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

FOLK

XXII. THE MAN ALONE

 

INTRODUCTION.

 

ON February the First 1887, the Lady Vain was lost by collision

with a derelict when about the latitude 1’ S. and longitude 107’

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′ 3″ S. and longitude 101’ 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’ S. and longitude 105’ 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. IN THE DINGEY OF THE “LADY VAIN.”

 

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.

 

<1> Daily News, March 17, 1887.

 

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 red 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.

 

II. THE MAN WHO WAS GOING NOWHERE

 

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, thin so 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.

 

“Thanks to me,” he said. “Even now the mutton is boiling.”

 

“Yes,” I said with assurance; “I could eat some mutton.”

 

“But,” said he with a momentary hesitation, “you know I’m dying to hear

of how you came to be alone in that boat. Damn that howling!”

I thought I detected a certain suspicion in his eyes.

 

He suddenly left the cabin, and I heard him in violent controversy

with some one, who seemed to me to talk gibberish in response to him.

The matter sounded as though it ended in blows, but in that I thought

my ears were mistaken.