The Island of Doctor Moreau
by H. G. Wells
Contents
INTRODUCTION
I. IN THE DINGEY OF THE “LADY VAIN”
II. THE MAN WHO WAS GOING NOWHERE
III. THE STRANGE FACE
IV. AT THE SCHOONER’S RAIL
V. THE MAN WHO HAD NOWHERE TO GO
VI. THE EVIL-LOOKING BOATMEN
VII. THE LOCKED DOOR
VIII. THE CRYING OF THE PUMA
IX. THE THING IN THE FOREST
X. THE CRYING OF THE MAN
XI. THE HUNTING OF THE MAN
XII. THE SAYERS OF THE LAW
XIII. A PARLEY
XIV. DOCTOR MOREAU EXPLAINS
XV. CONCERNING THE BEAST FOLK
XVI. HOW THE BEAST FOLK TASTE BLOOD
XVII. A CATASTROPHE
XVIII. THE FINDING OF MOREAU
XIX. MONTGOMERY’S “BANK HOLIDAY”
XX. ALONE WITH THE BEAST FOLK
XXI. THE REVERSION OF THE BEAST 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 Island of Doctor Moreau
(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 luckily for us he did not reach us, and I might almost say
luckily for himself; for we had only a small beaker 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 round 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, so thin 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. 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.