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

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It clutched at me with its crippled hand, and struck me in the face.

Its spring carried it over me. I fell under the hind part of its body;

but luckily I had hit as I meant, and it had died even as it leapt.

I crawled out from under its unclean weight and stood up trembling,

staring at its quivering body. That danger at least was over;

but this, I knew was only the first of the series of relapses that

must come.

 

I burnt both of the bodies on a pyre of brushwood; but after that I saw

that unless I left the island my death was only a question of time.

The Beast People by that time had, with one or two exceptions,

left the ravine and made themselves lairs according to their taste

among the thickets of the island. Few prowled by day, most of

them slept, and the island might have seemed deserted to a new-comer;

but at night the air was hideous with their calls and howling.

I had half a mind to make a massacre of them; to build traps,

or fight them with my knife. Had I possessed sufficient cartridges,

I should not have hesitated to begin the killing. There could

now be scarcely a score left of the dangerous carnivores;

the braver of these were already dead. After the death of this poor

dog of mine, my last friend, I too adopted to some extent the practice

of slumbering in the daytime in order to be on my guard at night.

I rebuilt my den in the walls of the enclosure, with such a narrow

opening that anything attempting to enter must necessarily make

a considerable noise. The creatures had lost the art of fire too,

and recovered their fear of it. I turned once more, almost passionately

now, to hammering together stakes and branches to form a raft for

my escape.

 

I found a thousand difficulties. I am an extremely unhandy man

(my schooling was over before the days of Slojd); but most

of the requirements of a raft I met at last in some clumsy,

circuitous way or other, and this time I took care of the strength.

The only insurmountable obstacle was that I had no vessel to contain

the water I should need if I floated forth upon these untravelled seas.

I would have even tried pottery, but the island contained no clay.

I used to go moping about the island trying with all my might

to solve this one last difficulty. Sometimes I would give

way to wild outbursts of rage, and hack and splinter some

unlucky tree in my intolerable vexation. But I could think

of nothing.

 

And then came a day, a wonderful day, which I spent in ecstasy.

I saw a sail to the southwest, a small sail like that of a little schooner;

and forthwith I lit a great pile of brushwood, and stood by it in

the heat of it, and the heat of the midday sun, watching. All day I

watched that sail, eating or drinking nothing, so that my head reeled;

and the Beasts came and glared at me, and seemed to wonder,

and went away. It was still distant when night came and swallowed

it up; and all night I toiled to keep my blaze bright and high,

and the eyes of the Beasts shone out of the darkness, marvelling.

In the dawn the sail was nearer, and I saw it was the dirty

lug-sail of a small boat. But it sailed strangely. My eyes were

weary with watching, and I peered and could not believe them.

Two men were in the boat, sitting low down,—one by the bows,

the other at the rudder. The head was not kept to the wind; it yawed and

fell away.

 

As the day grew brighter, I began waving the last rag of my jacket to them;

but they did not notice me, and sat still, facing each other. I went

to the lowest point of the low headland, and gesticulated and shouted.

There was no response, and the boat kept on her aimless course,

making slowly, very slowly, for the bay. Suddenly a great white bird

flew up out of the boat, and neither of the men stirred nor noticed it;

it circled round, and then came sweeping overhead with its strong

wings outspread.

 

Then I stopped shouting, and sat down on the headland and rested my chin

on my hands and stared. Slowly, slowly, the boat drove past towards

the west. I would have swum out to it, but something—a cold, vague fear—

kept me back. In the afternoon the tide stranded the boat, and left it

a hundred yards or so to the westward of the ruins of the enclosure.

The men in it were dead, had been dead so long that they fell

to pieces when I tilted the boat on its side and dragged them out.

One had a shock of red hair, like the captain of the “Ipecacuanha,” and

a dirty white cap lay in the bottom of the boat.

 

As I stood beside the boat, three of the Beasts came slinking

out of the bushes and sniffing towards me. One of my spasms

of disgust came upon me. I thrust the little boat down the beach

and clambered on board her. Two of the brutes were Wolf-beasts,

and came forward with quivering nostrils and glittering eyes;

the third was the horrible nondescript of bear and bull.

When I saw them approaching those wretched remains, heard them

snarling at one another and caught the gleam of their teeth,

a frantic horror succeeded my repulsion. I turned my back upon them,

struck the lug and began paddling out to sea. I could not bring myself

to look behind me.

 

I lay, however, between the reef and the island that night,

and the next morning went round to the stream and filled the empty

keg aboard with water. Then, with such patience as I could command,

I collected a quantity of fruit, and waylaid and killed two rabbits

with my last three cartridges. While I was doing this I left

the boat moored to an inward projection of the reef, for fear

of the Beast People.

 

XXII. THE MAN ALONE.

 

IN the evening I started, and drove out to sea before a gentle wind

from the southwest, slowly, steadily; and the island grew smaller

and smaller, and the lank spire of smoke dwindled to a finer and

finer line against the hot sunset. The ocean rose up around me,

hiding that low, dark patch from my eyes. The daylight, the trailing

glory of the sun, went streaming out of the sky, was drawn aside

like some luminous curtain, and at last I looked into the blue

gulf of immensity which the sunshine hides, and saw the floating

hosts of the stars. The sea was silent, the sky was silent.

I was alone with the night and silence.

 

So I drifted for three days, eating and drinking sparingly, and meditating

upon all that had happened to me,—not desiring very greatly then to see

men again. One unclean rag was about me, my hair a black tangle:

no doubt my discoverers thought me a madman.

 

It is strange, but I felt no desire to return to mankind.

I was only glad to be quit of the foulness of the Beast People.

And on the third day I was picked up by a brig from Apia to San Francisco.

Neither the captain nor the mate would believe my story, judging that

solitude and danger had made me mad; and fearing their opinion might

be that of others, I refrained from telling my adventure further,

and professed to recall nothing that had happened to me between

the loss of the “Lady Vain” and the time when I was picked up again,—

the space of a year.

 

I had to act with the utmost circumspection to save myself from the

suspicion of insanity. My memory of the Law, of the two dead sailors,

of the ambuscades of the darkness, of the body in the canebrake,

haunted me; and, unnatural as it seems, with my return to mankind came,

instead of that confidence and sympathy I had expected, a strange

enhancement of the uncertainty and dread I had experienced

during my stay upon the island. No one would believe me;

I was almost as queer to men as I had been to the Beast People.

I may have caught something of the natural wildness of my companions.

They say that terror is a disease, and anyhow I can witness that for

several years now a restless fear has dwelt in my mind,—such a restless

fear as a half-tamed lion cub may feel.

 

My trouble took the strangest form. I could not persuade myself

that the men and women I met were not also another Beast People,

animals half wrought into the outward image of human souls, and that they

would presently begin to revert,—to show first this bestial mark

and then that. But I have confided my case to a strangely able man,—

a man who had known Moreau, and seemed half to credit my story;

a mental specialist,—and he has helped me mightily, though I do not

expect that the terror of that island will ever altogether leave me.

At most times it lies far in the back of my mind, a mere distant cloud,

a memory, and a faint distrust; but there are times when the little

cloud spreads until it obscures the whole sky. Then I look about me

at my fellow-men; and I go in fear. I see faces, keen and bright;

others dull or dangerous; others, unsteady, insincere,—none that

have the calm authority of a reasonable soul. I feel as though

the animal was surging up through them; that presently the degradation

of the Islanders will be played over again on a larger scale.

I know this is an illusion; that these seeming men and women about

me are indeed men and women,—men and women for ever, perfectly

reasonable creatures, full of human desires and tender solicitude,

emancipated from instinct and the slaves of no fantastic Law,—

beings altogether different from the Beast Folk. Yet I shrink

from them, from their curious glances, their inquiries and assistance,

and long to be away from them and alone. For that reason I live near

the broad free downland, and can escape thither when this shadow

is over my soul; and very sweet is the empty downland then, under the

wind-swept sky.

 

When I lived in London the horror was well-nigh insupportable.

I could not get away from men: their voices came through windows;

locked doors were flimsy safeguards. I would go out into the streets

to fight with my delusion, and prowling women would mew after me;

furtive, craving men glance jealously at me; weary, pale workers

go coughing by me with tired eyes and eager paces, like wounded

deer dripping blood; old people, bent and dull, pass murmuring

to themselves; and, all unheeding, a ragged tail of gibing children.

Then I would turn aside into some chapel,—and even there,

such was my disturbance, it seemed that the preacher gibbered

“Big Thinks,” even as the Ape-man had done; or into some library,

and there the intent faces over the books seemed but patient

creatures waiting for prey. Particularly nauseous were the blank,

expressionless faces of people in trains and omnibuses;

they seemed no more my fellow-creatures than dead bodies would be,

so that I did not dare to travel unless I was assured of being alone.

And even it seemed that I too was not a reasonable creature,

but only an animal tormented with some strange disorder in its

brain which sent it to wander alone, like a sheep stricken

with gid.

 

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