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

damned! I’m king here.” At last I must confess

my voice suddenly broke in the middle of a vigorous threat.

I felt a gust of hysterical petulance, and went aft and stared dismally

at nothing.

 

Meanwhile the sailors progressed rapidly with the task of

unshipping the packages and caged animals. A large launch,

with two standing lugs, lay under the lea of the schooner;

and into this the strange assortment of goods were swung.

I did not then see the hands from the island that were receiving

the packages, for the hull of the launch was hidden from me

by the side of the schooner. Neither Montgomery nor his companion

took the slightest notice of me, but busied themselves in assisting

and directing the four or five sailors who were unloading the goods.

The captain went forward interfering rather than assisting.

I was alternately despairful and desperate. Once or twice

as I stood waiting there for things to accomplish themselves,

I could not resist an impulse to laugh at my miserable quandary.

I felt all the wretcheder for the lack of a breakfast.

Hunger and a lack of blood-corpuscles take all the manhood from a man.

I perceived pretty clearly that I had not the stamina

either to resist what the captain chose to do to expel me,

or to force myself upon Montgomery and his companion.

So I waited passively upon fate; and the work of transferring

Montgomery’s possessions to the launch went on as if I did

not exist.

 

Presently that work was finished, and then came a struggle.

I was hauled, resisting weakly enough, to the gangway.

Even then I noticed the oddness of the brown faces of the men who were

with Montgomery in the launch; but the launch was now fully laden,

and was shoved off hastily. A broadening gap of green water

appeared under me, and I pushed back with all my strength to avoid

falling headlong. The hands in the launch shouted derisively,

and I heard Montgomery curse at them; and then the captain,

the mate, and one of the seamen helping him, ran me aft towards

the stern.

 

The dingey of the “Lady Vain” had been towing behind; it was

half full of water, had no oars, and was quite unvictualled.

I refused to go aboard her, and flung myself full length on the deck.

In the end, they swung me into her by a rope (for they had no

stern ladder), and then they cut me adrift. I drifted slowly

from the schooner. In a kind of stupor I watched all hands take

to the rigging, and slowly but surely she came round to the wind;

the sails fluttered, and then bellied out as the wind came into them.

I stared at her weather-beaten side heeling steeply towards me;

and then she passed out of my range of view.

 

I did not turn my head to follow her. At first I could scarcely

believe what had happened. I crouched in the bottom of the dingey,

stunned, and staring blankly at the vacant, oily sea. Then I realized

that I was in that little hell of mine again, now half swamped;

and looking back over the gunwale, I saw the schooner standing away

from me, with the red-haired captain mocking at me over the taffrail,

and turning towards the island saw the launch growing smaller as she

approached the beach.

 

Abruptly the cruelty of this desertion became clear to me.

I had no means of reaching the land unless I should chance to drift there.

I was still weak, you must remember, from my exposure in the boat;

I was empty and very faint, or I should have had more heart.

But as it was I suddenly began to sob and weep, as I had never done

since I was a little child. The tears ran down my face. In a passion

of despair I struck with my fists at the water in the bottom of the boat,

and kicked savagely at the gunwale. I prayed aloud for God to let

me die.

 

VI. THE EVIL-LOOKING BOATMEN.

 

BUT the islanders, seeing that I was really adrift, took pity on me.

I drifted very slowly to the eastward, approaching the island slantingly;

and presently I saw, with hysterical relief, the launch come round and

return towards me. She was heavily laden, and I could make out as she

drew nearer Montgomery’s white-haired, broad-shouldered companion sitting

cramped up with the dogs and several packing-cases in the stern sheets.

This individual stared fixedly at me without moving or speaking.

The black-faced cripple was glaring at me as fixedly in the bows

near the puma. There were three other men besides,—three strange

brutish-looking fellows, at whom the staghounds were snarling savagely.

Montgomery, who was steering, brought the boat by me, and rising,

caught and fastened my painter to the tiller to tow me, for there was no

room aboard.

 

I had recovered from my hysterical phase by this time

and answered his hail, as he approached, bravely enough.

I told him the dingey was nearly swamped, and he reached me a piggin.

I was jerked back as the rope tightened between the boats.

For some time I was busy baling.

 

It was not until I had got the water under (for the water

in the dingey had been shipped; the boat was perfectly sound)

that I had leisure to look at the people in the launch again.

 

The white-haired man I found was still regarding me steadfastly,

but with an expression, as I now fancied, of some perplexity.

When my eyes met his, he looked down at the staghound that sat

between his knees. He was a powerfully-built man, as I have said,

with a fine forehead and rather heavy features; but his eyes

had that odd drooping of the skin above the lids which often

comes with advancing years, and the fall of his heavy mouth

at the corners gave him an expression of pugnacious resolution.

He talked to Montgomery in a tone too low for me to hear.

 

From him my eyes travelled to his three men; and a strange crew they were.

I saw only their faces, yet there was something in their faces—

I knew not what—that gave me a queer spasm of disgust.

I looked steadily at them, and the impression did not pass,

though I failed to see what had occasioned it. They seemed

to me then to be brown men; but their limbs were oddly swathed

in some thin, dirty, white stuff down even to the fingers and feet:

I have never seen men so wrapped up before, and women so only in the East.

They wore turbans too, and thereunder peered out their elfin

faces at me,—faces with protruding lower-jaws and bright eyes.

They had lank black hair, almost like horsehair, and seemed

as they sat to exceed in stature any race of men I have seen.

The white-haired man, who I knew was a good six feet in height,

sat a head below any one of the three. I found afterwards that really

none were taller than myself; but their bodies were abnormally long,

and the thigh-part of the leg short and curiously twisted.

At any rate, they were an amazingly ugly gang, and over the heads

of them under the forward lug peered the black face of the man whose

eyes were luminous in the dark. As I stared at them, they met my gaze;

and then first one and then another turned away from my direct stare,

and looked at me in an odd, furtive manner. It occurred to me that I

was perhaps annoying them, and I turned my attention to the island

we were approaching.

 

It was low, and covered with thick vegetation,—chiefly a kind of palm,

that was new to me. From one point a thin white thread of vapour rose

slantingly to an immense height, and then frayed out like a down feather.

We were now within the embrace of a broad bay flanked on either

hand by a low promontory. The beach was of dull-grey sand,

and sloped steeply up to a ridge, perhaps sixty or seventy feet above

the sea-level, and irregularly set with trees and undergrowth.

Half way up was a square enclosure of some greyish stone, which I found

subsequently was built partly of coral and partly of pumiceous lava.

Two thatched roofs peeped from within this enclosure.

A man stood awaiting us at the water’s edge. I fancied while we

were still far off that I saw some other and very grotesque-looking

creatures scuttle into the bushes upon the slope; but I saw nothing

of these as we drew nearer. This man was of a moderate size,

and with a black negroid face. He had a large, almost lipless,

mouth, extraordinary lank arms, long thin feet, and bow-legs,

and stood with his heavy face thrust forward staring at us.

He was dressed like Montgomery and his white-haired companion,

in jacket and trousers of blue serge. As we came still nearer,

this individual began to run to and fro on the beach, making the most

grotesque movements.

 

At a word of command from Montgomery, the four men in the launch

sprang up, and with singularly awkward gestures struck the lugs.

Montgomery steered us round and into a narrow little dock excavated

in the beach. Then the man on the beach hastened towards us.

This dock, as I call it, was really a mere ditch just long

enough at this phase of the tide to take the longboat.

I heard the bows ground in the sand, staved the dingey off the rudder

of the big boat with my piggin, and freeing the painter, landed.

The three muffled men, with the clumsiest movements, scrambled out

upon the sand, and forthwith set to landing the cargo, assisted by

the man on the beach. I was struck especially by the curious

movements of the legs of the three swathed and bandaged boatmen,—

not stiff they were, but distorted in some odd way, almost as if they

were jointed in the wrong place. The dogs were still snarling,

and strained at their chains after these men, as the white-haired

man landed with them. The three big fellows spoke to one another

in odd guttural tones, and the man who had waited for us on

the beach began chattering to them excitedly—a foreign language,

as I fancied—as they laid hands on some bales piled near the stern.

Somewhere I had heard such a voice before, and I could not think where.

The white-haired man stood, holding in a tumult of six dogs, and bawling

orders over their din. Montgomery, having unshipped the rudder,

landed likewise, and all set to work at unloading. I was too faint,

what with my long fast and the sun beating down on my bare head, to offer

any assistance.

 

Presently the white-haired man seemed to recollect my presence,

and came up to me.

 

“You look,” said he, “as though you had scarcely breakfasted.”

His little eyes were a brilliant black under his heavy brows.

“I must apologise for that. Now you are our guest, we must

make you comfortable,—though you are uninvited, you know.”

He looked keenly into my face. “Montgomery says you are an educated man,

Mr. Prendick; says you know something of science. May I ask what

that signifies?”

 

I told him I had spent some years at the Royal College of Science,

and had done some researches in biology under Huxley. He raised

his eyebrows slightly at that.

 

“That alters the case a little, Mr. Prendick,” he said,

with a trifle more respect in his manner. “As it happens,

we are biologists here. This is a biological station—of a sort.”

His eye rested on the men in white who were busily hauling the puma,

on rollers, towards the