mademe a trifle thoughtful; but in the first place was the singularity of an educated man livingon this unknown little island, and coupled with that the extraordinary nature of hisluggage. i found myself repeating the captain's question. what did he want with the beasts?why, too, had he pretended they were not his when i had remarked about them at first? then,again, in his personal attendant there was a bizarre quality which had impressed me profoundly.these circumstances threw a haze of mystery round the man. they laid hold of my imagination,and hampered my tongue. towards midnight our talk of london died away,and we stood side by side leaning over the

bulwarks and staring dreamily over the silent,starlit sea, each pursuing his own thoughts. it was the atmosphere for sentiment, and ibegan upon my gratitude. “if i may say it,” said i, after a time,“you have saved my life.” “chance,” he answered. “just chance.” “i prefer to make my thanks to the accessibleagent.” “thank no one. you had the need, and i hadthe knowledge; and i injected and fed you much as i might have collected a specimen.i was bored and wanted something to do. if i'd been jaded that day, or hadn't liked yourface, well—it's a curious question where you would have been now!”

this damped my mood a little. “at any rate,”i began. “it's a chance, i tell you,” he interrupted,“as everything is in a man's life. only the asses won't see it! why am i here now,an outcast from civilisation, instead of being a happy man enjoying all the pleasures oflondon? simply because eleven years ago—i lost my head for ten minutes on a foggy night.” he stopped. “yes?” said i. “that's all.” we relapsed into silence. presently he laughed.“there's something in this starlight that loosens one's tongue. i'm an ass, and yetsomehow i would like to tell you.”

“whatever you tell me, you may rely uponmy keeping to myself—if that's it.” he was on the point of beginning, and thenshook his head, doubtfully. “don't,” said i. “it is all the sameto me. after all, it is better to keep your secret. there's nothing gained but a littlerelief if i respect your confidence. if i don't—well?” he grunted undecidedly. i felt i had him ata disadvantage, had caught him in the mood of indiscretion; and to tell the truth i wasnot curious to learn what might have driven a young medical student out of london. i havean imagination. i shrugged my shoulders and turned away. over the taffrail leant a silentblack figure, watching the stars. it was montgomery's

strange attendant. it looked over its shoulderquickly with my movement, then looked away again. it may seem a little thing to you, perhaps,but it came like a sudden blow to me. the only light near us was a lantern at the wheel.the creature's face was turned for one brief instant out of the dimness of the stern towardsthis illumination, and i saw that the eyes that glanced at me shone with a pale-greenlight. i did not know then that a reddish luminosity, at least, is not uncommon in humaneyes. the thing came to me as stark inhumanity. that black figure with its eyes of fire struckdown through all my adult thoughts and feelings, and for a moment the forgotten horrors ofchildhood came back to my mind. then the effect

passed as it had come. an uncouth black figureof a man, a figure of no particular import, hung over the taffrail against the starlight,and i found montgomery was speaking to me. “i'm thinking of turning in, then,” saidhe, “if you've had enough of this.” i answered him incongruously. we went below,and he wished me good-night at the door of my cabin. that night i had some very unpleasant dreams.the waning moon rose late. its light struck a ghostly white beam across my cabin, andmade an ominous shape on the planking by my bunk. then the staghounds woke, and beganhowling and baying; so that i dreamt fitfully, and scarcely slept until the approach of dawn.

chapter v. the man who had nowhere to go. in the early morning (it was the second morningafter my recovery, and i believe the fourth after i was picked up), i awoke through anavenue of tumultuous dreams,—dreams of guns and howling mobs,—and became sensible ofa hoarse shouting above me. i rubbed my eyes and lay listening to the noise, doubtful fora little while of my whereabouts. then came a sudden pattering of bare feet, the soundof heavy objects being thrown about, a violent creaking and the rattling of chains. i heardthe swish of the water as the ship was suddenly brought round, and a foamy yellow-green waveflew across the little round window and left it streaming. i jumped into my clothes andwent on deck.

as i came up the ladder i saw against theflushed sky—for the sun was just rising—the broad back and red hair of the captain, andover his shoulder the puma spinning from a tackle rigged on to the mizzen spanker-boom. the poor brute seemed horribly scared, andcrouched in the bottom of its little cage. “overboard with 'em!” bawled the captain.“overboard with 'em! we'll have a clean ship soon of the whole bilin' of 'em.” he stood in my way, so that i had perforceto tap his shoulder to come on deck. he came round with a start, and staggered back a fewpaces to stare at me. it needed no expert eye to tell that the man was still drunk.

“hullo!” said he, stupidly; and then witha light coming into his eyes, “why, it's mister—mister?” “prendick,” said i. “prendick be damned!” said he. “shut-up,—that'syour name. mister shut-up.” it was no good answering the brute; but icertainly did not expect his next move. he held out his hand to the gangway by whichmontgomery stood talking to a massive grey-haired man in dirty-blue flannels, who had apparentlyjust come aboard. “that way, mister blasted shut-up! thatway!” roared the captain. montgomery and his companion turned as hespoke.

“what do you mean?” i said. “that way, mister blasted shut-up,—that'swhat i mean! overboard, mister shut-up,—and sharp! we're cleaning the ship out,—cleaningthe whole blessed ship out; and overboard you go!” i stared at him dumfounded. then it occurredto me that it was exactly the thing i wanted. the lost prospect of a journey as sole passengerwith this quarrelsome sot was not one to mourn over. i turned towards montgomery. “can't have you,” said montgomery's companion,concisely. “you can't have me!” said i, aghast. hehad the squarest and most resolute face i

ever set eyes upon. “look here,” i began, turning to the captain. “overboard!” said the captain. “thisship aint for beasts and cannibals and worse than beasts, any more. overboard you go, mistershut-up. if they can't have you, you goes overboard. but, anyhow, you go—with yourfriends. i've done with this blessed island for evermore, amen! i've had enough of it.” “but, montgomery,” i appealed. he distorted his lower lip, and nodded hishead hopelessly at the grey-haired man beside him, to indicate his powerlessness to helpme.

“i'll see to you, presently,” said thecaptain. then began a curious three-cornered altercation.alternately i appealed to one and another of the three men,—first to the grey-hairedman to let me land, and then to the drunken captain to keep me aboard. i even bawled entreatiesto the sailors. montgomery said never a word, only shook his head. “you're going overboard,i tell you,” was the captain's refrain. “law be damned! i'm king here.” at lasti must confess my voice suddenly broke in the middle of a vigorous threat. i felt agust of hysterical petulance, and went aft and stared dismally at nothing. meanwhile the sailors progressed rapidly withthe task of unshipping the packages and caged

animals. a large launch, with two standinglugs, lay under the lee of the schooner; and into this the strange assortment of goodswere swung. i did not then see the hands from the island that were receiving the packages,for the hull of the launch was hidden from me by the side of the schooner. neither montgomerynor his companion took the slightest notice of me, but busied themselves in assistingand directing the four or five sailors who were unloading the goods. the captain wentforward interfering rather than assisting. i was alternately despairful and desperate.once or twice as i stood waiting there for things to accomplish themselves, i could notresist an impulse to laugh at my miserable quandary. i felt all the wretcheder for thelack of a breakfast. hunger and a lack of

blood-corpuscles take all the manhood froma man. i perceived pretty clearly that i had not the stamina either to resist what thecaptain chose to do to expel me, or to force myself upon montgomery and his companion.so i waited passively upon fate; and the work of transferring montgomery's possessions tothe launch went on as if i did not exist. presently that work was finished, and thencame a struggle. i was hauled, resisting weakly enough, to the gangway. even then i noticedthe oddness of the brown faces of the men who were with montgomery in the launch; butthe launch was now fully laden, and was shoved off hastily. a broadening gap of green waterappeared under me, and i pushed back with all my strength to avoid falling headlong.the hands in the launch shouted derisively,

and i heard montgomery curse at them; andthen the captain, the mate, and one of the seamen helping him, ran me aft towards thestern. the dingey of the lady vain had been towingbehind; it was half full of water, had no oars, and was quite unvictualled. i refusedto go aboard her, and flung myself full length on the deck. in the end, they swung me intoher by a rope (for they had no stern ladder), and then they cut me adrift. i drifted slowlyfrom the schooner. in a kind of stupor i watched all hands take to the rigging, and slowlybut surely she came round to the wind; the sails fluttered, and then bellied out as thewind came into them. i stared at her weather-beaten side heeling steeply towards me; and thenshe passed out of my range of view.

i did not turn my head to follow her. at firsti could scarcely believe what had happened. i crouched in the bottom of the dingey, stunned,and staring blankly at the vacant, oily sea. then i realised that i was in that littlehell of mine again, now half swamped; and looking back over the gunwale, i saw the schoonerstanding away from me, with the red-haired captain mocking at me over the taffrail, andturning towards the island saw the launch growing smaller as she approached the beach. abruptly the cruelty of this desertion becameclear to me. i had no means of reaching the land unless i should chance to drift there.i was still weak, you must remember, from my exposure in the boat; i was empty and veryfaint, or i should have had more heart. but

as it was i suddenly began to sob and weep,as i had never done since i was a little child. the tears ran down my face. in a passion ofdespair i struck with my fists at the water in the bottom of the boat, and kicked savagelyat the gunwale. i prayed aloud for god to let me die. chapter vi. the evil-looking boatmen. but the islanders, seeing that i was reallyadrift, took pity on me. i drifted very slowly to the eastward, approaching the island slantingly;and presently i saw, with hysterical relief, the launch come round and return towards me.she was heavily laden, and i could make out as she drew nearer montgomery's white-haired,broad-shouldered companion sitting cramped

up with the dogs and several packing-casesin the stern sheets. this individual stared fixedly at me without moving or speaking.the black-faced cripple was glaring at me as fixedly in the bows near the puma. therewere three other men besides,—three strange brutish-looking fellows, at whom the staghoundswere snarling savagely. montgomery, who was steering, brought the boat by me, and rising,caught and fastened my painter to the tiller to tow me, for there was no room aboard. i had recovered from my hysterical phase bythis time and answered his hail, as he approached, bravely enough. i told him the dingey wasnearly swamped, and he reached me a piggin. i was jerked back as the rope tightened betweenthe boats. for some time i was busy baling.

it was not until i had got the water under(for the water in the dingey had been shipped; the boat was perfectly sound) that i had leisureto look at the people in the launch again. the white-haired man i found was still regardingme steadfastly, but with an expression, as i now fancied, of some perplexity. when myeyes met his, he looked down at the staghound that sat between his knees. he was a powerfully-builtman, as i have said, with a fine forehead and rather heavy features; but his eyes hadthat odd drooping of the skin above the lids which often comes with advancing years, andthe fall of his heavy mouth at the corners gave him an expression of pugnacious resolution.he talked to montgomery in a tone too low for me to hear.

from him my eyes travelled to his three men;and a strange crew they were. i saw only their faces, yet there was something in their faces—iknew not what—that gave me a queer spasm of disgust. i looked steadily at them, andthe impression did not pass, though i failed to see what had occasioned it. they seemedto me then to be brown men; but their limbs were oddly swathed in some thin, dirty, whitestuff down even to the fingers and feet: i have never seen men so wrapped up before,and women so only in the east. they wore turbans too, and thereunder peered out their elfinfaces at me,—faces with protruding lower-jaws and bright eyes. they had lank black hair,almost like horsehair, and seemed as they sat to exceed in stature any race of men ihave seen. the white-haired man, who i knew

was a good six feet in height, sat a headbelow any one of the three. i found afterwards that really none were taller than myself;but their bodies were abnormally long, and the thigh-part of the leg short and curiouslytwisted. at any rate, they were an amazingly ugly gang, and over the heads of them underthe forward lug peered the black face of the man whose eyes were luminous in the dark.as i stared at them, they met my gaze; and then first one and then another turned awayfrom my direct stare, and looked at me in an odd, furtive manner. it occurred to methat i was perhaps annoying them, and i turned my attention to the island we were approaching. it was low, and covered with thick vegetation,—chieflya kind of palm, that was new to me. from one

point a thin white thread of vapour rose slantinglyto an immense height, and then frayed out like a down feather. we were now within theembrace of a broad bay flanked on either hand by a low promontory. the beach was of dull-greysand, and sloped steeply up to a ridge, perhaps sixty or seventy feet above the sea-level,and irregularly set with trees and undergrowth. half way up was a square enclosure of somegreyish stone, which i found subsequently was built partly of coral and partly of pumiceouslava. two thatched roofs peeped from within this enclosure. a man stood awaiting us atthe water's edge. i fancied while we were still far off that i saw some other and verygrotesque-looking creatures scuttle into the bushes upon the slope; but i saw nothing ofthese as we drew nearer. this man was of a

moderate size, and with a black negroid face.he had a large, almost lipless, mouth, extraordinary lank arms, long thin feet, and bow-legs, andstood with his heavy face thrust forward staring at us. he was dressed like montgomery andhis white-haired companion, in jacket and trousers of blue serge. as we came still nearer,this individual began to run to and fro on the beach, making the most grotesque movements. at a word of command from montgomery, thefour men in the launch sprang up, and with singularly awkward gestures struck the lugs.montgomery steered us round and into a narrow little dock excavated in the beach. then theman on the beach hastened towards us. this dock, as i call it, was really a mere ditchjust long enough at this phase of the tide

to take the longboat. i heard the bows groundin the sand, staved the dingey off the rudder of the big boat with my piggin, and freeingthe painter, landed. the three muffled men, with the clumsiest movements, scrambled outupon the sand, and forthwith set to landing the cargo, assisted by the man on the beach.i was struck especially by the curious movements of the legs of the three swathed and bandagedboatmen,—not stiff they were, but distorted in some odd way, almost as if they were jointedin the wrong place. the dogs were still snarling, and strained at their chains after these men,as the white-haired man landed with them. the three big fellows spoke to one anotherin odd guttural tones, and the man who had waited for us on the beach began chatteringto them excitedly—a foreign language, as

i fancied—as they laid hands on some balespiled near the stern. somewhere i had heard such a voice before, and i could not thinkwhere. the white-haired man stood, holding in a tumult of six dogs, and bawling ordersover their din. montgomery, having unshipped the rudder, landed likewise, and all set towork at unloading. i was too faint, what with my long fast and the sun beating down on mybare head, to offer any assistance. presently the white-haired man seemed to recollectmy presence, and came up to me. “you look,” said he, “as though youhad scarcely breakfasted.” his little eyes were a brilliant black under his heavy brows.“i must apologise for that. now you are our guest, we must make you comfortable,—thoughyou are uninvited, you know.” he looked

keenly into my face. “montgomery says youare an educated man, mr. prendick; says you know something of science. may i ask whatthat signifies?” i told him i had spent some years at the royalcollege of science, and had done some researches in biology under huxley. he raised his eyebrowsslightly at that. “that alters the case a little, mr. prendick,”he said, with a trifle more respect in his manner. “as it happens, we are biologistshere. this is a biological station—of a sort.” his eye rested on the men in whitewho were busily hauling the puma, on rollers, towards the walled yard. “i and montgomery,at least,” he added. then, “when you will be able to get away, i can't say. we're offthe track to anywhere. we see a ship once

in a twelve-month or so.” he left me abruptly, and went up the beachpast this group, and i think entered the enclosure. the other two men were with montgomery, erectinga pile of smaller packages on a low-wheeled truck. the llama was still on the launch withthe rabbit hutches; the staghounds were still lashed to the thwarts. the pile of thingscompleted, all three men laid hold of the truck and began shoving the ton-weight orso upon it after the puma. presently montgomery left them, and coming back to me held outhis hand. “i'm glad,” said he, “for my own part.that captain was a silly ass. he'd have made things lively for you.”

“it was you,” said i, “that saved meagain.” “that depends. you'll find this island aninfernally rum place, i promise you. i'd watch my goings carefully, if i were you. he—”he hesitated, and seemed to alter his mind about what was on his lips. “i wish you'dhelp me with these rabbits,” he said. his procedure with the rabbits was singular.i waded in with him, and helped him lug one of the hutches ashore. no sooner was thatdone than he opened the door of it, and tilting the thing on one end turned its living contentsout on the ground. they fell in a struggling heap one on the top of the other. he clappedhis hands, and forthwith they went off with that hopping run of theirs, fifteen or twentyof them i should think, up the beach.

“increase and multiply, my friends,” saidmontgomery. “replenish the island. hitherto we've had a certain lack of meat here.” as i watched them disappearing, the white-hairedman returned with a brandy-flask and some biscuits. “something to go on with, prendick,”said he, in a far more familiar tone than before. i made no ado, but set to work onthe biscuits at once, while the white-haired man helped montgomery to release about a scoremore of the rabbits. three big hutches, however, went up to the house with the puma. the brandyi did not touch, for i have been an abstainer from my birth. chapter vii. the locked door.

the reader will perhaps understand that atfirst everything was so strange about me, and my position was the outcome of such unexpectedadventures, that i had no discernment of the relative strangeness of this or that thing.i followed the llama up the beach, and was overtaken by montgomery, who asked me notto enter the stone enclosure. i noticed then that the puma in its cage and the pile ofpackages had been placed outside the entrance to this quadrangle. i turned and saw that the launch had now beenunloaded, run out again, and was being beached, and the white-haired man was walking towardsus. he addressed montgomery. “and now comes the problem of this uninvitedguest. what are we to do with him?”

“he knows something of science,” saidmontgomery. “i'm itching to get to work again—withthis new stuff,” said the white-haired man, nodding towards the enclosure. his eyes grewbrighter. “i daresay you are,” said montgomery,in anything but a cordial tone. “we can't send him over there, and we can'tspare the time to build him a new shanty; and we certainly can't take him into our confidencejust yet.” “i'm in your hands,” said i. i had noidea of what he meant by “over there.” “i've been thinking of the same things,”montgomery answered. “there's my room with the outer door—”

“that's it,” said the elder man, promptly,looking at montgomery; and all three of us went towards the enclosure. “i'm sorry tomake a mystery, mr. prendick; but you'll remember you're uninvited. our little establishmenthere contains a secret or so, is a kind of blue-beard's chamber, in fact. nothing verydreadful, really, to a sane man; but just now, as we don't know you—” “decidedly,” said i, “i should be afool to take offence at any want of confidence.” he twisted his heavy mouth into a faint smile—hewas one of those saturnine people who smile with the corners of the mouth down,—andbowed his acknowledgment of my complaisance. the main entrance to the enclosure was passed;it was a heavy wooden gate, framed in iron

and locked, with the cargo of the launch piledoutside it, and at the corner we came to a small doorway i had not previously observed.the white-haired man produced a bundle of keys from the pocket of his greasy blue jacket,opened this door, and entered. his keys, and the elaborate locking-up of the place evenwhile it was still under his eye, struck me as peculiar. i followed him, and found myselfin a small apartment, plainly but not uncomfortably furnished and with its inner door, which wasslightly ajar, opening into a paved courtyard. this inner door montgomery at once closed.a hammock was slung across the darker corner of the room, and a small unglazed window defendedby an iron bar looked out towards the sea. this the white-haired man told me was to bemy apartment; and the inner door, which “for

fear of accidents,” he said, he would lockon the other side, was my limit inward. he called my attention to a convenient deck-chairbefore the window, and to an array of old books, chiefly, i found, surgical works andeditions of the latin and greek classics (languages i cannot read with any comfort), on a shelfnear the hammock. he left the room by the outer door, as if to avoid opening the innerone again. “we usually have our meals in here,” saidmontgomery, and then, as if in doubt, went out after the other. “moreau!” i heardhim call, and for the moment i do not think i noticed. then as i handled the books onthe shelf it came up in consciousness: where had i heard the name of moreau before? i satdown before the window, took out the biscuits

that still remained to me, and ate them withan excellent appetite. moreau! through the window i saw one of those unaccountablemen in white, lugging a packing-case along the beach. presently the window-frame hidhim. then i heard a key inserted and turned in the lock behind me. after a little whilei heard through the locked door the noise of the staghounds, that had now been broughtup from the beach. they were not barking, but sniffing and growling in a curious fashion.i could hear the rapid patter of their feet, and montgomery's voice soothing them. i was very much impressed by the elaboratesecrecy of these two men regarding the contents of the place, and for some time i was thinkingof that and of the unaccountable familiarity

of the name of moreau; but so odd is the humanmemory that i could not then recall that well-known name in its proper connection. from that mythoughts went to the indefinable queerness of the deformed man on the beach. i neversaw such a gait, such odd motions as he pulled at the box. i recalled that none of thesemen had spoken to me, though most of them i had found looking at me at one time or anotherin a peculiarly furtive manner, quite unlike the frank stare of your unsophisticated savage.indeed, they had all seemed remarkably taciturn, and when they did speak, endowed with veryuncanny voices. what was wrong with them? then i recalled the eyes of montgomery's ungainlyattendant. just as i was thinking of him he came in.he was now dressed in white, and carried a

little tray with some coffee and boiled vegetablesthereon. i could hardly repress a shuddering recoil as he came, bending amiably, and placedthe tray before me on the table. then astonishment paralysed me. under his stringy black locksi saw his ear; it jumped upon me suddenly close to my face. the man had pointed ears,covered with a fine brown fur! “your breakfast, sair,” he said. i stared at his face without attempting toanswer him. he turned and went towards the door, regarding me oddly over his shoulder.i followed him out with my eyes; and as i did so, by some odd trick of unconscious cerebration,there came surging into my head the phrase, “the moreau hollows”—was it? “themoreau—” ah! it sent my memory back ten

years. “the moreau horrors!” the phrasedrifted loose in my mind for a moment, and then i saw it in red lettering on a littlebuff-coloured pamphlet, to read which made one shiver and creep. then i remembered distinctlyall about it. that long-forgotten pamphlet came back with startling vividness to my mind.i had been a mere lad then, and moreau was, i suppose, about fifty,—a prominent andmasterful physiologist, well-known in scientific circles for his extraordinary imaginationand his brutal directness in discussion. was this the same moreau? he had publishedsome very astonishing facts in connection with the transfusion of blood, and in additionwas known to be doing valuable work on morbid growths. then suddenly his career was closed.he had to leave england. a journalist obtained

access to his laboratory in the capacity oflaboratory-assistant, with the deliberate intention of making sensational exposures;and by the help of a shocking accident (if it was an accident), his gruesome pamphletbecame notorious. on the day of its publication a wretched dog, flayed and otherwise mutilated,escaped from moreau's house. it was in the silly season, and a prominent editor, a cousinof the temporary laboratory-assistant, appealed to the conscience of the nation. it was notthe first time that conscience has turned against the methods of research. the doctorwas simply howled out of the country. it may be that he deserved to be; but i still thinkthat the tepid support of his fellow-investigators and his desertion by the great body of scientificworkers was a shameful thing. yet some of

his experiments, by the journalist's account,were wantonly cruel. he might perhaps have purchased his social peace by abandoning hisinvestigations; but he apparently preferred the latter, as most men would who have oncefallen under the overmastering spell of research. he was unmarried, and had indeed nothing buthis own interest to consider. i felt convinced that this must be the sameman. everything pointed to it. it dawned upon me to what end the puma and the other animals—whichhad now been brought with other luggage into the enclosure behind the house—were destined;and a curious faint odour, the halitus of something familiar, an odour that had beenin the background of my consciousness hitherto, suddenly came forward into the forefront ofmy thoughts. it was the antiseptic odour of

the dissecting-room. i heard the puma growlingthrough the wall, and one of the dogs yelped as though it had been struck. yet surely, and especially to another scientificman, there was nothing so horrible in vivisection as to account for this secrecy; and by someodd leap in my thoughts the pointed ears and luminous eyes of montgomery's attendant cameback again before me with the sharpest definition. i stared before me out at the green sea, frothingunder a freshening breeze, and let these and other strange memories of the last few dayschase one another through my mind. what could it all mean? a locked enclosureon a lonely island, a notorious vivisector, and these crippled and distorted men?

chapter viii. the crying of the puma. montgomery interrupted my tangle of mystificationand suspicion about one o'clock, and his grotesque attendant followed him with a tray bearingbread, some herbs and other eatables, a flask of whiskey, a jug of water, and three glassesand knives. i glanced askance at this strange creature, and found him watching me with hisqueer, restless eyes. montgomery said he would lunch with me, but that moreau was too preoccupiedwith some work to come. “moreau!” said i. “i know that name.” “the devil you do!” said he. “what anass i was to mention it to you! i might have thought. anyhow, it will give you an inklingof our—mysteries. whiskey?”

“no, thanks; i'm an abstainer.” “i wish i'd been. but it's no use lockingthe door after the steed is stolen. it was that infernal stuff which led to my cominghere,—that, and a foggy night. i thought myself in luck at the time, when moreau offeredto get me off. it's queer—” “montgomery,” said i, suddenly, as theouter door closed, “why has your man pointed ears?” “damn!” he said, over his first mouthfulof food. he stared at me for a moment, and then repeated, “pointed ears?” “little points to them,” said i, as calmlyas possible, with a catch in my breath; “and

a fine black fur at the edges?” he helped himself to whiskey and water withgreat deliberation. “i was under the impression—that his hair covered his ears.” “i saw them as he stooped by me to put thatcoffee you sent to me on the table. and his eyes shine in the dark.” by this time montgomery had recovered fromthe surprise of my question. “i always thought,” he said deliberately, with a certain accentuationof his flavouring of lisp, “that there was something the matter with his ears, from theway he covered them. what were they like?” i was persuaded from his manner that thisignorance was a pretence. still, i could hardly

tell the man that i thought him a liar. “pointed,”i said; “rather small and furry,—distinctly furry. but the whole man is one of the strangestbeings i ever set eyes on.” a sharp, hoarse cry of animal pain came fromthe enclosure behind us. its depth and volume testified to the puma. i saw montgomery wince. “yes?” he said. “where did you pick up the creature?” “san francisco. he's an ugly brute, i admit.half-witted, you know. can't remember where he came from. but i'm used to him, you know.we both are. how does he strike you?” “he's unnatural,” i said. “there's somethingabout him—don't think me fanciful, but it

gives me a nasty little sensation, a tighteningof my muscles, when he comes near me. it's a touch—of the diabolical, in fact.” montgomery had stopped eating while i toldhim this. “rum!” he said. “i can't see it.” he resumed his meal. “i had no ideaof it,” he said, and masticated. “the crew of the schooner must have felt it thesame. made a dead set at the poor devil. you saw the captain?” suddenly the puma howled again, this timemore painfully. montgomery swore under his breath. i had half a mind to attack him aboutthe men on the beach. then the poor brute within gave vent to a series of short, sharpcries.

“your men on the beach,” said i; “whatrace are they?” “excellent fellows, aren't they?” saidhe, absentmindedly, knitting his brows as the animal yelled out sharply. i said no more. there was another outcry worsethan the former. he looked at me with his dull grey eyes, and then took some more whiskey.he tried to draw me into a discussion about alcohol, professing to have saved my lifewith it. he seemed anxious to lay stress on the fact that i owed my life to him. i answeredhim distractedly. presently our meal came to an end; the misshapenmonster with the pointed ears cleared the remains away, and montgomery left me alonein the room again. all the time he had been

in a state of ill-concealed irritation atthe noise of the vivisected puma. he had spoken of his odd want of nerve, and left me to theobvious application. i found myself that the cries were singularlyirritating, and they grew in depth and intensity as the afternoon wore on. they were painfulat first, but their constant resurgence at last altogether upset my balance. i flungaside a crib of horace i had been reading, and began to clench my fists, to bite my lips,and to pace the room. presently i got to stopping my ears with my fingers. the emotional appeal of those yells grew uponme steadily, grew at last to such an exquisite expression of suffering that i could standit in that confined room no longer. i stepped

out of the door into the slumberous heat ofthe late afternoon, and walking past the main entrance—locked again, i noticed—turnedthe corner of the wall. the crying sounded even louder out of doors.it was as if all the pain in the world had found a voice. yet had i known such pain wasin the next room, and had it been dumb, i believe—i have thought since—i could havestood it well enough. it is when suffering finds a voice and sets our nerves quiveringthat this pity comes troubling us. but in spite of the brilliant sunlight and the greenfans of the trees waving in the soothing sea-breeze, the world was a confusion, blurred with driftingblack and red phantasms, until i was out of earshot of the house in the chequered wall.

chapter ix. the thing in the forest. i strode through the undergrowth that clothedthe ridge behind the house, scarcely heeding whither i went; passed on through the shadowof a thick cluster of straight-stemmed trees beyond it, and so presently found myself someway on the other side of the ridge, and descending towards a streamlet that ran through a narrowvalley. i paused and listened. the distance i had come, or the intervening masses of thicket,deadened any sound that might be coming from the enclosure. the air was still. then witha rustle a rabbit emerged, and went scampering up the slope before me. i hesitated, and satdown in the edge of the shade. the place was a pleasant one. the rivuletwas hidden by the luxuriant vegetation of

the banks save at one point, where i caughta triangular patch of its glittering water. on the farther side i saw through a bluishhaze a tangle of trees and creepers, and above these again the luminous blue of the sky.here and there a splash of white or crimson marked the blooming of some trailing epiphyte.i let my eyes wander over this scene for a while, and then began to turn over in my mindagain the strange peculiarities of montgomery's man. but it was too hot to think elaborately,and presently i fell into a tranquil state midway between dozing and waking. from this i was aroused, after i know nothow long, by a rustling amidst the greenery on the other side of the stream. for a momenti could see nothing but the waving summits

of the ferns and reeds. then suddenly uponthe bank of the stream appeared something—at first i could not distinguish what it was.it bowed its round head to the water, and began to drink. then i saw it was a man, goingon all-fours like a beast. he was clothed in bluish cloth, and was of a copper-colouredhue, with black hair. it seemed that grotesque ugliness was an invariable character of theseislanders. i could hear the suck of the water at his lips as he drank. i leant forward to see him better, and a pieceof lava, detached by my hand, went pattering down the slope. he looked up guiltily, andhis eyes met mine. forthwith he scrambled to his feet, and stood wiping his clumsy handacross his mouth and regarding me. his legs

were scarcely half the length of his body.so, staring one another out of countenance, we remained for perhaps the space of a minute.then, stopping to look back once or twice, he slunk off among the bushes to the rightof me, and i heard the swish of the fronds grow faint in the distance and die away. longafter he had disappeared, i remained sitting up staring in the direction of his retreat.my drowsy tranquillity had gone. i was startled by a noise behind me, and turningsuddenly saw the flapping white tail of a rabbit vanishing up the slope. i jumped tomy feet. the apparition of this grotesque, half-bestial creature had suddenly populatedthe stillness of the afternoon for me. i looked around me rather nervously, and regrettedthat i was unarmed. then i thought that the

man i had just seen had been clothed in bluishcloth, had not been naked as a savage would have been; and i tried to persuade myselffrom that fact that he was after all probably a peaceful character, that the dull ferocityof his countenance belied him. yet i was greatly disturbed at the apparition.i walked to the left along the slope, turning my head about and peering this way and thatamong the straight stems of the trees. why should a man go on all-fours and drink withhis lips? presently i heard an animal wailing again, and taking it to be the puma, i turnedabout and walked in a direction diametrically opposite to the sound. this led me down tothe stream, across which i stepped and pushed my way up through the undergrowth beyond.

i was startled by a great patch of vivid scarleton the ground, and going up to it found it to be a peculiar fungus, branched and corrugatedlike a foliaceous lichen, but deliquescing into slime at the touch; and then in the shadowof some luxuriant ferns i came upon an unpleasant thing,—the dead body of a rabbit coveredwith shining flies, but still warm and with the head torn off. i stopped aghast at thesight of the scattered blood. here at least was one visitor to the island disposed of!there were no traces of other violence about it. it looked as though it had been suddenlysnatched up and killed; and as i stared at the little furry body came the difficultyof how the thing had been done. the vague dread that had been in my mind since i hadseen the inhuman face of the man at the stream

grew distincter as i stood there. i beganto realise the hardihood of my expedition among these unknown people. the thicket aboutme became altered to my imagination. every shadow became something more than a shadow,—becamean ambush; every rustle became a threat. invisible things seemed watching me. i resolved to goback to the enclosure on the beach. i suddenly turned away and thrust myself violently, possiblyeven frantically, through the bushes, anxious to get a clear space about me again. i stopped just in time to prevent myself emergingupon an open space. it was a kind of glade in the forest, made by a fall; seedlings werealready starting up to struggle for the vacant space; and beyond, the dense growth of stemsand twining vines and splashes of fungus and

flowers closed in again. before me, squattingtogether upon the fungoid ruins of a huge fallen tree and still unaware of my approach,were three grotesque human figures. one was evidently a female; the other two were men.they were naked, save for swathings of scarlet cloth about the middle; and their skins wereof a dull pinkish-drab colour, such as i had seen in no savages before. they had fat, heavy,chinless faces, retreating foreheads, and a scant bristly hair upon their heads. i neversaw such bestial-looking creatures. they were talking, or at least one of themen was talking to the other two, and all three had been too closely interested to heedthe rustling of my approach. they swayed their heads and shoulders from side to side. thespeaker's words came thick and sloppy, and

though i could hear them distinctly i couldnot distinguish what he said. he seemed to me to be reciting some complicated gibberish.presently his articulation became shriller, and spreading his hands he rose to his feet.at that the others began to gibber in unison, also rising to their feet, spreading theirhands and swaying their bodies in rhythm with their chant. i noticed then the abnormal shortnessof their legs, and their lank, clumsy feet. all three began slowly to circle round, raisingand stamping their feet and waving their arms; a kind of tune crept into their rhythmic recitation,and a refrain,—“aloola,” or “balloola,” it sounded like. their eyes began to sparkle,and their ugly faces to brighten, with an expression of strange pleasure. saliva drippedfrom their lipless mouths.

suddenly, as i watched their grotesque andunaccountable gestures, i perceived clearly for the first time what it was that had offendedme, what had given me the two inconsistent and conflicting impressions of utter strangenessand yet of the strangest familiarity. the three creatures engaged in this mysteriousrite were human in shape, and yet human beings with the strangest air about them of somefamiliar animal. each of these creatures, despite its human form, its rag of clothing,and the rough humanity of its bodily form, had woven into it—into its movements, intothe expression of its countenance, into its whole presence—some now irresistible suggestionof a hog, a swinish taint, the unmistakable mark of the beast.

i stood overcome by this amazing realisationand then the most horrible questionings came rushing into my mind. they began leaping inthe air, first one and then the other, whooping and grunting. then one slipped, and for amoment was on all-fours,—to recover, indeed, forthwith. but that transitory gleam of thetrue animalism of these monsters was enough. i turned as noiselessly as possible, and becomingevery now and then rigid with the fear of being discovered, as a branch cracked or aleaf rustled, i pushed back into the bushes. it was long before i grew bolder, and daredto move freely. my only idea for the moment was to get away from these foul beings, andi scarcely noticed that i had emerged upon a faint pathway amidst the trees. then suddenlytraversing a little glade, i saw with an unpleasant

start two clumsy legs among the trees, walkingwith noiseless footsteps parallel with my course, and perhaps thirty yards away fromme. the head and upper part of the body were hidden by a tangle of creeper. i stopped abruptly,hoping the creature did not see me. the feet stopped as i did. so nervous was i that icontrolled an impulse to headlong flight with the utmost difficulty. then looking hard,i distinguished through the interlacing network the head and body of the brute i had seendrinking. he moved his head. there was an emerald flash in his eyes as he glanced atme from the shadow of the trees, a half-luminous colour that vanished as he turned his headagain. he was motionless for a moment, and then with a noiseless tread began runningthrough the green confusion. in another moment

he had vanished behind some bushes. i couldnot see him, but i felt that he had stopped and was watching me again. what on earth was he,—man or beast? whatdid he want with me? i had no weapon, not even a stick. flight would be madness. atany rate the thing, whatever it was, lacked the courage to attack me. setting my teethhard, i walked straight towards him. i was anxious not to show the fear that seemed chillingmy backbone. i pushed through a tangle of tall white-flowered bushes, and saw him twentypaces beyond, looking over his shoulder at me and hesitating. i advanced a step or two,looking steadfastly into his eyes. “who are you?” said i.

he tried to meet my gaze. “no!” he saidsuddenly, and turning went bounding away from me through the undergrowth. then he turnedand stared at me again. his eyes shone brightly out of the dusk under the trees. my heart was in my mouth; but i felt my onlychance was bluff, and walked steadily towards him. he turned again, and vanished into thedusk. once more i thought i caught the glint of his eyes, and that was all. for the first time i realised how the latenessof the hour might affect me. the sun had set some minutes since, the swift dusk of thetropics was already fading out of the eastern sky, and a pioneer moth fluttered silentlyby my head. unless i would spend the night

among the unknown dangers of the mysteriousforest, i must hasten back to the enclosure. the thought of a return to that pain-hauntedrefuge was extremely disagreeable, but still more so was the idea of being overtaken inthe open by darkness and all that darkness might conceal. i gave one more look into theblue shadows that had swallowed up this odd creature, and then retraced my way down theslope towards the stream, going as i judged in the direction from which i had come. i walked eagerly, my mind confused with manythings, and presently found myself in a level place among scattered trees. the colourlessclearness that comes after the sunset flush was darkling; the blue sky above grew momentarilydeeper, and the little stars one by one pierced

the attenuated light; the interspaces of thetrees, the gaps in the further vegetation, that had been hazy blue in the daylight, grewblack and mysterious. i pushed on. the colour vanished from the world. the tree-tops roseagainst the luminous blue sky in inky silhouette, and all below that outline melted into oneformless blackness. presently the trees grew thinner, and the shrubby undergrowth moreabundant. then there was a desolate space covered with a white sand, and then anotherexpanse of tangled bushes. i did not remember crossing the sand-opening before. i beganto be tormented by a faint rustling upon my right hand. i thought at first it was fancy,for whenever i stopped there was silence, save for the evening breeze in the tree-tops.then when i turned to hurry on again there

was an echo to my footsteps. i turned away from the thickets, keeping tothe more open ground, and endeavouring by sudden turns now and then to surprise somethingin the act of creeping upon me. i saw nothing, and nevertheless my sense of another presencegrew steadily. i increased my pace, and after some time came to a slight ridge, crossedit, and turned sharply, regarding it steadfastly from the further side. it came out black andclear-cut against the darkling sky; and presently a shapeless lump heaved up momentarily againstthe sky-line and vanished again. i felt assured now that my tawny-faced antagonist was stalkingme once more; and coupled with that was another unpleasant realisation, that i had lost myway.

for a time i hurried on hopelessly perplexed,and pursued by that stealthy approach. whatever it was, the thing either lacked the courageto attack me, or it was waiting to take me at some disadvantage. i kept studiously tothe open. at times i would turn and listen; and presently i had half persuaded myselfthat my pursuer had abandoned the chase, or was a mere creation of my disordered imagination.then i heard the sound of the sea. i quickened my footsteps almost into a run, and immediatelythere was a stumble in my rear. i turned suddenly, and stared at the uncertaintrees behind me. one black shadow seemed to leap into another. i listened, rigid, andheard nothing but the creep of the blood in my ears. i thought that my nerves were unstrung,and that my imagination was tricking me, and

turned resolutely towards the sound of thesea again. in a minute or so the trees grew thinner,and i emerged upon a bare, low headland running out into the sombre water. the night was calmand clear, and the reflection of the growing multitude of the stars shivered in the tranquilheaving of the sea. some way out, the wash upon an irregular band of reef shone witha pallid light of its own. westward i saw the zodiacal light mingling with the yellowbrilliance of the evening star. the coast fell away from me to the east, and westwardit was hidden by the shoulder of the cape. then i recalled the fact that moreau's beachlay to the west. a twig snapped behind me, and there was arustle. i turned, and stood facing the dark

trees. i could see nothing—or else i couldsee too much. every dark form in the dimness had its ominous quality, its peculiar suggestionof alert watchfulness. so i stood for perhaps a minute, and then, with an eye to the treesstill, turned westward to cross the headland; and as i moved, one among the lurking shadowsmoved to follow me. my heart beat quickly. presently the broadsweep of a bay to the westward became visible, and i halted again. the noiseless shadow halteda dozen yards from me. a little point of light shone on the further bend of the curve, andthe grey sweep of the sandy beach lay faint under the starlight. perhaps two miles awaywas that little point of light. to get to the beach i should have to go through thetrees where the shadows lurked, and down a

bushy slope. i could see the thing rather more distinctlynow. it was no animal, for it stood erect. at that i opened my mouth to speak, and founda hoarse phlegm choked my voice. i tried again, and shouted, “who is there?” there wasno answer. i advanced a step. the thing did not move, only gathered itself together. myfoot struck a stone. that gave me an idea. without taking my eyes off the black formbefore me, i stooped and picked up this lump of rock; but at my motion the thing turnedabruptly as a dog might have done, and slunk obliquely into the further darkness. theni recalled a schoolboy expedient against big dogs, and twisted the rock into my handkerchief,and gave this a turn round my wrist. i heard

a movement further off among the shadows,as if the thing was in retreat. then suddenly my tense excitement gave way; i broke intoa profuse perspiration and fell a-trembling, with my adversary routed and this weapon inmy hand. it was some time before i could summon resolutionto go down through the trees and bushes upon the flank of the headland to the beach. atlast i did it at a run; and as i emerged from the thicket upon the sand, i heard some otherbody come crashing after me. at that i completely lost my head with fear, and began runningalong the sand. forthwith there came the swift patter of soft feet in pursuit. i gave a wildcry, and redoubled my pace. some dim, black things about three or four times the sizeof rabbits went running or hopping up from

the beach towards the bushes as i passed. so long as i live, i shall remember the terrorof that chase. i ran near the water's edge, and heard every now and then the splash ofthe feet that gained upon me. far away, hopelessly far, was the yellow light. all the night aboutus was black and still. splash, splash, came the pursuing feet, nearer and nearer. i feltmy breath going, for i was quite out of training; it whooped as i drew it, and i felt a painlike a knife at my side. i perceived the thing would come up with me long before i reachedthe enclosure, and, desperate and sobbing for my breath, i wheeled round upon it andstruck at it as it came up to me,—struck with all my strength. the stone came out ofthe sling of the handkerchief as i did so.

as i turned, the thing, which had been runningon all-fours, rose to its feet, and the missile fell fair on its left temple. the skull rangloud, and the animal-man blundered into me, thrust me back with its hands, and went staggeringpast me to fall headlong upon the sand with its face in the water; and there it lay still. i could not bring myself to approach thatblack heap. i left it there, with the water rippling round it, under the still stars,and giving it a wide berth pursued my way towards the yellow glow of the house; andpresently, with a positive effect of relief, came the pitiful moaning of the puma, thesound that had originally driven me out to explore this mysterious island. at that, thoughi was faint and horribly fatigued, i gathered

together all my strength, and began runningagain towards the light. i thought i heard a voice calling me. chapter x. the crying of the man. as i drew near the house i saw that the lightshone from the open door of my room; and then i heard coming from out of the darkness atthe side of that orange oblong of light, the voice of montgomery shouting, “prendick!”i continued running. presently i heard him again. i replied by a feeble “hullo!”and in another moment had staggered up to him. “where have you been?” said he, holdingme at arm's length, so that the light from

the door fell on my face. “we have bothbeen so busy that we forgot you until about half an hour ago.” he led me into the roomand sat me down in the deck chair. for awhile i was blinded by the light. “we did notthink you would start to explore this island of ours without telling us,” he said; andthen, “i was afraid—but—what—hullo!” my last remaining strength slipped from me,and my head fell forward on my chest. i think he found a certain satisfaction in givingme brandy. “for god's sake,” said i, “fasten thatdoor.” “you've been meeting some of our curiosities,eh?” said he. he locked the door and turned to me again.he asked me no questions, but gave me some

more brandy and water and pressed me to eat.i was in a state of collapse. he said something vague about his forgetting to warn me, andasked me briefly when i left the house and what i had seen. i answered him as briefly, in fragmentarysentences. “tell me what it all means,” said i, in a state bordering on hysterics. “it's nothing so very dreadful,” saidhe. “but i think you have had about enough for one day.” the puma suddenly gave a sharpyell of pain. at that he swore under his breath. “i'm damned,” said he, “if this placeis not as bad as gower street, with its cats.” “montgomery,” said i, “what was thatthing that came after me? was it a beast or

was it a man?” “if you don't sleep to-night,” he said,“you'll be off your head to-morrow.” i stood up in front of him. “what was thatthing that came after me?” i asked. he looked me squarely in the eyes, and twistedhis mouth askew. his eyes, which had seemed animated a minute before, went dull. “fromyour account,” said he, “i'm thinking it was a bogle.” i felt a gust of intense irritation, whichpassed as quickly as it came. i flung myself into the chair again, and pressed my handson my forehead. the puma began once more. montgomery came round behind me and put hishand on my shoulder. “look here, prendick,”

he said, “i had no business to let you driftout into this silly island of ours. but it's not so bad as you feel, man. your nerves areworked to rags. let me give you something that will make you sleep. that—will keepon for hours yet. you must simply get to sleep, or i won't answer for it.” i did not reply. i bowed forward, and coveredmy face with my hands. presently he returned with a small measure containing a dark liquid.this he gave me. i took it unresistingly, and he helped me into the hammock. when i awoke, it was broad day. for a littlewhile i lay flat, staring at the roof above me. the rafters, i observed, were made outof the timbers of a ship. then i turned my

head, and saw a meal prepared for me on thetable. i perceived that i was hungry, and prepared to clamber out of the hammock, which,very politely anticipating my intention, twisted round and deposited me upon all-fours on thefloor. i got up and sat down before the food. i hada heavy feeling in my head, and only the vaguest memory at first of the things that had happenedover night. the morning breeze blew very pleasantly through the unglazed window, and that andthe food contributed to the sense of animal comfort which i experienced. presently thedoor behind me—the door inward towards the yard of the enclosure—opened. i turned andsaw montgomery's face. “all right,” said he. “i'm frightfullybusy.” and he shut the door.

afterwards i discovered that he forgot tore-lock it. then i recalled the expression of his face the previous night, and with thatthe memory of all i had experienced reconstructed itself before me. even as that fear came backto me came a cry from within; but this time it was not the cry of a puma. i put down themouthful that hesitated upon my lips, and listened. silence, save for the whisper ofthe morning breeze. i began to think my ears had deceived me. after a long pause i resumed my meal, butwith my ears still vigilant. presently i heard something else, very faint and low. i satas if frozen in my attitude. though it was faint and low, it moved me more profoundlythan all that i had hitherto heard of the

abominations behind the wall. there was nomistake this time in the quality of the dim, broken sounds; no doubt at all of their source.for it was groaning, broken by sobs and gasps of anguish. it was no brute this time; itwas a human being in torment! as i realised this i rose, and in three stepshad crossed the room, seized the handle of the door into the yard, and flung it openbefore me. “prendick, man! stop!” cried montgomery,intervening. a startled deerhound yelped and snarled. therewas blood, i saw, in the sink,—brown, and some scarlet—and i smelt the peculiar smellof carbolic acid. then through an open doorway beyond, in the dim light of the shadow, isaw something bound painfully upon a framework,

scarred, red, and bandaged; and then blottingthis out appeared the face of old moreau, white and terrible. in a moment he had grippedme by the shoulder with a hand that was smeared red, had twisted me off my feet, and flungme headlong back into my own room. he lifted me as though i was a little child. i fellat full length upon the floor, and the door slammed and shut out the passionate intensityof his face. then i heard the key turn in the lock, and montgomery's voice in expostulation. “ruin the work of a lifetime,” i heardmoreau say. “he does not understand,” said montgomery.and other things that were inaudible. “i can't spare the time yet,” said moreau.

the rest i did not hear. i picked myself upand stood trembling, my mind a chaos of the most horrible misgivings. could it be possible,i thought, that such a thing as the vivisection of men was carried on here? the question shotlike lightning across a tumultuous sky; and suddenly the clouded horror of my mind condensedinto a vivid realisation of my own danger. chapter xi. the hunting of the man. it came before my mind with an unreasonablehope of escape that the outer door of my room was still open to me. i was convinced now,absolutely assured, that moreau had been vivisecting a human being. all the time since i had heardhis name, i had been trying to link in my mind in some way the grotesque animalism ofthe islanders with his abominations; and now

i thought i saw it all. the memory of hiswork on the transfusion of blood recurred to me. these creatures i had seen were thevictims of some hideous experiment. these sickening scoundrels had merely intended tokeep me back, to fool me with their display of confidence, and presently to fall uponme with a fate more horrible than death,—with torture; and after torture the most hideousdegradation it is possible to conceive,—to send me off a lost soul, a beast, to the restof their comus rout. i looked round for some weapon. nothing. thenwith an inspiration i turned over the deck chair, put my foot on the side of it, andtore away the side rail. it happened that a nail came away with the wood, and projecting,gave a touch of danger to an otherwise petty

weapon. i heard a step outside, and incontinentlyflung open the door and found montgomery within a yard of it. he meant to lock the outer door!i raised this nailed stick of mine and cut at his face; but he sprang back. i hesitateda moment, then turned and fled, round the corner of the house. “prendick, man!”i heard his astonished cry, “don't be a silly ass, man!” another minute, thought i, and he would havehad me locked in, and as ready as a hospital rabbit for my fate. he emerged behind thecorner, for i heard him shout, “prendick!” then he began to run after me, shouting thingsas he ran. this time running blindly, i went northeastward in a direction at right anglesto my previous expedition. once, as i went

running headlong up the beach, i glanced overmy shoulder and saw his attendant with him. i ran furiously up the slope, over it, thenturning eastward along a rocky valley fringed on either side with jungle i ran for perhapsa mile altogether, my chest straining, my heart beating in my ears; and then hearingnothing of montgomery or his man, and feeling upon the verge of exhaustion, i doubled sharplyback towards the beach as i judged, and lay down in the shelter of a canebrake. therei remained for a long time, too fearful to move, and indeed too fearful even to plana course of action. the wild scene about me lay sleeping silently under the sun, and theonly sound near me was the thin hum of some small gnats that had discovered me. presentlyi became aware of a drowsy breathing sound,

the soughing of the sea upon the beach. after about an hour i heard montgomery shoutingmy name, far away to the north. that set me thinking of my plan of action. as i interpretedit then, this island was inhabited only by these two vivisectors and their animalisedvictims. some of these no doubt they could press into their service against me if needarose. i knew both moreau and montgomery carried revolvers; and, save for a feeble bar of dealspiked with a small nail, the merest mockery of a mace, i was unarmed. so i lay still there, until i began to thinkof food and drink; and at that thought the real hopelessness of my position came hometo me. i knew no way of getting anything to

eat. i was too ignorant of botany to discoverany resort of root or fruit that might lie about me; i had no means of trapping the fewrabbits upon the island. it grew blanker the more i turned the prospect over. at last inthe desperation of my position, my mind turned to the animal men i had encountered. i triedto find some hope in what i remembered of them. in turn i recalled each one i had seen,and tried to draw some augury of assistance from my memory. then suddenly i heard a staghound bay, andat that realised a new danger. i took little time to think, or they would have caught methen, but snatching up my nailed stick, rushed headlong from my hiding-place towards thesound of the sea. i remember a growth of thorny

plants, with spines that stabbed like pen-knives.i emerged bleeding and with torn clothes upon the lip of a long creek opening northward.i went straight into the water without a minute's hesitation, wading up the creek, and presentlyfinding myself kneedeep in a little stream. i scrambled out at last on the westward bank,and with my heart beating loudly in my ears, crept into a tangle of ferns to await theissue. i heard the dog (there was only one) draw nearer, and yelp when it came to thethorns. then i heard no more, and presently began to think i had escaped. the minutes passed; the silence lengthenedout, and at last after an hour of security my courage began to return to me. by thistime i was no longer very much terrified or

very miserable. i had, as it were, passedthe limit of terror and despair. i felt now that my life was practically lost, and thatpersuasion made me capable of daring anything. i had even a certain wish to encounter moreauface to face; and as i had waded into the water, i remembered that if i were too hardpressed at least one path of escape from torment still lay open to me,—they could not verywell prevent my drowning myself. i had half a mind to drown myself then; but an odd wishto see the whole adventure out, a queer, impersonal, spectacular interest in myself, restrainedme. i stretched my limbs, sore and painful from the pricks of the spiny plants, and staredaround me at the trees; and, so suddenly that it seemed to jump out of the green traceryabout it, my eyes lit upon a black face watching

me. i saw that it was the simian creaturewho had met the launch upon the beach. he was clinging to the oblique stem of a palm-tree.i gripped my stick, and stood up facing him. he began chattering. “you, you, you,”was all i could distinguish at first. suddenly he dropped from the tree, and in another momentwas holding the fronds apart and staring curiously at me. i did not feel the same repugnance towardsthis creature which i had experienced in my encounters with the other beast men. “you,”he said, “in the boat.” he was a man, then,—at least as much of a man as montgomery'sattendant,—for he could talk. “yes,” i said, “i came in the boat.from the ship.”

“oh!” he said, and his bright, restlesseyes travelled over me, to my hands, to the stick i carried, to my feet, to the tatteredplaces in my coat, and the cuts and scratches i had received from the thorns. he seemedpuzzled at something. his eyes came back to my hands. he held his own hand out and countedhis digits slowly, “one, two, three, four, five—eigh?” i did not grasp his meaning then; afterwardsi was to find that a great proportion of these beast people had malformed hands, lackingsometimes even three digits. but guessing this was in some way a greeting, i did thesame thing by way of reply. he grinned with immense satisfaction. then his swift rovingglance went round again; he made a swift movement—and

vanished. the fern fronds he had stood betweencame swishing together. i pushed out of the brake after him, and wasastonished to find him swinging cheerfully by one lank arm from a rope of creepers thatlooped down from the foliage overhead. his back was to me. “hullo!” said i. he came down with a twisting jump, and stoodfacing me. “i say,” said i, “where can i get somethingto eat?” “eat!” he said. “eat man's food, now.”and his eye went back to the swing of ropes. “at the huts.”

“but where are the huts?” “oh!” “i'm new, you know.” at that he swung round, and set off at a quickwalk. all his motions were curiously rapid. “come along,” said he. i went with him to see the adventure out.i guessed the huts were some rough shelter where he and some more of these beast peoplelived. i might perhaps find them friendly, find some handle in their minds to take holdof. i did not know how far they had forgotten their human heritage.

my ape-like companion trotted along by myside, with his hands hanging down and his jaw thrust forward. i wondered what memoryhe might have in him. “how long have you been on this island?” said i. “how long?” he asked; and after havingthe question repeated, he held up three fingers. the creature was little better than an idiot.i tried to make out what he meant by that, and it seems i bored him. after another questionor two he suddenly left my side and went leaping at some fruit that hung from a tree. he pulleddown a handful of prickly husks and went on eating the contents. i noted this with satisfaction,for here at least was a hint for feeding. i tried him with some other questions, buthis chattering, prompt responses were as often

as not quite at cross purposes with my question.some few were appropriate, others quite parrot-like. i was so intent upon these peculiarities thati scarcely noticed the path we followed. presently we came to trees, all charred and brown, andso to a bare place covered with a yellow-white incrustation, across which a drifting smoke,pungent in whiffs to nose and eyes, went drifting. on our right, over a shoulder of bare rock,i saw the level blue of the sea. the path coiled down abruptly into a narrow ravinebetween two tumbled and knotty masses of blackish scoriae. into this we plunged. it was extremely dark, this passage, afterthe blinding sunlight reflected from the sulphurous ground. its walls grew steep, and approachedeach other. blotches of green and crimson

drifted across my eyes. my conductor stoppedsuddenly. “home!” said he, and i stood in a floor of a chasm that was at first absolutelydark to me. i heard some strange noises, and thrust the knuckles of my left hand into myeyes. i became aware of a disagreeable odor, like that of a monkey's cage ill-cleaned.beyond, the rock opened again upon a gradual slope of sunlit greenery, and on either handthe light smote down through narrow ways into the central gloom. chapter xii. the sayers of the law. then something cold touched my hand. i startedviolently, and saw close to me a dim pinkish thing, looking more like a flayed child thananything else in the world. the creature had

exactly the mild but repulsive features ofa sloth, the same low forehead and slow gestures. as the first shock of the change of lightpassed, i saw about me more distinctly. the little sloth-like creature was standing andstaring at me. my conductor had vanished. the place was a narrow passage between highwalls of lava, a crack in the knotted rock, and on either side interwoven heaps of sea-mat,palm-fans, and reeds leaning against the rock formed rough and impenetrably dark dens. thewinding way up the ravine between these was scarcely three yards wide, and was disfiguredby lumps of decaying fruit-pulp and other refuse, which accounted for the disagreeablestench of the place. the little pink sloth-creature was still blinkingat me when my ape-man reappeared at the aperture

of the nearest of these dens, and beckonedme in. as he did so a slouching monster wriggled out of one of the places, further up thisstrange street, and stood up in featureless silhouette against the bright green beyond,staring at me. i hesitated, having half a mind to bolt the way i had come; and then,determined to go through with the adventure, i gripped my nailed stick about the middleand crawled into the little evil-smelling lean-to after my conductor. it was a semi-circular space, shaped likethe half of a bee-hive; and against the rocky wall that formed the inner side of it wasa pile of variegated fruits, cocoa-nuts among others. some rough vessels of lava and woodstood about the floor, and one on a rough

stool. there was no fire. in the darkest cornerof the hut sat a shapeless mass of darkness that grunted “hey!” as i came in, andmy ape-man stood in the dim light of the doorway and held out a split cocoa-nut to me as icrawled into the other corner and squatted down. i took it, and began gnawing it, asserenely as possible, in spite of a certain trepidation and the nearly intolerable closenessof the den. the little pink sloth-creature stood in the aperture of the hut, and somethingelse with a drab face and bright eyes came staring over its shoulder. “hey!” came out of the lump of mysteryopposite. “it is a man.” “it is a man,” gabbled my conductor, “aman, a man, a five-man, like me.”

“shut up!” said the voice from the dark,and grunted. i gnawed my cocoa-nut amid an impressive stillness. i peered hard into the blackness, but coulddistinguish nothing. “it is a man,” the voice repeated. “hecomes to live with us?” it was a thick voice, with something in it—akind of whistling overtone—that struck me as peculiar; but the english accent was strangelygood. the ape-man looked at me as though he expectedsomething. 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 blacknessin the black, a vague outline of a hunched-up figure. then i noticed the opening of theplace was darkened by two more black heads. my hand tightened on my stick. the thing in the dark repeated in a loudertone, “say the words.” i had missed its last remark. “not to go on all-fours; thatis the law,” it repeated in a kind of sing-song. i was puzzled. “say the words,” said the ape-man, repeating,and the figures in the doorway echoed this, with a threat in the tone of their voices. i realised that i had to repeat this idioticformula; and then began the insanest ceremony.

the voice in the dark began intoning a madlitany, line by line, and i and the rest to repeat it. as they did so, they swayed fromside to side in the oddest way, and beat their hands upon their knees; and i followed theirexample. i could have imagined i was already dead and in another world. that dark hut,these grotesque dim figures, just flecked here and there by a glimmer of light, andall 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 fish or flesh; that is the law.are we not men? “not to claw the bark of trees; that isthe 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 actsof folly, on to the prohibition of what i thought then were the maddest, most impossible,and most indecent things one could well imagine. a kind of rhythmic fervour fell on all ofus; we gabbled and swayed faster and faster, repeating this amazing law. superficiallythe contagion of these brutes was upon me, but deep down within me the laughter and disguststruggled together. we ran through a long list of prohibitions, and then the chant swunground to a new formula. “his is the house of pain. “his is the hand that makes.

“his is the hand that wounds. “his is the hand that heals.” and so on for another long series, mostlyquite incomprehensible gibberish to me about him, whoever he might be. i could have fanciedit was a dream, but never before have i heard chanting in a dream. “his is the lightning flash,” we sang.“his is the deep, salt sea.” a horrible fancy came into my head that moreau,after animalising these men, had infected their dwarfed brains with a kind of deificationof himself. however, i was too keenly aware of white teeth and strong claws about me tostop my chanting on that account.

“his are the stars in the sky.” at last that song ended. i saw the ape-man'sface shining with perspiration; and my eyes being now accustomed to the darkness, i sawmore distinctly the figure in the corner from which the voice came. it was the size of aman, but it seemed covered with a dull grey hair almost like a skye-terrier. what wasit? what were they all? imagine yourself surrounded by all the most horrible cripples and maniacsit is possible to conceive, and you may understand a little of my feelings with these grotesquecaricatures of humanity about me. “he is a five-man, a five-man, a five-man—likeme,” said the ape-man. i held out my hands. the grey creature inthe corner leant forward.

“not to run on all-fours; that is the law.are we not men?” he said. he put out a strangely distorted talon andgripped my fingers. the thing was almost like the hoof of a deer produced into claws. icould 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 disgustthat it was like the face of neither man nor beast, but a mere shock of grey hair, withthree shadowy over-archings to mark the eyes and mouth. “he has little nails,” said this grislycreature in his hairy beard. “it is well.” he threw my hand down, and instinctively igripped my stick.

“eat roots and herbs; it is his will,”said the ape-man. “i am the sayer of the law,” said thegrey figure. “here come all that be new to learn the law. i sit in the darkness andsay the law.” “it is even so,” said one of the beastsin the doorway. “evil are the punishments of those who breakthe law. none escape.” “none escape,” said the beast folk, glancingfurtively at one another. “none, none,” said the ape-man,—“noneescape. see! i did a little thing, a wrong thing, once. i jabbered, jabbered, stoppedtalking. none could understand. i am burnt, branded in the hand. he is great. he is good!”

“none escape,” said the grey creaturein the corner. “none escape,” said the beast people,looking askance at one another. “for every one the want that is bad,”said the grey sayer of the law. “what you will want we do not know; we shall know. somewant to follow things that move, to watch and slink and wait and spring; to kill andbite, bite deep and rich, sucking the blood. it is bad. ‘not to chase other men; thatis the law. are we not men? not to eat flesh or fish; that is the law. are we not men?’” “none escape,” said a dappled brute standingin the doorway. “for every one the want is bad,” saidthe grey sayer of the law. “some want to

go tearing with teeth and hands into the rootsof things, snuffing into the earth. it is bad.” “none escape,” said the men in the door. “some go clawing trees; some go scratchingat the graves of the dead; some go fighting with foreheads or feet or claws; some bitesuddenly, none giving occasion; some love uncleanness.” “none escape,” said the ape-man, scratchinghis calf. “none escape,” said the little pink sloth-creature. “punishment is sharp and sure. thereforelearn the law. say the words.”

and incontinently he began again the strangelitany of the law, and again i and all these creatures began singing and swaying. my headreeled with this jabbering and the close stench of the place; but i kept on, trusting to findpresently 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 noticednothing of a tumult outside, until some one, who i think was one of the two swine men ihad seen, thrust his head over the little pink sloth-creature and shouted somethingexcitedly, something that i did not catch. incontinently those at the opening of thehut vanished; my ape-man rushed out; the thing that had sat in the dark followed him (i onlyobserved that 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 staghound. in another moment i was standing outside thehovel, my chair-rail in my hand, every muscle of me quivering. before me were the clumsybacks of perhaps a score of these beast people, their misshapen heads half hidden by theirshoulder-blades. they were gesticulating excitedly. other half-animal faces glared interrogationout of the hovels. looking in the direction in which they faced, i saw coming throughthe haze under the trees beyond the end of the passage of dens the dark figure and awfulwhite face of moreau. he was holding the leaping staghound back, and close behind him camemontgomery revolver in hand.

for a moment i stood horror-struck. i turnedand saw the passage behind me blocked by another heavy brute, with a huge grey face and twinklinglittle eyes, advancing towards me. i looked round and saw to the right of me and a half-dozenyards in front of me a narrow gap in the wall of rock through which a ray of light slantedinto the shadows. “stop!” cried moreau as i strode towardsthis, and then, “hold him!” at that, first one face turned towards meand then others. their bestial minds were happily slow. i dashed my shoulder into aclumsy monster who was turning to see what moreau meant, and flung him forward into another.i felt his hands fly round, clutching at me and missing me. the little pink sloth-creaturedashed at me, and i gashed down its ugly face

with the nail in my stick and in another minutewas 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-facedcreature 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 sulphuron the westward side of the village of the beast men. that gap was altogether fortunate for me,for the narrow chimney, slanting obliquely upward, must have impeded the nearer pursuers.i ran over the white space and down a steep slope, through a scattered growth of trees,and came to a low-lying stretch of tall reeds,

through which i pushed into a dark, thickundergrowth that was black and succulent under foot. as i plunged into the reeds, my foremostpursuers 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 ofmy pursuers in the gap up the slope, then the crashing of the reeds, and every now andthen the crackling crash of a branch. some of the creatures roared like excited beastsof prey. the staghound yelped to the left. i heard moreau and montgomery shouting inthe same direction. i turned sharply to the right. it seemed to me even then that i heardmontgomery shouting for me to run for my life. presently the ground gave rich and oozy undermy feet; but i was desperate and went headlong

into it, struggled through kneedeep, and socame 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 beforemy footsteps. this pathway ran up hill, across another open space covered with white incrustation,and plunged into a canebrake again. then suddenly it turned parallel with the edge of a steep-walledgap, which came without warning, like the ha-ha of an english park,—turned with anunexpected abruptness. i was still running with all my might, and i never saw this dropuntil 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, rockyand thorny, full of a hazy mist which drifted

about me in wisps, and with a narrow streamletfrom which this mist came meandering down the centre. i was astonished at this thinfog in the full blaze of daylight; but i had no time to stand wondering then. i turnedto my right, down-stream, hoping to come to the sea in that direction, and so have myway open to drown myself. it was only later i found that i had dropped my nailed stickin my fall. presently the ravine grew narrower for a space,and carelessly i stepped into the stream. i jumped out again pretty quickly, for thewater was almost boiling. i noticed too there was a thin sulphurous scum drifting upon itscoiling 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; buti was hot and panting, with the warm blood oozing out on my face and running pleasantlythrough my veins. i felt more than a touch of exultation too, at having distanced mypursuers. it was not in me then to go out and drown myself yet. i stared back the wayi had come. i listened. save for the hum of the gnatsand the chirp of some small insects that hopped among the thorns, the air was absolutely still.then came the yelp of a dog, very faint, and a chattering and gibbering, the snap of awhip, and voices. they grew louder, then fainter again. the noise receded up the stream andfaded away. for a while the chase was over; but i knew now how much hope of help for melay in the beast people.

chapter xiii. a parley. i turned again and went on down towards thesea. i found the hot stream broadened out to a shallow, weedy sand, in which an abundanceof crabs and long-bodied, many-legged creatures started from my footfall. i walked to thevery edge of the salt water, and then i felt i was safe. i turned and stared, arms akimbo,at the thick green behind me, into which the steamy ravine cut like a smoking gash. but,as i say, i was too full of excitement and (a true saying, though those who have neverknown danger may doubt it) too desperate to die. then it came into my head that there was onechance before me yet. while moreau and montgomery

and their bestial rabble chased me throughthe island, might i not go round the beach until i came to their enclosure,—make aflank 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 totry. so i turned to the westward and walked alongby the water's edge. the setting sun flashed his blinding heat into my eyes. the slightpacific 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 firstone and then several figures emerging from

the bushes,—moreau, with his grey staghound,then montgomery, and two others. at that i stopped. they saw me, and began gesticulating and advancing.i stood watching them approach. the two beast men came running forward to cut me off fromthe undergrowth, inland. montgomery came, running also, but straight towards me. moreaufollowed slower with the dog. at last i roused myself from 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 to my waist. dimly i could see the intertidalcreatures darting away from my feet. “what are you doing, man?” cried montgomery.

i turned, standing waist deep, and staredat them. montgomery stood panting at the margin of the water. his face was bright-red withexertion, his long flaxen hair blown about his head, and his dropping nether lip showedhis irregular teeth. moreau was just coming up, his face pale and firm, and the dog athis hand barked at me. both men had heavy whips. farther up the beach stared the beastmen. “what am i doing? i am going to drown myself,”said i. montgomery and moreau looked at each other.“why?” asked moreau. “because that is better than being torturedby you.” “i told you so,” said montgomery, andmoreau said something in a low tone.

“what makes you think i shall torture you?”asked moreau. “what i saw,” i said. “and those—yonder.” “hush!” said moreau, and held up his hand. “i will not,” said i. “they were men:what are they now? i at least will not be like them.” i looked past my interlocutors. up the beachwere m'ling, montgomery's attendant, and one of the white-swathed brutes from the boat.farther up, in the shadow of the trees, i saw my little ape-man, and behind him someother dim figures. “who are these creatures?” said i, pointingto 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 haveenslaved, and whom you still fear. “you who listen,” i cried, pointing nowto moreau and shouting past him to the beast men,—“you who listen! do you not see thesemen still fear you, go in dread of you? why, then, do you fear them? you are many—” “for god's sake,” cried montgomery, “stopthat, prendick!” “prendick!” cried moreau. they both shouted together, as if to drownmy voice; and behind them lowered the staring faces of the beast men, wondering, their deformedhands hanging down, their shoulders hunched

up. they seemed, as i fancied, to be tryingto understand me, to remember, i thought, something of their human past. i went on shouting, i scarcely remember what,—thatmoreau and montgomery could be killed, that they were not to be feared: that was the burdenof what i put into the heads of the beast people. i saw the green-eyed man in the darkrags, who had met me on the evening of my arrival, come out from among the trees, andothers followed him, to hear me better. at last for want of breath i paused. “listen to me for a moment,” said thesteady voice of moreau; “and then say what you will.”

“well?” said i. he coughed, thought, then shouted: “latin,prendick! bad latin, schoolboy latin; but try and understand. hi non sunt homines; suntanimalia qui nos habemus—vivisected. a humanising process. i will explain. come ashore.” i laughed. “a pretty story,” said i. “theytalk, build houses. they were men. it's likely i'll come ashore.” “the water just beyond where you stand isdeep—and full of sharks.” “that's my way,” said i. “short andsharp. presently.” “wait a minute.” he took something outof his pocket that flashed back the sun, and

dropped the object at his feet. “that'sa loaded revolver,” said he. “montgomery here will do the same. now we are going upthe 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, weshould import men, not beasts. in the next, we had you drugged last night, had we wantedto work you any mischief; and in the next, now your first panic is over and you can thinka little, is montgomery here quite up to the character you give him? we have chased youfor your good. because this island is full

of inimical phenomena. besides, why shouldwe want to shoot you when you have just offered to drown yourself?” “why did you set—your people onto me wheni was in the hut?” “we felt sure of catching you, and bringingyou out of danger. afterwards we drew away from the scent, for your good.” i mused. it seemed just possible. then i rememberedsomething again. “but i saw,” said i, “in the enclosure—” “that was the puma.” “look here, prendick,” said montgomery,“you're a silly ass! come out of the water

and take these revolvers, and talk. we can'tdo 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, withan explanatory nod over his shoulder. “undignified.” “go up to the trees, then,” said i, “asyou please.” “it's a damned silly ceremony,” said montgomery. both turned and faced the six or seven grotesquecreatures, who stood there in the sunlight, solid, casting shadows, moving, and yet soincredibly unreal. montgomery cracked his

whip at them, and forthwith they all turnedand fled helter-skelter into the trees; and when montgomery and moreau were at a distancei judged sufficient, i waded ashore, and picked up and examined the revolvers. to satisfymyself against the subtlest trickery, i discharged one at a round lump of lava, and had the satisfactionof seeing the stone pulverised and the beach splashed with lead. still i hesitated fora moment. “i'll take the risk,” said i, at last;and with a revolver in each hand i walked up the beach towards them. “that's better,” said moreau, withoutaffectation. “as it is, you have wasted the best part of my day with your confoundedimagination.” and with a touch of contempt

which humiliated me, he and montgomery turnedand went on in silence before me. the knot of beast men, still wondering, stoodback among the trees. i passed them as serenely as possible. one started to follow me, butretreated again when montgomery cracked his whip. the rest stood silent—watching. theymay once have been animals; but i never before saw an animal trying to think. chapter xiv. doctor moreau explains. “and now, prendick, i will explain,” saiddoctor moreau, so soon as we had eaten and drunk. “i must confess that you are themost dictatorial guest i ever entertained. i warn you that this is the last i shall doto oblige you. the next thing you threaten

to commit suicide about, i shan't do,—evenat some personal inconvenience.” he sat in my deck chair, a cigar half consumedin his white, dexterous-looking fingers. the light of the swinging lamp fell on his whitehair; he stared through the little window out at the starlight. i sat as far away fromhim as possible, the table between us and the revolvers to hand. montgomery was notpresent. i did not care to be with the two of them in such a little room. “you admit that the vivisected human being,as you called it, is, after all, only the puma?” said moreau. he had made me visitthat horror in the inner room, to assure myself of its inhumanity.

“it is the puma,” i said, “still alive,but so cut and mutilated as i pray i may never see living flesh again. of all vile—” “never mind that,” said moreau; “atleast, spare me those youthful horrors. montgomery used to be just the same. you admit that itis the puma. now be quiet, while i reel off my physiological lecture to you.” and forthwith, beginning in the tone of aman supremely bored, but presently warming a little, he explained his work to me. hewas 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, hadnever been men. they were animals, humanised animals,—triumphs of vivisection. “you forget all that a skilled vivisectorcan do with living things,” said moreau. “for my own part, i'm puzzled why the thingsi have done here have not been done before. small efforts, of course, have been made,—amputation,tongue-cutting, excisions. of course you know a squint may be induced or cured by surgery?then in the case of excisions you have all kinds of secondary changes, pigmentary disturbances,modifications of the passions, alterations in the secretion of fatty tissue. i have nodoubt you have heard of these things?” “of course,” said i. “but these foulcreatures of yours—”

“all in good time,” said he, waving hishand at me; “i am only beginning. those are trivial cases of alteration. surgery cando 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 nosehas been destroyed: a flap of skin is cut from the forehead, turned down on the nose,and heals in the new position. this is a kind of grafting in a new position of part of ananimal upon itself. grafting of freshly obtained material from another animal is also possible,—thecase 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. hunter's cock-spur—possibly youhave heard of that—flourished on the bull's neck; and the rhinoceros rats of the algerianzouaves are also to be thought of,—monsters manufactured by transferring a slip from thetail of an ordinary rat to its snout, and allowing it to heal in that position.” “monsters manufactured!” said i. “thenyou mean to tell me—” “yes. these creatures you have seen areanimals carven and wrought into new shapes. to that, to the study of the plasticity ofliving forms, my life has been devoted. i have studied for years, gaining in knowledgeas i go. i see you look horrified, and yet i am telling you nothing new. it all lay inthe surface of practical anatomy years ago,

but no one had the temerity to touch it. itis not simply the outward form of an animal which i can change. the physiology, the chemicalrhythm of the creature, may also be made to undergo an enduring modification,—of whichvaccination and other methods of inoculation with living or dead matter are examples thatwill, no doubt, be familiar to you. a similar operation is the transfusion of blood,—withwhich subject, indeed, i began. these are all familiar cases. less so, and probablyfar more extensive, were the operations of those mediaeval practitioners who made dwarfsand beggar-cripples, show-monsters,—some vestiges of whose art still remain in thepreliminary manipulation of the young mountebank or contortionist. victor hugo gives an accountof them in ‘l'homme qui rit.’—but perhaps

my meaning grows plain now. you begin to seethat 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 articulations of its limbs; and, indeed, to change it in its most intimatestructure. “and yet this extraordinary branch of knowledgehas 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 kindredevidence that will recur to your mind has been demonstrated as it were by accident,—bytyrants, by criminals, by the breeders of horses and dogs, by all kinds of untrainedclumsy-handed men working for their own immediate

ends. i was the first man to take up thisquestion armed with antiseptic surgery, and with a really scientific knowledge of thelaws of growth. yet one would imagine it must have been practised in secret before. suchcreatures as the siamese twins—and in the vaults of the inquisition. no doubt theirchief aim was artistic torture, but some at least of the inquisitors must have had a touchof scientific curiosity.” “but,” said i, “these things—theseanimals talk!” he said that was so, and proceeded to pointout 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

the promise of a possibility of supersedingold inherent instincts by new suggestions, grafting upon or replacing the inherited fixedideas. very much indeed of what we call moral education, he said, is such an artificialmodification and perversion of instinct; pugnacity is trained into courageous self-sacrifice,and suppressed sexuality into religious emotion. and the great difference between man and monkeyis in the larynx, he continued,—in the incapacity to frame delicately different sound-symbolsby which thought could be sustained. in this i failed to agree with him, but with a certainincivility he declined to notice my objection. he repeated that the thing was so, and continuedhis account of his work. i asked him why he had taken the human formas a model. there seemed to me then, and there

still seems to me now, a strange wickednessfor that choice. he confessed that he had chosen that formby chance. “i might just as well have worked to form sheep into llamas and llamas intosheep. i suppose there is something in the human form that appeals to the artistic turnof mind more powerfully than any animal shape can. but i've not confined myself to man-making.once or twice—” he was silent, for a minute perhaps. “these years! how they have slippedby! and here i have wasted a day saving your life, and am now wasting an hour explainingmyself!” “but,” said i, “i still do not understand.where is your justification for inflicting all this pain? the only thing that could excusevivisection to me would be some application—”

“precisely,” said he. “but, you see,i am differently constituted. we are on different platforms. you are a materialist.” “i am not a materialist,” i began hotly. “in my view—in my view. for it is justthis 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 aboutsin,—so long, i tell you, you are an animal, thinking a little less obscurely what an animalfeels. this pain—” i gave an impatient shrug at such sophistry. “oh, but it is such a little thing! a mindtruly opened to what science has to teach

must see that it is a little thing. it maybe that save in this little planet, this speck of cosmic dust, invisible long before thenearest star could be attained—it may be, i say, that nowhere else does this thing calledpain occur. but the laws we feel our way towards—why, even on this earth, even among living things,what pain is there?” as he spoke he drew a little penknife fromhis 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 withdrewit. “no doubt,” he said, “you have seenthat before. it does not hurt a pin-prick. but what does it show? the capacity for painis not needed in the muscle, and it is not

placed there,—is but little needed in theskin, and only here and there over the thigh is a spot capable of feeling pain. pain issimply our intrinsic medical adviser to warn us and stimulate us. not all living fleshis painful; nor is all nerve, not even all sensory nerve. there's no taint of pain, realpain, in the sensations of the optic nerve. if you wound the optic nerve, you merely seeflashes of light,—just as disease of the auditory nerve merely means a humming in ourears. plants do not feel pain, nor the lower animals; it's possible that such animals asthe starfish and crayfish do not feel pain at all. then with men, the more intelligentthey become, the more intelligently they will see after their own welfare, and the lessthey will need the goad to keep them out of

danger. i never yet heard of a useless thingthat was not ground out of existence by evolution sooner or later. did you? and pain gets needless. “then i am a religious man, prendick, asevery sane man must be. it may be, i fancy, that i have seen more of the ways of thisworld'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 nothingto do with heaven or hell. pleasure and pain—bah! what is your theologian's ecstasy but mahomet'shouri in the dark? this store which men and women set on pleasure and pain, prendick,is the mark of the beast upon them,—the mark of the beast from which they came! pain,pain and pleasure, they are for us only so

long as we wriggle in the dust. “you see, i went on with this research justthe way it led me. that is the only way i ever heard of true research going. i askeda question, devised some method of obtaining an answer, and got a fresh question. was thispossible or that possible? you cannot imagine what this means to an investigator, what anintellectual passion grows upon him! you cannot imagine the strange, colourless delight ofthese 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 sufferfrom years ago. i wanted—it was the one thing i wanted—to find out the extreme limitof plasticity in a living shape.”

“but,” said i, “the thing is an abomination—” “to this day i have never troubled aboutthe ethics of the matter,” he continued. “the study of nature makes a man at lastas remorseless as nature. i have gone on, not heeding anything but the question i waspursuing; and the material has—dripped into the huts yonder. it is nearly eleven yearssince we came here, i and montgomery and six kanakas. i remember the green stillness ofthe island and the empty ocean about us, as though it was yesterday. the place seemedwaiting for me. “the stores were landed and the house wasbuilt. the kanakas founded some huts near the ravine. i went to work here upon whati had brought with me. there were some disagreeable

things happened at first. i began with a sheep,and killed it after a day and a half by a slip of the scalpel. i took another sheep,and made a thing of pain and fear and left it bound up to heal. it looked quite humanto me when i had finished it; but when i went to it i was discontented with it. it rememberedme, 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 itsmisery. these animals without courage, these fear-haunted, pain-driven things, withouta 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. allthe week, night and day, i moulded him. with him it was chiefly the brain that needed moulding;much had to be added, much changed. i thought him a fair specimen of the negroid type wheni had finished him, and he lay bandaged, bound, and motionless before me. it was only whenhis life was assured that i left him and came into this room again, and found montgomerymuch as you are. he had heard some of the cries as the thing grew human,—cries likethose that disturbed you so. i didn't take him completely into my confidence at first.and the kanakas too, had realised something of it. they were scared out of their witsby the sight of me. i got montgomery over to me—in a way; but i and he had the hardestjob to prevent the kanakas deserting. finally

they did; and so we lost the yacht. i spentmany days educating the brute,—altogether i had him for three or four months. i taughthim the rudiments of english; gave him ideas of counting; even made the thing read thealphabet. but at that he was slow, though i've met with idiots slower. he began witha clean sheet, mentally; had no memories left in his mind of what he had been. when hisscars were quite healed, and he was no longer anything but painful and stiff, and able toconverse 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 seemedso mild, and he was so abject, that after

a time they received him and took his educationin hand. he was quick to learn, very imitative and adaptive, and built himself a hovel ratherbetter, it seemed to me, than their own shanties. there was one among the boys a bit of a missionary,and he taught the thing to read, or at least to pick out letters, and gave him some rudimentaryideas of morality; but it seems the beast's habits were not all that is desirable. “i rested from work for some days afterthis, and was in a mind to write an account of the whole affair to wake up english physiology.then i came upon the creature squatting up in a tree and gibbering at two of the kanakaswho had been teasing him. i threatened him, told him the inhumanity of such a proceeding,aroused his sense of shame, and came home

resolved to do better before i took my workback to england. i have been doing better. but somehow the things drift back again: thestubborn beast-flesh grows day by day back again. but i mean to do better things still.i mean to conquer that. this puma— “but that's the story. all the kanaka boysare dead now; one fell overboard of the launch, and one died of a wounded heel that he poisonedin some way with plant-juice. three went away in the yacht, and i suppose and hope weredrowned. the other one—was killed. well, i have replaced them. montgomery went on muchas 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 numberof human creatures i made a thing—” he

hesitated. “yes?” said i. “it was killed.” “i don't understand,” said i; “do youmean to say—” “it killed the kanaka—yes. it killed severalother things that it caught. we chased it for a couple of days. it only got loose byaccident—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 serpentinefashion. 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 dividedthe party to close in upon it. montgomery insisted upon coming with me. the man hada rifle; and when his body was found, one of the barrels was curved into the shape ofan s and very nearly bitten through. montgomery shot the thing. after that i stuck to theideal of humanity—except for little things.” he became silent. i sat in silence watchinghis face. “so for twenty years altogether—countingnine years in england—i have been going on; and there is still something in everythingi do that defeats me, makes me dissatisfied, challenges me to further effort. sometimesi rise above my level, sometimes i fall below it; but always i fall short of the thingsi dream. the human shape i can get now, almost

with ease, so that it is lithe and graceful,or thick and strong; but often there is trouble with the hands and the claws,—painful things,that i dare not shape too freely. but it is in the subtle grafting and reshaping one mustneeds do to the brain that my trouble lies. the intelligence is often oddly low, withunaccountable blank ends, unexpected gaps. and least satisfactory of all is somethingthat 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 forthsuddenly and inundate the whole being of the creature with anger, hate, or fear. thesecreatures of mine seemed strange and uncanny to you so soon as you began to observe them;but to me, just after i make them, they seem

to be indisputably human beings. it's afterwards,as i observe them, that the persuasion fades. first one animal trait, then another, creepsto the surface and stares out at me. but i will conquer yet! each time i dip a livingcreature into the bath of burning pain, i say, ‘this time i will burn out all theanimal; this time i will make a rational creature of my own!’ after all, what is ten years?men have been a hundred thousand in the making.” he thought darkly. “but i am drawing nearthe fastness. this puma of mine—” after a silence, “and they revert. as soon asmy 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 intothose dens?” said i.

“they go. i turn them out when i begin tofeel the beast in them, and presently they wander there. they all dread this house andme. there is a kind of travesty of humanity over there. montgomery knows about it, forhe interferes in their affairs. he has trained one or two of them to our service. he's ashamedof 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 followin the lines the kanaka missionary marked out, and have a kind of mockery of a rationallife, poor beasts! there's something they call the law. sing hymns about ‘all thine.’they build themselves their dens, gather fruit, and pull herbs—marry even. but i can seethrough it all, see into their very souls,

and see there nothing but the souls of beasts,beasts that perish, anger and the lusts to live and gratify themselves.—yet they'reodd; 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 havesome hope of this puma. i have worked hard at her head and brain— “and now,” said he, standing up aftera long gap of silence, during which we had each pursued our own thoughts, “what doyou think? are you in fear of me still?” i looked at him, and saw but a white-faced,white-haired man, with calm eyes. save for his serenity, the touch almost of beauty thatresulted from his set tranquillity and his

magnificent build, he might have passed musteramong a hundred other comfortable old gentlemen. then i shivered. by way of answer to his secondquestion, i handed him a revolver with either hand. “keep them,” he said, and snatched ata 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 thoughtme over for a moment, then went out by the inner door. i immediately turned the key in the outerone. 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 leftme. the black window stared at me like an eye. at last with an effort i put out thelight and got into the hammock. very soon i was asleep. chapter xv. concerning the beast folk. i woke early. moreau's explanation stood beforemy mind, clear and definite, from the moment of my awakening. i got out of the hammockand went to the door to assure myself that the key was turned. then i tried the window-bar,and found it firmly fixed. that these man-like creatures were in truth only bestial monsters,mere grotesque travesties of men, filled me with a vague uncertainty of their possibilitieswhich was far worse than any definite fear.

a tapping came at the door, and i heard theglutinous accents of m'ling speaking. i pocketed one of the revolvers (keeping one hand uponit), and opened to him. “good-morning, sair,” he said, bringingin, in addition to the customary herb-breakfast, an ill-cooked rabbit. montgomery followedhim. his roving eye caught the position of my arm and he smiled askew. the puma was resting to heal that day; butmoreau, who was singularly solitary in his habits, did not join us. i talked with montgomeryto clear my ideas of the way in which the beast folk lived. in particular, i was urgentto know how these inhuman monsters were kept from falling upon moreau and montgomery andfrom rending one another. he explained to

me that the comparative safety of moreau andhimself was due to the limited mental scope of these monsters. in spite of their increasedintelligence and the tendency of their animal instincts to reawaken, they had certain fixedideas implanted by moreau in their minds, which absolutely bounded their imaginations.they were really hypnotised; had been told that certain things were impossible, and thatcertain things were not to be done, and these prohibitions were woven into the texture oftheir minds beyond any possibility of disobedience or dispute. certain matters, however, in which old instinctwas at war with moreau's convenience, were in a less stable condition. a series of propositionscalled the law (i had already heard them recited)

battled in their minds with the deep-seated,ever-rebellious cravings of their animal natures. this law they were ever repeating, i found,and ever breaking. both montgomery and moreau displayed particular solicitude to keep themignorant of the taste of blood; they feared the inevitable suggestions of that flavour.montgomery told me that the law, especially among the feline beast people, became oddlyweakened about nightfall; that then the animal was at its strongest; that a spirit of adventuresprang up in them at the dusk, when they would dare things they never seemed to dream aboutby day. to that i owed my stalking by the leopard-man, on the night of my arrival. butduring 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 generalfacts about the island and the beast people. the island, which was of irregular outlineand lay low upon the wide sea, had a total area, i suppose, of seven or eight squaremiles.{2} it was volcanic in origin, and was now fringed on three sides by coral reefs;some fumaroles to the northward, and a hot spring, were the only vestiges of the forcesthat had long since originated it. now and then a faint quiver of earthquake would besensible, and sometimes the ascent of the spire of smoke would be rendered tumultuousby gusts of steam; but that was all. the population of the island, montgomery informed me, nownumbered rather more than sixty of these strange

creations of moreau's art, not counting thesmaller monstrosities which lived in the undergrowth and were without human form. altogether hehad made nearly a hundred and twenty; but many had died, and others—like the writhingfootless thing of which he had told me—had come by violent ends. in answer to my question,montgomery said that they actually bore offspring, but that these generally died. when they lived,moreau took them and stamped the human form upon them. there was no evidence of the inheritanceof their acquired human characteristics. the females were less numerous than the males,and liable to much furtive persecution in spite of the monogamy the law enjoined. {2} this description corresponds in everyrespect to noble's isle. — c. e. p.

it would be impossible for me to describethese beast people in detail; my eye has had no training in details, and unhappily i cannotsketch. most striking, perhaps, in their general appearance was the disproportion between thelegs of these creatures and the length of their bodies; and yet—so relative is ouridea of grace—my eye became habituated to their forms, and at last i even fell in withtheir persuasion that my own long thighs were ungainly. another point was the forward carriageof the head and the clumsy and inhuman curvature of the spine. even the ape-man lacked thatinward sinuous curve of the back which makes the human figure so graceful. most had theirshoulders hunched clumsily, and their short forearms hung weakly at their sides. few ofthem were conspicuously hairy, at least until

the end of my time upon the island. the next most obvious deformity was in theirfaces, almost all of which were prognathous, malformed about the ears, with large and protuberantnoses, very furry or very bristly hair, and often strangely-coloured or strangely-placedeyes. none could laugh, though the ape-man had a chattering titter. beyond these generalcharacters their heads had little in common; each preserved the quality of its particularspecies: 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 bytheir unexpected human appearance, almost

all were deficient in the number of the digits,clumsy about the finger-nails, and lacking any tactile sensibility. the two most formidable animal men were myleopard-man and a creature made of hyena and swine. larger than these were the three bull-creatureswho pulled in the boat. then came the silvery-hairy-man, who was also the sayer of the law, m'ling,and a satyr-like creature of ape and goat. there were three swine-men and a swine-woman,a mare-rhinoceros-creature, and several other females whose sources i did not ascertain.there were several wolf-creatures, a bear-bull, and a saint-bernard-man. i have already describedthe ape-man, and there was a particularly hateful (and evil-smelling) old woman madeof vixen and bear, whom i hated from the beginning.

she was said to be a passionate votary ofthe law. smaller creatures were certain dappled youths and my little sloth-creature. but enoughof 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 habituatedto the idea of them, and moreover i was affected by montgomery's attitude towards them. hehad been with them so long that he had come to regard them as almost normal human beings.his london days seemed a glorious, impossible past to him. only once in a year or so didhe go to arica to deal with moreau's agent, a trader in animals there. he hardly met thefinest 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,—unnaturallylong in the leg, flat in the face, prominent in the forehead, suspicious, dangerous, andcold-hearted. in fact, he did not like men: his heart had warmed to me, he thought, becausehe had saved my life. i fancied even then that he had a sneaking kindness for some ofthese metamorphosed brutes, a vicious sympathy with some of their ways, but that he attemptedto veil it from me at first. m'ling, the black-faced man, montgomery'sattendant, the first of the beast folk i had encountered, did not live with the othersacross the island, but in a small kennel at the back of the enclosure. the creature wasscarcely so intelligent as the ape-man, but far more docile, and the most human-lookingof all the beast folk; and montgomery had

trained it to prepare food, and indeed todischarge all the trivial domestic offices that were required. it was a complex trophyof moreau's horrible skill,—a bear, tainted with dog and ox, and one of the most elaboratelymade of all his creatures. it treated montgomery with a strange tenderness and devotion. sometimeshe would notice it, pat it, call it half-mocking, half-jocular names, and so make it caper withextraordinary delight; sometimes he would ill-treat it, especially after he had beenat the whiskey, kicking it, beating it, pelting it with stones or lighted fusees. but whetherhe 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 andordinary to me. i suppose everything in existence takes its colour from the average hue of oursurroundings. montgomery and moreau were too peculiar and individual to keep my generalimpressions of humanity well defined. i would see one of the clumsy bovine-creatures whoworked the launch treading heavily through the undergrowth, and find myself asking, tryinghard to recall, how he differed from some really human yokel trudging home from hismechanical labours; or i would meet the fox-bear woman's vulpine, shifty face, strangely humanin its speculative cunning, and even imagine i had met it before in some city byway. yet every now and then the beast would flashout upon me beyond doubt or denial. an ugly-looking

man, a hunch-backed human savage to all appearance,squatting in the aperture of one of the dens, would stretch his arms and yawn, showing withstartling suddenness scissor-edged incisors and sabre-like canines, keen and brilliantas knives. or in some narrow pathway, glancing with a transitory daring into the eyes ofsome lithe, white-swathed female figure, i would suddenly see (with a spasmodic revulsion)that she had slit-like pupils, or glancing down note the curving nail with which sheheld her shapeless wrap about her. it is a curious thing, by the bye, for which i amquite unable to account, that these weird creatures—the females, i mean—had in theearlier days of my stay an instinctive sense of their own repulsive clumsiness, and displayedin consequence a more than human regard for

the decency and decorum of extensive costume. chapter xvi. how the beast folk taste blood. my inexperience as a writer betrays me, andi wander from the thread of my story. after i had breakfasted with montgomery, hetook me across the island to see the fumarole and the source of the hot spring into whosescalding waters i had blundered on the previous day. both of us carried whips and loaded revolvers.while going through a leafy jungle on our road thither, we heard a rabbit squealing.we stopped and listened, but we heard no more; and presently we went on our way, and theincident dropped out of our minds. montgomery called my attention to certain little pinkanimals with long hind-legs, that went leaping

through the undergrowth. he told me they werecreatures made of the offspring of the beast people, that moreau had invented. he had fanciedthey might serve for meat, but a rabbit-like habit of devouring their young had defeatedthis intention. i had already encountered some of these creatures,—once during mymoonlight flight from the leopard-man, and once during my pursuit by moreau on the previousday. by chance, one hopping to avoid us leapt into the hole caused by the uprooting of awind-blown tree; before it could extricate itself we managed to catch it. it spat likea cat, scratched and kicked vigorously with its hind-legs, and made an attempt to bite;but its teeth were too feeble to inflict more than a painless pinch. it seemed to me rathera pretty little creature; and as montgomery

stated that it never destroyed the turf byburrowing, and was very cleanly in its habits, i should imagine it might prove a convenientsubstitute for the common rabbit in gentlemen's parks. we also saw on our way the trunk of a treebarked in long strips and splintered deeply. montgomery called my attention to this. “notto claw bark of trees, that is the law,” he said. “much some of them care for it!”it was after this, i think, that we met the satyr and the ape-man. the satyr was a gleamof classical memory on the part of moreau,—his face ovine in expression, like the coarserhebrew type; his voice a harsh bleat, his nether extremities satanic. he was gnawingthe husk of a pod-like fruit as he passed

us. both of them saluted montgomery. “hail,” said they, “to the other withthe whip!” “there's a third with a whip now,” saidmontgomery. “so you'd better mind!” “was he not made?” said the ape-man. “hesaid—he said he was made.” the satyr-man looked curiously at me. “thethird with the whip, he that walks weeping into the sea, has a thin white face.” “he has a thin long whip,” said montgomery. “yesterday he bled and wept,” said thesatyr. “you never bleed nor weep. the master does not bleed or weep.”

“ollendorffian beggar!” said montgomery,“you'll bleed and weep if you don't look out!” “he has five fingers, he is a five-man likeme,” said the ape-man. “come along, prendick,” said montgomery,taking my arm; and i went on with him. the satyr and the ape-man stood watching usand making other remarks to each other. “he says nothing,” said the satyr. “menhave voices.” “yesterday he asked me of things to eat,”said the ape-man. “he did not know.” then they spoke inaudible things, and i heardthe satyr laughing. it was on our way back that we came upon thedead rabbit. the red body of the wretched

little beast was rent to pieces, many of theribs stripped white, and the backbone indisputably gnawed. at that montgomery stopped. “good god!”said he, stooping down, and picking up some of the crushed vertebrae to examine them moreclosely. “good god!” he repeated, “what can this mean?” “some carnivore of yours has rememberedits old habits,” i said after a pause. “this backbone has been bitten through.” he stood staring, with his face white andhis lip pulled askew. “i don't like this,” he said slowly.

“i saw something of the same kind,” saidi, “the first day i came here.” “the devil you did! what was it?” “a rabbit with its head twisted off.” “the day you came here?” “the day i came here. in the undergrowthat the back of the enclosure, when i went out in the evening. the head was completelywrung off.” he gave a long, low whistle. “and what is more, i have an idea whichof your brutes did the thing. it's only a suspicion, you know. before i came on therabbit i saw one of your monsters drinking

in the stream.” “sucking his drink?” “yes.” “‘not to suck your drink; that is thelaw.’ much the brutes care for the law, eh? when moreau's not about!” “it was the brute who chased me.” “of course,” said montgomery; “it'sjust the way with carnivores. after a kill, they drink. it's the taste of blood, you know.—whatwas the brute like?” he continued. “would you know him again?” he glanced about us,standing astride over the mess of dead rabbit,

his eyes roving among the shadows and screensof greenery, the lurking-places and ambuscades of the forest that bounded us in. “the tasteof blood,” he said again. he took out his revolver, examined the cartridgesin 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 killedthe rabbit,” said montgomery. “i wish i'd never brought the things here.” i should have gone on, but he stayed therethinking over the mangled rabbit in a puzzle-headed

way. as it was, i went to such a distancethat the rabbit's remains were hidden. “come on!” i said. presently he woke up and came towards me.“you see,” he said, almost in a whisper, “they are all supposed to have a fixed ideaagainst eating anything that runs on land. if some brute has by any accident tasted blood—” we went on some way in silence. “i wonderwhat can have happened,” he said to himself. then, after a pause again: “i did a foolishthing the other day. that servant of mine—i showed him how to 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 musttell moreau.” he could think of nothing else on our homewardjourney. moreau took the matter even more seriouslythan 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? iwish, montgomery, you had kept your taste for meat in hand, and gone without these excitingnovelties. 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,” saidmoreau. “i suppose if anything should turn up, m'ling can take care of himself?” “i'm not so sure of m'ling,” said montgomery.“i think i ought to know him.” in the afternoon, moreau, montgomery, myself,and m'ling went across the island to the huts in the ravine. we three were armed; m'lingcarried the little hatchet he used in chopping firewood, and some coils of wire. moreau hada huge cowherd's horn slung over his shoulder. “you will see a gathering of the beast people,”said montgomery. “it is a pretty sight!” moreau said not a word on the way, but theexpression of his heavy, white-fringed face

was grimly set. we crossed the ravine down which smoked thestream of hot water, and followed the winding pathway through the canebrakes until we reacheda wide area covered over with a thick, powdery yellow substance which i believe was sulphur.above the shoulder of a weedy bank the sea glittered. we came to a kind of shallow naturalamphitheatre, and here the four of us halted. then moreau sounded the horn, and broke thesleeping stillness of the tropical afternoon. he must have had strong lungs. the hootingnote rose and rose amidst its echoes, to at last an ear-penetrating intensity. “ah!” said moreau, letting the curvedinstrument fall to his side again.

immediately there was a crashing through theyellow canes, and a sound of voices from the dense green jungle that marked the morassthrough which i had run on the previous day. then at three or four points on the edge ofthe sulphurous area appeared the grotesque forms of the beast people hurrying towardsus. i could not help a creeping horror, as i perceived first one and then another trotout from the trees or reeds and come shambling along over the hot dust. but moreau and montgomerystood calmly enough; and, perforce, i stuck beside them. first to arrive was the satyr, strangely unrealfor all that he cast a shadow and tossed the dust with his hoofs. after him from the brakecame a monstrous lout, a thing of horse and

rhinoceros, chewing a straw as it came; thenappeared the swine-woman and two wolf-women; then the fox-bear witch, with her red eyesin her peaked red face, and then others,—all hurrying eagerly. as they came forward theybegan to cringe towards moreau and chant, quite regardless of one another, fragmentsof the latter half of the litany of the law,—“his is the hand that wounds; his is the hand thatheals,” and so forth. as soon as they had approached within a distance of perhaps thirtyyards they halted, and bowing on knees and elbows began flinging the white dust upontheir heads. imagine the scene if you can! we three blue-cladmen, with our misshapen black-faced attendant, standing in a wide expanse of sunlit yellowdust under the blazing blue sky, and surrounded

by this circle of crouching and gesticulatingmonstrosities,—some almost human save in their subtle expression and gestures, somelike cripples, some so strangely distorted as to resemble nothing but the denizens ofour wildest dreams; and, beyond, the reedy lines of a canebrake in one direction, a densetangle of palm-trees on the other, separating us from the ravine with the huts, and to thenorth the hazy horizon of the pacific ocean. “sixty-two, sixty-three,” counted moreau.“there are four more.” “i do not see the leopard-man,” said i. presently moreau sounded the great horn again,and at the sound of it all the beast people writhed and grovelled in the dust. then, slinkingout of the canebrake, stooping near the ground

and trying to join the dust-throwing circlebehind moreau's back, came the leopard-man. the last of the beast people to arrive wasthe little ape-man. the earlier animals, hot and weary with their grovelling, shot viciousglances at him. “cease!” said moreau, in his firm, loudvoice; and the beast people sat back upon their hams and rested from their worshipping. “where is the sayer of the law?” saidmoreau, and the hairy-grey monster bowed his face in the dust. “say the words!” said moreau. forthwith all in the kneeling assembly, swayingfrom side to side and dashing up the sulphur

with their hands,—first the right hand anda puff of dust, and then the left,—began once more to chant their strange litany. whenthey reached, “not to eat flesh or fish, that is the law,” moreau held up his lankwhite hand. “stop!” he cried, and there fell absolutesilence upon them all. i think they all knew and dreaded what wascoming. i looked round at their strange faces. when i saw their wincing attitudes and thefurtive 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 creaturewith the silvery hair. “none escape,”

repeated the kneeling circle of beast people. “who is he?” cried moreau, and lookedround at their faces, cracking his whip. i fancied the hyena-swine looked dejected, sotoo did the leopard-man. moreau stopped, facing this creature, who cringed towards him withthe memory and dread of infinite torment. “who is he?” repeated moreau, in a voiceof thunder. “evil is he who breaks the law,” chantedthe sayer of the law. moreau looked into the eyes of the leopard-man,and seemed to be dragging the very soul out of the creature. “who breaks the law—” said moreau, takinghis eyes off his victim, and turning towards

us (it seemed to me there was a touch of exultationin his voice). “goes back to the house of pain,” theyall clamoured,—“goes back to the house of pain, o master!” “back to the house of pain,—back to thehouse of pain,” gabbled the ape-man, as though the idea was sweet to him. “do you hear?” said moreau, turning backto the criminal, “my friend—hullo!” for the leopard-man, released from moreau'seye, had risen straight from his knees, and now, with eyes aflame and his huge felinetusks flashing out from under his curling lips, leapt towards his tormentor. i am convincedthat only the madness of unendurable fear

could have prompted this attack. the wholecircle of threescore monsters seemed to rise about us. i drew my revolver. the two figurescollided. i saw moreau reeling back from the leopard-man's blow. there was a furious yellingand howling all about us. every one was moving rapidly. for a moment i thought it was a generalrevolt. the furious face of the leopard-man flashed by mine, with m'ling close in pursuit.i saw the yellow eyes of the hyena-swine blazing with excitement, his attitude as if he werehalf resolved to attack me. the satyr, too, glared at me over the hyena-swine's hunchedshoulders. 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 toowas swung round by the magnetism of the movement.

in another second i was running, one of atumultuous shouting crowd, in pursuit of the escaping leopard-man. that is all i can tell definitely. i saw theleopard-man strike moreau, and then everything spun about me until i was running headlong.m'ling was ahead, close in pursuit of the fugitive. behind, their tongues already lollingout, ran the wolf-women in great leaping strides. the swine folk followed, squealing with excitement,and the two bull-men in their swathings of white. then came moreau in a cluster of thebeast people, his wide-brimmed straw hat blown off, his revolver in hand, and his lank whitehair streaming out. the hyena-swine ran beside me, keeping pace with me and glancing furtivelyat me out of his feline eyes, and the others

came pattering and shouting behind us. the leopard-man went bursting his way throughthe long canes, which sprang back as he passed, and rattled in m'ling's face. we others inthe rear found a trampled path for us when we reached the brake. the chase lay throughthe brake for perhaps a quarter of a mile, and then plunged into a dense thicket, whichretarded our movements exceedingly, though we went through it in a crowd together,—frondsflicking into our faces, ropy creepers catching us under the chin or gripping our ankles,thorny plants hooking into and tearing cloth and flesh together. “he has gone on all-fours through this,”panted moreau, now just ahead of me.

“none escape,” said the wolf-bear, laughinginto my face with the exultation of hunting. we burst out again among rocks, and saw thequarry ahead running lightly on all-fours and snarling at us over his shoulder. at thatthe wolf folk howled with delight. the thing was still clothed, and at a distance its facestill seemed human; but the carriage of its four limbs was feline, and the furtive droopof its shoulder was distinctly that of a hunted animal. it leapt over some thorny yellow-floweringbushes, and was hidden. m'ling was halfway across the space. most of us now had lost the first speed ofthe chase, and had fallen into a longer and steadier stride. i saw as we traversed theopen that the pursuit was now spreading from

a column into a line. the hyena-swine stillran close to me, watching me as it ran, every now and then puckering its muzzle with a snarlinglaugh. at the edge of the rocks the leopard-man, realising that he was making for the projectingcape upon which he had stalked me on the night of my arrival, had doubled in the undergrowth;but montgomery had seen the manoeuvre, and turned him again. so, panting, tumbling againstrocks, torn by brambles, impeded by ferns and reeds, i helped to pursue the leopard-manwho had broken the law, and the hyena-swine ran, laughing savagely, by my side. i staggeredon, my head reeling and my heart beating against my ribs, tired almost to death, and yet notdaring to lose sight of the chase lest i should be left alone with this horrible companion.i staggered on in spite of infinite fatigue

and the dense heat of the tropical afternoon. at last the fury of the hunt slackened. wehad pinned the wretched brute into a corner of the island. moreau, whip in hand, marshalledus all into an irregular line, and we advanced now slowly, shouting to one another as weadvanced and tightening the cordon about our victim. he lurked noiseless and invisiblein the bushes through which i had run from him during that midnight pursuit. “steady!” cried moreau, “steady!”as the ends of the line crept round the tangle of undergrowth and hemmed the brute in. “ware a rush!” came the voice of montgomeryfrom beyond the thicket.

i was on the slope above the bushes; montgomeryand moreau beat along the beach beneath. slowly we pushed in among the fretted network ofbranches and leaves. the quarry was silent. “back to the house of pain, the house ofpain, the house of pain!” yelped the voice of the ape-man, some twenty yards to the right. when i heard that, i forgave the poor wretchall the fear he had inspired in me. i heard the twigs snap and the boughs swish asidebefore the heavy tread of the horse-rhinoceros upon my right. then suddenly through a polygonof green, in the half darkness under the luxuriant growth, i saw the creature we were hunting.i halted. he was crouched together into the smallest possible compass, his luminous greeneyes turned over his shoulder regarding me.

it may seem a strange contradiction in me,—icannot explain the fact,—but now, seeing the creature there in a perfectly animal attitude,with the light gleaming in its eyes and its imperfectly human face distorted with terror,i realised again the fact of its humanity. in another moment other of its pursuers wouldsee it, and it would be overpowered and captured, to experience once more the horrible torturesof the enclosure. abruptly i slipped out my revolver, aimed between its terror-struckeyes, and fired. as i did so, the hyena-swine saw the thing, and flung itself upon it withan eager cry, thrusting thirsty teeth into its neck. all about me the green masses ofthe thicket were swaying and cracking as the beast people came rushing together. one faceand then another appeared.

“don't kill it, prendick!” cried moreau.“don't kill it!” and i saw him stooping as he pushed through under the fronds of thebig ferns. in another moment he had beaten off the hyena-swinewith the handle of his whip, and he and montgomery were keeping away the excited carnivorousbeast people, and particularly m'ling, from the still quivering body. the hairy-grey thingcame sniffing at the corpse under my arm. the other animals, in their animal ardour,jostled me to get a nearer view. “confound you, prendick!” said moreau.“i wanted him.” “i'm sorry,” said i, though i was not.“it was the impulse of the moment.” i felt sick with exertion and excitement. turning,i pushed my way out of the crowding beast

people and went on alone up the slope towardsthe higher part of the headland. under the shouted directions of moreau i heard the threewhite-swathed bull-men begin dragging the victim down towards the water. it was easy now for me to be alone. the beastpeople manifested a quite human curiosity about the dead body, and followed it in athick knot, sniffing and growling at it as the bull-men dragged it down the beach. iwent to the headland and watched the bull-men, black against the evening sky as they carriedthe weighted dead body out to sea; and like a wave across my mind came the realisationof the unspeakable aimlessness of things upon the island. upon the beach among the rocksbeneath me were the ape-man, the hyena-swine,

and several other of the beast people, standingabout montgomery and moreau. they were all still intensely excited, and all overflowingwith noisy expressions of their loyalty to the law; yet i felt an absolute assurancein my own mind that the hyena-swine was implicated in the rabbit-killing. a strange persuasioncame upon me, that, save for the grossness of the line, the grotesqueness of the forms,i had here before me the whole balance of human life in miniature, the whole interplayof instinct, reason, and fate in its simplest form. the leopard-man had happened to go under:that was all the difference. poor brute! poor brutes! i began to see the viler aspectof moreau's cruelty. i had not thought before of the pain and trouble that came to thesepoor victims after they had passed from moreau's

hands. i had shivered only at the days ofactual torment in the enclosure. but now that seemed to me the lesser part. before, theyhad been beasts, their instincts fitly adapted to their surroundings, and happy as livingthings may be. now they stumbled in the shackles of humanity, lived in a fear that never died,fretted by a law they could not understand; their mock-human existence, begun in an agony,was one long internal struggle, one long dread of moreau—and for what? it was the wantonnessof it that stirred me. had moreau had any intelligible object, icould have sympathised at least a little with him. i am not so squeamish about pain as that.i could have forgiven him a little even, had his motive been only hate. but he was so irresponsible,so utterly careless! his curiosity, his mad,

aimless investigations, drove him on; andthe things were thrown out to live a year or so, to struggle and blunder and suffer,and at last to die painfully. they were wretched in themselves; the old animal hate moved themto trouble one another; the law held them back from a brief hot struggle and a decisiveend to their natural animosities. in those days my fear of the beast peoplewent the way of my personal fear for moreau. i fell indeed into a morbid state, deep andenduring, and alien to fear, which has left permanent scars upon my mind. i must confessthat i lost faith in the sanity of the world when i saw it suffering the painful disorderof this island. a blind fate, a vast pitiless mechanism, seemed to cut and shape the fabricof existence and i, moreau (by his passion

for research), montgomery (by his passionfor 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 thiscondition did not come all at once: i think indeed that i anticipate a little in speakingof it now. chapter xvii. a catastrophe. scarcely six weeks passed before i had lostevery feeling but dislike and abhorrence for this infamous experiment of moreau's. my oneidea was to get away from these horrible caricatures of my maker's image, back to the sweet andwholesome intercourse of men. my fellow-creatures, from whom i was thus separated, began to assumeidyllic virtue and beauty in my memory. my

first friendship with montgomery did not increase.his long separation from humanity, his secret vice of drunkenness, his evident sympathywith 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 mytime upon the beach, looking for some liberating sail that never appeared,—until one daythere fell upon us an appalling disaster, which put an altogether different aspect uponmy strange surroundings. it was about seven or eight weeks after mylanding,—rather more, i think, though i had not troubled to keep account of the time,—whenthis 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 mencarrying wood into the enclosure. after breakfast i went to the open gatewayof the enclosure, and stood there smoking a cigarette and enjoying the freshness ofthe early morning. moreau presently came round the corner of the enclosure and greeted me.he passed by me, and i heard him behind me unlock and enter his laboratory. so induratedwas i at that time to the abomination of the place, that i heard without a touch of emotionthe puma victim begin another day of torture. it met its persecutor with a shriek, almostexactly like that of an angry virago. then suddenly something happened,—i do notknow what, to this day. i heard a short, sharp cry behind me, a fall, and turning saw anawful face rushing upon me,—not human, not

animal, but hellish, brown, seamed with redbranching scars, red drops starting out upon it, and the lidless eyes ablaze. i threw upmy arm to defend myself from the blow that flung me headlong with a broken forearm; andthe great monster, swathed in lint and with red-stained bandages fluttering about it,leapt over me and passed. i rolled over and over down the beach, tried to sit up, andcollapsed upon my broken arm. then moreau appeared, his massive white face all the moreterrible for the blood that trickled from his forehead. he carried a revolver in onehand. he scarcely glanced at me, but rushed off at once in pursuit of the puma. i tried the other arm and sat up. the muffledfigure in front ran in great striding leaps

along the beach, and moreau followed her.she turned her head and saw him, then doubling abruptly made for the bushes. she gained uponhim at every stride. i saw her plunge into them, and moreau, running slantingly to intercepther, fired and missed as she disappeared. then he too vanished in the green confusion.i stared after them, and then the pain in my arm flamed up, and with a groan i staggeredto my feet. montgomery appeared in the doorway, dressed, and with his revolver in his hand. “great god, prendick!” he said, not noticingthat i was hurt, “that brute's loose! tore the fetter out of the wall! have you seenthem?” then sharply, seeing i gripped my arm, “what's the matter?”

“i was standing in the doorway,” saidi. he came forward and took my arm. “bloodon the sleeve,” said he, and rolled back the flannel. he pocketed his weapon, feltmy 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 brokensentences, with gasps of pain between them, and very dexterously and swiftly he boundmy arm meanwhile. he slung it from my shoulder, stood back and looked at me. “you'll do,” he said. “and now?”

he thought. then he went out and locked thegates of the enclosure. he was absent some time. i was chiefly concerned about my arm. theincident seemed merely one more of many horrible things. i sat down in the deck chair, andi must admit swore heartily at the island. the first dull feeling of injury in my armhad already given way to a burning pain when montgomery reappeared. his face was ratherpale, and he showed more of his lower gums than ever. “i can neither see nor hear anything ofhim,” he said. “i've been thinking he may want my help.” he stared at me withhis expressionless eyes. “that was a strong

brute,” he said. “it simply wrenched itsfetter out of the wall.” he went to the window, then to the door, and there turnedto me. “i shall go after him,” he said. “there's another revolver i can leave withyou. to tell you the truth, i feel anxious somehow.” he obtained the weapon, and put it ready tomy hand on the table; then went out, leaving a restless contagion in the air. i did notsit long after he left, but took the revolver in hand and went to the doorway. the morning was as still as death. not a whisperof wind was stirring; the sea was like polished glass, the sky empty, the beach desolate.in my half-excited, half-feverish state, this

stillness of things oppressed me. i triedto whistle, and the tune died away. i swore again,—the second time that morning. theni went to the corner of the enclosure and stared inland at the green bush that had swallowedup moreau and montgomery. when would they return, and how? then far away up the beacha little grey beast man appeared, ran down to the water's edge and began splashing about.i strolled back to the doorway, then to the corner again, and so began pacing to and frolike a sentinel upon duty. once i was arrested by the distant voice of montgomery bawling,“coo-ee—moreau!” my arm became less painful, but very hot. i got feverish andthirsty. my shadow grew shorter. i watched the distant figure until it went away again.would moreau and montgomery never return?

three sea-birds began fighting for some strandedtreasure. then from far away behind the enclosure iheard a pistol-shot. a long silence, and then came another. then a yelling cry nearer, andanother dismal gap of silence. my unfortunate imagination set to work to torment me. thensuddenly a shot close by. i went to the corner, startled, and saw montgomery,—his face scarlet,his hair disordered, and the knee of his trousers torn. his face expressed profound consternation.behind him slouched the beast man, m'ling, and round m'ling's jaws were some queer darkstains. “has he come?” said montgomery. “moreau?” said i. “no.”

“my god!” the man was panting, almostsobbing. “go back in,” he said, taking my arm. “they're mad. they're all rushingabout 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 roomand sat down in the deck chair. m'ling flung himself down just outside the doorway andbegan panting like a dog. i got montgomery some brandy-and-water. he sat staring in frontof him at nothing, recovering his breath. after some minutes he began to tell me whathad happened. he had followed their track for some way.it was plain enough at first on account of the crushed and broken bushes, white ragstorn from the puma's bandages, and occasional

smears of blood on the leaves of the shrubsand undergrowth. he lost the track, however, on the stony ground beyond the stream wherei had seen the beast man drinking, and went wandering aimlessly westward shouting moreau'sname. then m'ling had come to him carrying a light hatchet. m'ling had seen nothing ofthe puma affair; had been felling wood, and heard him calling. they went on shouting together.two beast men came crouching and peering at them through the undergrowth, with gesturesand a furtive carriage that alarmed montgomery by their strangeness. he hailed them, andthey fled guiltily. he stopped shouting after that, and after wandering some time fartherin an undecided way, determined to visit the huts.

he found the ravine deserted. growing more alarmed every minute, he beganto retrace his steps. then it was he encountered the two swine-men i had seen dancing on thenight of my arrival; blood-stained they were about the mouth, and intensely excited. theycame crashing through the ferns, and stopped with fierce faces when they saw him. he crackedhis whip in some trepidation, and forthwith they rushed at him. never before had a beastman dared to do that. one he shot through the head; m'ling flung himself upon the other,and the two rolled grappling. m'ling got his brute under and with his teeth in its throat,and montgomery shot that too as it struggled in m'ling's grip. he had some difficulty ininducing m'ling to come on with him. thence

they had hurried back to me. on the way, m'linghad suddenly rushed into a thicket and driven out an under-sized ocelot-man, also blood-stained,and lame through a wound in the foot. this brute had run a little way and then turnedsavagely at bay, and montgomery—with a certain wantonness, i thought—had shot him. “what does it all mean?” said i. he shook his head, and turned once more tothe brandy. chapter xviii. the finding of moreau. when i saw montgomery swallow a third doseof brandy, i took it upon myself to interfere. he was already more than half fuddled. i toldhim that some serious thing must have happened

to moreau by this time, or he would have returnedbefore this, and that it behoved us to ascertain what that catastrophe was. montgomery raisedsome feeble objections, and at last agreed. we had some food, and then all three of usstarted. 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 afternoonis a singularly vivid impression. m'ling went first, his shoulder hunched, his strange blackhead moving with quick starts as he peered first on this side of the way and then onthat. he was unarmed; his axe he had dropped when he encountered the swine-man. teeth werehis weapons, when it came to fighting. montgomery followed with stumbling footsteps, his handsin his pockets, his face downcast; he was

in a state of muddled sullenness with me onaccount of the brandy. my left arm was in a sling (it was lucky it was my left), andi carried my revolver in my right. soon we traced a narrow path through the wild luxurianceof the island, going northwestward; and presently m'ling stopped, and became rigid with watchfulness.montgomery almost staggered into him, and then stopped too. then, listening intently,we heard coming through the trees the sound of voices and footsteps approaching us. “he is dead,” said a deep, vibrating voice. “he is not dead; he is not dead,” jabberedanother. “we saw, we saw,” said several voices.

“hullo!” suddenly shouted montgomery,“hullo, there!” “confound you!” said i, and gripped mypistol. there was a silence, then a crashing amongthe interlacing vegetation, first here, then there, and then half-a-dozen faces appeared,—strangefaces, lit by a strange light. m'ling made a growling noise in his throat. i recognisedthe ape-man: i had indeed already identified his voice, and two of the white-swathed brown-featuredcreatures i had seen in montgomery's boat. with these were the two dappled brutes andthat grey, horribly crooked creature who said the law, with grey hair streaming down itscheeks, heavy grey eyebrows, and grey locks pouring off from a central parting upon itssloping forehead,—a heavy, faceless thing,

with strange red eyes, looking at us curiouslyfrom amidst the green. for a space no one spoke. then montgomeryhiccoughed, “who—said he was dead?” the monkey-man looked guiltily at the hairy-greything. “he is dead,” said this monster. “they saw.” there was nothing threatening about this detachment,at any rate. they seemed awestricken and puzzled. “where is he?” said montgomery. “beyond,” and the grey creature pointed. “is there a law now?” asked the monkey-man.“is it still to be this and that? is he dead indeed?”

“is there a law?” repeated the man inwhite. “is there a law, thou other with the whip?” “he is dead,” said the hairy-grey thing.and they all stood watching us. “prendick,” said montgomery, turning hisdull eyes to me. “he's dead, evidently.” i had been standing behind him during thiscolloquy. i began to see how things lay with them. i suddenly stepped in front of montgomeryand lifted up my voice:—“children of the law,” i said, “he is not dead!” m'lingturned his sharp eyes on me. “he has changed his shape; he has changed his body,” i wenton. “for a time you will not see him. he is—there,” i pointed upward, “wherehe can watch you. you cannot see him, but

he can see you. fear the law!” i looked at them squarely. they flinched. “he is great, he is good,” said the ape-man,peering fearfully upward among the dense trees. “and the other thing?” i demanded. “the thing that bled, and ran screamingand sobbing,—that is dead too,” said the grey thing, still regarding me. “that's well,” grunted montgomery. “the other with the whip—” began thegrey thing. “said he was dead.”

but montgomery was still sober enough to understandmy motive in denying moreau's death. “he is not dead,” he said slowly, “not deadat 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 castaway because he had no more need of it.” “it is this way, man who walked in the sea,”said the grey thing. and with these six creatures guiding us, wewent through the tumult of ferns and creepers and tree-stems towards the northwest. thencame a yelling, a crashing among the branches, and a little pink homunculus rushed by usshrieking. immediately after appeared a monster in headlong pursuit, blood-bedabbled, whowas amongst us almost before he could stop

his career. the grey thing leapt aside. m'ling,with a snarl, flew at it, and was struck aside. montgomery fired and missed, bowed his head,threw up his arm, and turned to run. i fired, and the thing still came on; fired again,point-blank, into its ugly face. i saw its features vanish in a flash: its face was drivenin. yet it passed me, gripped montgomery, and holding him, fell headlong beside himand pulled him sprawling upon itself in its death-agony. i found myself alone with m'ling, the deadbrute, and the prostrate man. montgomery raised himself slowly and stared in a muddled wayat the shattered beast man beside him. it more than half sobered him. he scrambled tohis feet. then i saw the grey thing returning

cautiously through the trees. “see,” said i, pointing to the dead brute,“is the law not alive? this came of breaking the law.” he peered at the body. “he sends the firethat kills,” said he, in his deep voice, repeating part of the ritual. the others gatheredround and stared for a space. at last we drew near the westward extremityof the island. we came upon the gnawed and mutilated body of the puma, its shoulder-bonesmashed by a bullet, and perhaps twenty yards farther found at last what we sought. moreaulay face downward in a trampled space in a canebrake. one hand was almost severed atthe wrist and his silvery hair was dabbled

in blood. his head had been battered in bythe fetters of the puma. the broken canes beneath him were smeared with blood. his revolverwe could not find. montgomery turned him over. resting at intervals, and with the help ofthe seven beast people (for he was a heavy man), we carried moreau back to the enclosure.the night was darkling. twice we heard unseen creatures howling and shrieking past our littleband, 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 peopleleft us, m'ling going with the rest. we locked ourselves in, and then took moreau's mangledbody into the yard and laid it upon a pile of brushwood. then we went into the laboratoryand put an end to all we found living there.

chapter xix. montgomery's “bank holiday.” when this was accomplished, and we had washedand eaten, montgomery and i went into my little room and seriously discussed our positionfor the first time. it was then near midnight. he was almost sober, but greatly disturbedin his mind. he had been strangely under the influence of moreau's personality: i do notthink it had ever occurred to him that moreau could die. this disaster was the sudden collapseof the habits that had become part of his nature in the ten or more monotonous yearshe had spent on the island. he talked vaguely, answered my questions crookedly, wanderedinto general questions. “this silly ass of a world,” he said;“what a muddle it all is! i haven't had

any life. i wonder when it's going to begin.sixteen years being bullied by nurses and schoolmasters at their own sweet will; fivein london grinding hard at medicine, bad food, shabby lodgings, shabby clothes, shabby vice,a blunder,—i didn't know any better,—and hustled off to this beastly island. ten yearshere! what's it all for, prendick? are we bubbles blown by a baby?” it was hard to deal with such ravings. “thething 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 anoutcast. where am i to join on? it's all very well for you, prendick. poor old moreau! wecan't leave him here to have his bones picked.

as it is—and besides, what will become ofthe decent part of the beast folk?” “well,” said i, “that will do to-morrow.i've been thinking we might make the brushwood into a pyre and burn his body—and thoseother things. then what will happen with the beast folk?” “i don't know. i suppose those that weremade of beasts of prey will make silly asses of themselves sooner or later. we can't massacrethe lot—can we? i suppose that's what your humanity would suggest? but they'll change.they are sure to change.” he talked thus inconclusively until at lasti felt my temper going. “damnation!” he exclaimed at some petulanceof mine; “can't you see i'm in a worse hole

than you are?” and he got up, and went forthe brandy. “drink!” he said returning, “you logic-chopping, chalky-faced saintof an atheist, drink!” “not i,” said i, and sat grimly watchinghis face under the yellow paraffine flare, as he drank himself into a garrulous misery. i have a memory of infinite tedium. he wanderedinto a maudlin defence of the beast people and of m'ling. m'ling, he said, was the onlything that had ever really cared for him. and suddenly an idea came to him. “i'm damned!” said he, staggering to hisfeet and clutching the brandy bottle. by some flash of intuition i knew what itwas he intended. “you don't give drink to

that beast!” i said, rising and facing him. “beast!” said he. “you're the beast.he takes his liquor like a christian. come out of the way, prendick!” “for god's sake,” said i. “get—out of the way!” he roared, andsuddenly whipped out his revolver. “very well,” said i, and stood aside,half-minded to fall upon him as he put his hand upon the latch, but deterred by the thoughtof my useless arm. “you've made a beast of yourself,—to the beasts you may go.” he flung the doorway open, and stood halffacing me between the yellow lamp-light and

the pallid glare of the moon; his eye-socketswere blotches of black under his stubbly eyebrows. “you're a solemn prig, prendick, a sillyass! you're always fearing and fancying. we're on the edge of things. i'm bound to cut mythroat to-morrow. i'm going to have a damned bank holiday to-night.” he turned and wentout into the moonlight. “m'ling!” he cried; “m'ling, old friend!” three dim creatures in the silvery light camealong the edge of the wan beach,—one a white-wrapped creature, the other two blotches of blacknessfollowing it. they halted, staring. then i saw m'ling's hunched shoulders as he cameround the corner of the house. “drink!” cried montgomery, “drink, youbrutes! drink and be men! damme, i'm the cleverest.

moreau forgot this; this is the last touch.drink, i tell you!” and waving the bottle in his hand he started off at a kind of quicktrot to the westward, m'ling ranging himself between him and the three dim creatures whofollowed. i went to the doorway. they were already indistinctin the mist of the moonlight before montgomery halted. i saw him administer a dose of theraw brandy to m'ling, and saw the five figures melt into one vague patch. “sing!” i heard montgomery shout,—“singall together, ‘confound old prendick!’ that's right; now again, ‘confound old prendick!’” the black group broke up into five separatefigures, and wound slowly away from me along

the band of shining beach. each went howlingat his own sweet will, yelping insults at me, or giving whatever other vent this newinspiration of brandy demanded. presently i heard montgomery's voice shouting, “rightturn!” and they passed with their shouts and howls into the blackness of the landwardtrees. slowly, very slowly, they receded into silence. the peaceful splendour of the night healedagain. the moon was now past the meridian and travelling down the west. it was at itsfull, and very bright riding through the empty blue sky. the shadow of the wall lay, a yardwide and of inky blackness, at my feet. the eastward sea was a featureless grey, darkand mysterious; and between the sea and the

shadow the grey sands (of volcanic glass andcrystals) flashed and shone like a beach of diamonds. behind me the paraffine lamp flaredhot and ruddy. then i shut the door, locked it, and wentinto the enclosure where moreau lay beside his latest victims,—the staghounds and thellama and some other wretched brutes,—with his massive face calm even after his terribledeath, and with the hard eyes open, staring at the dead white moon above. i sat down uponthe edge of the sink, and with my eyes upon that ghastly pile of silvery light and ominousshadows began to turn over my plans. in the morning i would gather some provisions inthe dingey, and after setting fire to the pyre before me, push out into the desolationof the high sea once more. i felt that for

montgomery there was no help; that he was,in truth, half akin to these beast folk, unfitted for human kindred. i do not know how long i sat there scheming.it must have been an hour or so. then my planning was interrupted by the return of montgomeryto my neighbourhood. i heard a yelling from many throats, a tumult of exultant cries passingdown towards the beach, whooping and howling, and excited shrieks that seemed to come toa stop near the water's edge. the riot rose and fell; i heard heavy blows and the splinteringsmash of wood, but it did not trouble me then. a discordant chanting began. my thoughts went back to my means of escape.i got up, brought the lamp, and went into

a shed to look at some kegs i had seen there.then i became interested in the contents of some biscuit-tins, and opened one. i saw somethingout of the tail of my eye,—a red figure,—and turned sharply. behind me lay the yard, vividly black-and-whitein the moonlight, and the pile of wood and faggots on which moreau and his mutilatedvictims lay, one over another. they seemed to be gripping one another in one last revengefulgrapple. his wounds gaped, black as night, and the blood that had dripped lay in blackpatches upon the sand. then i saw, without understanding, the cause of my phantom,—aruddy glow that came and danced and went upon the wall opposite. i misinterpreted this,fancied it was a reflection of my flickering

lamp, and turned again to the stores in theshed. i went on rummaging among them, as well as a one-armed man could, finding this convenientthing and that, and putting them aside for to-morrow's launch. my movements were slow,and the time passed quickly. insensibly the daylight crept upon me. the chanting died down, giving place to aclamour; then it began again, and suddenly broke into a tumult. i heard cries of, “more!more!” a sound like quarrelling, and a sudden wild shriek. the quality of the sounds changedso greatly that it arrested my attention. i went out into the yard and listened. thencutting like a knife across the confusion came the crack of a revolver.

i rushed at once through my room to the littledoorway. as i did so i heard some of the packing-cases behind me go sliding down and smash togetherwith a clatter of glass on the floor of the shed. but i did not heed these. i flung thedoor open and looked out. up the beach by the boathouse a bonfire wasburning, raining up sparks into the indistinctness of the dawn. around this struggled a massof black figures. i heard montgomery call my name. i began to run at once towards thisfire, revolver in hand. i saw the pink tongue of montgomery's pistol lick out once, closeto the ground. he was down. i shouted with all my strength and fired into the air. iheard some one cry, “the master!” the knotted black struggle broke into scatteringunits, the fire leapt and sank down. the crowd

of beast people fled in sudden panic beforeme, up the beach. in my excitement i fired at their retreating backs as they disappearedamong the bushes. then i turned to the black heaps upon the ground. montgomery lay on his back, with the hairy-greybeast-man sprawling across his body. the brute was dead, but still gripping montgomery'sthroat with its curving claws. near by lay m'ling on his face and quite still, his neckbitten open and the upper part of the smashed brandy-bottle in his hand. two other figureslay near the fire,—the one motionless, the other groaning fitfully, every now and thenraising its head slowly, then dropping it i caught hold of the grey man and pulled himoff montgomery's body; his claws drew down

the torn coat reluctantly as i dragged himaway. montgomery was dark in the face and scarcely breathing. i splashed sea-water onhis face and pillowed his head on my rolled-up coat. m'ling was dead. the wounded creatureby the fire—it was a wolf-brute with a bearded grey face—lay, i found, with the fore partof its body upon the still glowing timber. the wretched thing was injured so dreadfullythat in mercy i blew its brains out at once. the other brute was one of the bull-men swathedin white. he too was dead. the rest of the beast people had vanished from the beach. i went to montgomery again and knelt besidehim, cursing my ignorance of medicine. the fire beside me had sunk down, and only charredbeams of timber glowing at the central ends

and mixed with a grey ash of brushwood remained.i wondered casually where montgomery had got his wood. then i saw that the dawn was uponus. the sky had grown brighter, the setting moon was becoming pale and opaque in the luminousblue of the day. the sky to the eastward was rimmed with red. suddenly i heard a thud and a hissing behindme, and, looking round, sprang to my feet with a cry of horror. against the warm dawngreat tumultuous masses of black smoke were boiling up out of the enclosure, and throughtheir stormy darkness shot flickering threads of blood-red flame. then the thatched roofcaught. i saw the curving charge of the flames across the sloping straw. a spurt of firejetted from the window of my room.

i knew at once what had happened. i rememberedthe crash i had heard. when i had rushed out to montgomery's assistance, i had overturnedthe lamp. the hopelessness of saving any of the contentsof the enclosure stared me in the face. my mind came back to my plan of flight, and turningswiftly i looked to see where the two boats lay upon the beach. they were gone! two axeslay upon the sands beside me; chips and splinters were scattered broadcast, and the ashes ofthe bonfire were blackening and smoking under the dawn. montgomery had burnt the boats torevenge himself upon me and prevent our return to mankind! a sudden convulsion of rage shook me. i wasalmost moved to batter his foolish head in,

as he lay there helpless at my feet. thensuddenly his hand moved, so feebly, so pitifully, that my wrath vanished. he groaned, and openedhis eyes for a minute. i knelt down beside him and raised his head. he opened his eyesagain, staring silently at the dawn, and then they met mine. the lids fell. “sorry,” he said presently, with an effort.he seemed trying to think. “the last,” he murmured, “the last of this silly universe.what a mess—” i listened. his head fell helplessly to oneside. i thought some drink might revive him; but there was neither drink nor vessel inwhich to bring drink at hand. he seemed suddenly heavier. my heart went cold. i bent down tohis face, put my hand through the rent in

his blouse. he was dead; and even as he dieda line of white heat, the limb of the sun, rose eastward beyond the projection of thebay, splashing its radiance across the sky and turning the dark sea into a welteringtumult of dazzling light. it fell like a glory upon his death-shrunken face. i let his head fall gently upon the roughpillow i had made for him, and stood up. before me was the glittering desolation of the sea,the awful solitude upon which i had already suffered so much; behind me the island, hushedunder the dawn, its beast people silent and unseen. the enclosure, with all its provisionsand ammunition, burnt noisily, with sudden gusts of flame, a fitful crackling, and nowand then a crash. the heavy smoke drove up

the beach away from me, rolling low over thedistant tree-tops towards the huts in the ravine. beside me were the charred vestigesof the boats and these five dead bodies. then out of the bushes came three beast people,with hunched shoulders, protruding heads, misshapen hands awkwardly held, and inquisitive,unfriendly eyes and advanced towards me with hesitating gestures. chapter xx. alone with the beast folk. i faced these people, facing my fate in them,single-handed now,—literally single-handed, for i had a broken arm. in my pocket was arevolver with two empty chambers. among the chips scattered about the beach lay the twoaxes that had been used to chop up the boats.

the tide was creeping in behind me. therewas 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 laybeyond me on the beach. i took half-a-dozen steps, picked up the blood-stained whip thatlay beneath the body of the wolf-man, and cracked it. they stopped and stared at me. “salute!” said i. “bow down!” they hesitated. one bent his knees. i repeatedmy command, with my heart in my mouth, and advanced upon them. one knelt, then the othertwo. i turned and walked towards the dead bodies,keeping my face towards the three kneeling

beast men, very much as an actor passing upthe stage faces the audience. “they broke the law,” said i, puttingmy foot on the sayer of the law. “they have been slain,—even the sayer of the law; eventhe other with the whip. great is the law! come and see.” “none escape,” said one of them, advancingand peering. “none escape,” said i. “therefore hearand do as i command.” they stood up, looking questioningly at one another. “stand there,” said i. i picked up the hatchets and swung them bytheir heads from the sling of my arm; turned

montgomery over; picked up his revolver stillloaded in two chambers, and bending down to rummage, found half-a-dozen cartridges inhis pocket. “take him,” said i, standing up againand pointing with the whip; “take him, and carry him out and cast him into the sea.” they came forward, evidently still afraidof montgomery, but still more afraid of my cracking red whip-lash; and after some fumblingand hesitation, some whip-cracking and shouting, they lifted him gingerly, carried him downto the beach, and went splashing into the dazzling welter of the sea. “on!” said i, “on! carry him far.”

they went in up to their armpits and stoodregarding me. “let go,” said i; and the body of montgomeryvanished 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 wakesof black in the silver. at the water's edge they stopped, turning and glaring into thesea as though they presently expected montgomery to arise therefrom and exact vengeance. “now these,” said i, pointing to the otherbodies. they took care not to approach the place wherethey had thrown montgomery into the water,

but instead, carried the four dead beast peopleslantingly along the beach for perhaps a hundred yards before they waded out and cast themaway. as i watched them disposing of the mangledremains of m'ling, i heard a light footfall behind me, and turning quickly saw the bighyena-swine perhaps a dozen yards away. his head was bent down, his bright eyes were fixedupon me, his stumpy hands clenched and held close by his side. he stopped in this crouchingattitude when i turned, his eyes a little averted. for a moment we stood eye to eye. i droppedthe whip and snatched at the pistol in my pocket; for i meant to kill this brute, themost formidable of any left now upon the island,

at the first excuse. it may seem treacherous,but so i was resolved. i was far more afraid of him than of any other two of the beastfolk. 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. “whoare you that i should—” perhaps a little too spasmodically i drewmy revolver, aimed quickly and fired. i heard him yelp, saw him run sideways and turn, knewi had missed, and clicked back the cock with my thumb for the next shot. but he was alreadyrunning headlong, jumping from side to side, and i dared not risk another miss. every nowand then he looked back at me over his shoulder.

he went slanting along the beach, and vanishedbeneath the driving masses of dense smoke that were still pouring out from the burningenclosure. for some time i stood staring after him. i turned to my three obedient beast folkagain and signalled them to drop the body they still carried. then i went back to theplace by the fire where the bodies had fallen and kicked the sand until all the brown blood-stainswere absorbed and hidden. i dismissed my three serfs with a wave ofthe hand, and went up the beach into the thickets. i carried my pistol in my hand, my whip thrustwith the hatchets in the sling of my arm. i was anxious to be alone, to think out theposition in which i was now placed. a dreadful thing that i was only beginning to realisewas, that over all this island there was now

no safe place where i could be alone and secureto rest or sleep. i had recovered strength amazingly since my landing, but i was stillinclined to be nervous and to break down under any great stress. i felt that i ought to crossthe 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 burningenclosure, made for a point where a shallow spit of coral sand ran out towards the reef.here i could sit down and think, my back to the sea and my face against any surprise.and there i sat, chin on knees, the sun beating down upon my head and unspeakable dread inmy mind, plotting how i could live on against the hour of my rescue (if ever rescue came).i tried to review the whole situation as calmly

as i could, but it was difficult to clearthe thing of emotion. i began turning over in my mind the reasonof montgomery's despair. “they will change,” he said; “they are sure to change.” andmoreau, what was it that moreau had said? “the stubborn beast-flesh grows day by dayback again.” then i came round to the hyena-swine. i felt sure that if i did not kill that brute,he would kill me. the sayer of the law was dead: worse luck. they knew now that we ofthe whips could be killed even as they themselves were killed. were they peering at me alreadyout of the green masses of ferns and palms over yonder, watching until i came withintheir spring? were they plotting against me? what was the hyena-swine telling them? myimagination was running away with me into

a morass of unsubstantial fears. my thoughts were disturbed by a crying ofsea-birds hurrying towards some black object that had been stranded by the waves on thebeach near the enclosure. i knew what that object was, but i had not the heart to goback and drive them off. i began walking along the beach in the opposite direction, designingto come round the eastward corner of the island and so approach the ravine of the huts, withouttraversing the possible ambuscades of the thickets. perhaps half a mile along the beach i becameaware of one of my three beast folk advancing out of the landward bushes towards me. i wasnow so nervous with my own imaginings that

i immediately drew my revolver. even the propitiatorygestures of the creature failed to disarm me. he hesitated as he approached. “go away!” cried i. there was something very suggestive of a dogin the cringing attitude of the creature. it retreated a little way, very like a dogbeing sent home, and stopped, looking at me imploringly with canine brown eyes. “go away,” said i. “do not come nearme.” “may i not come near you?” it said. “no; go away,” i insisted, and snappedmy whip. then putting my whip in my teeth,

i stooped for a stone, and with that threatdrove the creature away. so in solitude i came round by the ravineof the beast people, and hiding among the weeds and reeds that separated this crevicefrom the sea i watched such of them as appeared, trying to judge from their gestures and appearancehow the death of moreau and montgomery and the destruction of the house of pain had affectedthem. i know now the folly of my cowardice. had i kept my courage up to the level of thedawn, had i not allowed it to ebb away in solitary thought, i might have grasped thevacant sceptre of moreau and ruled over the beast people. as it was i lost the opportunity,and sank to the position of a mere leader among my fellows.

towards noon certain of them came and squattedbasking in the hot sand. the imperious voices of hunger and thirst prevailed over my dread.i came out of the bushes, and, revolver in hand, walked down towards these seated figures.one, a wolf-woman, turned her head and stared at me, and then the others. none attemptedto rise or salute me. i felt too faint and weary to insist, and i let the moment pass. “i want food,” said i, almost apologetically,and drawing near. “there is food in the huts,” said an ox-boar-man,drowsily, and looking away from me. i passed them, and went down into the shadowand odours of the almost deserted ravine. in an empty hut i feasted on some speckedand half-decayed fruit; and then after i had

propped some branches and sticks about theopening, and placed myself with my face towards it and my hand upon my revolver, the exhaustionof the last thirty hours claimed its own, and i fell into a light slumber, hoping thatthe flimsy barricade i had erected would cause sufficient noise in its removal to save mefrom surprise. chapter xxi. the reversion of the beast folk. in this way i became one among the beast peoplein the island of doctor moreau. when i awoke, it was dark about me. my arm ached in itsbandages. i sat up, wondering at first where i might be. i heard coarse voices talkingoutside. then i saw that my barricade had gone, and that the opening of the hut stoodclear. my revolver was still in my hand.

i heard something breathing, saw somethingcrouched together close beside me. i held my breath, trying to see what it was. it beganto 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 stifledin my throat. then i just realised what had happened sufficiently to stay my fingers onthe revolver. “who is that?” i said in a hoarse whisper,the revolver still pointed. “i—master.” “who are you?” “they say there is no master now. but iknow, i know. i carried the bodies into the

sea, o walker in the sea! the bodies of thoseyou 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, forit might have fallen upon me as i slept. “it is well,” i said, extending my hand foranother licking kiss. i began to realise what its presence meant, and the tide of my courageflowed. “where are the others?” i asked. “they are mad; they are fools,” said thedog-man. “even now they talk together beyond there. they say, ‘the master is dead. theother with the whip is dead. that other who walked in the sea is as we are. we have nomaster, no whips, no house of pain, any more.

there is an end. we love the law, and willkeep it; but there is no pain, no master, no whips for ever again.’ so they say. buti know, master, i know.” i felt in the darkness, and patted the dog-man'shead. “it is well,” i said again. “presently you will slay them all,” saidthe dog-man. “presently,” i answered, “i will slaythem all,—after certain days and certain things have come to pass. every one of themsave those you spare, every one of them shall be slain.” “what the master wishes to kill, the masterkills,” 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 amthe master.” “the master's will is sweet,” said thedog-man, with the ready tact of his canine blood. “but one has sinned,” said i. “him iwill kill, whenever i may meet him. when i say to you, ‘that is he,’ see that youfall 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 blackenedby the exit of the dog-man. then i followed and stood up, almost in the exact spot wherei had been when i had heard moreau and his

staghound pursuing me. but now it was night,and all the miasmatic ravine about me was black; and beyond, instead of a green, sunlitslope, i saw a red fire, before which hunched, grotesque figures moved to and fro. fartherwere the thick trees, a bank of darkness, fringed above with the black lace of the upperbranches. the moon was just riding up on the edge of the ravine, and like a bar acrossits face drove the spire of vapour that was for ever streaming from the fumaroles of theisland. “walk by me,” said i, nerving myself;and side by side we walked down the narrow way, taking little heed of the dim thingsthat 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 hewas not there. altogether, perhaps twenty of the beast folk squatted, staring into thefire or talking to one another. “he is dead, he is dead! the master is dead!”said the voice of the ape-man to the right of me. “the house of pain—there is nohouse of pain!” “he is not dead,” said i, in a loud voice.“even now he watches us!” this startled them. twenty pairs of eyes regardedme. “the house of pain is gone,” said i. “itwill 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 animalmay be ferocious and cunning enough, but it takes a real man to tell a lie. “the man with the bandaged arm speaks astrange thing,” said one of the beast folk. “i tell you it is so,” i said. “themaster and the house of pain will come again. woe be to him who breaks the law!” they looked curiously at one another. withan affectation of indifference i began to chop idly at the ground in front of me withmy hatchet. they looked, i noticed, at the deep cuts i made in the turf. then the satyr raised a doubt. i answeredhim. then one of the dappled things objected,

and an animated discussion sprang up roundthe fire. every moment i began to feel more convinced of my present security. i talkednow without the catching in my breath, due to the intensity of my excitement, that hadtroubled me at first. in the course of about an hour i had really convinced several ofthe beast folk of the truth of my assertions, and talked most of the others into a dubiousstate. i kept a sharp eye for my enemy the hyena-swine, but he never appeared. everynow and then a suspicious movement would startle me, but my confidence grew rapidly. then asthe moon crept down from the zenith, one by one the listeners began to yawn (showing theoddest teeth in the light of the sinking fire), and first one and then another retired towardsthe dens in the ravine; and i, dreading the

silence and darkness, went with them, knowingi was safer with several of them than with one alone. in this manner began the longer part of mysojourn upon this island of doctor moreau. but from that night until the end came, therewas but one thing happened to tell save a series of innumerable small unpleasant detailsand the fretting of an incessant uneasiness. so that i prefer to make no chronicle forthat gap of time, to tell only one cardinal incident of the ten months i spent as an intimateof these half-humanised brutes. there is much that sticks in my memory that i could write,—thingsthat i would cheerfully give my right hand to forget; but they do not help the tellingof the story.

in the retrospect it is strange to rememberhow soon i fell in with these monsters' ways, and gained my confidence again. i had my quarrelswith them of course, and could show some of their teeth-marks still; but they soon gaineda wholesome respect for my trick of throwing stones and for the bite of my hatchet. andmy saint-bernard-man's loyalty was of infinite service to me. i found their simple scaleof honour was based mainly on the capacity for inflicting trenchant wounds. indeed, imay say—without vanity, i hope—that i held something like pre-eminence among them.one or two, whom in a rare access of high spirits i had scarred rather badly, bore mea grudge; but it vented itself chiefly behind my back, and at a safe distance from my missiles,in grimaces.

the hyena-swine avoided me, and i was alwayson the alert for him. my inseparable dog-man hated and dreaded him intensely. i reallybelieve that was at the root of the brute's attachment to me. it was soon evident to methat the former monster had tasted blood, and gone the way of the leopard-man. he formeda lair somewhere in the forest, and became solitary. once i tried to induce the beastfolk to hunt him, but i lacked the authority to make them co-operate for one end. againand again i tried to approach his den and come upon him unaware; but always he was tooacute for me, and saw or winded me and got away. he too made every forest pathway dangerousto 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, comparedwith their latter condition, were human enough, and for one or two besides my canine friendi even conceived a friendly tolerance. the little pink sloth-creature displayed an oddaffection for me, and took to following me about. the monkey-man bored me, however; heassumed, on the strength of his five digits, that he was my equal, and was for ever jabberingat me,—jabbering the most arrant nonsense. one thing about him entertained me a little:he had a fantastic trick of coining new words. he had an idea, i believe, that to gabbleabout names that meant nothing was the proper use of speech. he called it “big thinks”to distinguish it from “little thinks,” the sane every-day interests of life. if everi made a remark he did not understand, he

would praise it very much, ask me to say itagain, learn it by heart, and go off repeating it, with a word wrong here or there, to allthe milder of the beast people. he thought nothing of what was plain and comprehensible.i invented some very curious “big thinks” for his especial use. i think now that hewas the silliest creature i ever met; he had developed in the most wonderful way the distinctivesilliness of man without losing one jot of the natural folly of a monkey. this, i say, was in the earlier weeks of mysolitude among these brutes. during that time they respected the usage established by thelaw, and behaved with general decorum. once i found another rabbit torn to pieces,—bythe hyena-swine, i am assured,—but that

was all. it was about may when i first distinctlyperceived 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 lessand less comprehensible, more and more simian. some of the others seemed altogether slippingtheir hold upon speech, though they still understood what i said to them at that time.(can you imagine language, once clear-cut and exact, softening and guttering, losingshape and import, becoming mere lumps of sound again?) and they walked erect with an increasingdifficulty. though they evidently felt ashamed of themselves, every now and then i wouldcome upon one or another running on toes and finger-tips, and quite unable to recover thevertical attitude. they held things more clumsily;

drinking by suction, feeding by gnawing, grewcommoner every day. i realised more keenly than ever what moreau had told me about the“stubborn beast-flesh.” they were reverting, and reverting very rapidly. some of them—the pioneers in this, i noticedwith some surprise, were all females—began to disregard the injunction of decency, deliberatelyfor 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 disagreeablesubject. my dog-man imperceptibly slipped back to thedog again; day by day he became dumb, quadrupedal, hairy. i scarcely noticed the transition fromthe companion on my right hand to the lurching

dog at my side. as the carelessness and disorganisation increasedfrom day to day, the lane of dwelling places, at no time very sweet, became so loathsomethat i left it, and going across the island made myself a hovel of boughs amid the blackruins of moreau's enclosure. some memory of pain, i found, still made that place the safestfrom the beast folk. it would be impossible to detail every stepof the lapsing of these monsters,—to tell how, day by day, the human semblance leftthem; how they gave up bandagings and wrappings, abandoned at last every stitch of clothing;how the hair began to spread over the exposed limbs; how their foreheads fell away and theirfaces projected; how the quasi-human intimacy

i had permitted myself with some of them inthe first month of my loneliness became a shuddering horror to recall. the change was slow and inevitable. for themand for me it came without any definite shock. i still went among them in safety, becauseno jolt in the downward glide had released the increasing charge of explosive animalismthat 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 enabledme to sleep at times in something like peace. the little pink sloth-thing became shy andleft me, to crawl back to its natural life once more among the tree-branches. we werein just the state of equilibrium that would

remain in one of those “happy family”cages which animal-tamers exhibit, if the tamer were to leave it for ever. of course these creatures did not declineinto such beasts as the reader has seen in zoological gardens,—into ordinary bears,wolves, tigers, oxen, swine, and apes. there was still something strange about each; ineach moreau had blended this animal with that. one perhaps was ursine chiefly, another felinechiefly, another bovine chiefly; but each was tainted with other creatures,—a kindof generalised animalism appearing through the specific dispositions. and the dwindlingshreds of the humanity still startled me every now and then,—a momentary recrudescenceof speech perhaps, an unexpected dexterity

of the fore-feet, a pitiful attempt to walkerect. i too must have undergone strange changes.my clothes hung about me as yellow rags, through whose rents showed the tanned skin. my hairgrew long, and became matted together. i am told that even now my eyes have a strangebrightness, a swift alertness of movement. at first i spent the daylight hours on thesouthward beach watching for a ship, hoping and praying for a ship. i counted on the ipecacuanhareturning as the year wore on; but she never came. five times i saw sails, and thrice smoke;but nothing ever touched the island. i always had a bonfire ready, but no doubt the volcanicreputation of the island was taken to account for that.

it was only about september or october thati began to think of making a raft. by that time my arm had healed, and both my handswere at my service again. at first, i found my helplessness appalling. i had never doneany carpentry or such-like work in my life, and i spent day after day in experimentalchopping and binding among the trees. i had no ropes, and could hit on nothing wherewithto make ropes; none of the abundant creepers seemed limber or strong enough, and with allmy litter of scientific education i could not devise any way of making them so. i spentmore than a fortnight grubbing among the black ruins of the enclosure and on the beach wherethe boats had been burnt, looking for nails and other stray pieces of metal that mightprove of service. now and then some beast-creature

would watch me, and go leaping off when icalled to it. there came a season of thunder-storms and heavy rain, which greatly retarded mywork; but at last the raft was completed. i was delighted with it. but with a certainlack of practical sense which has always been my bane, i had made it a mile or more fromthe 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 atmy failure was so acute that for some days i simply moped on the beach, and stared atthe water and thought of death. i did not, however, mean to die, and an incidentoccurred that warned me unmistakably of the folly of letting the days pass so,—for eachfresh day was fraught with increasing danger

from the beast people. i was lying in the shade of the enclosurewall, staring out to sea, when i was startled by something cold touching the skin of myheel, 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 grewthicker every day and his stumpy claws more askew. he made a moaning noise when he sawhe had attracted my attention, went a little way towards the bushes and looked back atme. at first i did not understand, but presentlyit occurred to me that he wished me to follow him; and this i did at last,—slowly, forthe day was hot. when we reached the trees

he clambered into them, for he could travelbetter among their swinging creepers than on the ground. and suddenly in a trampledspace i came upon a ghastly group. my saint-bernard-creature lay on the ground, dead; and near his bodycrouched the hyena-swine, gripping the quivering flesh with its misshapen claws, gnawing atit, 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 notafraid and not ashamed; the last vestige of the human taint had vanished. i advanced astep farther, stopped, and pulled out my revolver. at last i had him face to face. the brute made no sign of retreat; but itsears went back, its hair bristled, and its

body crouched together. i aimed between theeyes and fired. as i did so, the thing rose straight at me in a leap, and i was knockedover like a ninepin. it clutched at me with its crippled hand, and struck me in the face.its spring carried it over me. i fell under the hind part of its body; but luckily i hadhit as i meant, and it had died even as it leapt. i crawled out from under its uncleanweight and stood up trembling, staring at its quivering body. that danger at least wasover; but this, i knew was only the first of the series of relapses that must come. i burnt both of the bodies on a pyre of brushwood;but after that i saw that unless i left the island my death was only a question of time.the beast people by that time had, with one

or two exceptions, left the ravine and madethemselves lairs according to their taste among the thickets of the island. few prowledby day, most of them slept, and the island might have seemed deserted to a new-comer;but at night the air was hideous with their calls and howling. i had half a mind to makea massacre of them; to build traps, or fight them with my knife. had i possessed sufficientcartridges, i should not have hesitated to begin the killing. there could now be scarcelya score left of the dangerous carnivores; the braver of these were already dead. afterthe death of this poor dog of mine, my last friend, i too adopted to some extent the practiceof slumbering in the daytime in order to be on my guard at night. i rebuilt my den inthe walls of the enclosure, with such a narrow

opening that anything attempting to entermust 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 hammeringtogether stakes and branches to form a raft for my escape. i found a thousand difficulties. i am an extremelyunhandy man (my schooling was over before the days of slã¶jd); but most of the requirementsof a raft i met at last in some clumsy, circuitous way or other, and this time i took care ofthe strength. the only insurmountable obstacle was that i had no vessel to contain the wateri should need if i floated forth upon these untravelled seas. i would have even triedpottery, but the island contained no clay.

i used to go moping about the island tryingwith all my might to solve this one last difficulty. sometimes i would give way to wild outburstsof rage, and hack and splinter some unlucky tree in my intolerable vexation. but i couldthink of nothing. and then came a day, a wonderful day, whichi spent in ecstasy. i saw a sail to the southwest, a small sail like that of a little schooner;and forthwith i lit a great pile of brushwood, and stood by it in the heat of it, and theheat of the midday sun, watching. all day i watched that sail, eating or drinking nothing,so that my head reeled; and the beasts came and glared at me, and seemed to wonder, andwent away. it was still distant when night came and swallowed it up; and all night itoiled to keep my blaze bright and high, and

the eyes of the beasts shone out of the darkness,marvelling. in the dawn the sail was nearer, and i saw it was the dirty lug-sail of a smallboat. but it sailed strangely. my eyes were weary with watching, and i peered and couldnot believe them. two men were in the boat, sitting low down,—one by the bows, the otherat the rudder. the head was not kept to the wind; it yawed and fell away. as the day grew brighter, i began waving thelast rag of my jacket to them; but they did not notice me, and sat still, facing eachother. i went to the lowest point of the low headland, and gesticulated and shouted. therewas 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 menstirred nor noticed it; it circled round, and then came sweeping overhead with its strongwings outspread. then i stopped shouting, and sat down on theheadland and rested my chin on my hands and stared. slowly, slowly, the boat drove pasttowards the west. i would have swum out to it, but something—a cold, vague fear—keptme back. in the afternoon the tide stranded the boat, and left it a hundred yards or soto the westward of the ruins of the enclosure. the men in it were dead, had been dead solong that they fell to pieces when i tilted the boat on its side and dragged them out.one had a shock of red hair, like the captain of the ipecacuanha, and a dirty white caplay in the bottom of the boat.

as i stood beside the boat, three of the beastscame slinking out of the bushes and sniffing towards me. one of my spasms of disgust cameupon me. i thrust the little boat down the beach and clambered on board her. two of thebrutes 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 approachingthose wretched remains, heard them snarling at one another and caught the gleam of theirteeth, a frantic horror succeeded my repulsion. i turned my back upon them, struck the lugand began paddling out to sea. i could not bring myself to look behind me. i lay, however, between the reef and the islandthat night, and the next morning went round

to the stream and filled the empty keg aboardwith 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 thisi left the boat moored to an inward projection of the reef, for fear of the beast people. chapter xxii. the man alone. in the evening i started, and drove out tosea before a gentle wind from the southwest, slowly, steadily; and the island grew smallerand smaller, and the lank spire of smoke dwindled to a finer and finer line against the hotsunset. the ocean rose up around me, hiding that low, dark patch from my eyes. the daylight,the trailing glory of the sun, went streaming

out of the sky, was drawn aside like someluminous curtain, and at last i looked into the blue gulf of immensity which the sunshinehides, and saw the floating hosts of the stars. the sea was silent, the sky was silent. iwas alone with the night and silence. so i drifted for three days, eating and drinkingsparingly, and meditating upon all that had happened to me,—not desiring very greatlythen to see men again. one unclean rag was about me, my hair a black tangle: no doubtmy discoverers thought me a madman. it is strange, but i felt no desire to returnto mankind. i was only glad to be quit of the foulness of the beast people. and on thethird day i was picked up by a brig from apia to san francisco. neither the captain northe mate would believe my story, judging that

solitude and danger had made me mad; and fearingtheir opinion might be that of others, i refrained from telling my adventure further, and professedto recall nothing that had happened to me between the loss of the lady vain and thetime when i was picked up again,—the space of a year. i had to act with the utmost circumspectionto save myself from the suspicion of insanity. my memory of the law, of the two dead sailors,of the ambuscades of the darkness, of the body in the canebrake, haunted me; and, unnaturalas it seems, with my return to mankind came, instead of that confidence and sympathy ihad expected, a strange enhancement of the uncertainty and dread i had experienced duringmy stay upon the island. no one would believe

me; i was almost as queer to men as i hadbeen 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 arestless fear has dwelt in my mind,—such a restless fear as a half-tamed lion cub mayfeel. my trouble took the strangest form. i couldnot persuade myself that the men and women i met were not also another beast people,animals half wrought into the outward image of human souls, and that they would presentlybegin to revert,—to show first this bestial mark and then that. but i have confided mycase to a strangely able man,—a man who had known moreau, and seemed half to creditmy story; a mental specialist,—and he has

helped me mightily, though i do not expectthat the terror of that island will ever altogether leave me. at most times it lies far in theback of my mind, a mere distant cloud, a memory, and a faint distrust; but there are timeswhen the little cloud spreads until it obscures the whole sky. then i look about me at myfellow-men; and i go in fear. i see faces, keen and bright; others dull or dangerous;others, unsteady, insincere,—none that have the calm authority of a reasonable soul. ifeel as though the animal was surging up through them; that presently the degradation of theislanders will be played over again on a larger scale. i know this is an illusion; that theseseeming men and women about me are indeed men and women,—men and women for ever, perfectlyreasonable creatures, full of human desires

and tender solicitude, emancipated from instinctand 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, andlong to be away from them and alone. for that reason i live near the broad free downland,and can escape thither when this shadow is over my soul; and very sweet is the emptydownland then, under the wind-swept sky. when i lived in london the horror was well-nighinsupportable. i could not get away from men: their voices came through windows; lockeddoors were flimsy safeguards. i would go out into the streets to fight with my delusion,and prowling women would mew after me; furtive, craving men glance jealously at me; weary,pale workers go coughing by me with tired

eyes and eager paces, like wounded deer drippingblood; old people, bent and dull, pass murmuring to themselves; and, all unheeding, a raggedtail of gibing children. then i would turn aside into some chapel,—and even there,such was my disturbance, it seemed that the preacher gibbered “big thinks,” even asthe ape-man had done; or into some library, and there the intent faces over the booksseemed but patient creatures waiting for prey. particularly nauseous were the blank, expressionlessfaces of people in trains and omnibuses; they seemed no more my fellow-creatures than deadbodies 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 withsome strange disorder in its brain which sent

it to wander alone, like a sheep strickenwith gid. this is a mood, however, that comes to menow, i thank god, more rarely. i have withdrawn myself from the confusion of cities and multitudes,and spend my days surrounded by wise books,—bright windows in this life of ours, lit by the shiningsouls of men. i see few strangers, and have but a small household. my days i devote toreading and to experiments in chemistry, and i spend many of the clear nights in the studyof astronomy. there is—though i do not know how there is or why there is—a sense ofinfinite 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 troublesof men, that whatever is more than animal

within us must find its solace and its hope.i hope, or i could not live. and so, in hope and solitude, my story ends. edward prendick.