The_island_of_Dr._Moreau/chapters/The Man Alone.tex

In the evening I started, and drove out to sea before a gentle wind
from the southwest, slowly, steadily; and the island grew smaller and
smaller, and the lank spire of smoke dwindled to a finer and finer line
against the hot sunset. The ocean rose up around me, hiding that low,
dark patch from my eyes. The daylight, the trailing glory of the sun,
went streaming out of the sky, was drawn aside like some luminous
curtain, and at last I looked into the blue gulf of immensity which the
sunshine hides, and saw the floating hosts of the stars. The sea was
silent, the sky was silent. I was alone with the night and silence.

So I drifted for three days, eating and drinking sparingly, and
meditating upon all that had happened to me,—not desiring very greatly
then to see men again. One unclean rag was about me, my hair a black
tangle: no doubt my discoverers thought me a madman.

It is strange, but I felt no desire to return to mankind. I was only
glad to be quit of the foulness of the Beast People. And on the third
day I was picked up by a brig from Apia to San Francisco. Neither the
captain nor the mate would believe my story, judging that solitude and
danger had made me mad; and fearing their opinion might be that of
others, I refrained from telling my adventure further, and professed to
recall nothing that had happened to me between the loss of the \emph{Lady
Vain} and the time when I was picked up again,—the space of a year.

I had to act with the utmost circumspection to save myself from the
suspicion of insanity. My memory of the Law, of the two dead sailors,
of the ambuscades of the darkness, of the body in the canebrake,
haunted me; and, unnatural as it seems, with my return to mankind came,
instead of that confidence and sympathy I had expected, a strange
enhancement of the uncertainty and dread I had experienced during my
stay upon the island. No one would believe me; I was almost as queer to
men as I had been to the Beast People. I may have caught something of
the natural wildness of my companions. They say that terror is a
disease, and anyhow I can witness that for several years now a restless
fear has dwelt in my mind,—such a restless fear as a half-tamed lion
cub may feel.

My trouble took the strangest form. I could not persuade myself that
the men and women I met were not also another Beast People, animals
half wrought into the outward image of human souls, and that they would
presently begin to revert,—to show first this bestial mark and then
that. But I have confided my case to a strangely able man,—a man who
had known Moreau, and seemed half to credit my story; a mental
specialist,—and he has helped me mightily, though I do not expect that
the terror of that island will ever altogether leave me. At most times
it lies far in the back of my mind, a mere distant cloud, a memory, and
a faint distrust; but there are times when the little cloud spreads
until it obscures the whole sky. Then I look about me at my fellow-men;
and I go in fear. I see faces, keen and bright; others dull or
dangerous; others, unsteady, insincere,—none that have the calm
authority of a reasonable soul. I feel as though the animal was surging
up through them; that presently the degradation of the Islanders will
be played over again on a larger scale. I know this is an illusion;
that these seeming men and women about me are indeed men and women,—men
and women for ever, perfectly reasonable creatures, full of human
desires and tender solicitude, emancipated from instinct and the slaves
of no fantastic Law,—beings altogether different from the Beast Folk.
Yet I shrink from them, from their curious glances, their inquiries and
assistance, and long to be away from them and alone. For that reason I
live near the broad free downland, and can escape thither when this
shadow is over my soul; and very sweet is the empty downland then,
under the wind-swept sky.

When I lived in London the horror was well-nigh insupportable. I could
not get away from men: their voices came through windows; locked doors
were flimsy safeguards. I would go out into the streets to fight with
my delusion, and prowling women would mew after me; furtive, craving
men glance jealously at me; weary, pale workers go coughing by me with
tired eyes and eager paces, like wounded deer dripping blood; old
people, bent and dull, pass murmuring to themselves; and, all
unheeding, a ragged tail of gibing children. Then I would turn aside
into some chapel,—and even there, such was my disturbance, it seemed
that the preacher gibbered “Big Thinks,” even as the Ape-man had done;
or into some library, and there the intent faces over the books seemed
but patient creatures waiting for prey. Particularly nauseous were the
blank, expressionless faces of people in trains and omnibuses; they
seemed no more my fellow-creatures than dead bodies would be, so that I
did not dare to travel unless I was assured of being alone. And even it
seemed that I too was not a reasonable creature, but only an animal
tormented with some strange disorder in its brain which sent it to
wander alone, like a sheep stricken with gid.

This is a mood, however, that comes to me now, I thank God, more
rarely. I have withdrawn myself from the confusion of cities and
multitudes, and spend my days surrounded by wise books,—bright windows
in this life of ours, lit by the shining souls of men. I see few
strangers, and have but a small household. My days I devote to reading
and to experiments in chemistry, and I spend many of the clear nights
in the study of astronomy. There is—though I do not know how there is
or why there is—a sense of infinite peace and protection in the
glittering hosts of heaven. There it must be, I think, in the vast and
eternal laws of matter, and not in the daily cares and sins and
troubles of men, that whatever is more than animal within us must find
its solace and its hope. I \emph{hope}, or I could not live.
\par
And so, in hope and solitude, my story ends.
\par
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EDWARD PRENDICK.