The Island of Doctor Moreau

ON February the First 1887, the Lady Vain was lost by collision
with a derelict when about the latitude 1 degree S. and longitude
107 degrees W.

On January the Fifth, 1888—that is eleven months and four days after—my
uncle, Edward Prendick, a private gentleman, who certainly went
aboard the Lady Vain at Callao, and who had been considered drowned,
was picked up in latitude 5 degrees 3' S. and longitude 101 degrees W.
in a small open boat of which the name was illegible, but which is
supposed to have belonged to the missing schooner Ipecacuanha.
He gave such a strange account of himself that he was supposed demented.
Subsequently he alleged that his mind was a blank from the moment
of his escape from the Lady Vain. His case was discussed among
psychologists at the time as a curious instance of the lapse
of memory consequent upon physical and mental stress.
The following narrative was found among his papers by the undersigned,
his nephew and heir, but unaccompanied by any definite request
for publication.

The only island known to exist in the region in which my uncle was
picked up is Noble's Isle, a small volcanic islet and uninhabited.
It was visited in 1891 by H. M. S. Scorpion. A party of sailors
then landed, but found nothing living thereon except certain curious
white moths, some hogs and rabbits, and some rather peculiar rats.
So that this narrative is without confirmation in its most
essential particular. With that understood, there seems no harm
in putting this strange story before the public in accordance,
as I believe, with my uncle's intentions. There is at least this
much in its behalf: my uncle passed out of human knowledge about
latitude 5 degrees S. and longitude 105 degrees E., and reappeared
in the same part of the ocean after a space of eleven months.
In some way he must have lived during the interval. And it seems that
a schooner called the Ipecacuanha with a drunken captain, John Davies,
did start from Africa with a puma and certain other animals aboard
in January, 1887, that the vessel was well known at several ports
in the South Pacific, and that it finally disappeared from those seas
(with a considerable amount of copra aboard), sailing to its unknown
fate from Bayna in December, 1887, a date that tallies entirely with my
uncle's story.

CHARLES EDWARD PRENDICK.

(The Story written by Edward Prendick.)

I DO not propose to add anything to what has already been written
concerning the loss of the "Lady Vain." As everyone knows,
she collided with a derelict when ten days out from Callao.
The longboat, with seven of the crew, was picked up eighteen days after
by H. M. gunboat "Myrtle," and the story of their terrible privations
has become quite as well known as the far more horrible "Medusa" case.
But I have to add to the published story of the "Lady Vain"
another, possibly as horrible and far stranger. It has hitherto
been supposed that the four men who were in the dingey perished,
but this is incorrect. I have the best of evidence for this assertion:
I was one of the four men.

But in the first place I must state that there never were four men
in the dingey,—the number was three. Constans, who was "seen
by the captain to jump into the gig,"
[1]
luckily for us and unluckily
for himself did not reach us. He came down out of the tangle
of ropes under the stays of the smashed bowsprit, some small rope
caught his heel as he let go, and he hung for a moment head downward,
and then fell and struck a block or spar floating in the water.
We pulled towards him, but he never came up.

I say lucky for us he did not reach us, and I might almost
say luckily for himself; for we had only a small breaker
of water and some soddened ship's biscuits with us, so sudden
had been the alarm, so unprepared the ship for any disaster.
We thought the people on the launch would be better provisioned
(though it seems they were not), and we tried to hail them. They could
not have heard us, and the next morning when the drizzle cleared,—which
was not until past midday,—we could see nothing of them. We could
not stand up to look about us, because of the pitching of the boat.
The two other men who had escaped so far with me were a man named Helmar,
a passenger like myself, and a seaman whose name I don't know,—a short
sturdy man, with a stammer.

We drifted famishing, and, after our water had come to an end,
tormented by an intolerable thirst, for eight days altogether.
After the second day the sea subsided slowly to a glassy calm. It is
quite impossible for the ordinary reader to imagine those eight days.
He has not, luckily for himself, anything in his memory to imagine with.
After the first day we said little to one another, and lay
in our places in the boat and stared at the horizon, or watched,
with eyes that grew larger and more haggard every day, the misery
and weakness gaining upon our companions. The sun became pitiless.
The water ended on the fourth day, and we were already thinking
strange things and saying them with our eyes; but it was, I think,
the sixth before Helmar gave voice to the thing we had all been thinking.
I remember our voices were dry and thin, so that we bent towards
one another and spared our words. I stood out against it with all
my might, was rather for scuttling the boat and perishing together
among the sharks that followed us; but when Helmar said that if his
proposal was accepted we should have drink, the sailor came round
to him.

I would not draw lots however, and in the night the sailor whispered
to Helmar again and again, and I sat in the bows with my clasp-knife
in my hand, though I doubt if I had the stuff in me to fight;
and in the morning I agreed to Helmar's proposal, and we handed
halfpence to find the odd man. The lot fell upon the sailor;
but he was the strongest of us and would not abide by it, and attacked
Helmar with his hands. They grappled together and almost stood up.
I crawled along the boat to them, intending to help Helmar by grasping
the sailor's leg; but the sailor stumbled with the swaying of the boat,
and the two fell upon the gunwale and rolled overboard together.
They sank like stones. I remember laughing at that, and wondering
why I laughed. The laugh caught me suddenly like a thing
from without.

I lay across one of the thwarts for I know not how long,
thinking that if I had the strength I would drink sea-water
and madden myself to die quickly. And even as I lay there I saw,
with no more interest than if it had been a picture, a sail come
up towards me over the sky-line. My mind must have been wandering,
and yet I remember all that happened, quite distinctly.
I remember how my head swayed with the seas, and the horizon
with the sail above it danced up and down; but I also remember
as distinctly that I had a persuasion that I was dead, and that I
thought what a jest it was that they should come too late by such
a little to catch me in my body.

For an endless period, as it seemed to me, I lay with my head
on the thwart watching the schooner (she was a little ship,
schooner-rigged fore and aft) come up out of the sea.
She kept tacking to and fro in a widening compass, for she was
sailing dead into the wind. It never entered my head to attempt
to attract attention, and I do not remember anything distinctly after
the sight of her side until I found myself in a little cabin aft.
There's a dim half-memory of being lifted up to the gangway, and of
a big round countenance covered with freckles and surrounded with red
hair staring at me over the bulwarks. I also had a disconnected
impression of a dark face, with extraordinary eyes, close to mine;
but that I thought was a nightmare, until I met it again.
I fancy I recollect some stuff being poured in between my teeth;
and that is all.

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 '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 '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.