The_island_of_Dr._Moreau/chapters/The Sayers of the law.tex

Then something cold touched my hand. I started violently, and saw close
to me a dim pinkish thing, looking more like a flayed child than
anything else in the world. The creature had exactly the mild but
repulsive features of a sloth, the same low forehead and slow gestures.

As the first shock of the change of light passed, I saw about me more
distinctly. The little sloth-like creature was standing and staring at
me. My conductor had vanished. The place was a narrow passage between
high walls of lava, a crack in the knotted rock, and on either side
interwoven heaps of sea-mat, palm-fans, and reeds leaning against the
rock formed rough and impenetrably dark dens. The winding way up the
ravine between these was scarcely three yards wide, and was disfigured
by lumps of decaying fruit-pulp and other refuse, which accounted for
the disagreeable stench of the place.

The little pink sloth-creature was still blinking at me when my Ape-man
reappeared at the aperture of the nearest of these dens, and beckoned
me in. As he did so a slouching monster wriggled out of one of the
places, further up this strange street, and stood up in featureless
silhouette against the bright green beyond, staring at me. I hesitated,
having half a mind to bolt the way I had come; and then, determined to
go through with the adventure, I gripped my nailed stick about the
middle and crawled into the little evil-smelling lean-to after my
conductor.

It was a semi-circular space, shaped like the half of a bee-hive; and
against the rocky wall that formed the inner side of it was a pile of
variegated fruits, cocoa-nuts among others. Some rough vessels of lava
and wood stood about the floor, and one on a rough stool. There was no
fire. In the darkest corner of the hut sat a shapeless mass of darkness
that grunted “Hey!” as I came in, and my Ape-man stood in the dim light
of the doorway and held out a split cocoa-nut to me as I crawled into
the other corner and squatted down. I took it, and began gnawing it, as
serenely as possible, in spite of a certain trepidation and the nearly
intolerable closeness of the den. The little pink sloth-creature stood
in the aperture of the hut, and something else with a drab face and
bright eyes came staring over its shoulder.

“Hey!” came out of the lump of mystery opposite. “It is a man.”

“It is a man,” gabbled my conductor, “a man, a man, a five-man, like
me.”

“Shut up!” said the voice from the dark, and grunted. I gnawed my
cocoa-nut amid an impressive stillness.

I peered hard into the blackness, but could distinguish nothing.

“It is a man,” the voice repeated. “He comes to live with us?”

It was a thick voice, with something in it—a kind of whistling
overtone—that struck me as peculiar; but the English accent was
strangely good.

The Ape-man looked at me as though he expected something. I perceived
the pause was interrogative. “He comes to live with you,” I said.

“It is a man. He must learn the Law.”

I began to distinguish now a deeper blackness in the black, a vague
outline of a hunched-up figure. Then I noticed the opening of the place
was darkened by two more black heads. My hand tightened on my stick.

The thing in the dark repeated in a louder tone, “Say the words.” I had
missed its last remark. “Not to go on all-fours; that is the Law,” it
repeated in a kind of sing-song.

I was puzzled.

“Say the words,” said the Ape-man, repeating, and the figures in the
doorway echoed this, with a threat in the tone of their voices.

I realised that I had to repeat this idiotic formula; and then began
the insanest ceremony. The voice in the dark began intoning a mad
litany, line by line, and I and the rest to repeat it. As they did so,
they swayed from side to side in the oddest way, and beat their hands
upon their knees; and I followed their example. I could have imagined I
was already dead and in another world. That dark hut, these grotesque
dim figures, just flecked here and there by a glimmer of light, and all
of them swaying in unison and chanting,

“Not to go on all-fours; that is the Law. Are we not Men?
“Not to suck up Drink; that is the Law. Are we not Men?
“Not to eat Fish or Flesh; that is the Law. Are we not Men?
“Not to claw the Bark of Trees; \emph{that} is the Law. Are we not Men?
“Not to chase other Men; \emph{that} is the Law. Are we not Men?”


And so from the prohibition of these acts of folly, on to the
prohibition of what I thought then were the maddest, most impossible,
and most indecent things one could well imagine. A kind of rhythmic
fervour fell on all of us; we gabbled and swayed faster and faster,
repeating this amazing Law. Superficially the contagion of these brutes
was upon me, but deep down within me the laughter and disgust struggled
together. We ran through a long list of prohibitions, and then the
chant swung round to a new formula.

“\emph{His} is the House of Pain.
“\emph{His} is the Hand that makes.
“\emph{His} is the Hand that wounds.
“\emph{His} is the Hand that heals.”


And so on for another long series, mostly quite incomprehensible
gibberish to me about \emph{Him}, whoever he might be. I could have fancied
it was a dream, but never before have I heard chanting in a dream.

“\emph{His} is the lightning flash,” we sang. “\emph{His} is the deep, salt sea.”

A horrible fancy came into my head that Moreau, after animalising these
men, had infected their dwarfed brains with a kind of deification of
himself. However, I was too keenly aware of white teeth and strong
claws about me to stop my chanting on that account.

“\emph{His} are the stars in the sky.”


At last that song ended. I saw the Ape-man’s face shining with
perspiration; and my eyes being now accustomed to the darkness, I saw
more distinctly the figure in the corner from which the voice came. It
was the size of a man, but it seemed covered with a dull grey hair
almost like a Skye-terrier. What was it? What were they all? Imagine
yourself surrounded by all the most horrible cripples and maniacs it is
possible to conceive, and you may understand a little of my feelings
with these grotesque caricatures of humanity about me.

“He is a five-man, a five-man, a five-man—like me,” said the Ape-man.

I held out my hands. The grey creature in the corner leant forward.

“Not to run on all-fours; that is the Law. Are we not Men?” he said.

He put out a strangely distorted talon and gripped my fingers. The
thing was almost like the hoof of a deer produced into claws. I could
have yelled with surprise and pain. His face came forward and peered at
my nails, came forward into the light of the opening of the hut and I
saw with a quivering disgust that it was like the face of neither man
nor beast, but a mere shock of grey hair, with three shadowy
over-archings to mark the eyes and mouth.

“He has little nails,” said this grisly creature in his hairy beard.
“It is well.”

He threw my hand down, and instinctively I gripped my stick.

“Eat roots and herbs; it is His will,” said the Ape-man.

“I am the Sayer of the Law,” said the grey figure. “Here come all that
be new to learn the Law. I sit in the darkness and say the Law.”

“It is even so,” said one of the beasts in the doorway.

“Evil are the punishments of those who break the Law. None escape.”

“None escape,” said the Beast Folk, glancing furtively at one another.

“None, none,” said the Ape-man,—“none escape. See! I did a little
thing, a wrong thing, once. I jabbered, jabbered, stopped talking. None
could understand. I am burnt, branded in the hand. He is great. He is
good!”

“None escape,” said the grey creature in the corner.

“None escape,” said the Beast People, looking askance at one another.

“For every one the want that is bad,” said the grey Sayer of the Law.
“What you will want we do not know; we shall know. Some want to follow
things that move, to watch and slink and wait and spring; to kill and
bite, bite deep and rich, sucking the blood. It is bad. ‘Not to chase
other Men; that is the Law. Are we not Men? Not to eat Flesh or Fish;
that is the Law. Are we not Men?’”

“None escape,” said a dappled brute standing in the doorway.

“For every one the want is bad,” said the grey Sayer of the Law. “Some
want to go tearing with teeth and hands into the roots of things,
snuffing into the earth. It is bad.”

“None escape,” said the men in the door.

“Some go clawing trees; some go scratching at the graves of the dead;
some go fighting with foreheads or feet or claws; some bite suddenly,
none giving occasion; some love uncleanness.”

“None escape,” said the Ape-man, scratching his calf.

“None escape,” said the little pink sloth-creature.

“Punishment is sharp and sure. Therefore learn the Law. Say the words.”

And incontinently he began again the strange litany of the Law, and
again I and all these creatures began singing and swaying. My head
reeled with this jabbering and the close stench of the place; but I
kept on, trusting to find presently some chance of a new development.

“Not to go on all-fours; that is the Law. Are we not Men?”

We were making such a noise that I noticed nothing of a tumult outside,
until some one, who I think was one of the two Swine Men I had seen,
thrust his head over the little pink sloth-creature and shouted
something excitedly, something that I did not catch. Incontinently
those at the opening of the hut vanished; my Ape-man rushed out; the
thing that had sat in the dark followed him (I only observed that it
was big and clumsy, and covered with silvery hair), and I was left
alone. Then before I reached the aperture I heard the yelp of a
staghound.

In another moment I was standing outside the hovel, my chair-rail in my
hand, every muscle of me quivering. Before me were the clumsy backs of
perhaps a score of these Beast People, their misshapen heads half
hidden by their shoulder-blades. They were gesticulating excitedly.
Other half-animal faces glared interrogation out of the hovels. Looking
in the direction in which they faced, I saw coming through the haze
under the trees beyond the end of the passage of dens the dark figure
and awful white face of Moreau. He was holding the leaping staghound
back, and close behind him came Montgomery revolver in hand.

For a moment I stood horror-struck. I turned and saw the passage behind
me blocked by another heavy brute, with a huge grey face and twinkling
little eyes, advancing towards me. I looked round and saw to the right
of me and a half-dozen yards in front of me a narrow gap in the wall of
rock through which a ray of light slanted into the shadows.

“Stop!” cried Moreau as I strode towards this, and then, “Hold him!”

At that, first one face turned towards me and then others. Their
bestial minds were happily slow. I dashed my shoulder into a clumsy
monster who was turning to see what Moreau meant, and flung him forward
into another. I felt his hands fly round, clutching at me and missing
me. The little pink sloth-creature dashed at me, and I gashed down its
ugly face with the nail in my stick and in another minute was
scrambling up a steep side pathway, a kind of sloping chimney, out of
the ravine. I heard a howl behind me, and cries of “Catch him!” “Hold
him!” and the grey-faced creature appeared behind me and jammed his
huge bulk into the cleft. “Go on! go on!” they howled. I clambered up
the narrow cleft in the rock and came out upon the sulphur on the
westward side of the village of the Beast Men.

That gap was altogether fortunate for me, for the narrow chimney,
slanting obliquely upward, must have impeded the nearer pursuers. I ran
over the white space and down a steep slope, through a scattered growth
of trees, and came to a low-lying stretch of tall reeds, through which
I pushed into a dark, thick undergrowth that was black and succulent
under foot. As I plunged into the reeds, my foremost pursuers emerged
from the gap. I broke my way through this undergrowth for some minutes.
The air behind me and about me was soon full of threatening cries. I
heard the tumult of my pursuers in the gap up the slope, then the
crashing of the reeds, and every now and then the crackling crash of a
branch. Some of the creatures roared like excited beasts of prey. The
staghound yelped to the left. I heard Moreau and Montgomery shouting in
the same direction. I turned sharply to the right. It seemed to me even
then that I heard Montgomery shouting for me to run for my life.

Presently the ground gave rich and oozy under my feet; but I was
desperate and went headlong into it, struggled through kneedeep, and so
came to a winding path among tall canes. The noise of my pursuers
passed away to my left. In one place three strange, pink, hopping
animals, about the size of cats, bolted before my footsteps. This
pathway ran up hill, across another open space covered with white
incrustation, and plunged into a canebrake again. Then suddenly it
turned parallel with the edge of a steep-walled gap, which came without
warning, like the ha-ha of an English park,—turned with an unexpected
abruptness. I was still running with all my might, and I never saw this
drop until I was flying headlong through the air.

I fell on my forearms and head, among thorns, and rose with a torn ear
and bleeding face. I had fallen into a precipitous ravine, rocky and
thorny, full of a hazy mist which drifted about me in wisps, and with a
narrow streamlet from which this mist came meandering down the centre.
I was astonished at this thin fog in the full blaze of daylight; but I
had no time to stand wondering then. I turned to my right, down-stream,
hoping to come to the sea in that direction, and so have my way open to
drown myself. It was only later I found that I had dropped my nailed
stick in my fall.

Presently the ravine grew narrower for a space, and carelessly I
stepped into the stream. I jumped out again pretty quickly, for the
water was almost boiling. I noticed too there was a thin sulphurous
scum drifting upon its coiling water. Almost immediately came a turn in
the ravine, and the indistinct blue horizon. The nearer sea was
flashing the sun from a myriad facets. I saw my death before me; but I
was hot and panting, with the warm blood oozing out on my face and
running pleasantly through my veins. I felt more than a touch of
exultation too, at having distanced my pursuers. It was not in me then
to go out and drown myself yet. I stared back the way I had come.

I listened. Save for the hum of the gnats and the chirp of some small
insects that hopped among the thorns, the air was absolutely still.
Then came the yelp of a dog, very faint, and a chattering and
gibbering, the snap of a whip, and voices. They grew louder, then
fainter again. The noise receded up the stream and faded away. For a
while the chase was over; but I knew now how much hope of help for me
lay in the Beast People.