The_island_of_Dr._Moreau/chapters/The Strange Face.tex

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.