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

us and making other remarks

to each other.

 

“He says nothing,” said the Satyr. “Men have voices.”

 

“Yesterday he asked me of things to eat,” said the Ape-man. “He

did not know.”

 

Then they spoke inaudible things, and I heard the Satyr laughing.

 

It was on our way back that we came upon the dead rabbit.

The red body of the wretched little beast was rent to pieces, many of

the ribs stripped white, and the backbone indisputably gnawed.

 

At that Montgomery stopped. “Good God!” said he, stooping down,

and picking up some of the crushed vertebrae to examine them more closely.

“Good God!” he repeated, “what can this mean?”

 

“Some carnivore of yours has remembered its old habits,”

I said after a pause. “This backbone has been bitten through.”

 

He stood staring, with his face white and his lip pulled askew.

“I don’t like this,” he said slowly.

 

“I saw something of the same kind,” said I, “the first day I came here.”

 

“The devil you did! What was it?”

 

“A rabbit with its head twisted off.”

 

“The day you came here?”

 

“The day I came here. In the undergrowth at the back of the enclosure,

when I went out in the evening. The head was completely wrung off.”

 

He gave a long, low whistle.

 

“And what is more, I have an idea which of your brutes did the thing.

It’s only a suspicion, you know. Before I came on the rabbit I saw one

of your monsters drinking in the stream.”

 

“Sucking his drink?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“‘Not to suck your drink; that is the Law.’ Much the brutes care

for the Law, eh? when Moreau’s not about!”

 

“It was the brute who chased me.”

 

“Of course,” said Montgomery; “it’s just the way with carnivores.

After a kill, they drink. It’s the taste of blood, you know.—

What was the brute like?” he continued. “Would you know him again?”

He glanced about us, standing astride over the mess of dead rabbit,

his eyes roving among the shadows and screens of greenery,

the lurking-places and ambuscades of the forest that bounded us in.

“The taste of blood,” he said again.

 

He took out his revolver, examined the cartridges in it and replaced it.

Then he began to pull at his dropping lip.

 

“I think I should know the brute again,” I said. “I stunned him.

He ought to have a handsome bruise on the forehead of him.”

 

“But then we have to prove that he killed the rabbit,” said Montgomery.

“I wish I’d never brought the things here.”

 

I should have gone on, but he stayed there thinking over the mangled

rabbit in a puzzle-headed way. As it was, I went to such a distance

that the rabbit’s remains were hidden.

 

“Come on!” I said.

 

Presently he woke up and came towards me. “You see,” he said,

almost in a whisper, “they are all supposed to have a fixed idea

against eating anything that runs on land. If some brute has

by any accident tasted blood He went on some way in silence.

“I wonder what can have happened,” he said to himself.

Then, after a pause again: “I did a foolish thing the other day.

That servant of mine—I showed him how to skin and cook a rabbit.

It’s odd—I saw him licking his hands—It never occurred

to me.” Then: “We must put a stop to this. I must tell Moreau.”

 

He could think of nothing else on our homeward journey.

 

Moreau took the matter even more seriously than Montgomery, and I

need scarcely say that I was affected by their evident consternation.

 

“We must make an example,” said Moreau. “I’ve no doubt in my own

mind that the Leopard-man was the sinner. But how can we prove it?

I wish, Montgomery, you had kept your taste for meat in hand, and gone

without these exciting novelties. We may find ourselves in a mess yet,

through it.”

 

“I was a silly ass,” said Montgomery. “But the thing’s done now;

and you said I might have them, you know.”

 

“We must see to the thing at once,” said Moreau. “I suppose

if anything should turn up, M’ling can take care of himself?”

 

“I’m not so sure of M’ling,” said Montgomery. “I think I ought

to know him.”

 

In the afternoon, Moreau, Montgomery, myself, and M’ling went

across the island to the huts in the ravine. We three were armed;

M’ling carried the little hatchet he used in chopping firewood,

and some coils of wire. Moreau had a huge cowherd’s horn slung over

his shoulder.

 

“You will see a gathering of the Beast People,” said Montgomery.

“It is a pretty sight!”

 

Moreau said not a word on the way, but the expression of his heavy,

white-fringed face was grimly set.

 

We crossed the ravine down which smoked the stream of hot water,

and followed the winding pathway through the canebrakes

until we reached a wide area covered over with a thick,

powdery yellow substance which I believe was sulphur.

Above the shoulder of a weedy bank the sea glittered. We came to a kind

of shallow natural amphitheatre, and here the four of us halted.

Then Moreau sounded the horn, and broke the sleeping stillness

of the tropical afternoon. He must have had strong lungs.

The hooting note rose and rose amidst its echoes, to at last an

ear-penetrating intensity.

 

“Ah!” said Moreau, letting the curved instrument fall to his side again.

 

Immediately there was a crashing through the yellow canes,

and a sound of voices from the dense green jungle that marked

the morass through which I had run on the previous day.

Then at three or four points on the edge of the sulphurous area

appeared the grotesque forms of the Beast People hurrying towards us.

I could not help a creeping horror, as I perceived first one and then

another trot out from the trees or reeds and come shambling along

over the hot dust. But Moreau and Montgomery stood calmly enough;

and, perforce, I stuck beside them.

 

First to arrive was the Satyr, strangely unreal for all that he cast

a shadow and tossed the dust with his hoofs. After him from

the brake came a monstrous lout, a thing of horse and rhinoceros,

chewing a straw as it came; then appeared the Swine-woman

and two Wolf-women; then the Fox-bear witch, with her red eyes

in her peaked red face, and then others,—all hurrying eagerly.

As they came forward they began to cringe towards Moreau and chant,

quite regardless of one another, fragments of the latter half

of the litany of the Law,—“His is the Hand that wounds;

His is the Hand that heals,” and so forth. As soon as they had

approached within a distance of perhaps thirty yards they halted,

and bowing on knees and elbows began flinging the white dust upon

their heads.

 

Imagine the scene if you can! We three blue-clad men, with our

misshapen black-faced attendant, standing in a wide expanse

of sunlit yellow dust under the blazing blue sky, and surrounded

by this circle of crouching and gesticulating monstrosities,—

some almost human save in their subtle expression and gestures,

some like cripples, some so strangely distorted as to resemble nothing

but the denizens of our wildest dreams; and, beyond, the reedy

lines of a canebrake in one direction, a dense tangle of palm-trees

on the other, separating us from the ravine with the huts,

and to the north the hazy horizon of the Pacific Ocean.

 

“Sixty-two, sixty-three,” counted Moreau. “There are four more.”

 

“I do not see the Leopard-man,” said I.

 

Presently Moreau sounded the great horn again, and at the sound

of it all the Beast People writhed and grovelled in the dust.

Then, slinking out of the canebrake, stooping near the ground

and trying to join the dust-throwing circle behind Moreau’s back,

came the Leopard-man. The last of the Beast People to arrive was the little

Ape-man. The earlier animals, hot and weary with their grovelling,

shot vicious glances at him.

 

“Cease!” said Moreau, in his firm, loud voice; and the Beast People

sat back upon their hams and rested from their worshipping.

 

“Where is the Sayer of the Law?” said Moreau, and the hairy-grey

monster bowed his face in the dust.

 

“Say the words!” said Moreau.

 

Forthwith all in the kneeling assembly, swaying from side to side

and dashing up the sulphur with their hands,—first the right hand

and a puff of dust, and then the left,—began once more to chant

their strange litany. When they reached, “Not to eat Flesh or Fowl,

that is the Law,” Moreau held up his lank white hand.

 

“Stop!” he cried, and there fell absolute silence upon them all.

 

I think they all knew and dreaded what was coming.

I looked round at their strange faces. When I saw their wincing

attitudes and the furtive dread in their bright eyes, I wondered

that I had ever believed them to be men.

 

“That Law has been broken!” said Moreau.

 

“None escape,” from the faceless creature with the silvery hair.

“None escape,” repeated the kneeling circle of Beast People.

 

“Who is he?” cried Moreau, and looked round at their faces,

cracking his whip. I fancied the Hyena-swine looked dejected,

so too did the Leopard-man. Moreau stopped, facing this creature,

who cringed towards him with the memory and dread of infinite torment.

 

“Who is he?” repeated Moreau, in a voice of thunder.

 

“Evil is he who breaks the Law,” chanted the Sayer of the Law.

 

Moreau looked into the eyes of the Leopard-man, and seemed to be

dragging the very soul out of the creature.

 

“Who breaks the Law—” said Moreau, taking his eyes off his victim,

and turning towards us (it seemed to me there was a touch of exultation

in his voice).

 

“Goes back to the House of Pain,” they all clamoured,—“goes back

to the House of Pain, O Master!”

 

“Back to the House of Pain,—back to the House of Pain,”

gabbled the Ape-man, as though the idea was sweet to him.

 

“Do you hear?” said Moreau, turning back to the criminal,

“my friend—Hullo!”

 

For the Leopard-man, released from Moreau’s eye, had risen straight

from his knees, and now, with eyes aflame and his huge feline tusks

flashing out from under his curling lips, leapt towards his tormentor.

I am convinced that only the madness of unendurable fear could have

prompted this attack. The whole circle of threescore monsters seemed

to rise about us. I drew my revolver. The two figures collided.

I saw Moreau reeling back from the Leopard-man’s blow. There was a

furious yelling and howling all about us. Every one was moving rapidly.

For a moment I thought it was a general revolt. The furious face

of the Leopard-man flashed by mine, with M’ling close in pursuit.

I saw the yellow eyes of the Hyena-swine blazing with excitement,

his attitude as if he were half resolved to attack me.

The Satyr, too, glared at me over the Hyena-swine’s hunched shoulders.

I heard the crack of Moreau’s pistol, and saw the pink flash

dart across the tumult. The whole crowd seemed to swing round

in the direction of the glint of fire, and I too was swung round

by the magnetism of the movement. In another second I was running,

one of a tumultuous shouting crowd, in pursuit of the escaping

Leopard-man.

 

That is all I can tell definitely. I saw the Leopard-man strike Moreau,

and then everything spun about me until I was running headlong.

M’ling was ahead, close in pursuit of the fugitive. Behind, their tongues

already lolling out, ran