Adicionado alguns capitulos em arquivos separados
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Gustavo Henrique Santos Souza de Miranda
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That night land was sighted after sundown, and the schooner hove to.
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Montgomery intimated that was his destination. It was too far to see
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any details; it seemed to me then simply a low-lying patch of dim blue
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in the uncertain blue-grey sea. An almost vertical streak of smoke went
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up from it into the sky. The captain was not on deck when it was
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sighted. After he had vented his wrath on me he had staggered below,
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and I understand he went to sleep on the floor of his own cabin. The
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mate practically assumed the command. He was the gaunt, taciturn
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individual we had seen at the wheel. Apparently he was in an evil
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temper with Montgomery. He took not the slightest notice of either of
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us. We dined with him in a sulky silence, after a few ineffectual
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efforts on my part to talk. It struck me too that the men regarded my
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companion and his animals in a singularly unfriendly manner. I found
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Montgomery very reticent about his purpose with these creatures, and
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about his destination; and though I was sensible of a growing curiosity
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as to both, I did not press him.
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We remained talking on the quarter deck until the sky was thick with
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stars. Except for an occasional sound in the yellow-lit forecastle and
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a movement of the animals now and then, the night was very still. The
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puma lay crouched together, watching us with shining eyes, a black heap
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in the corner of its cage. Montgomery produced some cigars. He talked
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to me of London in a tone of half-painful reminiscence, asking all
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kinds of questions about changes that had taken place. He spoke like a
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man who had loved his life there, and had been suddenly and irrevocably
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cut off from it. I gossiped as well as I could of this and that. All
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the time the strangeness of him was shaping itself in my mind; and as I
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talked I peered at his odd, pallid face in the dim light of the
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binnacle lantern behind me. Then I looked out at the darkling sea,
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where in the dimness his little island was hidden.
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This man, it seemed to me, had come out of Immensity merely to save my
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life. To-morrow he would drop over the side, and vanish again out of my
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existence. Even had it been under commonplace circumstances, it would
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have made me a trifle thoughtful; but in the first place was the
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singularity of an educated man living on this unknown little island,
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and coupled with that the extraordinary nature of his luggage. I found
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myself repeating the captain’s question. What did he want with the
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beasts? Why, too, had he pretended they were not his when I had
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remarked about them at first? Then, again, in his personal attendant
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there was a bizarre quality which had impressed me profoundly. These
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circumstances threw a haze of mystery round the man. They laid hold of
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my imagination, and hampered my tongue.
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Towards midnight our talk of London died away, and we stood side by
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side leaning over the bulwarks and staring dreamily over the silent,
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starlit sea, each pursuing his own thoughts. It was the atmosphere for
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sentiment, and I began upon my gratitude.
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“If I may say it,” said I, after a time, “you have saved my life.”
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“Chance,” he answered. “Just chance.”
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“I prefer to make my thanks to the accessible agent.”
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“Thank no one. You had the need, and I had the knowledge; and I
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injected and fed you much as I might have collected a specimen. I was
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bored and wanted something to do. If I’d been jaded that day, or hadn’t
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liked your face, well—it’s a curious question where you would have been
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now!”
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This damped my mood a little. “At any rate,” I began.
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“It’s a chance, I tell you,” he interrupted, “as everything is in a
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man’s life. Only the asses won’t see it! Why am I here now, an outcast
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from civilisation, instead of being a happy man enjoying all the
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pleasures of London? Simply because eleven years ago—I lost my head for
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ten minutes on a foggy night.”
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He stopped. “Yes?” said I.
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“That’s all.”
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We relapsed into silence. Presently he laughed. “There’s something in
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this starlight that loosens one’s tongue. I’m an ass, and yet somehow I
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would like to tell you.”
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“Whatever you tell me, you may rely upon my keeping to myself—if that’s
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it.”
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He was on the point of beginning, and then shook his head, doubtfully.
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“Don’t,” said I. “It is all the same to me. After all, it is better to
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keep your secret. There’s nothing gained but a little relief if I
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respect your confidence. If I don’t—well?”
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He grunted undecidedly. I felt I had him at a disadvantage, had caught
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him in the mood of indiscretion; and to tell the truth I was not
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curious to learn what might have driven a young medical student out of
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London. I have an imagination. I shrugged my shoulders and turned away.
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Over the taffrail leant a silent black figure, watching the stars. It
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was Montgomery’s strange attendant. It looked over its shoulder quickly
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with my movement, then looked away again.
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It may seem a little thing to you, perhaps, but it came like a sudden
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blow to me. The only light near us was a lantern at the wheel. The
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creature’s face was turned for one brief instant out of the dimness of
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the stern towards this illumination, and I saw that the eyes that
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glanced at me shone with a pale-green light. I did not know then that a
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reddish luminosity, at least, is not uncommon in human eyes. The thing
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came to me as stark inhumanity. That black figure with its eyes of fire
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struck down through all my adult thoughts and feelings, and for a
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moment the forgotten horrors of childhood came back to my mind. Then
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the effect passed as it had come. An uncouth black figure of a man, a
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figure of no particular import, hung over the taffrail against the
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starlight, and I found Montgomery was speaking to me.
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“I’m thinking of turning in, then,” said he, “if you’ve had enough of
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this.”
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I answered him incongruously. We went below, and he wished me
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good-night at the door of my cabin.
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That night I had some very unpleasant dreams. The waning moon rose
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late. Its light struck a ghostly white beam across my cabin, and made
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an ominous shape on the planking by my bunk. Then the staghounds woke,
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and began howling and baying; so that I dreamt fitfully, and scarcely
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slept until the approach of dawn.
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The reader will perhaps understand that at first everything was so
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strange about me, and my position was the outcome of such unexpected
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adventures, that I had no discernment of the relative strangeness of
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this or that thing. I followed the llama up the beach, and was
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overtaken by Montgomery, who asked me not to enter the stone enclosure.
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I noticed then that the puma in its cage and the pile of packages had
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been placed outside the entrance to this quadrangle.
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I turned and saw that the launch had now been unloaded, run out again,
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and was being beached, and the white-haired man was walking towards us.
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He addressed Montgomery.
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“And now comes the problem of this uninvited guest. What are we to do
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with him?”
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“He knows something of science,” said Montgomery.
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“I’m itching to get to work again—with this new stuff,” said the
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white-haired man, nodding towards the enclosure. His eyes grew
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brighter.
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“I daresay you are,” said Montgomery, in anything but a cordial tone.
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“We can’t send him over there, and we can’t spare the time to build him
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a new shanty; and we certainly can’t take him into our confidence just
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yet.”
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“I’m in your hands,” said I. I had no idea of what he meant by “over
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there.”
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“I’ve been thinking of the same things,” Montgomery answered. “There’s
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my room with the outer door—”
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“That’s it,” said the elder man, promptly, looking at Montgomery; and
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all three of us went towards the enclosure. “I’m sorry to make a
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mystery, Mr. Prendick; but you’ll remember you’re uninvited. Our little
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establishment here contains a secret or so, is a kind of Blue-Beard’s
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chamber, in fact. Nothing very dreadful, really, to a sane man; but
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just now, as we don’t know you—”
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“Decidedly,” said I, “I should be a fool to take offence at any want of
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confidence.”
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He twisted his heavy mouth into a faint smile—he was one of those
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saturnine people who smile with the corners of the mouth down,—and
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bowed his acknowledgment of my complaisance. The main entrance to the
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enclosure was passed; it was a heavy wooden gate, framed in iron and
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locked, with the cargo of the launch piled outside it, and at the
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corner we came to a small doorway I had not previously observed. The
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white-haired man produced a bundle of keys from the pocket of his
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greasy blue jacket, opened this door, and entered. His keys, and the
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elaborate locking-up of the place even while it was still under his
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eye, struck me as peculiar. I followed him, and found myself in a small
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apartment, plainly but not uncomfortably furnished and with its inner
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door, which was slightly ajar, opening into a paved courtyard. This
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inner door Montgomery at once closed. A hammock was slung across the
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darker corner of the room, and a small unglazed window defended by an
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iron bar looked out towards the sea.
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This the white-haired man told me was to be my apartment; and the inner
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door, which “for fear of accidents,” he said, he would lock on the
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other side, was my limit inward. He called my attention to a convenient
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deck-chair before the window, and to an array of old books, chiefly, I
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found, surgical works and editions of the Latin and Greek classics
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(languages I cannot read with any comfort), on a shelf near the
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hammock. He left the room by the outer door, as if to avoid opening the
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inner one again.
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“We usually have our meals in here,” said Montgomery, and then, as if
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in doubt, went out after the other. “Moreau!” I heard him call, and for
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the moment I do not think I noticed. Then as I handled the books on the
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shelf it came up in consciousness: Where had I heard the name of Moreau
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before? I sat down before the window, took out the biscuits that still
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remained to me, and ate them with an excellent appetite. Moreau!
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Through the window I saw one of those unaccountable men in white,
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lugging a packing-case along the beach. Presently the window-frame hid
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him. Then I heard a key inserted and turned in the lock behind me.
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After a little while I heard through the locked door the noise of the
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staghounds, that had now been brought up from the beach. They were not
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barking, but sniffing and growling in a curious fashion. I could hear
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the rapid patter of their feet, and Montgomery’s voice soothing them.
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I was very much impressed by the elaborate secrecy of these two men
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regarding the contents of the place, and for some time I was thinking
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of that and of the unaccountable familiarity of the name of Moreau; but
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so odd is the human memory that I could not then recall that well-known
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name in its proper connection. From that my thoughts went to the
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indefinable queerness of the deformed man on the beach. I never saw
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such a gait, such odd motions as he pulled at the box. I recalled that
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none of these men had spoken to me, though most of them I had found
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looking at me at one time or another in a peculiarly furtive manner,
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quite unlike the frank stare of your unsophisticated savage. Indeed,
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they had all seemed remarkably taciturn, and when they did speak,
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endowed with very uncanny voices. What was wrong with them? Then I
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recalled the eyes of Montgomery’s ungainly attendant.
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Just as I was thinking of him he came in. He was now dressed in white,
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and carried a little tray with some coffee and boiled vegetables
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thereon. I could hardly repress a shuddering recoil as he came, bending
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amiably, and placed the tray before me on the table. Then astonishment
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paralysed me. Under his stringy black locks I saw his ear; it jumped
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upon me suddenly close to my face. The man had pointed ears, covered
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with a fine brown fur!
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“Your breakfast, sair,” he said.
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I stared at his face without attempting to answer him. He turned and
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went towards the door, regarding me oddly over his shoulder. I followed
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him out with my eyes; and as I did so, by some odd trick of unconscious
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cerebration, there came surging into my head the phrase, “The Moreau
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Hollows”—was it? “The Moreau—” Ah! It sent my memory back ten years.
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“The Moreau Horrors!” The phrase drifted loose in my mind for a moment,
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and then I saw it in red lettering on a little buff-coloured pamphlet,
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to read which made one shiver and creep. Then I remembered distinctly
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all about it. That long-forgotten pamphlet came back with startling
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vividness to my mind. I had been a mere lad then, and Moreau was, I
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suppose, about fifty,—a prominent and masterful physiologist,
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well-known in scientific circles for his extraordinary imagination and
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his brutal directness in discussion.
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Was this the same Moreau? He had published some very astonishing facts
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in connection with the transfusion of blood, and in addition was known
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to be doing valuable work on morbid growths. Then suddenly his career
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was closed. He had to leave England. A journalist obtained access to
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his laboratory in the capacity of laboratory-assistant, with the
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deliberate intention of making sensational exposures; and by the help
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of a shocking accident (if it was an accident), his gruesome pamphlet
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became notorious. On the day of its publication a wretched dog, flayed
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and otherwise mutilated, escaped from Moreau’s house. It was in the
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silly season, and a prominent editor, a cousin of the temporary
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laboratory-assistant, appealed to the conscience of the nation. It was
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not the first time that conscience has turned against the methods of
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research. The doctor was simply howled out of the country. It may be
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that he deserved to be; but I still think that the tepid support of his
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fellow-investigators and his desertion by the great body of scientific
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workers was a shameful thing. Yet some of his experiments, by the
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journalist’s account, were wantonly cruel. He might perhaps have
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purchased his social peace by abandoning his investigations; but he
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apparently preferred the latter, as most men would who have once fallen
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under the overmastering spell of research. He was unmarried, and had
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indeed nothing but his own interest to consider.
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I felt convinced that this must be the same man. Everything pointed to
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it. It dawned upon me to what end the puma and the other animals—which
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had now been brought with other luggage into the enclosure behind the
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house—were destined; and a curious faint odour, the halitus of
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something familiar, an odour that had been in the background of my
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consciousness hitherto, suddenly came forward into the forefront of my
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thoughts. It was the antiseptic odour of the dissecting-room. I heard
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the puma growling through the wall, and one of the dogs yelped as
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though it had been struck.
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Yet surely, and especially to another scientific man, there was nothing
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so horrible in vivisection as to account for this secrecy; and by some
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odd leap in my thoughts the pointed ears and luminous eyes of
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Montgomery’s attendant came back again before me with the sharpest
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definition. I stared before me out at the green sea, frothing under a
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freshening breeze, and let these and other strange memories of the last
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few days chase one another through my mind.
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What could it all mean? A locked enclosure on a lonely island, a
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notorious vivisector, and these crippled and distorted men?
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As I drew near the house I saw that the light shone from the open door
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of my room; and then I heard coming from out of the darkness at the
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side of that orange oblong of light, the voice of Montgomery shouting,
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“Prendick!” I continued running. Presently I heard him again. I replied
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by a feeble “Hullo!” and in another moment had staggered up to him.
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“Where have you been?” said he, holding me at arm’s length, so that the
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light from the door fell on my face. “We have both been so busy that we
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forgot you until about half an hour ago.” He led me into the room and
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sat me down in the deck chair. For awhile I was blinded by the light.
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“We did not think you would start to explore this island of ours
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without telling us,” he said; and then, “I was afraid—But—what—Hullo!”
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My last remaining strength slipped from me, and my head fell forward on
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my chest. I think he found a certain satisfaction in giving me brandy.
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“For God’s sake,” said I, “fasten that door.”
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“You’ve been meeting some of our curiosities, eh?” said he.
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He locked the door and turned to me again. He asked me no questions,
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but gave me some more brandy and water and pressed me to eat. I was in
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a state of collapse. He said something vague about his forgetting to
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warn me, and asked me briefly when I left the house and what I had
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seen.
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I answered him as briefly, in fragmentary sentences. “Tell me what it
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all means,” said I, in a state bordering on hysterics.
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“It’s nothing so very dreadful,” said he. “But I think you have had
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about enough for one day.” The puma suddenly gave a sharp yell of pain.
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At that he swore under his breath. “I’m damned,” said he, “if this
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||||||
|
place is not as bad as Gower Street, with its cats.”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“Montgomery,” said I, “what was that thing that came after me? Was it a
|
||||||
|
beast or was it a man?”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“If you don’t sleep to-night,” he said, “you’ll be off your head
|
||||||
|
to-morrow.”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I stood up in front of him. “What was that thing that came after me?” I
|
||||||
|
asked.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
He looked me squarely in the eyes, and twisted his mouth askew. His
|
||||||
|
eyes, which had seemed animated a minute before, went dull. “From your
|
||||||
|
account,” said he, “I’m thinking it was a bogle.”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I felt a gust of intense irritation, which passed as quickly as it
|
||||||
|
came. I flung myself into the chair again, and pressed my hands on my
|
||||||
|
forehead. The puma began once more.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Montgomery came round behind me and put his hand on my shoulder. “Look
|
||||||
|
here, Prendick,” he said, “I had no business to let you drift out into
|
||||||
|
this silly island of ours. But it’s not so bad as you feel, man. Your
|
||||||
|
nerves are worked to rags. Let me give you something that will make you
|
||||||
|
sleep. \emph{That}—will keep on for hours yet. You must simply get to sleep,
|
||||||
|
or I won’t answer for it.”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I did not reply. I bowed forward, and covered my face with my hands.
|
||||||
|
Presently he returned with a small measure containing a dark liquid.
|
||||||
|
This he gave me. I took it unresistingly, and he helped me into the
|
||||||
|
hammock.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
When I awoke, it was broad day. For a little while I lay flat, staring
|
||||||
|
at the roof above me. The rafters, I observed, were made out of the
|
||||||
|
timbers of a ship. Then I turned my head, and saw a meal prepared for
|
||||||
|
me on the table. 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 the floor.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I got up and sat down before the food. I had a heavy feeling in my
|
||||||
|
head, and only the vaguest memory at first of the things that had
|
||||||
|
happened over night. The morning breeze blew very pleasantly through
|
||||||
|
the unglazed window, and that and the food contributed to the sense of
|
||||||
|
animal comfort which I experienced. Presently the door behind me—the
|
||||||
|
door inward towards the yard of the enclosure—opened. I turned and saw
|
||||||
|
Montgomery’s face.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“All right,” said he. “I’m frightfully busy.” And he shut the door.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Afterwards I discovered that he forgot to re-lock it. Then I recalled
|
||||||
|
the expression of his face the previous night, and with that the memory
|
||||||
|
of all I had experienced reconstructed itself before me. Even as that
|
||||||
|
fear came back to me came a cry from within; but this time it was not
|
||||||
|
the cry of a puma. I put down the mouthful that hesitated upon my lips,
|
||||||
|
and listened. Silence, save for the whisper of the morning breeze. I
|
||||||
|
began to think my ears had deceived me.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
After a long pause I resumed my meal, but with my ears still vigilant.
|
||||||
|
Presently I heard something else, very faint and low. I sat as if
|
||||||
|
frozen in my attitude. Though it was faint and low, it moved me more
|
||||||
|
profoundly than all that I had hitherto heard of the abominations
|
||||||
|
behind the wall. There was no mistake 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; it was a human being in torment!
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
As I realised this I rose, and in three steps had crossed the room,
|
||||||
|
seized the handle of the door into the yard, and flung it open before
|
||||||
|
me.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“Prendick, man! Stop!” cried Montgomery, intervening.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
A startled deerhound yelped and snarled. There was blood, I saw, in the
|
||||||
|
sink,—brown, and some scarlet—and I smelt the peculiar smell of
|
||||||
|
carbolic acid. Then through an open doorway beyond, in the dim light of
|
||||||
|
the shadow, I saw something bound painfully upon a framework, scarred,
|
||||||
|
red, and bandaged; and then blotting this out appeared the face of old
|
||||||
|
Moreau, white and terrible. In a moment he had gripped me by the
|
||||||
|
shoulder with a hand that was smeared red, had twisted me off my feet,
|
||||||
|
and flung me headlong back into my own room. He lifted me as though I
|
||||||
|
was a little child. I fell at full length upon the floor, and the door
|
||||||
|
slammed and shut out the passionate intensity of his face. Then I heard
|
||||||
|
the key turn in the lock, and Montgomery’s voice in expostulation.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“Ruin the work of a lifetime,” I heard Moreau 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 up and stood trembling, my
|
||||||
|
mind a chaos of the most horrible misgivings. Could it be possible, I
|
||||||
|
thought, that such a thing as the vivisection of men was carried on
|
||||||
|
here? The question shot like lightning across a tumultuous sky; and
|
||||||
|
suddenly the clouded horror of my mind condensed into a vivid
|
||||||
|
realisation of my own danger.
|
||||||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,111 @@
|
||||||
|
Montgomery interrupted my tangle of mystification and suspicion about
|
||||||
|
one o’clock, and his grotesque attendant followed him with a tray
|
||||||
|
bearing bread, some herbs and other eatables, a flask of whiskey, a jug
|
||||||
|
of water, and three glasses and knives. I glanced askance at this
|
||||||
|
strange creature, and found him watching me with his queer, restless
|
||||||
|
eyes. Montgomery said he would lunch with me, but that Moreau was too
|
||||||
|
preoccupied with some work to come.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“Moreau!” said I. “I know that name.”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“The devil you do!” said he. “What an ass I was to mention it to you! I
|
||||||
|
might have thought. Anyhow, it will give you an inkling of
|
||||||
|
our—mysteries. Whiskey?”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“No, thanks; I’m an abstainer.”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“I wish I’d been. But it’s no use locking the door after the steed is
|
||||||
|
stolen. It was that infernal stuff which led to my coming here,—that,
|
||||||
|
and a foggy night. I thought myself in luck at the time, when Moreau
|
||||||
|
offered to get me off. It’s queer—”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“Montgomery,” said I, suddenly, as the outer door closed, “why has your
|
||||||
|
man pointed ears?”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“Damn!” he said, over his first mouthful of food. He stared at me for a
|
||||||
|
moment, and then repeated, “Pointed ears?”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“Little points to them,” said I, as calmly as possible, with a catch in
|
||||||
|
my breath; “and a fine black fur at the edges?”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
He helped himself to whiskey and water with great deliberation. “I was
|
||||||
|
under the impression—that his hair covered his ears.”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“I saw them as he stooped by me to put that coffee you sent to me on
|
||||||
|
the table. And his eyes shine in the dark.”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
By this time Montgomery had recovered from the surprise of my question.
|
||||||
|
“I always thought,” he said deliberately, with a certain accentuation
|
||||||
|
of his flavouring of lisp, “that there \emph{was} something the matter with
|
||||||
|
his ears, from the way he covered them. What were they like?”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I was persuaded from his manner that this ignorance was a pretence.
|
||||||
|
Still, I could hardly tell the man that I thought him a liar.
|
||||||
|
“Pointed,” I said; “rather small and furry,—distinctly furry. But the
|
||||||
|
whole man is one of the strangest beings I ever set eyes on.”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
A sharp, hoarse cry of animal pain came from the enclosure behind us.
|
||||||
|
Its depth and volume testified to the puma. I saw Montgomery wince.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“Yes?” he said.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“Where did you pick up the creature?”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“San Francisco. He’s an ugly brute, I admit. Half-witted, you know.
|
||||||
|
Can’t remember where he came from. But I’m used to him, you know. We
|
||||||
|
both are. How does he strike you?”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“He’s unnatural,” I said. “There’s something about him—don’t think me
|
||||||
|
fanciful, but it gives me a nasty little sensation, a tightening of my
|
||||||
|
muscles, when he comes near me. It’s a touch—of the diabolical, in
|
||||||
|
fact.”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Montgomery had stopped eating while I told him this. “Rum!” he said.
|
||||||
|
“\emph{I} can’t see it.” He resumed his meal. “I had no idea of it,” he
|
||||||
|
said, and masticated. “The crew of the schooner must have felt it the
|
||||||
|
same. Made a dead set at the poor devil. You saw the captain?”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Suddenly the puma howled again, this time more painfully. Montgomery
|
||||||
|
swore under his breath. I had half a mind to attack him about the men
|
||||||
|
on the beach. Then the poor brute within gave vent to a series of
|
||||||
|
short, sharp cries.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“Your men on the beach,” said I; “what race are they?”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“Excellent fellows, aren’t they?” said he, absentmindedly, knitting his
|
||||||
|
brows as the animal yelled out sharply.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I said no more. There was another outcry worse than the former. He
|
||||||
|
looked at me with his dull grey eyes, and then took some more whiskey.
|
||||||
|
He tried to draw me into a discussion about alcohol, professing to have
|
||||||
|
saved my life with it. He seemed anxious to lay stress on the fact that
|
||||||
|
I owed my life to him. I answered him distractedly.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Presently our meal came to an end; the misshapen monster with the
|
||||||
|
pointed ears cleared the remains away, and Montgomery left me alone in
|
||||||
|
the room again. All the time he had been in a state of ill-concealed
|
||||||
|
irritation at the noise of the vivisected puma. He had spoken of his
|
||||||
|
odd want of nerve, and left me to the obvious application.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I found myself that the cries were singularly irritating, and they grew
|
||||||
|
in depth and intensity as the afternoon wore on. They were painful at
|
||||||
|
first, but their constant resurgence at last altogether upset my
|
||||||
|
balance. I flung aside 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 upon me steadily, grew at last
|
||||||
|
to such an exquisite expression of suffering that I could stand it in
|
||||||
|
that confined room no longer. I stepped out of the door into the
|
||||||
|
slumberous heat of the late afternoon, and walking past the main
|
||||||
|
entrance—locked again, I noticed—turned the 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 was in the
|
||||||
|
next room, and had it been dumb, I believe—I have thought since—I could
|
||||||
|
have stood it well enough. It is when suffering finds a voice and sets
|
||||||
|
our nerves quivering that this pity comes troubling us. But in spite of
|
||||||
|
the brilliant sunlight and the green fans of the trees waving in the
|
||||||
|
soothing sea-breeze, the world was a confusion, blurred with drifting
|
||||||
|
black and red phantasms, until I was out of earshot of the house in the
|
||||||
|
chequered wall.
|
||||||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,185 @@
|
||||||
|
We left the cabin and found a man at the companion obstructing our way.
|
||||||
|
He was standing on the ladder with his back to us, peering over the
|
||||||
|
combing of the hatchway. He was, I could see, a misshapen man, short,
|
||||||
|
broad, and clumsy, with a crooked back, a hairy neck, and a head sunk
|
||||||
|
between his shoulders. He was dressed in dark-blue serge, and had
|
||||||
|
peculiarly thick, coarse, black hair. I heard the unseen dogs growl
|
||||||
|
furiously, and forthwith he ducked back,—coming into contact with the
|
||||||
|
hand I put out to fend him off from myself. He turned with animal
|
||||||
|
swiftness.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In some indefinable way the black face thus flashed upon me shocked me
|
||||||
|
profoundly. It was a singularly deformed one. The facial part
|
||||||
|
projected, forming something dimly suggestive of a muzzle, and the huge
|
||||||
|
half-open mouth showed as big white teeth as I had ever seen in a human
|
||||||
|
mouth. His eyes were blood-shot at the edges, with scarcely a rim of
|
||||||
|
white round the hazel pupils. There was a curious glow of excitement in
|
||||||
|
his face.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“Confound you!” said Montgomery. “Why the devil don’t you get out of
|
||||||
|
the way?”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The black-faced man started aside without a word. I went on up the
|
||||||
|
companion, staring at him instinctively as I did so. Montgomery stayed
|
||||||
|
at the foot for a moment. “You have no business here, you know,” he
|
||||||
|
said in a deliberate tone. “Your place is forward.”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The black-faced man cowered. “They—won’t have me forward.” He spoke
|
||||||
|
slowly, with a queer, hoarse quality in his voice.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“Won’t have you forward!” said Montgomery, in a menacing voice. “But I
|
||||||
|
tell you to go!” He was on the brink of saying something further, then
|
||||||
|
looked up at me suddenly and followed me up the ladder.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I had paused half way through the hatchway, looking back, still
|
||||||
|
astonished beyond measure at the grotesque ugliness of this black-faced
|
||||||
|
creature. I had never beheld such a repulsive and extraordinary face
|
||||||
|
before, and yet—if the contradiction is credible—I experienced at the
|
||||||
|
same time an odd feeling that in some way I \emph{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; and
|
||||||
|
yet that scarcely satisfied my suspicion of a previous acquaintance.
|
||||||
|
Yet how one could have set eyes on so singular a face and yet have
|
||||||
|
forgotten the precise occasion, passed my imagination.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Montgomery’s movement to follow me released my 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 never beheld a deck so dirty. It was littered with scraps
|
||||||
|
of carrot, shreds of green stuff, and indescribable filth. Fastened by
|
||||||
|
chains to the mainmast were a number of grisly staghounds, who now
|
||||||
|
began leaping and barking at me, and by the mizzen a huge puma was
|
||||||
|
cramped in a little iron cage far too small even to give it turning
|
||||||
|
room. Farther under the starboard bulwark were some big hutches
|
||||||
|
containing a number of rabbits, and a solitary llama was squeezed in a
|
||||||
|
mere box of a cage forward. The dogs were muzzled by leather straps.
|
||||||
|
The only human being on deck was a gaunt and silent sailor at the
|
||||||
|
wheel.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The patched and dirty spankers were tense before the wind, and up aloft
|
||||||
|
the little ship seemed carrying every sail she had. The sky was clear,
|
||||||
|
the sun midway down the western sky; long waves, capped by the breeze
|
||||||
|
with froth, were running with us. We went past the steersman to the
|
||||||
|
taffrail, and saw the water 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 furious blasphemy from the
|
||||||
|
companion hatchway, and the deformed man with the black face came up
|
||||||
|
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 this time, became furiously excited, howling and
|
||||||
|
leaping against their chains. The black hesitated before them, and this
|
||||||
|
gave the red-haired man time to come up with him and deliver a
|
||||||
|
tremendous 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 they were muzzled. The red-haired man
|
||||||
|
gave a yawp of exultation and stood staggering, and as it seemed to me
|
||||||
|
in serious danger of either going backwards down the companion hatchway
|
||||||
|
or forwards upon his victim.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
So soon as the second man had appeared, Montgomery had started forward.
|
||||||
|
“Steady on there!” he cried, in a tone of remonstrance. A couple of
|
||||||
|
sailors appeared on the forecastle. The black-faced man, howling in a
|
||||||
|
singular voice rolled about under the feet of the dogs. No one
|
||||||
|
attempted to help him. The brutes did their best to worry him, butting
|
||||||
|
their muzzles at him. There was a quick dance of their lithe
|
||||||
|
grey-figured bodies over the clumsy, prostrate figure. The sailors
|
||||||
|
forward shouted, as though it was admirable sport. Montgomery gave an
|
||||||
|
angry exclamation, and went striding down the deck, and I followed him.
|
||||||
|
The black-faced man scrambled up and staggered forward, going and
|
||||||
|
leaning over the bulwark by the main shrouds, where he remained,
|
||||||
|
panting and glaring over his 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, “this won’t
|
||||||
|
do!”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I stood behind Montgomery. The captain came half round, and regarded
|
||||||
|
him with the dull and solemn eyes of a drunken man. “Wha’ won’t do?” he
|
||||||
|
said, and added, after looking sleepily 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 to
|
||||||
|
the bulwarks.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“Look you here, Captain,” he said; “that man of mine is not to be
|
||||||
|
ill-treated. He has been hazed ever since he came aboard.”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
For a minute, alcoholic fumes kept the captain speechless. “Blasted
|
||||||
|
Sawbones!” was all he considered necessary.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I could see that Montgomery had one of those slow, pertinacious tempers
|
||||||
|
that will warm day after day to a white heat, and never again cool to
|
||||||
|
forgiveness; and I saw too that this quarrel had been some time
|
||||||
|
growing. “The man’s drunk,” said I, perhaps officiously; “you’ll do no
|
||||||
|
good.”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Montgomery gave an ugly twist to his dropping lip. “He’s always drunk.
|
||||||
|
Do you think that excuses his assaulting his passengers?”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“My ship,” began the captain, waving his hand unsteadily towards the
|
||||||
|
cages, “was a clean ship. Look at it now!” It was certainly anything
|
||||||
|
but clean. “Crew,” continued the captain, “clean, respectable crew.”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“You agreed to take the beasts.”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“I wish I’d never set eyes on your infernal island. What the devil—want
|
||||||
|
beasts for on an island like that? Then, that man of yours—understood
|
||||||
|
he was a man. He’s a lunatic; and he hadn’t no business aft. Do you
|
||||||
|
think the whole damned ship belongs to you?”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“Your sailors began to haze the poor devil as soon as he came aboard.”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“That’s just what he is—he’s a devil! an ugly devil! My men can’t stand
|
||||||
|
him. \emph{I} can’t stand him. None of us can’t stand him. Nor \emph{you}
|
||||||
|
either!”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Montgomery turned away. “\emph{You} leave that man alone, anyhow,” he said,
|
||||||
|
nodding his head as he spoke.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
But the captain meant to quarrel now. He raised his voice. “If he comes
|
||||||
|
this end of the ship again I’ll cut his insides out, I tell you. Cut
|
||||||
|
out his blasted insides! Who are \emph{You}, to tell \emph{me}what \emph{I'm}to do?
|
||||||
|
I tell you I’m captain of this ship,—captain and owner. I’m the law
|
||||||
|
here, I tell you,—the law and the prophets. I bargained to take a man
|
||||||
|
and his attendant to and from Arica, and bring back some animals. I
|
||||||
|
never bargained to carry a mad 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. The captain began
|
||||||
|
some abuse even fouler than the last. “Shut up!” I said, turning on him
|
||||||
|
sharply, for I had seen danger in Montgomery’s white face. With that I
|
||||||
|
brought the downpour on myself.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
However, I was glad to avert what was uncommonly near a scuffle, even
|
||||||
|
at the price of the captain’s drunken ill-will. I do not think I have
|
||||||
|
ever heard 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” I had
|
||||||
|
forgotten that I was merely a bit of human flotsam, cut off from my
|
||||||
|
resources and with my fare unpaid; a mere casual dependant on the
|
||||||
|
bounty, or speculative enterprise, of the ship. He reminded me of it
|
||||||
|
with considerable vigour; but at any rate I prevented a fight.
|
||||||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,158 @@
|
||||||
|
But the islanders, seeing that I was really adrift, took pity on me. I
|
||||||
|
drifted very slowly to the eastward, approaching the island slantingly;
|
||||||
|
and presently I saw, with hysterical relief, the launch come round 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-cases in the stern
|
||||||
|
sheets. This individual stared fixedly at me without moving or
|
||||||
|
speaking. The black-faced cripple was glaring at me as fixedly in the
|
||||||
|
bows near the puma. There were three other men besides,—three strange
|
||||||
|
brutish-looking fellows, at whom the staghounds were snarling savagely.
|
||||||
|
Montgomery, who was steering, brought the boat by me, and rising,
|
||||||
|
caught and fastened my painter to the tiller to tow me, for there was
|
||||||
|
no room aboard.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I had recovered from my hysterical phase by this time and answered his
|
||||||
|
hail, as he approached, bravely enough. I told him the dingey was
|
||||||
|
nearly swamped, and he reached me a piggin. I was jerked back as the
|
||||||
|
rope tightened between the boats. For some time I was busy baling.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
It was not until I had got the water under (for the water in the dingey
|
||||||
|
had been shipped; the boat was perfectly sound) that I had leisure to
|
||||||
|
look at the people in the launch again.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The white-haired man I found was still regarding me steadfastly, but
|
||||||
|
with an expression, as I now fancied, of some perplexity. When my eyes
|
||||||
|
met his, he looked down at the staghound that sat between his knees. He
|
||||||
|
was a powerfully-built man, as I have said, with a fine forehead and
|
||||||
|
rather heavy features; but his eyes had that odd drooping of the skin
|
||||||
|
above the lids which often comes with advancing years, and the 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—I
|
||||||
|
knew not what—that gave me a queer spasm of disgust. I looked steadily
|
||||||
|
at them, and the impression did not pass, though I failed to see what
|
||||||
|
had occasioned it. They seemed to me then to be brown men; but their
|
||||||
|
limbs were oddly swathed in some thin, dirty, white stuff down even to
|
||||||
|
the fingers and feet: I have never seen men so wrapped up before, and
|
||||||
|
women so only in the East. They wore turbans too, and thereunder peered
|
||||||
|
out their elfin faces 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 I have seen.
|
||||||
|
The white-haired man, who I knew was a good six feet in height, sat a
|
||||||
|
head below any one of the three. I found afterwards that really none
|
||||||
|
were taller than myself; but their bodies were abnormally long, and the
|
||||||
|
thigh-part of the leg short and curiously twisted. At any rate, they
|
||||||
|
were an amazingly ugly gang, and over the heads of them under the
|
||||||
|
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 away from my direct stare, and looked at me in
|
||||||
|
an odd, furtive manner. It occurred to me that I was perhaps annoying
|
||||||
|
them, and I turned my attention to the island we were approaching.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
It was low, and covered with thick vegetation,—chiefly a kind of palm,
|
||||||
|
that was new to me. From one point a thin white thread of vapour rose
|
||||||
|
slantingly to an immense height, and then frayed out like a down
|
||||||
|
feather. We were now within the embrace of a broad bay flanked on
|
||||||
|
either hand by a low promontory. The beach was of dull-grey sand, 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 some greyish stone, which I found
|
||||||
|
subsequently was built partly of coral and partly of pumiceous lava.
|
||||||
|
Two thatched roofs peeped from within this enclosure. A man stood
|
||||||
|
awaiting us at the water’s edge. I fancied while we were still far off
|
||||||
|
that I saw some other and very grotesque-looking creatures scuttle into
|
||||||
|
the bushes upon the slope; but I saw nothing of these as we drew
|
||||||
|
nearer. This man was of a moderate size, and with a black negroid face.
|
||||||
|
He had a large, almost lipless, mouth, extraordinary lank arms, long
|
||||||
|
thin feet, and bow-legs, and stood with his heavy face thrust forward
|
||||||
|
staring at us. He was dressed like Montgomery and his white-haired
|
||||||
|
companion, in jacket and trousers of blue serge. As we came still
|
||||||
|
nearer, this individual began to run to and fro on the beach, making
|
||||||
|
the most grotesque movements.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
At a word of command from Montgomery, the four 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 the man on the beach hastened towards us. This dock, as I call it,
|
||||||
|
was really a mere ditch just long enough at this phase of the tide to
|
||||||
|
take the longboat. I heard the bows ground in the sand, staved the
|
||||||
|
dingey off the rudder of the big boat with my piggin, and freeing the
|
||||||
|
painter, landed. The three muffled men, with the clumsiest movements,
|
||||||
|
scrambled out upon 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 bandaged
|
||||||
|
boatmen,—not stiff they were, but distorted in some odd way, almost as
|
||||||
|
if they were jointed in 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 another in odd
|
||||||
|
guttural tones, and the man who had waited for us on the beach began
|
||||||
|
chattering to them excitedly—a foreign language, as I fancied—as they
|
||||||
|
laid hands on some bales piled near the stern. Somewhere I had heard
|
||||||
|
such a voice before, and I could not think where. The white-haired man
|
||||||
|
stood, holding in a tumult of six dogs, and bawling orders over their
|
||||||
|
din. Montgomery, having unshipped the rudder, landed likewise, and all
|
||||||
|
set to work at unloading. I was too faint, what with my long fast and
|
||||||
|
the sun beating down on my bare head, to offer any assistance.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Presently the white-haired man seemed to recollect my presence, and
|
||||||
|
came up to me.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“You look,” said he, “as though you had scarcely breakfasted.” His
|
||||||
|
little eyes were a brilliant black under his heavy brows. “I must
|
||||||
|
apologise for that. Now you are our guest, we must make you
|
||||||
|
comfortable,—though you are uninvited, you know.” He looked keenly into
|
||||||
|
my face. “Montgomery says you are an educated man, Mr. Prendick; says
|
||||||
|
you know something of science. May I ask what that signifies?”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I told him I had spent some years at the Royal College of Science, and
|
||||||
|
had done some researches in biology under Huxley. He raised his
|
||||||
|
eyebrows slightly at that.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“That alters the case a little, Mr. Prendick,” he said, with a trifle
|
||||||
|
more respect in his manner. “As it happens, we are biologists here.
|
||||||
|
This is a biological station—of a sort.” His eye rested on the men in
|
||||||
|
white who were busily hauling the puma, on rollers, towards the walled
|
||||||
|
yard. “I and Montgomery, at least,” he added. Then, “When you will be
|
||||||
|
able to get away, I can’t say. We’re off the track to anywhere. We see
|
||||||
|
a ship once in a twelve-month or so.”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
He left me abruptly, and went up the beach past this group, and I think
|
||||||
|
entered the enclosure. The other two men were with Montgomery, erecting
|
||||||
|
a pile of smaller packages on a low-wheeled truck. The llama was still
|
||||||
|
on the launch with the rabbit hutches; the staghounds were still lashed
|
||||||
|
to the thwarts. The pile of things completed, all three men laid hold
|
||||||
|
of the truck and began shoving the ton-weight or so upon it after the
|
||||||
|
puma. Presently Montgomery left them, and coming back to me held out
|
||||||
|
his hand.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“I’m glad,” said he, “for my own part. That captain was a silly ass.
|
||||||
|
He’d have made things lively for you.”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“It was you,” said I, “that saved me again.”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“That depends. You’ll find this island an infernally rum place, I
|
||||||
|
promise you. I’d watch my goings carefully, if I were you. \emph{He}—” He
|
||||||
|
hesitated, and seemed to alter his mind about what was on his lips. “I
|
||||||
|
wish you’d help 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 that done than
|
||||||
|
he opened the door of it, and tilting the thing on one end turned its
|
||||||
|
living contents out on the ground. They fell in a struggling heap one
|
||||||
|
on the top of the other. He clapped his hands, and forthwith they went
|
||||||
|
off with that hopping run of theirs, fifteen or twenty of them I should
|
||||||
|
think, up the beach.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“Increase and multiply, my friends,” said Montgomery. “Replenish the
|
||||||
|
island. Hitherto we’ve had a certain lack of meat here.”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
As I watched them disappearing, the white-haired man returned with 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 on the biscuits at once, while the white-haired man helped
|
||||||
|
Montgomery to release about a score more of the rabbits. Three big
|
||||||
|
hutches, however, went up to the house with the puma. The brandy I did
|
||||||
|
not touch, for I have been an abstainer from my birth.
|
||||||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,139 @@
|
||||||
|
In the early morning (it was the second morning after my recovery, and
|
||||||
|
I believe the fourth after I was picked up), I awoke through an avenue
|
||||||
|
of tumultuous dreams,—dreams of guns and howling mobs,—and became
|
||||||
|
sensible of a hoarse shouting above me. I rubbed my eyes and lay
|
||||||
|
listening to the noise, doubtful for a little while of my whereabouts.
|
||||||
|
Then came a sudden pattering of bare feet, the sound of heavy objects
|
||||||
|
being thrown about, a violent creaking and the rattling of chains. I
|
||||||
|
heard the swish of the water as the ship was suddenly brought round,
|
||||||
|
and a foamy yellow-green wave flew across the little round window and
|
||||||
|
left it streaming. I jumped into my clothes and went on deck.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
As I came up the ladder I saw against the flushed sky—for the sun was
|
||||||
|
just rising—the broad back and red hair of the captain, and over his
|
||||||
|
shoulder the puma spinning from a tackle rigged on to the mizzen
|
||||||
|
spanker-boom.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The poor brute seemed horribly scared, and crouched 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 perforce to tap his shoulder to come
|
||||||
|
on deck. He came round with a start, and staggered back a few paces to
|
||||||
|
stare at me. It needed no expert eye to tell that the man was still
|
||||||
|
drunk.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“Hullo!” said he, stupidly; and then with a light coming into his eyes,
|
||||||
|
“Why, it’s Mister—Mister?”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“Prendick,” said I.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“Prendick be damned!” said he. “Shut-up,—that’s your name. Mister
|
||||||
|
Shut-up.”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
It was no good answering the brute; but I certainly did not expect his
|
||||||
|
next move. He held out his hand to the gangway by which Montgomery
|
||||||
|
stood talking to a massive grey-haired man in dirty-blue flannels, who
|
||||||
|
had apparently just come aboard.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“That way, Mister Blasted Shut-up! that way!” roared the captain.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Montgomery and his companion turned as he spoke.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“What do you mean?” I said.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“That way, Mister Blasted Shut-up,—that’s what I mean! Overboard,
|
||||||
|
Mister Shut-up,—and sharp! We’re cleaning the ship out,—cleaning the
|
||||||
|
whole blessed ship out; and overboard you go!”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I stared at him dumfounded. Then it occurred to me that it was exactly
|
||||||
|
the thing I wanted. The lost prospect of a journey as sole passenger
|
||||||
|
with this quarrelsome sot was not one to mourn over. I turned towards
|
||||||
|
Montgomery.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“Can’t have you,” said Montgomery’s companion, concisely.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“You can’t have me!” said I, aghast. He had the squarest and most
|
||||||
|
resolute face I ever set eyes upon.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“Look here,” I began, turning to the captain.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“Overboard!” said the captain. “This ship aint for beasts and cannibals
|
||||||
|
and worse than beasts, any more. Overboard you go, Mister Shut-up. If
|
||||||
|
they can’t have you, you goes overboard. But, anyhow, you go—with your
|
||||||
|
friends. I’ve done with this blessed island for evermore, amen! I’ve
|
||||||
|
had enough of it.”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“But, Montgomery,” I appealed.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
He distorted his lower lip, and nodded his head hopelessly at the
|
||||||
|
grey-haired man beside him, to indicate his powerlessness to help me.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“I’ll see to \emph{you}, presently,” said the captain.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Then began a curious three-cornered altercation. Alternately I appealed
|
||||||
|
to one and another of the three men,—first to the grey-haired man to
|
||||||
|
let me land, and then to the drunken captain to keep me aboard. I even
|
||||||
|
bawled entreaties to the sailors. Montgomery said never a word, only
|
||||||
|
shook his head. “You’re going overboard, I tell you,” was the captain’s
|
||||||
|
refrain. “Law be damned! I’m king here.” At last I must confess my
|
||||||
|
voice suddenly broke in the middle of a vigorous threat. I felt a gust
|
||||||
|
of hysterical petulance, and went aft and stared dismally at nothing.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Meanwhile the sailors progressed rapidly with the task of unshipping
|
||||||
|
the packages and caged animals. A large launch, with two standing lugs,
|
||||||
|
lay under the lee of the schooner; and into this the strange assortment
|
||||||
|
of goods were swung. I did not then see the hands from the island that
|
||||||
|
were receiving the packages, for the hull of the launch was hidden from
|
||||||
|
me by the side of the schooner. Neither Montgomery nor his companion
|
||||||
|
took the slightest notice of me, but busied themselves in assisting and
|
||||||
|
directing the four or five sailors who were unloading the goods. The
|
||||||
|
captain went forward interfering rather than assisting. I was
|
||||||
|
alternately despairful and desperate. Once or twice as I stood waiting
|
||||||
|
there for things to accomplish themselves, I could not resist an
|
||||||
|
impulse to laugh at my miserable quandary. I felt all the wretcheder
|
||||||
|
for the lack of a breakfast. Hunger and a lack of blood-corpuscles take
|
||||||
|
all the manhood from a man. I perceived pretty clearly that I had not
|
||||||
|
the stamina either to resist what the captain chose to do to expel me,
|
||||||
|
or to force myself upon Montgomery and his companion. So I waited
|
||||||
|
passively upon fate; and the work of transferring Montgomery’s
|
||||||
|
possessions to the launch went on as if I did not exist.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Presently that work was finished, and then came a struggle. I was
|
||||||
|
hauled, resisting weakly enough, to the gangway. Even then I noticed
|
||||||
|
the oddness of the brown faces of the men who were with Montgomery in
|
||||||
|
the launch; but the launch was now fully laden, and was shoved off
|
||||||
|
hastily. A broadening gap of green water appeared 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;
|
||||||
|
and then the captain, the mate, and one of the seamen helping him, ran
|
||||||
|
me aft towards the stern.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The dingey of the \emph{Lady Vain} had been towing behind; it was half full
|
||||||
|
of water, had no oars, and was quite unvictualled. I refused to go
|
||||||
|
aboard her, and flung myself full length on the deck. In the end, they
|
||||||
|
swung me into her by a rope (for they had no stern ladder), and then
|
||||||
|
they cut me adrift. I drifted slowly from the schooner. In a kind of
|
||||||
|
stupor I watched all hands take to the rigging, and slowly but surely
|
||||||
|
she came round to the wind; the sails fluttered, and then bellied out
|
||||||
|
as the wind came into them. I stared at her weather-beaten side heeling
|
||||||
|
steeply towards me; and then she passed out of my range of view.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I did not turn my head to follow her. At first I could 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 little hell of mine again, now half swamped; and looking back over
|
||||||
|
the gunwale, I saw the schooner standing away from me, with the
|
||||||
|
red-haired captain mocking at me over the taffrail, and turning towards
|
||||||
|
the island saw the launch growing smaller as she approached the beach.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Abruptly the cruelty of this desertion became clear to me. I had no
|
||||||
|
means of reaching the land unless I should chance to drift there. I was
|
||||||
|
still weak, you must remember, from my exposure in the boat; I was
|
||||||
|
empty and very faint, or I should have had more heart. But as it was I
|
||||||
|
suddenly began to sob and weep, as I had never done since I was a
|
||||||
|
little child. The tears ran down my face. In a passion of despair I
|
||||||
|
struck with my fists at the water in the bottom of the boat, and kicked
|
||||||
|
savagely at the gunwale. I prayed aloud for God to let me die.
|
||||||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,113 @@
|
||||||
|
The cabin in which I found myself was small and rather untidy. A
|
||||||
|
youngish man with flaxen hair, a bristly straw-coloured moustache, and
|
||||||
|
a dropping nether lip, was sitting and holding my wrist. For a minute
|
||||||
|
we stared at each other without speaking. He had watery grey eyes,
|
||||||
|
oddly void of expression. Then just overhead came a sound like an iron
|
||||||
|
bedstead being knocked about, and the low angry growling of some large
|
||||||
|
animal. At the same time the man spoke. He repeated his question,—“How
|
||||||
|
do you feel now?”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I think I said I felt all right. I could not recollect how I had got
|
||||||
|
there. He must have seen the question in my face, for my voice was
|
||||||
|
inaccessible to me.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“You were picked up in a boat, starving. The name on the boat was the
|
||||||
|
\emph{Lady Vain}, and there were spots of blood on the gunwale.”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
At the same time my eye caught my hand, so thin that it looked like a
|
||||||
|
dirty skin-purse full of loose bones, and all the business of the boat
|
||||||
|
came back to me.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“Have some of this,” said he, and gave me a dose of some scarlet stuff,
|
||||||
|
iced.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
It tasted like blood, and made me feel stronger.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“You were in luck,” said he, “to get picked up by a ship with a medical
|
||||||
|
man aboard.” He spoke with a slobbering articulation, with the ghost of
|
||||||
|
a lisp.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“What ship is this?” I said slowly, hoarse from my long silence.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“It’s a little trader from Arica and Callao. I never asked where she
|
||||||
|
came from in the beginning,—out of the land of born fools, I guess. I’m
|
||||||
|
a passenger myself, from Arica. The silly ass who owns her,—he’s
|
||||||
|
captain too, named Davies,—he’s lost his certificate, or something. You
|
||||||
|
know the kind of man,—calls the thing the \emph{Ipecacuanha}, of all silly,
|
||||||
|
infernal names; though when there’s much of a sea without any wind, she
|
||||||
|
certainly acts according.”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
(Then the noise overhead began again, a snarling growl and the voice of
|
||||||
|
a human being together. Then another voice, telling some
|
||||||
|
“Heaven-forsaken idiot” to desist.)
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“You were nearly dead,” said my interlocutor. “It was a very near
|
||||||
|
thing, indeed. But I’ve put some stuff into you now. Notice your arm’s
|
||||||
|
sore? Injections. You’ve been insensible for nearly thirty hours.”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I thought slowly. (I was distracted now by the yelping of a number of
|
||||||
|
dogs.) “Am I eligible for solid food?” I asked.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“Thanks to me,” he said. “Even now the mutton is boiling.”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“Yes,” I said with assurance; “I could eat some mutton.”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“But,” said he with a momentary hesitation, “you know I’m dying to hear
|
||||||
|
of how you came to be alone in that boat.\ \emph{Damn that howling}!” I
|
||||||
|
thought I detected a certain suspicion in his eyes.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
He suddenly left the cabin, and I heard him in violent controversy with
|
||||||
|
some one, who seemed to me to talk gibberish in response to him. The
|
||||||
|
matter sounded as though it ended in blows, but in that I thought my
|
||||||
|
ears were mistaken. Then he shouted at the dogs, and returned to the
|
||||||
|
cabin.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“Well?” said he in the doorway. “You were just beginning to tell me.”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I told him my name, Edward Prendick, and how I had taken to Natural
|
||||||
|
History as a relief from the dulness of my comfortable independence.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
He seemed interested in this. “I’ve done some science myself. I did my
|
||||||
|
Biology at University College,—getting out the ovary of the earthworm
|
||||||
|
and the radula of the snail, and all that. Lord! It’s ten years ago.
|
||||||
|
But go on! go on! tell me about the boat.”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
He was evidently satisfied with the frankness of my story, which I told
|
||||||
|
in concise sentences enough, for I felt horribly weak; and when it was
|
||||||
|
finished he reverted at once to the topic of Natural History and his
|
||||||
|
own biological studies. He began to question me closely about Tottenham
|
||||||
|
Court Road and Gower Street. “Is Caplatzi still flourishing? What a
|
||||||
|
shop that was!” He had evidently been a very ordinary medical student,
|
||||||
|
and drifted incontinently to the topic of the music halls. He told me
|
||||||
|
some anecdotes.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“Left it all,” he said, “ten years ago. How jolly it all used to be!
|
||||||
|
But I made a young ass of myself,—played myself out before I 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 suddenly and 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 excited by the appetising smell of it that I forgot the noise of the
|
||||||
|
beast that had troubled me.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
After a day of alternate sleep and feeding I was so far recovered as to
|
||||||
|
be able to get from my bunk to the scuttle, and see the green seas
|
||||||
|
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, and I asked him for some clothes. He lent me
|
||||||
|
some duck things of his own, for those I had worn in the boat had been
|
||||||
|
thrown overboard. They were rather loose for me, for he was large and
|
||||||
|
long in his limbs. He told me casually that the captain was three-parts
|
||||||
|
drunk in his own cabin. As I assumed the clothes, I began asking him
|
||||||
|
some questions about the destination of the ship. He said the ship was
|
||||||
|
bound to Hawaii, but that it had to land him first.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“Where?” said I.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“It’s an island, where I live. So far as I 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 desired to avoid
|
||||||
|
my questions. I had the discretion to ask no more.
|
||||||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,307 @@
|
||||||
|
I strode through the undergrowth that clothed the ridge behind the
|
||||||
|
house, scarcely heeding whither I went; passed on through the shadow of
|
||||||
|
a thick cluster of straight-stemmed trees beyond it, and so presently
|
||||||
|
found myself some way on the other side of the ridge, and descending
|
||||||
|
towards a streamlet that ran through a narrow valley. I paused and
|
||||||
|
listened. The distance I had come, or the intervening masses of
|
||||||
|
thicket, deadened any sound that might be coming from the enclosure.
|
||||||
|
The air was still. Then with a rustle a rabbit emerged, and went
|
||||||
|
scampering up the slope before me. I hesitated, and sat down in the
|
||||||
|
edge of the shade.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The place was a pleasant one. The rivulet was hidden by the luxuriant
|
||||||
|
vegetation of the banks save at one point, where I caught a triangular
|
||||||
|
patch of its glittering water. On the farther side I saw through a
|
||||||
|
bluish haze a tangle of 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 mind
|
||||||
|
again 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 not how long, by a rustling
|
||||||
|
amidst the greenery on the other side of the stream. For a moment I
|
||||||
|
could see nothing but the waving summits of the ferns and reeds. Then
|
||||||
|
suddenly upon the 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, going on all-fours
|
||||||
|
like a beast. He was clothed in bluish cloth, and was of a
|
||||||
|
copper-coloured hue, with black hair. It seemed that grotesque ugliness
|
||||||
|
was an invariable character of these islanders. I could hear the suck
|
||||||
|
of the water at his lips as he drank.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I leant forward to see him better, and a piece of lava, detached by my
|
||||||
|
hand, went pattering down the slope. He looked up guiltily, and his
|
||||||
|
eyes met mine. Forthwith he scrambled to his feet, and stood wiping his
|
||||||
|
clumsy hand across his mouth and regarding me. His legs were scarcely
|
||||||
|
half the length of his body. So, staring one another out of
|
||||||
|
countenance, we remained for perhaps the space of a minute. Then,
|
||||||
|
stopping to look back once or twice, he slunk off among the bushes to
|
||||||
|
the right of me, and I heard the swish of the fronds grow faint in the
|
||||||
|
distance and die away. Long after 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 turning suddenly saw the
|
||||||
|
flapping white tail of a rabbit vanishing up the slope. I jumped to my
|
||||||
|
feet. The apparition of this grotesque, half-bestial creature had
|
||||||
|
suddenly populated the stillness of the afternoon for me. I looked
|
||||||
|
around me rather nervously, and regretted that I was unarmed. Then I
|
||||||
|
thought that the man I had just seen had been clothed in bluish cloth,
|
||||||
|
had not been naked as a savage would have been; and I tried to persuade
|
||||||
|
myself from that fact that he was after all probably a peaceful
|
||||||
|
character, that the dull ferocity of 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 that
|
||||||
|
among the straight stems of the trees. Why should a man go on all-fours
|
||||||
|
and drink with his lips? Presently I heard an animal wailing again, and
|
||||||
|
taking it to be the puma, I turned about and walked in a direction
|
||||||
|
diametrically opposite to the sound. This led me down to the stream,
|
||||||
|
across which I stepped and pushed my way up through the undergrowth
|
||||||
|
beyond.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I was startled by a great patch of vivid scarlet on the ground, and
|
||||||
|
going up to it found it to be a peculiar fungus, branched and
|
||||||
|
corrugated like a foliaceous lichen, but deliquescing into slime at the
|
||||||
|
touch; and then in the shadow of some luxuriant ferns I came upon an
|
||||||
|
unpleasant thing,—the dead body of a rabbit covered with shining flies,
|
||||||
|
but still warm and with the head torn off. I stopped aghast at the
|
||||||
|
sight of the scattered blood. Here at least was one visitor to the
|
||||||
|
island disposed of! There were no traces of other violence about it. It
|
||||||
|
looked as though it had been suddenly snatched up and killed; and as I
|
||||||
|
stared at the little furry body came the difficulty of how the thing
|
||||||
|
had been done. The vague dread that had been in my mind since I had
|
||||||
|
seen the inhuman face of the man at the stream grew distincter as I
|
||||||
|
stood there. I began to realise the hardihood of my expedition among
|
||||||
|
these unknown people. The thicket about me became altered to my
|
||||||
|
imagination. Every shadow became something more than a shadow,—became
|
||||||
|
an ambush; every rustle became a threat. Invisible things seemed
|
||||||
|
watching me. I resolved to go back to the enclosure on the beach. I
|
||||||
|
suddenly turned away and thrust myself violently, possibly even
|
||||||
|
frantically, through the bushes, anxious to get a clear space about me
|
||||||
|
again.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I stopped just in time to prevent myself emerging upon an open space.
|
||||||
|
It was a kind of glade in the forest, made by a fall; seedlings were
|
||||||
|
already starting up to struggle for the vacant space; and beyond, the
|
||||||
|
dense growth of stems and twining vines and splashes of fungus and
|
||||||
|
flowers closed in again. Before me, squatting together 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 were of 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 never saw such bestial-looking creatures.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
They were talking, or at least one of the men was talking to the other
|
||||||
|
two, and all three had been too closely interested to heed the rustling
|
||||||
|
of my approach. They swayed their heads and shoulders from side to
|
||||||
|
side. The speaker’s words came thick and sloppy, and though I could
|
||||||
|
hear them distinctly I could not distinguish what he said. He seemed to
|
||||||
|
me to be reciting some complicated gibberish. Presently his
|
||||||
|
articulation became shriller, and spreading his hands he rose to his
|
||||||
|
feet. At that the others began to gibber in unison, also rising to
|
||||||
|
their feet, spreading their hands and swaying their bodies in rhythm
|
||||||
|
with their chant. I noticed then the abnormal shortness of their legs,
|
||||||
|
and their lank, clumsy feet. All three began slowly to circle round,
|
||||||
|
raising and 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
|
||||||
|
dripped from their lipless mouths.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Suddenly, as I watched their grotesque and unaccountable gestures, I
|
||||||
|
perceived clearly for the first time what it was that had offended me,
|
||||||
|
what had given me the two inconsistent and conflicting impressions of
|
||||||
|
utter strangeness and yet of the strangest familiarity. The three
|
||||||
|
creatures engaged in this mysterious rite were human in shape, and yet
|
||||||
|
human beings with the strangest air about them of some familiar animal.
|
||||||
|
Each of these creatures, despite its human form, its rag of clothing,
|
||||||
|
and the rough humanity of its bodily form, had woven into it—into its
|
||||||
|
movements, into the expression of its countenance, into its whole
|
||||||
|
presence—some now irresistible suggestion of a hog, a swinish taint,
|
||||||
|
the unmistakable mark of the beast.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I stood overcome by this amazing realisation and then the most horrible
|
||||||
|
questionings came rushing into my mind. They began leaping in the air,
|
||||||
|
first one and then the other, whooping and grunting. Then one slipped,
|
||||||
|
and for a moment was on all-fours,—to recover, indeed, forthwith. But
|
||||||
|
that transitory gleam of the true animalism of these monsters was
|
||||||
|
enough.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I turned as noiselessly as possible, and becoming every now and then
|
||||||
|
rigid with the fear of being discovered, as a branch cracked or a leaf
|
||||||
|
rustled, I pushed back into the bushes. It was long before I grew
|
||||||
|
bolder, and dared to move freely. My only idea for the moment was to
|
||||||
|
get away from these foul beings, and I scarcely noticed that I had
|
||||||
|
emerged upon a faint pathway amidst the trees. Then suddenly traversing
|
||||||
|
a little glade, I saw with an unpleasant start two clumsy legs among
|
||||||
|
the trees, walking with noiseless footsteps parallel with my course,
|
||||||
|
and perhaps thirty yards away from me. The head and upper part of the
|
||||||
|
body were hidden by a tangle of creeper. I stopped abruptly, hoping the
|
||||||
|
creature did not see me. The feet stopped as I did. So nervous was I
|
||||||
|
that I controlled 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 seen drinking. He moved
|
||||||
|
his head. There was an emerald flash in his eyes as he glanced at me
|
||||||
|
from the shadow of the trees, a half-luminous colour that vanished as
|
||||||
|
he turned his head again. He was motionless for a moment, and then with
|
||||||
|
a noiseless tread began running through the green confusion. In another
|
||||||
|
moment he had vanished behind some bushes. I could not see him, but I
|
||||||
|
felt that he had stopped and was watching me again.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
What on earth was he,—man or beast? What did he want with me? I had no
|
||||||
|
weapon, not even a stick. Flight would be madness. At any rate the
|
||||||
|
Thing, whatever it was, lacked the courage to attack me. Setting my
|
||||||
|
teeth hard, I walked straight towards him. I was anxious not to show
|
||||||
|
the fear that seemed chilling my backbone. I pushed through a tangle of
|
||||||
|
tall white-flowered bushes, and saw him twenty paces beyond, looking
|
||||||
|
over his shoulder at 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 said suddenly, and turning went
|
||||||
|
bounding away from me through the undergrowth. Then he turned and
|
||||||
|
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 only chance was bluff, and
|
||||||
|
walked steadily towards him. He turned again, and vanished into the
|
||||||
|
dusk. Once more I thought I caught the glint of his eyes, and that was
|
||||||
|
all.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
For the first time I realised how the lateness of the hour might affect
|
||||||
|
me. The sun had set some minutes since, the swift dusk of the tropics
|
||||||
|
was already fading out of the eastern sky, and a pioneer moth fluttered
|
||||||
|
silently by my head. Unless I would spend the night among the unknown
|
||||||
|
dangers of the mysterious forest, I must hasten back to the enclosure.
|
||||||
|
The thought of a return to that pain-haunted refuge was extremely
|
||||||
|
disagreeable, but still more so was the idea of being overtaken in the
|
||||||
|
open by darkness and all that darkness might conceal. I gave one more
|
||||||
|
look into the blue shadows that had swallowed up this odd creature, and
|
||||||
|
then retraced my way down the slope towards the stream, going as I
|
||||||
|
judged in the direction from which I had come.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I walked eagerly, my mind confused with many things, and presently
|
||||||
|
found myself in a level place among scattered trees. The colourless
|
||||||
|
clearness that comes after the sunset flush was darkling; the blue sky
|
||||||
|
above grew momentarily deeper, and the little stars one by one pierced
|
||||||
|
the attenuated light; the interspaces of the trees, the gaps in the
|
||||||
|
further vegetation, that had been hazy blue in the daylight, grew black
|
||||||
|
and mysterious. I pushed on. The colour vanished from the world. The
|
||||||
|
tree-tops rose against the luminous blue sky in inky silhouette, and
|
||||||
|
all below that outline melted into one formless blackness. Presently
|
||||||
|
the trees grew thinner, and the shrubby undergrowth more abundant. Then
|
||||||
|
there was a desolate space covered with a white sand, and then another
|
||||||
|
expanse of tangled bushes. I did not remember crossing the sand-opening
|
||||||
|
before. I began to be tormented by a faint rustling upon my right hand.
|
||||||
|
I thought at first it was fancy, for whenever I stopped 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 to the more open ground, and
|
||||||
|
endeavouring by sudden turns now and then to surprise something in the
|
||||||
|
act of creeping upon me. I saw nothing, and nevertheless my sense of
|
||||||
|
another presence grew steadily. I increased my pace, and after some
|
||||||
|
time came to a slight ridge, crossed it, and turned sharply, regarding
|
||||||
|
it steadfastly from the further side. It came out black and clear-cut
|
||||||
|
against the darkling sky; and presently a shapeless lump heaved up
|
||||||
|
momentarily against the sky-line and vanished again. I felt assured now
|
||||||
|
that my tawny-faced antagonist was stalking me once more; and coupled
|
||||||
|
with that was another unpleasant realisation, that I had lost my way.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
For a time I hurried on hopelessly perplexed, and pursued by that
|
||||||
|
stealthy approach. Whatever it was, the Thing either lacked the courage
|
||||||
|
to attack me, or it was waiting to take me at some disadvantage. I kept
|
||||||
|
studiously to the open. At times I would turn and listen; and presently
|
||||||
|
I had half persuaded myself that my pursuer had 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
|
||||||
|
immediately there was a stumble in my rear.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I turned suddenly, and stared at the uncertain trees behind me. One
|
||||||
|
black shadow seemed to leap into another. I listened, rigid, and heard
|
||||||
|
nothing but the creep of the blood in my ears. I thought that my nerves
|
||||||
|
were unstrung, and that my imagination was tricking me, and turned
|
||||||
|
resolutely towards the sound of the sea 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 calm and
|
||||||
|
clear, and the reflection of the growing multitude of the stars
|
||||||
|
shivered in the tranquil heaving of the sea. Some way out, the wash
|
||||||
|
upon an irregular band of reef shone with a pallid light of its own.
|
||||||
|
Westward I saw the zodiacal light mingling with the yellow brilliance
|
||||||
|
of the evening star. The coast fell away from me to the east, and
|
||||||
|
westward it was hidden by the shoulder of the cape. Then I recalled the
|
||||||
|
fact that Moreau’s beach lay to the west.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
A twig snapped behind me, and there was a rustle. I turned, and stood
|
||||||
|
facing the dark trees. I could see nothing—or else I could see too
|
||||||
|
much. Every dark form in the dimness had its ominous quality, its
|
||||||
|
peculiar suggestion of alert watchfulness. So I stood for perhaps a
|
||||||
|
minute, and then, with an eye to the trees still, turned westward to
|
||||||
|
cross the headland; and as I moved, one among the lurking shadows moved
|
||||||
|
to follow me.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
My heart beat quickly. Presently the broad sweep of a bay to the
|
||||||
|
westward became visible, and I halted again. The noiseless shadow
|
||||||
|
halted a dozen yards from me. A little point of light shone on the
|
||||||
|
further bend of the curve, and the grey sweep of the sandy beach lay
|
||||||
|
faint under the starlight. Perhaps two miles away was that little point
|
||||||
|
of light. To get to the beach I should have to go through the trees
|
||||||
|
where the shadows lurked, and down a bushy slope.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I could see the Thing rather more distinctly now. It was no animal, for
|
||||||
|
it stood erect. At that I opened my mouth to speak, and found a hoarse
|
||||||
|
phlegm choked my voice. I tried again, and shouted, “Who is there?”
|
||||||
|
There was no answer. I advanced a step. The Thing did not move, only
|
||||||
|
gathered itself together. My foot struck a stone. That gave me an idea.
|
||||||
|
Without taking my eyes off the black form before me, I stooped and
|
||||||
|
picked up this lump of rock; but at my motion the Thing turned abruptly
|
||||||
|
as a dog might have done, and slunk obliquely into the further
|
||||||
|
darkness. Then I 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 into a profuse perspiration and fell a-trembling, with my
|
||||||
|
adversary routed and this weapon in my hand.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
It was some time before I could summon resolution to go down through
|
||||||
|
the trees and bushes upon the flank of the headland to the beach. At
|
||||||
|
last I did it at a run; and as I emerged from the thicket upon the
|
||||||
|
sand, I heard some other body come crashing after me. At that I
|
||||||
|
completely lost my head with fear, and began running along the sand.
|
||||||
|
Forthwith there came the swift patter of soft feet in pursuit. I gave a
|
||||||
|
wild cry, and redoubled my pace. Some dim, black things about three or
|
||||||
|
four times the size of rabbits went running or hopping up from the
|
||||||
|
beach towards the bushes as I passed.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
So long as I live, I shall remember the terror of that chase. I ran
|
||||||
|
near the water’s edge, and heard every now and then the splash of the
|
||||||
|
feet that gained upon me. Far away, hopelessly far, was the yellow
|
||||||
|
light. All the night about us was black and still. Splash, splash, came
|
||||||
|
the pursuing feet, nearer and nearer. I felt my breath going, for I was
|
||||||
|
quite out of training; it whooped as I drew it, and I felt a pain like
|
||||||
|
a knife at my side. I perceived the Thing would come up with me long
|
||||||
|
before I reached the enclosure, and, desperate and sobbing for my
|
||||||
|
breath, I wheeled round upon it and struck at it as it came up to
|
||||||
|
me,—struck with all my strength. The stone came out of the sling of the
|
||||||
|
handkerchief as I did so. As I turned, the Thing, which had been
|
||||||
|
running on all-fours, rose to its feet, and the missile fell fair on
|
||||||
|
its left temple. The skull rang loud, and the animal-man blundered into
|
||||||
|
me, thrust me back with its hands, and went staggering past me to fall
|
||||||
|
headlong upon the sand with its face in the water; and there it lay
|
||||||
|
still.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I could not bring myself to approach that black 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; and
|
||||||
|
presently, with a positive effect of relief, came the pitiful moaning
|
||||||
|
of the puma, the sound that had originally driven me out to explore
|
||||||
|
this mysterious island. At that, though I was faint and horribly
|
||||||
|
fatigued, I gathered together all my strength, and began running again
|
||||||
|
towards the light. I thought I heard a voice calling me.
|
||||||
Loading…
Reference in New Issue