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

Then he shouted at the dogs, and returned to

the cabin.

 

“Well?” said he in the doorway. “You were just beginning to tell me.”

 

I told him my name, Edward Prendick, and how I had taken to Natural

History as a relief from the dulness of my comfortable independence.

 

He seemed interested in this. “I’ve done some science myself. I did

my Biology at University College,—getting out the ovary of the earthworm

and the radula of the snail, and all that. Lord! It’s ten years ago.

But go on! go on! tell me about the boat.”

 

He was evidently satisfied with the frankness of my story,

which I told in concise sentences enough, for I felt horribly weak;

and when it was finished he reverted at once to the topic

of Natural History and his own biological studies. He began to

question me closely about Tottenham Court Road and Gower Street.

“Is Caplatzi still flourishing? What a shop that was!”

He had evidently been a very ordinary medical student, and drifted

incontinently to the topic of the music halls. He told me

some anecdotes.

 

“Left it all,” he said, “ten years ago. How jolly it all used to be!

But I made a young ass of myself,—played myself out before I was

twenty-one. I daresay it’s all different now. But I must look up

that ass of a cook, and see what he’s done to your mutton.”

 

The growling overhead was renewed, so suddenly and with so much savage

anger that it startled me. “What’s that?” I called after him,

but the door had closed. He came back again with the boiled mutton,

and I was so excited by the appetising smell of it that I forgot

the noise of the beast that had troubled me.

 

After a day of alternate sleep and feeding I was so far recovered

as to be able to get from my bunk to the scuttle, and see the green

seas trying to keep pace with us. I judged the schooner was running

before the wind. Montgomery—that was the name of the flaxen-haired man—

came in again as I stood there, and I asked him for some clothes.

He lent me some duck things of his own, for those I had worn in the boat

had been thrown overboard. They were rather loose for me, for he was

large and long in his limbs. He told me casually that the captain

was three-parts drunk in his own cabin. As I assumed the clothes,

I began asking him some questions about the destination of the ship.

He said the ship was bound to Hawaii, but that it had to land

him first.

 

“Where?” said I.

 

“It’s an island, where I live. So far as I know, it hasn’t got

a name.”

 

He stared at me with his nether lip dropping, and looked so wilfully

stupid of a sudden that it came into my head that he desired

to avoid my questions. I had the discretion to ask no more.

 

III. THE STRANGE FACE.

 

WE left the cabin and found a man at the companion obstructing

our way. He was standing on the ladder with his back to us,

peering over the combing of the hatchway. He was, I could see,

a misshapen man, short, broad, and clumsy, with a crooked back,

a hairy neck, and a head sunk between his shoulders. He was dressed

in dark-blue serge, and had peculiarly thick, coarse, black hair.

I heard the unseen dogs growl furiously, and forthwith he ducked back,—

coming into contact with the hand I put out to fend him off from myself.

He turned with animal swiftness.

 

In some indefinable way the black face thus flashed upon me

shocked me profoundly. It was a singularly deformed one.

The facial part projected, forming something dimly suggestive

of a muzzle, and the huge half-open mouth showed as big white teeth

as I had ever seen in a human mouth. His eyes were blood-shot

at the edges, with scarcely a rim of white round the hazel pupils.

There was a curious glow of excitement in his face.

 

“Confound you!” said Montgomery. “Why the devil don’t you get

out of the way?”

 

The black-faced man started aside without a word.

I went on up the companion, staring at him instinctively

as I did so. Montgomery stayed at the foot for a moment.

“You have no business here, you know,” he said in a deliberate tone.

“Your place is forward.”

 

The black-faced man cowered. “They—won’t have me forward.”

He spoke slowly, with a queer, hoarse quality in his voice.

 

“Won’t have you forward!” said Montgomery, in a menacing voice.

“But I tell you to go!” He was on the brink of saying something further,

then looked up at me suddenly and followed me up the ladder.

 

I had paused half way through the hatchway, looking back, still astonished

beyond measure at the grotesque ugliness of this black-faced creature.

I had never beheld such a repulsive and extraordinary face before,

and yet—if the contradiction is credible—I experienced at

the same time an odd feeling that in some way I had already

encountered exactly the features and gestures that now amazed me.

Afterwards it occurred to me that probably I had seen him as I

was lifted aboard; and yet that scarcely satisfied my suspicion

of a previous acquaintance. Yet how one could have set eyes on

so singular a face and yet have forgotten the precise occasion,

passed my imagination.

 

Montgomery’s movement to follow me released my attention, and I

turned and looked about me at the flush deck of the little schooner.

I was already half prepared by the sounds I had heard for what I saw.

Certainly I never beheld a deck so dirty. It was littered with

scraps of carrot, shreds of green stuff, and indescribable filth.

Fastened by chains to the mainmast were a number of grisly staghounds,

who now began leaping and barking at me, and by the mizzen a huge puma was

cramped in a little iron cage far too small even to give it turning room.

Farther under the starboard bulwark were some big hutches containing

a number of rabbits, and a solitary llama was squeezed in a mere

box of a cage forward. The dogs were muzzled by leather straps.

The only human being on deck was a gaunt and silent sailor at

the wheel.

 

The patched and dirty spankers were tense before the wind,

and up aloft the little ship seemed carrying every sail she had.

The sky was clear, the sun midway down the western sky;

long waves, capped by the breeze with froth, were running with us.

We went past the steersman to the taffrail, and saw the water come

foaming under the stern and the bubbles go dancing and vanishing

in her wake. I turned and surveyed the unsavoury length of

the ship.

 

“Is this an ocean menagerie?” said I.

 

“Looks like it,” said Montgomery.

 

“What are these beasts for? Merchandise, curios? Does the captain

think he is going to sell them somewhere in the South Seas?”

 

“It looks like it, doesn’t it?” said Montgomery, and turned towards

the wake again.

 

Suddenly we heard a yelp and a volley of furious blasphemy

from the companion hatchway, and the deformed man with the black

face came up hurriedly. He was immediately followed by a heavy

red-haired man in a white cap. At the sight of the former

the staghounds, who had all tired of barking at me by this time,

became furiously excited, howling and leaping against their chains.

The black hesitated before them, and this gave the red-haired man

time to come up with him and deliver a tremendous blow between

the shoulder-blades. The poor devil went down like a felled ox,

and rolled in the dirt among the furiously excited dogs.

It was lucky for him that they were muzzled. The red-haired man gave

a yawp of exultation and stood staggering, and as it seemed to me

in serious danger of either going backwards down the companion hatchway

or forwards upon his victim.

 

So soon as the second man had appeared, Montgomery had started forward.

“Steady on there!” he cried, in a tone of remonstrance.

A couple of sailors appeared on the forecastle. The black-faced man,

howling in a singular voice rolled about under the feet of the dogs.

No one attempted to help him. The brutes did their best to worry him,

butting their muzzles at him. There was a quick dance of their

lithe grey-figured bodies over the clumsy, prostrate figure.

The sailors forward shouted, as though it was admirable sport.

Montgomery gave an angry exclamation, and went striding down

the deck, and I followed him. The black-faced man scrambled

up and staggered forward, going and leaning over the bulwark

by the main shrouds, where he remained, panting and glaring

over his shoulder at the dogs. The red-haired man laughed a

satisfied laugh.

 

“Look here, Captain,” said Montgomery, with his lisp a little accentuated,

gripping the elbows of the red-haired man, “this won’t do!”

 

I stood behind Montgomery. The captain came half round,

and regarded him with the dull and solemn eyes of a drunken man.

“Wha’ won’t do?” he said, and added, after looking sleepily into

Montgomery’s face for a minute, “Blasted Sawbones!”

 

With a sudden movement he shook his arm free, and after two

ineffectual attempts stuck his freckled fists into his side pockets.

 

“That man’s a passenger,” said Montgomery. “I’d advise you to keep

your hands off him.”

 

“Go to hell!” said the captain, loudly. He suddenly turned

and staggered towards the side. “Do what I like on my own ship,”

he said.

 

I think Montgomery might have left him then, seeing the brute was drunk;

but he only turned a shade paler, and followed the captain

to the bulwarks.

 

“Look you here, Captain,” he said; “that man of mine is not to be

ill-treated. He has been hazed ever since he came aboard.”

 

For a minute, alcoholic fumes kept the captain speechless.

“Blasted Sawbones!” was all he considered necessary.

 

I could see that Montgomery had one of those slow, pertinacious tempers

that will warm day after day to a white heat, and never again

cool to forgiveness; and I saw too that this quarrel had been

some time growing. “The man’s drunk,” said I, perhaps officiously;

“you’ll do no good.”

 

Montgomery gave an ugly twist to his dropping lip. “He’s always drunk.

Do you think that excuses his assaulting his passengers?”

 

“My ship,” began the captain, waving his hand unsteadily

towards the cages, “was a clean ship. Look at it now!”

It was certainly anything but clean. “Crew,” continued the captain,

“clean, respectable crew.”

 

“You agreed to take the beasts.”

 

“I wish I’d never set eyes on your infernal island. What the devil—

want beasts for on an island like that? Then, that man of yours—

understood he was a man. He’s a lunatic; and he hadn’t no business aft.

Do you think the whole damned ship belongs to you?”

 

“Your sailors began to haze the poor devil as soon as he came aboard.”

 

“That’s just what he is—he’s a devil! an ugly devil! My men

can’t stand him. I can’t stand him. None of us can’t stand him.

Nor you either!”

 

Montgomery turned away. “You leave that man alone, anyhow,” he said,

nodding his head as he spoke.

 

But the captain meant to quarrel now. He raised his voice. “If he comes

this end of the ship again I’ll cut his insides out, I tell you.

Cut out his blasted insides! Who are you, to tell me what I’m to do?

I tell you I’m captain of this ship,—captain and