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

was still sober enough to understand my motive in denying

Moreau’s death. “He is not dead,” he said slowly, “not dead at all.

No more dead than I am.”

 

“Some,” said I, “have broken the Law: they will die. Some have died.

Show us now where his old body lies,—the body he cast away because

he had no more need of it.”

 

“It is this way, Man who walked in the Sea,” said the grey Thing.

 

And with these six creatures guiding us, we went through the tumult

of ferns and creepers and tree-stems towards the northwest.

Then came a yelling, a crashing among the branches, and a little

pink homunculus rushed by us shrieking. Immediately after appeared

a monster in headlong pursuit, blood-bedabbled, who was amongst us

almost before he could stop his career. The grey Thing leapt aside.

M’ling, with a snarl, flew at it, and was struck aside. Montgomery fired

and missed, bowed his head, threw up his arm, and turned to run.

I fired, and the Thing still came on; fired again, point-blank, into

its ugly face. I saw its features vanish in a flash: its face was

driven in. Yet it passed me, gripped Montgomery, and holding him,

fell headlong beside him and pulled him sprawling upon itself in its

death-agony.

 

I found myself alone with M’ling, the dead brute, and the prostrate man.

Montgomery raised himself slowly and stared in a muddled way at

the shattered Beast Man beside him. It more than half sobered him.

He scrambled to his feet. Then I saw the grey Thing returning cautiously

through the trees.

 

“See,” said I, pointing to the dead brute, “is the Law not alive?

This came of breaking the Law.”

 

He peered at the body. “He sends the Fire that kills,”

said he, in his deep voice, repeating part of the Ritual.

The others gathered round and stared for a space.

 

At last we drew near the westward extremity of the island.

We came upon the gnawed and mutilated body of the puma,

its shoulder-bone smashed by a bullet, and perhaps twenty yards

farther found at last what we sought. Moreau lay face downward

in a trampled space in a canebrake. One hand was almost severed

at the wrist and his silvery hair was dabbled in blood.

His head had been battered in by the fetters of the puma.

The broken canes beneath him were smeared with blood.

His revolver we could not find. Montgomery turned him over.

Resting at intervals, and with the help of the seven Beast People

(for he was a heavy man), we carried Moreau back to the enclosure.

The night was darkling. Twice we heard unseen creatures howling

and shrieking past our little band, and once the little pink

sloth-creature appeared and stared at us, and vanished again.

But we were not attacked again. At the gates of the enclosure

our company of Beast People left us, M’ling going with the rest.

We locked ourselves in, and then took Moreau’s mangled

body into the yard and laid it upon a pile of brushwood.

Then we went into the laboratory and put an end to all we found living

there.

 

XIX. MONTGOMERY’S “BANK HOLIDAY.”

 

WHEN this was accomplished, and we had washed and eaten,

Montgomery and I went into my little room and seriously discussed

our position for the first time. It was then near midnight.

He was almost sober, but greatly disturbed in his mind.

He had been strangely under the influence of Moreau’s personality:

I do not think it had ever occurred to him that Moreau could die.

This disaster was the sudden collapse of the habits that had become part of

his nature in the ten or more monotonous years he had spent on the island.

He talked vaguely, answered my questions crookedly, wandered into

general questions.

 

“This silly ass of a world,” he said; “what a muddle it all is!

I haven’t had any life. I wonder when it’s going to begin.

Sixteen years being bullied by nurses and schoolmasters at

their own sweet will; five in London grinding hard at medicine,

bad food, shabby lodgings, shabby clothes, shabby vice, a blunder,—

I didn’t know any better,—and hustled off to this beastly island.

Ten years here! What’s it all for, Prendick? Are we bubbles blown by

a baby?”

 

It was hard to deal with such ravings. “The thing we have to think

of now,” said I, “is how to get away from this island.”

 

“What’s the good of getting away? I’m an outcast.

Where am I to join on? It’s all very well for you, Prendick.

Poor old Moreau! We can’t leave him here to have his bones picked.

As it is—And besides, what will become of the decent part of the

Beast Folk?”

 

“Well,” said I, “that will do to-morrow. I’ve been thinking we might make

that brushwood into a pyre and burn his body—and those other things.

Then what will happen with the Beast Folk?”

 

“I don’t know. I suppose those that were made of beasts of prey will

make silly asses of themselves sooner or later. We can’t massacre

the lot—can we? I suppose that’s what your humanity would suggest?

But they’ll change. They are sure to change.”

 

He talked thus inconclusively until at last I felt my temper going.

 

“Damnation!” he exclaimed at some petulance of mine; “can’t you see I’m

in a worse hole than you are?” And he got up, and went for the brandy.

“Drink!” he said returning, “you logic-chopping, chalky-faced saint

of an atheist, drink!”

 

“Not I,” said I, and sat grimly watching his face under the yellow

paraffine flare, as he drank himself into a garrulous misery.

 

I have a memory of infinite tedium. He wandered into a maudlin

defence of the Beast People and of M’ling. M’ling, he said,

was the only thing that had ever really cared for him.

And suddenly an idea came to him.

 

“I’m damned!” said he, staggering to his feet and clutching

the brandy bottle.

 

By some flash of intuition I knew what it was he intended.

“You don’t give drink to that beast!” I said, rising and facing him.

 

“Beast!” said he. “You’re the beast. He takes his liquor

like a Christian. Come out of the way, Prendick!”

 

“For God’s sake,” said I.

 

“Get—out of the way!” he roared, and suddenly whipped out his revolver.

 

“Very well,” said I, and stood aside, half-minded to fall upon him

as he put his hand upon the latch, but deterred by the thought

of my useless arm. “You’ve made a beast of yourself,—to the beasts

you may go.”

 

He flung the doorway open, and stood half facing me between

the yellow lamp-light and the pallid glare of the moon;

his eye-sockets were blotches of black under his stubbly eyebrows.

 

“You’re a solemn prig, Prendick, a silly ass! You’re always fearing

and fancying. We’re on the edge of things. I’m bound to cut my

throat to-morrow. I’m going to have a damned Bank Holiday to-night.”

He turned and went out into the moonlight. “M’ling!” he cried;

“M’ling, old friend!”

 

Three dim creatures in the silvery light came along the edge

of the wan beach,—one a white-wrapped creature, the other two

blotches of blackness following it. They halted, staring.

Then I saw M’ling’s hunched shoulders as he came round the corner

of the house.

 

“Drink!” cried Montgomery, “drink, you brutes! Drink and be men!

Damme, I’m the cleverest. Moreau forgot this; this is the last touch.

Drink, I tell you!” And waving the bottle in his hand he started

off at a kind of quick trot to the westward, M’ling ranging himself

between him and the three dim creatures who followed.

 

I went to the doorway. They were already indistinct in the mist

of the moonlight before Montgomery halted. I saw him administer

a dose of the raw brandy to M’ling, and saw the five figures melt

into one vague patch.

 

“Sing!” I heard Montgomery shout,—“sing all together, `Confound

old Prendick!’ That’s right; now again, `Confound old Prendick!’”

 

The black group broke up into five separate figures,

and wound slowly away from me along the band of shining beach.

Each went howling at his own sweet will, yelping insults at me,

or giving whatever other vent this new inspiration of brandy demanded.

Presently I heard Montgomery’s voice shouting, “Right turn!”

and they passed with their shouts and howls into the blackness

of the landward trees. Slowly, very slowly, they receded

into silence.

 

The peaceful splendour of the night healed again.

The moon was now past the meridian and travelling down the west.

It was at its full, and very bright riding through the empty blue sky.

The shadow of the wall lay, a yard wide and of inky blackness, at my feet.

The eastward sea was a featureless grey, dark and mysterious;

and between the sea and the shadow the grey sands (of volcanic

glass and crystals) flashed and shone like a beach of diamonds.

Behind me the paraffine lamp flared hot and ruddy.

 

Then I shut the door, locked it, and went into the enclosure where

Moreau lay beside his latest victims,—the staghounds and the llama

and some other wretched brutes,—with his massive face calm even

after his terrible death, and with the hard eyes open, staring at

the dead white moon above. I sat down upon the edge of the sink,

and with my eyes upon that ghastly pile of silvery light and ominous

shadows began to turn over my plans. In the morning I would gather

some provisions in the dingey, and after setting fire to the pyre

before me, push out into the desolation of the high sea once more.

I felt that for Montgomery there was no help; that he was, in truth,

half akin to these Beast Folk, unfitted for human kindred.

 

I do not know how long I sat there scheming. It must have been

an hour or so. Then my planning was interrupted by the return of

Montgomery to my neighbourhood. I heard a yelling from many throats,

a tumult of exultant cries passing down towards the beach,

whooping and howling, and excited shrieks that seemed to come to a stop

near the water’s edge. The riot rose and fell; I heard heavy blows

and the splintering smash of wood, but it did not trouble me then.

A discordant chanting began.

 

My thoughts went back to my means of escape. I got up, brought the lamp,

and went into a shed to look at some kegs I had seen there.

Then I became interested in the contents of some biscuit-tins, and

opened one. I saw something out of the tail of my eye,—a red figure,—

and turned sharply.

 

Behind me lay the yard, vividly black-and-white in the moonlight,

and the pile of wood and faggots on which Moreau and his mutilated

victims lay, one over another. They seemed to be gripping one another

in one last revengeful grapple. His wounds gaped, black as night,

and the blood that had dripped lay in black patches upon the sand.

Then I saw, without understanding, the cause of my phantom,—

a ruddy glow that came and danced and went upon the wall opposite.

I misinterpreted this, fancied it was a reflection of my

flickering lamp, and turned again to the stores in the shed.

I went on rummaging among them, as well as a one-armed man could,

finding this convenient thing and that, and putting them

aside for to-morrow’s launch. My movements were slow,

and the time passed quickly. Insensibly the daylight crept

upon me.

 

The chanting died down, giving place to a clamour; then it

began again, and suddenly broke into a tumult. I heard cries of,

“More! more!” a sound