The Island of Doctor Moreau - H. G. Wells (little readers txt) 📗

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; that is the Law. Are we not Men?

“Not to chase other Men; 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.

 

“His is the House of Pain.

“His is the Hand that makes.

“His is the Hand that wounds.

“His is the Hand that heals.”

 

And so on for another long series, mostly quite incomprehensible

gibberish to me about Him, whoever he might be. I could have fancied

it was a dream, but never before have I heard chanting in a dream.

 

“His is the lightning flash,” we sang. “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.

 

“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 lowlying

stretch of tall reeds, through which I pushed into a dark,

thick undergrowth that 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