The_island_of_Dr._Moreau/chapters/The Reversion of the beast folk.tex

In this way I became one among the Beast People in the Island of Doctor
Moreau. When I awoke, it was dark about me. My arm ached in its
bandages. I sat up, wondering at first where I might be. I heard coarse
voices talking outside. Then I saw that my barricade had gone, and that
the opening of the hut stood clear. My revolver was still in my hand.

I heard something breathing, saw something crouched together close
beside me. I held my breath, trying to see what it was. It began to
move slowly, interminably. Then something soft and warm and moist
passed across my hand. All my muscles contracted. I snatched my hand
away. A cry of alarm began and was stifled in my throat. Then I just
realised what had happened sufficiently to stay my fingers on the
revolver.

“Who is that?” I said in a hoarse whisper, the revolver still pointed.

“\emph{I}—Master.”

“Who are \emph{you?}”

“They say there is no Master now. But I know, I know. I carried the
bodies into the sea, O Walker in the Sea! the bodies of those you slew.
I am your slave, Master.”

“Are you the one I met on the beach?” I asked.

“The same, Master.”

The Thing was evidently faithful enough, for it might have fallen upon
me as I slept. “It is well,” I said, extending my hand for another
licking kiss. I began to realise what its presence meant, and the tide
of my courage flowed. “Where are the others?” I asked.

“They are mad; they are fools,” said the Dog-man. “Even now they talk
together beyond there. They say, ‘The Master is dead. The Other with
the Whip is dead. That Other who walked in the Sea is as we are. We
have no Master, no Whips, no House of Pain, any more. There is an end.
We love the Law, and will keep it; but there is no Pain, no Master, no
Whips for ever again.’ So they say. But I know, Master, I know.”

I felt in the darkness, and patted the Dog-man’s head. “It is well,” I
said again.

“Presently you will slay them all,” said the Dog-man.

“Presently,” I answered, “I will slay them all,—after certain days and
certain things have come to pass. Every one of them save those you
spare, every one of them shall be slain.”

“What the Master wishes to kill, the Master kills,” said the Dog-man
with a certain satisfaction in his voice.

“And that their sins may grow,” I said, “let them live in their folly
until their time is ripe. Let them not know that I am the Master.”

“The Master’s will is sweet,” said the Dog-man, with the ready tact of
his canine blood.

“But one has sinned,” said I. “Him I will kill, whenever I may meet
him. When I say to you, ‘\emph{That is he},’ see that you fall upon him. And
now I will go to the men and women who are assembled together.”

For a moment the opening of the hut was blackened by the exit of the
Dog-man. Then I followed and stood up, almost in the exact spot where I
had been when I had heard Moreau and his staghound pursuing me. But now
it was night, and all the miasmatic ravine about me was black; and
beyond, instead of a green, sunlit slope, I saw a red fire, before
which hunched, grotesque figures moved to and fro. Farther were the
thick trees, a bank of darkness, fringed above with the black lace of
the upper branches. The moon was just riding up on the edge of the
ravine, and like a bar across its face drove the spire of vapour that
was for ever streaming from the fumaroles of the island.

“Walk by me,” said I, nerving myself; and side by side we walked down
the narrow way, taking little heed of the dim Things that peered at us
out of the huts.

None about the fire attempted to salute me. Most of them disregarded
me, ostentatiously. I looked round for the Hyena-swine, but he was not
there. Altogether, perhaps twenty of the Beast Folk squatted, staring
into the fire or talking to one another.

“He is dead, he is dead! the Master is dead!” said the voice of the
Ape-man to the right of me. “The House of Pain—there is no House of
Pain!”

“He is not dead,” said I, in a loud voice. “Even now he watches us!”

This startled them. Twenty pairs of eyes regarded me.

“The House of Pain is gone,” said I. “It will come again. The Master
you cannot see; yet even now he listens among you.”

“True, true!” said the Dog-man.

They were staggered at my assurance. An animal may be ferocious and
cunning enough, but it takes a real man to tell a lie.

“The Man with the Bandaged Arm speaks a strange thing,” said one of the
Beast Folk.

“I tell you it is so,” I said. “The Master and the House of Pain will
come again. Woe be to him who breaks the Law!”

They looked curiously at one another. With an affectation of
indifference I began to chop idly at the ground in front of me with my
hatchet. They looked, I noticed, at the deep cuts I made in the turf.

Then the Satyr raised a doubt. I answered him. Then one of the dappled
things objected, and an animated discussion sprang up round the fire.
Every moment I began to feel more convinced of my present security. I
talked now without the catching in my breath, due to the intensity of
my excitement, that had troubled me at first. In the course of about an
hour I had really convinced several of the Beast Folk of the truth of
my assertions, and talked most of the others into a dubious state. I
kept a sharp eye for my enemy the Hyena-swine, but he never appeared.
Every now and then a suspicious movement would startle me, but my
confidence grew rapidly. Then as the moon crept down from the zenith,
one by one the listeners began to yawn (showing the oddest teeth in the
light of the sinking fire), and first one and then another retired
towards the dens in the ravine; and I, dreading the silence and
darkness, went with them, knowing I was safer with several of them than
with one alone.

In this manner began the longer part of my sojourn upon this Island of
Doctor Moreau. But from that night until the end came, there was but
one thing happened to tell save a series of innumerable small
unpleasant details and the fretting of an incessant uneasiness. So that
I prefer to make no chronicle for that gap of time, to tell only one
cardinal incident of the ten months I spent as an intimate of these
half-humanised brutes. There is much that sticks in my memory that I
could write,—things that I would cheerfully give my right hand to
forget; but they do not help the telling of the story.

In the retrospect it is strange to remember how soon I fell in with
these monsters’ ways, and gained my confidence again. I had my quarrels
with them of course, and could show some of their teeth-marks still;
but they soon gained a wholesome respect for my trick of throwing
stones and for the bite of my hatchet. And my Saint-Bernard-man’s
loyalty was of infinite service to me. I found their simple scale of
honour was based mainly on the capacity for inflicting trenchant
wounds. Indeed, I may say—without vanity, I hope—that I held something
like pre-eminence among them. One or two, whom in a rare access of high
spirits I had scarred rather badly, bore me a grudge; but it vented
itself chiefly behind my back, and at a safe distance from my missiles,
in grimaces.

The Hyena-swine avoided me, and I was always on the alert for him. My
inseparable Dog-man hated and dreaded him intensely. I really believe
that was at the root of the brute’s attachment to me. It was soon
evident to me that the former monster had tasted blood, and gone the
way of the Leopard-man. He formed a lair somewhere in the forest, and
became solitary. Once I tried to induce the Beast Folk to hunt him, but
I lacked the authority to make them co-operate for one end. Again and
again I tried to approach his den and come upon him unaware; but always
he was too acute for me, and saw or winded me and got away. He too made
every forest pathway dangerous to me and my ally with his lurking
ambuscades. The Dog-man scarcely dared to leave my side.

In the first month or so the Beast Folk, compared with their latter
condition, were human enough, and for one or two besides my canine
friend I even conceived a friendly tolerance. The little pink
sloth-creature displayed an odd affection for me, and took to following
me about. The Monkey-man bored me, however; he assumed, on the strength
of his five digits, that he was my equal, and was for ever jabbering at
me,—jabbering the most arrant nonsense. One thing about him entertained
me a little: he had a fantastic trick of coining new words. He had an
idea, I believe, that to gabble about names that meant nothing was the
proper use of speech. He called it “Big Thinks” to distinguish it from
“Little Thinks,” the sane every-day interests of life. If ever I made a
remark he did not understand, he would praise it very much, ask me to
say it again, learn it by heart, and go off repeating it, with a word
wrong here or there, to all the milder of the Beast People. He thought
nothing of what was plain and comprehensible. I invented some very
curious “Big Thinks” for his especial use. I think now that he was the
silliest creature I ever met; he had developed in the most wonderful
way the distinctive silliness of man without losing one jot of the
natural folly of a monkey.

This, I say, was in the earlier weeks of my solitude among these
brutes. During that time they respected the usage established by the
Law, and behaved with general decorum. Once I found another rabbit torn
to pieces,—by the Hyena-swine, I am assured,—but that was all. It was
about May when I first distinctly perceived a growing difference in
their speech and carriage, a growing coarseness of articulation, a
growing disinclination to talk. My Monkey-man’s jabber multiplied in
volume but grew less and less comprehensible, more and more simian.
Some of the others seemed altogether slipping their hold upon speech,
though they still understood what I said to them at that time. (Can you
imagine language, once clear-cut and exact, softening and guttering,
losing shape and import, becoming mere lumps of sound again?) And they
walked erect with an increasing difficulty. Though they evidently felt
ashamed of themselves, every now and then I would come upon one or
another running on toes and finger-tips, and quite unable to recover
the vertical attitude. They held things more clumsily; drinking by
suction, feeding by gnawing, grew commoner every day. I realised more
keenly than ever what Moreau had told me about the “stubborn
beast-flesh.” They were reverting, and reverting very rapidly.

Some of them—the pioneers in this, I noticed with some surprise, were
all females—began to disregard the injunction of decency, deliberately
for the most part. Others even attempted public outrages upon the
institution of monogamy. The tradition of the Law was clearly losing
its force. I cannot pursue this disagreeable subject.

My Dog-man imperceptibly slipped back to the dog again; day by day he
became dumb, quadrupedal, hairy. I scarcely noticed the transition from
the companion on my right hand to the lurching dog at my side.

As the carelessness and disorganisation increased from day to day, the
lane of dwelling places, at no time very sweet, became so loathsome
that I left it, and going across the island made myself a hovel of
boughs amid the black ruins of Moreau’s enclosure. Some memory of pain,
I found, still made that place the safest from the Beast Folk.

It would be impossible to detail every step of the lapsing of these
monsters,—to tell how, day by day, the human semblance left them; how
they gave up bandagings and wrappings, abandoned at last every stitch
of clothing; how the hair began to spread over the exposed limbs; how
their foreheads fell away and their faces projected; how the
quasi-human intimacy I had permitted myself with some of them in the
first month of my loneliness became a shuddering horror to recall.

The change was slow and inevitable. For them and for me it came without
any definite shock. I still went among them in safety, because no jolt
in the downward glide had released the increasing charge of explosive
animalism that ousted the human day by day. But I began to fear that
soon now that shock must come. My Saint-Bernard-brute followed me to
the enclosure every night, and his vigilance enabled me to sleep at
times in something like peace. The little pink sloth-thing became shy
and left me, to crawl back to its natural life once more among the
tree-branches. We were in just the state of equilibrium that would
remain in one of those “Happy Family” cages which animal-tamers
exhibit, if the tamer were to leave it for ever.

Of course these creatures did not decline into such beasts as the
reader has seen in zoological gardens,—into ordinary bears, wolves,
tigers, oxen, swine, and apes. There was still something strange about
each; in each Moreau had blended this animal with that. One perhaps was
ursine chiefly, another feline chiefly, another bovine chiefly; but
each was tainted with other creatures,—a kind of generalised animalism
appearing through the specific dispositions. And the dwindling shreds
of the humanity still startled me every now and then,—a momentary
recrudescence of speech perhaps, an unexpected dexterity of the
fore-feet, a pitiful attempt to walk erect.

I too must have undergone strange changes. My clothes hung about me as
yellow rags, through whose rents showed the tanned skin. My hair grew
long, and became matted together. I am told that even now my eyes have
a strange brightness, a swift alertness of movement.

At first I spent the daylight hours on the southward beach watching for
a ship, hoping and praying for a ship. I counted on the \emph{Ipecacuanha}
returning as the year wore on; but she never came. Five times I saw
sails, and thrice smoke; but nothing ever touched the island. I always
had a bonfire ready, but no doubt the volcanic reputation of the island
was taken to account for that.

It was only about September or October that I began to think of making
a raft. By that time my arm had healed, and both my hands were at my
service again. At first, I found my helplessness appalling. I had never
done any carpentry or such-like work in my life, and I spent day after
day in experimental chopping and binding among the trees. I had no
ropes, and could hit on nothing wherewith to make ropes; none of the
abundant creepers seemed limber or strong enough, and with all my
litter of scientific education I could not devise any way of making
them so. I spent more than a fortnight grubbing among the black ruins
of the enclosure and on the beach where the boats had been burnt,
looking for nails and other stray pieces of metal that might prove of
service. Now and then some Beast-creature would watch me, and go
leaping off when I called to it. There came a season of thunder-storms
and heavy rain, which greatly retarded my work; but at last the raft
was completed.

I was delighted with it. But with a certain lack of practical sense
which has always been my bane, I had made it a mile or more from the
sea; and before I had dragged it down to the beach the thing had fallen
to pieces. Perhaps it is as well that I was saved from launching it;
but at the time my misery at my failure was so acute that for some days
I simply moped on the beach, and stared at the water and thought of
death.

I did not, however, mean to die, and an incident occurred that warned
me unmistakably of the folly of letting the days pass so,—for each
fresh day was fraught with increasing danger from the Beast People.

I was lying in the shade of the enclosure wall, staring out to sea,
when I was startled by something cold touching the skin of my heel, and
starting round found the little pink sloth-creature blinking into my
face. He had long since lost speech and active movement, and the lank
hair of the little brute grew thicker every day and his stumpy claws
more askew. He made a moaning noise when he saw he had attracted my
attention, went a little way towards the bushes and looked back at me.

At first I did not understand, but presently it occurred to me that he
wished me to follow him; and this I did at last,—slowly, for the day
was hot. When we reached the trees he clambered into them, for he could
travel better among their swinging creepers than on the ground. And
suddenly in a trampled space I came upon a ghastly group. My
Saint-Bernard-creature lay on the ground, dead; and near his body
crouched the Hyena-swine, gripping the quivering flesh with its
misshapen claws, gnawing at it, and snarling with delight. As I
approached, the monster lifted its glaring eyes to mine, its lips went
trembling back from its red-stained teeth, and it growled menacingly.
It was not afraid and not ashamed; the last vestige of the human taint
had vanished. I advanced a step farther, stopped, and pulled out my
revolver. At last I had him face to face.

The brute made no sign of retreat; but its ears went back, its hair
bristled, and its body crouched together. I aimed between the eyes and
fired. As I did so, the Thing rose straight at me in a leap, and I was
knocked over like a ninepin. It clutched at me with its crippled hand,
and struck me in the face. Its spring carried it over me. I fell under
the hind part of its body; but luckily I had hit as I meant, and it had
died even as it leapt. I crawled out from under its unclean weight and
stood up trembling, staring at its quivering body. That danger at least
was over; but this, I knew was only the first of the series of relapses
that must come.

I burnt both of the bodies on a pyre of brushwood; but after that I saw
that unless I left the island my death was only a question of time. The
Beast People by that time had, with one or two exceptions, left the
ravine and made themselves lairs according to their taste among the
thickets of the island. Few prowled by day, most of them slept, and the
island might have seemed deserted to a new-comer; but at night the air
was hideous with their calls and howling. I had half a mind to make a
massacre of them; to build traps, or fight them with my knife. Had I
possessed sufficient cartridges, I should not have hesitated to begin
the killing. There could now be scarcely a score left of the dangerous
carnivores; the braver of these were already dead. After the death of
this poor dog of mine, my last friend, I too adopted to some extent the
practice of slumbering in the daytime in order to be on my guard at
night. I rebuilt my den in the walls of the enclosure, with such a
narrow opening that anything attempting to enter must necessarily make
a considerable noise. The creatures had lost the art of fire too, and
recovered their fear of it. I turned once more, almost passionately
now, to hammering together stakes and branches to form a raft for my
escape.

I found a thousand difficulties. I am an extremely unhandy man (my
schooling was over before the days of Slöjd); but most of the
requirements of a raft I met at last in some clumsy, circuitous way or
other, and this time I took care of the strength. The only
insurmountable obstacle was that I had no vessel to contain the water I
should need if I floated forth upon these untravelled seas. I would
have even tried pottery, but the island contained no clay. I used to go
moping about the island trying with all my might to solve this one last
difficulty. Sometimes I would give way to wild outbursts of rage, and
hack and splinter some unlucky tree in my intolerable vexation. But I
could think of nothing.

And then came a day, a wonderful day, which I spent in ecstasy. I saw a
sail to the southwest, a small sail like that of a little schooner; and
forthwith I lit a great pile of brushwood, and stood by it in the heat
of it, and the heat of the midday sun, watching. All day I watched that
sail, eating or drinking nothing, so that my head reeled; and the
Beasts came and glared at me, and seemed to wonder, and went away. It
was still distant when night came and swallowed it up; and all night I
toiled to keep my blaze bright and high, and the eyes of the Beasts
shone out of the darkness, marvelling. In the dawn the sail was nearer,
and I saw it was the dirty lug-sail of a small boat. But it sailed
strangely. My eyes were weary with watching, and I peered and could not
believe them. Two men were in the boat, sitting low down,—one by the
bows, the other at the rudder. The head was not kept to the wind; it
yawed and fell away.

As the day grew brighter, I began waving the last rag of my jacket to
them; but they did not notice me, and sat still, facing each other. I
went to the lowest point of the low headland, and gesticulated and
shouted. There was no response, and the boat kept on her aimless
course, making slowly, very slowly, for the bay. Suddenly a great white
bird flew up out of the boat, and neither of the men stirred nor
noticed it; it circled round, and then came sweeping overhead with its
strong wings outspread.

Then I stopped shouting, and sat down on the headland and rested my
chin on my hands and stared. Slowly, slowly, the boat drove past
towards the west. I would have swum out to it, but something—a cold,
vague fear—kept me back. In the afternoon the tide stranded the boat,
and left it a hundred yards or so to the westward of the ruins of the
enclosure. The men in it were dead, had been dead so long that they
fell to pieces when I tilted the boat on its side and dragged them out.
One had a shock of red hair, like the captain of the \emph{Ipecacuanha}, and
a dirty white cap lay in the bottom of the boat.

As I stood beside the boat, three of the Beasts came slinking out of
the bushes and sniffing towards me. One of my spasms of disgust came
upon me. I thrust the little boat down the beach and clambered on board
her. Two of the brutes were Wolf-beasts, and came forward with
quivering nostrils and glittering eyes; the third was the horrible
nondescript of bear and bull. When I saw them approaching those
wretched remains, heard them snarling at one another and caught the
gleam of their teeth, a frantic horror succeeded my repulsion. I turned
my back upon them, struck the lug and began paddling out to sea. I
could not bring myself to look behind me.

I lay, however, between the reef and the island that night, and the
next morning went round to the stream and filled the empty keg aboard
with water. Then, with such patience as I could command, I collected a
quantity of fruit, and waylaid and killed two rabbits with my last
three cartridges. While I was doing this I left the boat moored to an
inward projection of the reef, for fear of the Beast People.