GHMiranda
/
The_island_of_Dr._Moreau
1
0
Fork 0
Code Issues Pull Requests Packages Projects Releases 1 Wiki Activity

Finalizado a separação de capitulos em arquivos individuais tex

This commit is contained in:
Gustavo Henrique Santos Souza de Miranda 2025-05-14 15:27:22 -03:00
parent 8ed6c73d88
commit d995fc7973
6 changed files with 750 additions and 97 deletions
Show Stats Download Patch File Download Diff File Expand all files Collapse all files

173
chapters/Concerning the Beast Folk.tex Normal file
View File

@ -0,0 +1,173 @@
I woke early. Moreau’s explanation stood before my mind, clear and
definite, from the moment of my awakening. I got out of the hammock and
went to the door to assure myself that the key was turned. Then I tried
the window-bar, and found it firmly fixed. That these man-like
creatures were in truth only bestial monsters, mere grotesque
travesties of men, filled me with a vague uncertainty of their
possibilities which was far worse than any definite fear.
A tapping came at the door, and I heard the glutinous accents of M’ling
speaking. I pocketed one of the revolvers (keeping one hand upon it),
and opened to him.
“Good-morning, sair,” he said, bringing in, in addition to the
customary herb-breakfast, an ill-cooked rabbit. Montgomery followed
him. His roving eye caught the position of my arm and he smiled askew.
The puma was resting to heal that day; but Moreau, who was singularly
solitary in his habits, did not join us. I talked with Montgomery to
clear my ideas of the way in which the Beast Folk lived. In particular,
I was urgent to know how these inhuman monsters were kept from falling
upon Moreau and Montgomery and from rending one another. He explained
to me that the comparative safety of Moreau and himself was due to the
limited mental scope of these monsters. In spite of their increased
intelligence and the tendency of their animal instincts to reawaken,
they had certain fixed ideas implanted by Moreau in their minds, which
absolutely bounded their imaginations. They were really hypnotised; had
been told that certain things were impossible, and that certain things
were not to be done, and these prohibitions were woven into the texture
of their minds beyond any possibility of disobedience or dispute.
Certain matters, however, in which old instinct was at war with
Moreau’s convenience, were in a less stable condition. A series of
propositions called the Law (I had already heard them recited) battled
in their minds with 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 them ignorant of the taste of blood; they feared the inevitable
suggestions of that flavour. Montgomery told me that the Law,
especially among the feline Beast People, became oddly weakened about
nightfall; that then the animal was at its strongest; that a spirit of
adventure sprang up in them at the dusk, when they would dare things
they never seemed to dream about by day. To that I owed my stalking by
the Leopard-man, on the night of my arrival. But during these earlier
days of my stay they broke the Law only furtively and after dark; in
the daylight there was a general atmosphere of respect for its
multifarious prohibitions.
And here perhaps I may give a few general facts about the island and
the Beast People. The island, which was of irregular outline and lay
low upon the wide sea, had a total area, I suppose, of seven or eight
square miles.\footnote{This description corresponds in every respect to Noble’s Isle.—C.
E. P.} It was volcanic in origin, and was now fringed on
three sides by coral reefs; some fumaroles to the northward, and a hot
spring, were the only vestiges of the forces that had long since
originated it. Now and then a faint quiver of earthquake would be
sensible, and sometimes the ascent of the spire of smoke would be
rendered tumultuous by gusts of steam; but that was all. The population
of the island, Montgomery informed me, now numbered rather more than
sixty of these strange creations of Moreau’s art, not counting the
smaller monstrosities which lived in the undergrowth and were without
human form. Altogether he had made nearly a hundred and twenty; but
many had died, and others—like the writhing Footless Thing of which he
had told me—had come by violent ends. In answer to my question,
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 inheritance of their
acquired human characteristics. The females were less numerous than the
males, and liable to much furtive persecution in spite of the monogamy
the Law enjoined.
It would be impossible for me to describe these Beast People in detail;
my eye has had no training in details, and unhappily I cannot sketch.
Most striking, perhaps, in their general appearance was the
disproportion between the legs of these creatures and the length of
their bodies; and yet—so relative is our idea of grace—my eye became
habituated to their forms, and at last I even fell in with their
persuasion that my own long thighs were ungainly. Another point was the
forward carriage of the head and the clumsy and inhuman curvature of
the spine. Even the Ape-man lacked that inward sinuous curve of the
back which makes the human figure so graceful. Most had their shoulders
hunched clumsily, and their short forearms hung weakly at their sides.
Few of them were conspicuously hairy, at least until the end of my time
upon the island.
The next most obvious deformity was in their faces, almost all of which
were prognathous, malformed about the ears, with large and protuberant
noses, very furry or very bristly hair, and often strangely-coloured or
strangely-placed eyes. None could laugh, though the Ape-man had a
chattering titter. Beyond these general characters their heads had
little in common; each preserved the quality of its particular species:
the human mark distorted but did not hide the leopard, the ox, or the
sow, or other animal or animals, from which the creature had been
moulded. The voices, too, varied exceedingly. The hands were always
malformed; and though some surprised me by their unexpected human
appearance, almost all were deficient in the number of the digits,
clumsy about the finger-nails, and lacking any tactile sensibility.
The two most formidable Animal Men were my Leopard-man and a creature
made of hyena and swine. Larger than these were the three
bull-creatures who pulled in the boat. Then came the silvery-hairy-man,
who was also the 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 described the Ape-man, and there was
a particularly hateful (and evil-smelling) old woman made of vixen and
bear, whom I hated from the beginning. She was said to be a passionate
votary of the Law. Smaller creatures were certain dappled youths and my
little sloth-creature. But enough of this catalogue.
At first I had a shivering horror of the brutes, felt all too keenly
that they were still brutes; but insensibly I became a little
habituated to the idea of them, and moreover I was affected by
Montgomery’s attitude towards them. He had been with them so long that
he had come to regard them as almost normal human beings. His London
days seemed a glorious, impossible past to him. Only once in a year or
so did he go to Africa to deal with Moreau’s agent, a trader in animals
there. He hardly met the finest type of mankind in that seafaring
village of Spanish mongrels. The men aboard-ship, he told me, seemed at
first just as strange to him as the Beast Men seemed to me,—unnaturally
long in the leg, flat in the face, prominent in the forehead,
suspicious, dangerous, and cold-hearted. In fact, he did not like men:
his heart had warmed to me, he thought, because he had saved my life. I
fancied even then that he had a sneaking kindness for some of these
metamorphosed brutes, a vicious sympathy with some of their ways, but
that he attempted to veil it from me at first.
M’ling, the black-faced man, Montgomery’s attendant, the first of the
Beast Folk I had encountered, did not live with the others across the
island, but in a small kennel at the back of the enclosure. The
creature was scarcely so intelligent as the Ape-man, but far more
docile, and the most human-looking of all the Beast Folk; and
Montgomery had trained it to prepare food, and indeed to discharge all
the trivial domestic offices that were required. It was a complex
trophy of Moreau’s horrible skill,—a bear, tainted with dog and ox, and
one of the most elaborately made of all his creatures. It treated
Montgomery with a strange tenderness and devotion. Sometimes he would
notice it, pat it, call it half-mocking, half-jocular names, and so
make it caper with extraordinary delight; sometimes he would ill-treat
it, especially after he had been at the whiskey, kicking it, beating
it, pelting it with stones or lighted fusees. But whether he treated it
well or ill, it loved nothing so much as to be near him.
I say I became habituated to the Beast People, that a thousand things
which had seemed unnatural and repulsive speedily became natural and
ordinary to me. I suppose everything in existence takes its colour from
the average hue of our surroundings. Montgomery and Moreau were too
peculiar and individual to keep my general impressions of humanity well
defined. I would see one of the clumsy bovine-creatures who worked the
launch treading heavily through the undergrowth, and find myself
asking, trying hard to recall, how he differed from some really human
yokel trudging home from his mechanical labours; or I would meet the
Fox-bear woman’s vulpine, shifty face, strangely human in its
speculative cunning, and even imagine I had met it before in some city
byway.
Yet every now and then the beast would flash out 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 with startling suddenness scissor-edged
incisors and sabre-like canines, keen and brilliant as knives. Or in
some narrow pathway, glancing with a transitory daring into the eyes of
some lithe, white-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 she held her shapeless wrap about her.
It is a curious thing, by the bye, for which I am quite unable to
account, that these weird creatures—the females, I mean—had in the
earlier days of my stay an instinctive sense of their own repulsive
clumsiness, and displayed in consequence a more than human regard for
the decency and decorum of extensive costume.

0
chapters/How the Beast Folk Taste Blood.tex Normal file
View File

184
chapters/The Hunting of the Man.tex Normal file
View File

@ -0,0 +1,184 @@
It came before my mind with an unreasonable hope 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 heard his name, I had been trying to link in my
mind in some way the grotesque animalism of the islanders with his
abominations; and now I thought I saw it all. The memory of his work on
the transfusion of blood recurred to me. These creatures I had seen
were the victims of some hideous experiment. These sickening scoundrels
had merely intended to keep me back, to fool me with their display of
confidence, and presently to fall upon me with a fate more horrible
than death,—with torture; and after torture the most hideous
degradation it is possible to conceive,—to send me off a lost soul, a
beast, to the rest of their Comus rout.
I looked round for some weapon. Nothing. Then with an inspiration I
turned over the deck chair, put my foot on the side of it, and tore
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 incontinently flung 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 hesitated a 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 have had me locked in, and as
ready as a hospital rabbit for my fate. He emerged behind the corner,
for I heard him shout, “Prendick!” Then he began to run after me,
shouting things as he ran. This time running blindly, I went
northeastward in a direction at right angles to my previous expedition.
Once, as I went running headlong up the beach, I glanced over my
shoulder and saw his attendant with him. I ran furiously up the slope,
over it, then turning eastward along a rocky valley fringed on either
side with jungle I ran for perhaps a mile altogether, my chest
straining, my heart beating in my ears; and then hearing nothing of
Montgomery or his man, and feeling upon the verge of exhaustion, I
doubled sharply back towards the beach as I judged, and lay down in the
shelter of a canebrake. There I remained for a long time, too fearful
to move, and indeed too fearful even to plan a course of action. The
wild scene about me lay sleeping silently under the sun, and the only
sound near me was the thin hum of some small gnats that had discovered
me. Presently I became aware of a drowsy breathing sound, the soughing
of the sea upon the beach.
After about an hour I heard Montgomery shouting my name, far away to
the north. That set me thinking of my plan of action. As I interpreted
it then, this island was inhabited only by these two vivisectors and
their animalised victims. Some of these no doubt they could press into
their service against me if need arose. I knew both Moreau and
Montgomery carried revolvers; and, save for a feeble bar of deal spiked
with a small nail, the merest mockery of a mace, I was unarmed.
So I lay still there, until I began to think of food and drink; and at
that thought the real hopelessness of my position came home to me. I
knew no way of getting anything to eat. I was too ignorant of botany to
discover any resort of root or fruit that might lie about me; I had no
means of trapping the few rabbits upon the island. It grew blanker the
more I turned the prospect over. At last in the desperation of my
position, my mind turned to the animal men I had encountered. I tried
to find some hope in what I remembered of them. In turn I recalled each
one I had seen, and tried to draw some augury of assistance from my
memory.
Then suddenly I heard a staghound bay, and at that realised a new
danger. I took little time to think, or they would have caught me then,
but snatching up my nailed stick, rushed headlong from my hiding-place
towards the sound 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 presently finding 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 the issue. I
heard the dog (there was only one) draw nearer, and yelp when it came
to the thorns. Then I heard no more, and presently began to think I had
escaped.
The minutes passed; the silence lengthened out, and at last after an
hour of security my courage began to return to me. By this time I was
no longer very much terrified or very miserable. I had, as it were,
passed the limit of terror and despair. I felt now that my life was
practically lost, and that persuasion made me capable of daring
anything. I had even a certain wish to encounter Moreau face to face;
and as I had waded into the water, I remembered that if I were too hard
pressed at least one path of escape from torment still lay open to
me,—they could not very well prevent my drowning myself. I had half a
mind to drown myself then; but an odd wish to see the whole adventure
out, a queer, impersonal, spectacular interest in myself, restrained
me. I stretched my limbs, sore and painful from the pricks of the spiny
plants, and stared around me at the trees; and, so suddenly that it
seemed to jump out of the green tracery about it, my eyes lit upon a
black face watching me. I saw that it was the simian creature who 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 moment was holding
the fronds apart and staring curiously at me.
I did not feel the same repugnance towards this 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’s attendant,—for he could talk.
“Yes,” I said, “I came in the boat. From the ship.”
“Oh!” he said, and his bright, restless eyes travelled over me, to my
hands, to the stick I carried, to my feet, to the tattered places in my
coat, and the cuts and scratches I had received from the thorns. He
seemed puzzled at something. His eyes came back to my hands. He held
his own hand out and counted his digits slowly, “One, two, three, four,
five—eigh?”
I did not grasp his meaning then; afterwards I was to find that a great
proportion of these Beast People had malformed hands, lacking sometimes
even three digits. But guessing this was in some way a greeting, I did
the same thing by way of reply. He grinned with immense satisfaction.
Then his swift roving glance went round again; he made a swift
movement—and vanished. The fern fronds he had stood between came
swishing together.
I pushed out of the brake after him, and was astonished to find him
swinging cheerfully by one lank arm from a rope of creepers that looped
down from the foliage overhead. His back was to me.
“Hullo!” said I.
He came down with a twisting jump, and stood facing me.
“I say,” said I, “where can I get something to eat?”
“Eat!” he said. “Eat Man’s food, now.” And his eye went 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 quick walk. All his motions
were curiously rapid. “Come along,” said he.
I went with him to see the adventure out. I guessed the huts were some
rough shelter where he and some more of these Beast People lived. I
might perhaps find them friendly, find some handle in their minds to
take hold of. I did not know how far they had forgotten their human
heritage.
My ape-like companion trotted along by my side, with his hands hanging
down and his jaw thrust forward. I wondered what memory he might have
in him. “How long have you been on this island?” said I.
“How long?” he asked; and after having the question repeated, he held
up three fingers.
The creature was little better than an idiot. I tried to make out what
he meant by that, and it seems I bored him. After another question or
two he suddenly left my side and went leaping at some fruit that hung
from a tree. He pulled down 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, but his
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 that I scarcely noticed the
path we followed. Presently we came to trees, all charred and brown,
and so to a bare place covered with a yellow-white incrustation, across
which a drifting smoke, pungent in whiffs to nose and eyes, went
drifting. On our right, over a shoulder of bare rock, I saw the level
blue of the sea. The path coiled down abruptly into a narrow ravine
between two tumbled and knotty masses of blackish scoriae. Into this we
plunged.
It was extremely dark, this passage, after the blinding sunlight
reflected from the sulphurous ground. Its walls grew steep, and
approached each other. Blotches of green and crimson drifted across my
eyes. My conductor stopped suddenly. “Home!” said he, and I stood in a
floor of a chasm that was at first absolutely dark to me. I heard some
strange noises, and thrust the knuckles of my left hand into my eyes. 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 hand the light smote down through narrow
ways into the central gloom.

99
chapters/The Man Alone.tex Normal file
View File

@ -0,0 +1,99 @@
In the evening I started, and drove out to sea before a gentle wind
from the southwest, slowly, steadily; and the island grew smaller and
smaller, and the lank spire of smoke dwindled to a finer and finer line
against the hot sunset. The ocean rose up around me, hiding that low,
dark patch from my eyes. The daylight, the trailing glory of the sun,
went streaming out of the sky, was drawn aside like some luminous
curtain, and at last I looked into the blue gulf of immensity which the
sunshine hides, and saw the floating hosts of the stars. The sea was
silent, the sky was silent. I was alone with the night and silence.
So I drifted for three days, eating and drinking sparingly, and
meditating upon all that had happened to me,—not desiring very greatly
then to see men again. One unclean rag was about me, my hair a black
tangle: no doubt my discoverers thought me a madman.
It is strange, but I felt no desire to return to mankind. I was only
glad to be quit of the foulness of the Beast People. And on the third
day I was picked up by a brig from Apia to San Francisco. Neither the
captain nor the mate would believe my story, judging that solitude and
danger had made me mad; and fearing their opinion might be that of
others, I refrained from telling my adventure further, and professed to
recall nothing that had happened to me between the loss of the \emph{Lady
Vain} and the time when I was picked up again,—the space of a year.
I had to act with the utmost circumspection to save myself from the
suspicion of insanity. My memory of the Law, of the two dead sailors,
of the ambuscades of the darkness, of the body in the canebrake,
haunted me; and, unnatural as it seems, with my return to mankind came,
instead of that confidence and sympathy I had expected, a strange
enhancement of the uncertainty and dread I had experienced during my
stay upon the island. No one would believe me; I was almost as queer to
men as I had been to the Beast People. I may have caught something of
the natural wildness of my companions. They say that terror is a
disease, and anyhow I can witness that for several years now a restless
fear has dwelt in my mind,—such a restless fear as a half-tamed lion
cub may feel.
My trouble took the strangest form. I could not persuade myself that
the men and women I met were not also another Beast People, animals
half wrought into the outward image of human souls, and that they would
presently begin to revert,—to show first this bestial mark and then
that. But I have confided my case to a strangely able man,—a man who
had known Moreau, and seemed half to credit my story; a mental
specialist,—and he has helped me mightily, though I do not expect that
the terror of that island will ever altogether leave me. At most times
it lies far in the back of my mind, a mere distant cloud, a memory, and
a faint distrust; but there are times when the little cloud spreads
until it obscures the whole sky. Then I look about me at my fellow-men;
and I go in fear. I see faces, keen and bright; others dull or
dangerous; others, unsteady, insincere,—none that have the calm
authority of a reasonable soul. I feel as though the animal was surging
up through them; that presently the degradation of the Islanders will
be played over again on a larger scale. I know this is an illusion;
that these seeming men and women about me are indeed men and women,—men
and women for ever, perfectly reasonable creatures, full of human
desires and tender solicitude, emancipated from instinct and the slaves
of no fantastic Law,—beings altogether different from the Beast Folk.
Yet I shrink from them, from their curious glances, their inquiries and
assistance, and long to be away from them and alone. For that reason I
live near the broad free downland, and can escape thither when this
shadow is over my soul; and very sweet is the empty downland then,
under the wind-swept sky.
When I lived in London the horror was well-nigh insupportable. I could
not get away from men: their voices came through windows; locked doors
were flimsy safeguards. I would go out into the streets to fight with
my delusion, and prowling women would mew after me; furtive, craving
men glance jealously at me; weary, pale workers go coughing by me with
tired eyes and eager paces, like wounded deer dripping blood; old
people, bent and dull, pass murmuring to themselves; and, all
unheeding, a ragged tail of gibing children. Then I would turn aside
into some chapel,—and even there, such was my disturbance, it seemed
that the preacher gibbered “Big Thinks,” even as the Ape-man had done;
or into some library, and there the intent faces over the books seemed
but patient creatures waiting for prey. Particularly nauseous were the
blank, expressionless faces of people in trains and omnibuses; they
seemed no more my fellow-creatures than dead bodies would be, so that I
did not dare to travel unless I was assured of being alone. And even it
seemed that I too was not a reasonable creature, but only an animal
tormented with some strange disorder in its brain which sent it to
wander alone, like a sheep stricken with gid.
This is a mood, however, that comes to me now, I thank God, more
rarely. I have withdrawn myself from the confusion of cities and
multitudes, and spend my days surrounded by wise books,—bright windows
in this life of ours, lit by the shining souls of men. I see few
strangers, and have but a small household. My days I devote to reading
and to experiments in chemistry, and I spend many of the clear nights
in the study of astronomy. There is—though I do not know how there is
or why there is—a sense of infinite peace and protection in the
glittering hosts of heaven. There it must be, I think, in the vast and
eternal laws of matter, and not in the daily cares and sins and
troubles of men, that whatever is more than animal within us must find
its solace and its hope. I \emph{hope}, or I could not live.
\par
And so, in hope and solitude, my story ends.
\par
\vspace*{1cm}
EDWARD PRENDICK.

293
chapters/The Sayers of the law.tex Normal file
View File

@ -0,0 +1,293 @@
Then something cold touched my hand. I started violently, and saw close
to me a dim pinkish thing, looking more like a flayed child than
anything else in the world. The creature had exactly the mild but
repulsive features of a sloth, the same low forehead and slow gestures.
As the first shock of the change of light passed, I saw about me more
distinctly. The little sloth-like creature was standing and staring at
me. My conductor had vanished. The place was a narrow passage between
high walls of lava, a crack in 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. The winding way up the
ravine between these was scarcely three yards wide, and was disfigured
by lumps of decaying fruit-pulp and other refuse, which accounted for
the disagreeable stench of the place.
The little pink sloth-creature was still blinking at me when my Ape-man
reappeared at the aperture of the nearest of these dens, and beckoned
me in. As he did so a slouching monster wriggled out of one of the
places, further up this strange street, and stood up in featureless
silhouette against the bright green beyond, staring at me. I hesitated,
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
middle and crawled into the little evil-smelling lean-to after my
conductor.
It was a semi-circular space, shaped like the half of a bee-hive; and
against the rocky wall that formed the inner side of it was a pile of
variegated fruits, cocoa-nuts among others. Some rough vessels of lava
and wood stood about the floor, and one on a rough stool. There was no
fire. In the darkest corner of the hut sat a shapeless mass of darkness
that grunted “Hey!” as I came in, and my Ape-man stood in the dim light
of the doorway and held out a split cocoa-nut to me as I crawled into
the other corner and squatted down. I took it, and began gnawing it, as
serenely as possible, in spite of a certain trepidation and the nearly
intolerable closeness of the den. The little pink sloth-creature stood
in the aperture of the hut, and something else with a drab face and
bright eyes came staring over its shoulder.
“Hey!” came out of the lump of mystery opposite. “It is a man.”
“It is a man,” gabbled my conductor, “a man, a man, a five-man, like
me.”
“Shut up!” said the voice from the dark, and grunted. I gnawed my
cocoa-nut amid an impressive stillness.
I peered hard into the blackness, but could distinguish nothing.
“It is a man,” the voice repeated. “He comes to live with us?”
It was a thick voice, with something in it—a kind of whistling
overtone—that struck me as peculiar; but the English accent was
strangely good.
The Ape-man looked at me as though he expected something. I perceived
the pause was interrogative. “He comes to live with you,” I said.
“It is a man. He must learn the Law.”
I began to distinguish now a deeper blackness in the black, a vague
outline of a hunched-up figure. Then I noticed the opening of the place
was darkened by two more black heads. My hand tightened on my stick.
The thing in the dark repeated in a louder tone, “Say the words.” I had
missed its last remark. “Not to go on all-fours; that is the Law,” it
repeated in a kind of sing-song.
I was puzzled.
“Say the words,” said the Ape-man, repeating, and the figures in the
doorway echoed this, with a threat in the tone of their voices.
I realised that I had to repeat this idiotic formula; and then began
the insanest ceremony. The voice in the dark began intoning a mad
litany, line by line, and I and the rest to repeat it. As they did so,
they swayed from side to side in the oddest way, and beat their hands
upon their knees; and I followed their example. I could have imagined I
was already dead and in another world. That dark hut, these grotesque
dim figures, just flecked here and there by a glimmer of light, and all
of them swaying in unison and chanting,
“Not to go on all-fours; that is the Law. Are we not Men?
“Not to suck up Drink; that is the Law. Are we not Men?
“Not to eat Fish or Flesh; that is the Law. Are we not Men?
“Not to claw the Bark of Trees; \emph{that} is the Law. Are we not Men?
“Not to chase other Men; \emph{that} is the Law. Are we not Men?”
And so from the prohibition of these acts of folly, on to the
prohibition of what I thought then were the maddest, most impossible,
and most indecent things one could well imagine. A kind of rhythmic
fervour fell on all of us; we gabbled and swayed faster and faster,
repeating this amazing Law. Superficially the contagion of these brutes
was upon me, but deep down within me the laughter and disgust struggled
together. We ran through a long list of prohibitions, and then the
chant swung round to a new formula.
“\emph{His} is the House of Pain.
“\emph{His} is the Hand that makes.
“\emph{His} is the Hand that wounds.
“\emph{His} is the Hand that heals.”
And so on for another long series, mostly quite incomprehensible
gibberish to me about \emph{Him}, whoever he might be. I could have fancied
it was a dream, but never before have I heard chanting in a dream.
“\emph{His} is the lightning flash,” we sang. “\emph{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 deification of
himself. However, I was too keenly aware of white teeth and strong
claws about me to stop my chanting on that account.
“\emph{His} are the stars in the sky.”
At last that song ended. I saw the Ape-man’s face shining with
perspiration; and my eyes being now accustomed to the darkness, I saw
more distinctly the figure in the corner from which the voice came. It
was the size of a man, but it seemed covered with a dull grey hair
almost like a Skye-terrier. What was it? What were they all? Imagine
yourself surrounded by all the most horrible cripples and maniacs it is
possible to conceive, and you may understand a little of my feelings
with these grotesque caricatures of humanity about me.
“He is a five-man, a five-man, a five-man—like me,” said the Ape-man.
I held out my hands. The grey creature in the corner leant forward.
“Not to run on all-fours; that is the Law. Are we not Men?” he said.
He put out a strangely distorted talon and gripped my fingers. The
thing was almost like the hoof of a deer produced into claws. I could
have yelled with surprise and pain. His face came forward and peered at
my nails, came forward into the light of the opening of the hut and I
saw with a quivering disgust that it was like the face of neither man
nor beast, but a mere shock of grey hair, with three shadowy
over-archings to mark the eyes and mouth.
“He has little nails,” said this grisly creature in his hairy beard.
“It is well.”
He threw my hand down, and instinctively I gripped my stick.
“Eat roots and herbs; it is His will,” said the Ape-man.
“I am the Sayer of the Law,” said the grey figure. “Here come all that
be new to learn the Law. I sit in the darkness and say the Law.”
“It is even so,” said one of the beasts in the doorway.
“Evil are the punishments of those who break the Law. None escape.”
“None escape,” said the Beast Folk, glancing furtively at one another.
“None, none,” said the Ape-man,—“none escape. See! I did a little
thing, a wrong thing, once. I jabbered, jabbered, stopped talking. None
could understand. I am burnt, branded in the hand. He is great. He is
good!”
“None escape,” said the grey creature in the corner.
“None escape,” said the Beast People, looking askance at one another.
“For every one the want that is bad,” said the grey Sayer of the Law.
“What you will want we do not know; we shall know. Some want to follow
things that move, to watch and slink and wait and spring; to kill and
bite, bite deep and rich, sucking the blood. It is bad. ‘Not to chase
other Men; that is the Law. Are we not Men? Not to eat Flesh or Fish;
that is the Law. Are we not Men?’”
“None escape,” said a dappled brute standing in the doorway.
“For every one the want is bad,” said the grey Sayer of the Law. “Some
want to go tearing with teeth and hands into the roots of things,
snuffing into the earth. It is bad.”
“None escape,” said the men in the door.
“Some go clawing trees; some go scratching at the graves of the dead;
some go fighting with foreheads or feet or claws; some bite suddenly,
none giving occasion; some love uncleanness.”
“None escape,” said the Ape-man, scratching his calf.
“None escape,” said the little pink sloth-creature.
“Punishment is sharp and sure. Therefore learn the Law. Say the words.”
And incontinently he began again the strange litany of the Law, and
again I and all these creatures began singing and swaying. My head
reeled with this jabbering and the close stench of the place; but I
kept on, trusting to find presently some chance of a new development.
“Not to go on all-fours; that is the Law. Are we not Men?”
We were making such a noise that I noticed nothing of a tumult outside,
until some one, who I think was one of the two Swine Men I had seen,
thrust his head over the little pink sloth-creature and shouted
something excitedly, something that I did not catch. Incontinently
those at the opening of the hut vanished; my Ape-man rushed out; the
thing that had sat in the dark followed him (I only observed 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 the hovel, my chair-rail in my
hand, every muscle of me quivering. Before me were the clumsy backs of
perhaps a score of these Beast People, their misshapen heads half
hidden by their shoulder-blades. They were gesticulating excitedly.
Other half-animal faces glared interrogation out of the hovels. Looking
in the direction in which they faced, I saw coming through the haze
under the trees beyond the end of the passage of dens the dark figure
and awful white face of Moreau. He was holding the leaping staghound
back, and close behind him came Montgomery revolver in hand.
For a moment I stood horror-struck. I turned and saw the passage behind
me blocked by another heavy brute, with a huge grey face and twinkling
little eyes, advancing towards me. I looked round and saw to the right
of me and a half-dozen yards in front of me a narrow gap in the wall of
rock through which a ray of light slanted into the shadows.
“Stop!” cried Moreau as I strode towards this, and then, “Hold him!”
At that, first one face turned towards me and then others. Their
bestial minds were happily slow. I dashed my shoulder into a clumsy
monster who was turning to see what Moreau meant, and flung him forward
into another. I felt his hands fly round, clutching at me and missing
me. The little pink sloth-creature dashed at me, and I gashed down its
ugly face with the nail in my stick and in another minute was
scrambling up a steep side pathway, a kind of sloping chimney, out of
the ravine. I heard a howl behind me, and cries of “Catch him!” “Hold
him!” and the grey-faced creature appeared behind me and jammed his
huge bulk into the cleft. “Go on! go on!” they howled. I clambered up
the narrow cleft in the rock and came out upon the sulphur on the
westward side of the village of the Beast Men.
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, thick undergrowth that was black and succulent
under foot. As I plunged into the reeds, my foremost pursuers emerged
from the gap. I broke my way through this undergrowth for some minutes.
The air behind me and about me was soon full of threatening cries. I
heard the tumult of my pursuers in the gap up the slope, then the
crashing of the reeds, and every now and then the crackling crash of a
branch. Some of the creatures roared like excited beasts of prey. The
staghound yelped to the left. I heard Moreau and Montgomery shouting in
the same direction. I turned sharply to the right. It seemed to me even
then that I heard Montgomery shouting for me to run for my life.
Presently the ground gave rich and oozy under my feet; but I was
desperate and went headlong into it, struggled through kneedeep, and so
came to a winding path among tall canes. The noise of my pursuers
passed away to my left. In one place three strange, pink, hopping
animals, about the size of cats, bolted before my footsteps. 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-walled gap, which came without
warning, like the ha-ha of an English park,—turned with an unexpected
abruptness. I was still running with all my might, and I never saw this
drop until I was flying headlong through the air.
I fell on my forearms and head, among thorns, and rose with a torn ear
and bleeding face. I had fallen into a precipitous ravine, rocky and
thorny, full of a hazy mist which drifted about me in wisps, and with a
narrow streamlet from which this mist came meandering down the centre.
I was astonished at this thin fog in the full blaze of daylight; but I
had no time to stand wondering then. I turned to my right, down-stream,
hoping to come to the sea in that direction, and so have my way open to
drown myself. It was only later I found that I had dropped my nailed
stick in my fall.
Presently the ravine grew narrower for a space, and carelessly I
stepped into the stream. I jumped out again pretty quickly, for the
water was almost boiling. I noticed too there was a thin sulphurous
scum drifting upon its coiling water. Almost immediately came a turn in
the ravine, and the indistinct blue horizon. The nearer sea was
flashing the sun from a myriad facets. I saw my death before me; but I
was hot and panting, with the warm blood oozing out on my face and
running pleasantly through my veins. I felt more than a touch of
exultation too, at having distanced my pursuers. It was not in me then
to go out and drown myself yet. I stared back the way I had come.
I listened. Save for the hum of the gnats and 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 a whip, and voices. They grew louder, then
fainter again. The noise receded up the stream and faded away. For a
while the chase was over; but I knew now how much hope of help for me
lay in the Beast People.

98
main.tex
View File

@ -185,105 +185,9 @@
\chapter{THE MAN ALONE}
\cleardoublepage
In the evening I started, and drove out to sea before a gentle wind
from the southwest, slowly, steadily; and the island grew smaller and
smaller, and the lank spire of smoke dwindled to a finer and finer line
against the hot sunset. The ocean rose up around me, hiding that low,
dark patch from my eyes. The daylight, the trailing glory of the sun,
went streaming out of the sky, was drawn aside like some luminous
curtain, and at last I looked into the blue gulf of immensity which the
sunshine hides, and saw the floating hosts of the stars. The sea was
silent, the sky was silent. I was alone with the night and silence.
So I drifted for three days, eating and drinking sparingly, and
meditating upon all that had happened to me,—not desiring very greatly
then to see men again. One unclean rag was about me, my hair a black
tangle: no doubt my discoverers thought me a madman.
\include{chapters/The Man Alone}
It is strange, but I felt no desire to return to mankind. I was only
glad to be quit of the foulness of the Beast People. And on the third
day I was picked up by a brig from Apia to San Francisco. Neither the
captain nor the mate would believe my story, judging that solitude and
danger had made me mad; and fearing their opinion might be that of
others, I refrained from telling my adventure further, and professed to
recall nothing that had happened to me between the loss of the \emph{Lady
Vain} and the time when I was picked up again,—the space of a year.
I had to act with the utmost circumspection to save myself from the
suspicion of insanity. My memory of the Law, of the two dead sailors,
of the ambuscades of the darkness, of the body in the canebrake,
haunted me; and, unnatural as it seems, with my return to mankind came,
instead of that confidence and sympathy I had expected, a strange
enhancement of the uncertainty and dread I had experienced during my
stay upon the island. No one would believe me; I was almost as queer to
men as I had been to the Beast People. I may have caught something of
the natural wildness of my companions. They say that terror is a
disease, and anyhow I can witness that for several years now a restless
fear has dwelt in my mind,—such a restless fear as a half-tamed lion
cub may feel.
My trouble took the strangest form. I could not persuade myself that
the men and women I met were not also another Beast People, animals
half wrought into the outward image of human souls, and that they would
presently begin to revert,—to show first this bestial mark and then
that. But I have confided my case to a strangely able man,—a man who
had known Moreau, and seemed half to credit my story; a mental
specialist,—and he has helped me mightily, though I do not expect that
the terror of that island will ever altogether leave me. At most times
it lies far in the back of my mind, a mere distant cloud, a memory, and
a faint distrust; but there are times when the little cloud spreads
until it obscures the whole sky. Then I look about me at my fellow-men;
and I go in fear. I see faces, keen and bright; others dull or
dangerous; others, unsteady, insincere,—none that have the calm
authority of a reasonable soul. I feel as though the animal was surging
up through them; that presently the degradation of the Islanders will
be played over again on a larger scale. I know this is an illusion;
that these seeming men and women about me are indeed men and women,—men
and women for ever, perfectly reasonable creatures, full of human
desires and tender solicitude, emancipated from instinct and the slaves
of no fantastic Law,—beings altogether different from the Beast Folk.
Yet I shrink from them, from their curious glances, their inquiries and
assistance, and long to be away from them and alone. For that reason I
live near the broad free downland, and can escape thither when this
shadow is over my soul; and very sweet is the empty downland then,
under the wind-swept sky.
When I lived in London the horror was well-nigh insupportable. I could
not get away from men: their voices came through windows; locked doors
were flimsy safeguards. I would go out into the streets to fight with
my delusion, and prowling women would mew after me; furtive, craving
men glance jealously at me; weary, pale workers go coughing by me with
tired eyes and eager paces, like wounded deer dripping blood; old
people, bent and dull, pass murmuring to themselves; and, all
unheeding, a ragged tail of gibing children. Then I would turn aside
into some chapel,—and even there, such was my disturbance, it seemed
that the preacher gibbered “Big Thinks,” even as the Ape-man had done;
or into some library, and there the intent faces over the books seemed
but patient creatures waiting for prey. Particularly nauseous were the
blank, expressionless faces of people in trains and omnibuses; they
seemed no more my fellow-creatures than dead bodies would be, so that I
did not dare to travel unless I was assured of being alone. And even it
seemed that I too was not a reasonable creature, but only an animal
tormented with some strange disorder in its brain which sent it to
wander alone, like a sheep stricken with gid.
This is a mood, however, that comes to me now, I thank God, more
rarely. I have withdrawn myself from the confusion of cities and
multitudes, and spend my days surrounded by wise books,—bright windows
in this life of ours, lit by the shining souls of men. I see few
strangers, and have but a small household. My days I devote to reading
and to experiments in chemistry, and I spend many of the clear nights
in the study of astronomy. There is—though I do not know how there is
or why there is—a sense of infinite peace and protection in the
glittering hosts of heaven. There it must be, I think, in the vast and
eternal laws of matter, and not in the daily cares and sins and
troubles of men, that whatever is more than animal within us must find
its solace and its hope. I \emph{hope}, or I could not live.
\par
And so, in hope and solitude, my story ends.
\par
\vspace*{1cm}
EDWARD PRENDICK.
\cleardoublepage
\thispagestyle{empty}
\vspace*{\stretch{1}}