The Island of Doctor Moreau (9 page)

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.

I TURNED again and went on down towards the sea. I found the hot stream
broadened out to a shallow, weedy sand, in which an abundance of crabs
and long-bodied, many-legged creatures started from my footfall.
I walked to the very edge of the salt water, and then I felt I was safe.
I turned and stared, arms akimbo, at the thick green behind me,
into which the steamy ravine cut like a smoking gash.
But, as I say, I was too full of excitement and (a true saying,
though those who have never known danger may doubt it) too desperate
to die.

Then it came into my head that there was one chance before me yet.
While Moreau and Montgomery and their bestial rabble chased me
through the island, might I not go round the beach until I came
to their enclosure,—make a flank march upon them, in fact,
and then with a rock lugged out of their loosely-built wall, perhaps,
smash in the lock of the smaller door and see what I could find
(knife, pistol, or what not) to fight them with when they returned?
It was at any rate something to try.

So I turned to the westward and walked along by the water's edge.
The setting sun flashed his blinding heat into my eyes.
The slight Pacific tide was running in with a gentle ripple.
Presently the shore fell away southward, and the sun came round
upon my right hand. Then suddenly, far in front of me, I saw
first one and then several figures emerging from the bushes,—Moreau,
with his grey staghound, then Montgomery, and two others.
At that I stopped.

They saw me, and began gesticulating and advancing. I stood watching
them approach. The two Beast Men came running forward to cut me
off from the undergrowth, inland. Montgomery came, running also,
but straight towards me. Moreau followed slower with the dog.

At last I roused myself from my inaction, and turning seaward walked
straight into the water. The water was very shallow at first.
I was thirty yards out before the waves reached to my waist.
Dimly I could see the intertidal creatures darting away from
my feet.

"What are you doing, man?" cried Montgomery.

I turned, standing waist deep, and stared at them.
Montgomery stood panting at the margin of the water. His face
was bright-red with exertion, his long flaxen hair blown about
his head, and his dropping nether lip showed his irregular teeth.
Moreau was just coming up, his face pale and firm, and the dog at his
hand barked at me. Both men had heavy whips. Farther up the beach
stared the Beast Men.

"What am I doing? I am going to drown myself," said I.

Montgomery and Moreau looked at each other. "Why?" asked Moreau.

"Because that is better than being tortured by you."

"I told you so," said Montgomery, and Moreau said something
in a low tone.

"What makes you think I shall torture you?" asked Moreau.

"What I saw," I said. "And those—yonder."

"Hush!" said Moreau, and held up his hand.

"I will not," said I. "They were men: what are they now?
I at least will not be like them."

I looked past my interlocutors. Up the beach were M'ling, Montgomery's
attendant, and one of the white-swathed brutes from the boat.
Farther up, in the shadow of the trees, I saw my little Ape-man,
and behind him some other dim figures.

"Who are these creatures?" said I, pointing to them and raising
my voice more and more that it might reach them. "They were men,
men like yourselves, whom you have infected with some bestial
taint,—men whom you have enslaved, and whom you still fear.

"You who listen," I cried, pointing now to Moreau and shouting past
him to the Beast Men,—"You who listen! Do you not see these men
still fear you, go in dread of you? Why, then, do you fear them?
You are many—"

"For God's sake," cried Montgomery, "stop that, Prendick!"

"Prendick!" cried Moreau.

They both shouted together, as if to drown my voice; and behind
them lowered the staring faces of the Beast Men, wondering,
their deformed hands hanging down, their shoulders hunched up.
They seemed, as I fancied, to be trying to understand me, to remember,
I thought, something of their human past.

I went on shouting, I scarcely remember what,—that Moreau
and Montgomery could be killed, that they were not to be feared:
that was the burden of what I put into the heads of the Beast People.
I saw the green-eyed man in the dark rags, who had met me on
the evening of my arrival, come out from among the trees, and others
followed him, to hear me better. At last for want of breath
I paused.

"Listen to me for a moment," said the steady voice of Moreau;
"and then say what you will."

"Well?" said I.

He coughed, thought, then shouted: "Latin, Prendick! bad Latin,
schoolboy Latin; but try and understand. Hi non sunt homines;
sunt animalia qui nos habemus—vivisected. A humanising process.
I will explain. Come ashore."

I laughed. "A pretty story," said I. "They talk, build houses.
They were men. It's likely I'll come ashore."

"The water just beyond where you stand is deep—and full of sharks."

"That's my way," said I. "Short and sharp. Presently."

"Wait a minute." He took something out of his pocket that flashed back
the sun, and dropped the object at his feet. "That's a loaded revolver,"
said he. "Montgomery here will do the same. Now we are going
up the beach until you are satisfied the distance is safe.
Then come and take the revolvers."

"Not I! You have a third between you."

"I want you to think over things, Prendick. In the first place,
I never asked you to come upon this island. If we vivisected men,
we should import men, not beasts. In the next, we had you
drugged last night, had we wanted to work you any mischief;
and in the next, now your first panic is over and you can think
a little, is Montgomery here quite up to the character you give him?
We have chased you for your good. Because this island is full
of inimical phenomena. Besides, why should we want to shoot you
when you have just offered to drown yourself?"

"Why did you set—your people onto me when I was in the hut?"

"We felt sure of catching you, and bringing you out of danger.
Afterwards we drew away from the scent, for your good."

I mused. It seemed just possible. Then I remembered something again.
"But I saw," said I, "in the enclosure—"

"That was the puma."

"Look here, Prendick," said Montgomery, "you're a silly ass!
Come out of the water and take these revolvers, and talk.
We can't do anything more than we could do now."

I will confess that then, and indeed always, I distrusted
and dreaded Moreau; but Montgomery was a man I felt I understood.

"Go up the beach," said I, after thinking, and added, "holding your
hands up."

"Can't do that," said Montgomery, with an explanatory nod over
his shoulder. "Undignified."

"Go up to the trees, then," said I, "as you please."

"It's a damned silly ceremony," said Montgomery.

Both turned and faced the six or seven grotesque creatures,
who stood there in the sunlight, solid, casting shadows, moving,
and yet so incredibly unreal. Montgomery cracked his whip at them,
and forthwith they all turned and fled helter-skelter into the trees;
and when Montgomery and Moreau were at a distance I judged sufficient,
I waded ashore, and picked up and examined the revolvers.
To satisfy myself against the subtlest trickery, I discharged one at
a round lump of lava, and had the satisfaction of seeing the stone
pulverised and the beach splashed with lead. Still I hesitated for
a moment.

"I'll take the risk," said I, at last; and with a revolver in each
hand I walked up the beach towards them.

"That's better," said Moreau, without affectation. "As it is, you have
wasted the best part of my day with your confounded imagination."
And with a touch of contempt which humiliated me, he and Montgomery
turned and went on in silence before me.

The knot of Beast Men, still wondering, stood back among the trees.
I passed them as serenely as possible. One started to follow me,
but retreated again when Montgomery cracked his whip. The rest
stood silent—watching. They may once have been animals; but I never
before saw an animal trying to think.

[2]

"AND now, Prendick, I will explain," said Doctor Moreau,
so soon as we had eaten and drunk. "I must confess that
you are the most dictatorial guest I ever entertained.
I warn you that this is the last I shall do to oblige you.
The next thing you threaten to commit suicide about, I shan't
do,—even at some personal inconvenience."

He sat in my deck chair, a cigar half consumed in his white,
dexterous-looking fingers. The light of the swinging lamp fell on his
white hair; he stared through the little window out at the starlight.
I sat as far away from him as possible, the table between us
and the revolvers to hand. Montgomery was not present.
I did not care to be with the two of them in such a little room.

"You admit that the vivisected human being, as you called it, is,
after all, only the puma?" said Moreau. He had made me visit
that horror in the inner room, to assure myself of its inhumanity.

"It is the puma," I said, "still alive, but so cut and mutilated
as I pray I may never see living flesh again. Of all vile—"

"Never mind that," said Moreau; "at least, spare me those
youthful horrors. Montgomery used to be just the same.
You admit that it is the puma. Now be quiet, while I reel off
my physiological lecture to you."

And forthwith, beginning in the tone of a man supremely bored,
but presently warming a little, he explained his work to me.
He was very simple and convincing. Now and then there was a touch
of sarcasm in his voice. Presently I found myself hot with shame at our
mutual positions.

The creatures I had seen were not men, had never been men.
They were animals, humanised animals,—triumphs of vivisection.

"You forget all that a skilled vivisector can do with living things,"
said Moreau. "For my own part, I'm puzzled why the things
I have done here have not been done before. Small efforts,
of course, have been made,—amputation, tongue-cutting, excisions.
Of course you know a squint may be induced or cured by surgery?
Then in the case of excisions you have all kinds of secondary changes,
pigmentary disturbances, modifications of the passions, alterations in
the secretion of fatty tissue. I have no doubt you have heard of
these things?"

"Of course," said I. "But these foul creatures of yours—"

"All in good time," said he, waving his hand at me; "I am only beginning.
Those are trivial cases of alteration. Surgery can do better things
than that. There is building up as well as breaking down and changing.
You have heard, perhaps, of a common surgical operation resorted to in
cases where the nose has been destroyed: a flap of skin is cut from
the forehead, turned down on the nose, and heals in the new position.
This is a kind of grafting in a new position of part of an animal
upon itself. Grafting of freshly obtained material from another
animal is also possible,—the case of teeth, for example.
The grafting of skin and bone is done to facilitate healing:
the surgeon places in the middle of the wound pieces of skin snipped
from another animal, or fragments of bone from a victim freshly killed.
Hunter's cock-spur—possibly you have heard of that—flourished on
the bull's neck; and the rhinoceros rats of the Algerian zouaves are
also to be thought of,—monsters manufactured by transferring a slip
from the tail of an ordinary rat to its snout, and allowing it to heal in
that position."