The island of Doctor Moreau
sprang back as he passed, and rattled in M’ling’s face. We others in
the rear found a trampled path for us when we reached the brake. The
chase lay through the brake for perhaps a quarter of a mile, and then
plunged into a dense thicket, which retarded our movements exceedingly,
though we went through it in a crowd together,—fronds flicking into our
faces, ropy creepers catching us under the chin or gripping our ankles,
thorny plants hooking into and tearing cloth and flesh together.
“He has gone on all-fours through this,” panted Moreau, now just ahead
of me.
“None escape,” said the Wolf-bear, laughing into my face with the
exultation of hunting. We burst out again among rocks, and saw the
quarry ahead running lightly on all-fours and snarling at us over his
shoulder. At that the Wolf Folk howled with delight. The Thing was
still clothed, and at a distance its face still seemed human; but the
carriage of its four limbs was feline, and the furtive droop of its
shoulder was distinctly that of a hunted animal. It leapt over some
thorny yellow-flowering bushes, and was hidden. M’ling was halfway
across the space.
Most of us now had lost the first speed of the chase, and had fallen
into a longer and steadier stride. I saw as we traversed the open that
the pursuit was now spreading from a column into a line. The
Hyena-swine still ran close to me, watching me as it ran, every now and
then puckering its muzzle with a snarling laugh. At the edge of the
rocks the Leopard-man, realising that he was making for the projecting
cape upon which he had stalked me on the night of my arrival, had
doubled in the undergrowth; but Montgomery had seen the manoeuvre, and
turned him again. So, panting, tumbling against rocks, torn by
brambles, impeded by ferns and reeds, I helped to pursue the
Leopard-man who had broken the Law, and the Hyena-swine ran, laughing
savagely, by my side. I staggered on, my head reeling and my heart
beating against my ribs, tired almost to death, and yet not daring to
lose sight of the chase lest I should be left alone with this horrible
companion. I staggered on in spite of infinite fatigue and the dense
heat of the tropical afternoon.
At last the fury of the hunt slackened. We had pinned the wretched
brute into a corner of the island. Moreau, whip in hand, marshalled us
all into an irregular line, and we advanced now slowly, shouting to one
another as we advanced and tightening the cordon about our victim. He
lurked noiseless and invisible in the bushes through which I had run
from him during that midnight pursuit.
“Steady!” cried Moreau, “steady!” as the ends of the line crept round
the tangle of undergrowth and hemmed the brute in.
“Ware a rush!” came the voice of Montgomery from beyond the thicket.
I was on the slope above the bushes; Montgomery and Moreau beat along
the beach beneath. Slowly we pushed in among the fretted network of
branches and leaves. The quarry was silent.
“Back to the House of Pain, the House of Pain, the House of Pain!”
yelped the voice of the Ape-man, some twenty yards to the right.
When I heard that, I forgave the poor wretch all the fear he had
inspired in me. I heard the twigs snap and the boughs swish aside
before the heavy tread of the Horse-rhinoceros upon my right. Then
suddenly through a polygon of green, in the half darkness under the
luxuriant growth, I saw the creature we were hunting. I halted. He was
crouched together into the smallest possible compass, his luminous
green eyes turned over his shoulder regarding me.
It may seem a strange contradiction in me,—I cannot explain the
fact,—but now, seeing the creature there in a perfectly animal
attitude, with the light gleaming in its eyes and its imperfectly human
face distorted with terror, I realised again the fact of its humanity.
In another moment other of its pursuers would see it, and it would be
overpowered and captured, to experience once more the horrible tortures
of the enclosure. Abruptly I slipped out my revolver, aimed between its
terror-struck eyes, and fired. As I did so, the Hyena-swine saw the
Thing, and flung itself upon it with an eager cry, thrusting thirsty
teeth into its neck. All about me the green masses of the thicket were
swaying and cracking as the Beast People came rushing together. One
face and then another appeared.
“Don’t kill it, Prendick!” cried Moreau. “Don’t kill it!” and I saw him
stooping as he pushed through under the fronds of the big ferns.
In another moment he had beaten off the Hyena-swine with the handle of
his whip, and he and Montgomery were keeping away the excited
carnivorous Beast People, and particularly M’ling, from the still
quivering body. The hairy-grey Thing came sniffing at the corpse under
my arm. The other animals, in their animal ardour, jostled me to get a
nearer view.
“Confound you, Prendick!” said Moreau. “I wanted him.”
“I’m sorry,” said I, though I was not. “It was the impulse of the
moment.” I felt sick with exertion and excitement. Turning, I pushed my
way out of the crowding Beast People and went on alone up the slope
towards the higher part of the headland. Under the shouted directions
of Moreau I heard the three white-swathed Bull-men begin dragging the
victim down towards the water.
It was easy now for me to be alone. The Beast People manifested a quite
human curiosity about the dead body, and followed it in a thick knot,
sniffing and growling at it as the Bull-men dragged it down the beach.
I went to the headland and watched the bull-men, black against the
evening sky as they carried the weighted dead body out to sea; and like
a wave across my mind came the realisation of the unspeakable
aimlessness of things upon the island. Upon the beach among the rocks
beneath me were the Ape-man, the Hyena-swine, and several other of the
Beast People, standing about Montgomery and Moreau. They were all still
intensely excited, and all overflowing with noisy expressions of their
loyalty to the Law; yet I felt an absolute assurance in my own mind
that the Hyena-swine was implicated in the rabbit-killing. A strange
persuasion came upon me, that, save for the grossness of the line, the
grotesqueness of the forms, I had here before me the whole balance of
human life in miniature, the whole interplay of instinct, reason, and
fate in its simplest form. The Leopard-man had happened to go under:
that was all the difference. Poor brute!
Poor brutes! I began to see the viler aspect of Moreau’s cruelty. I had
not thought before of the pain and trouble that came to these poor
victims after they had passed from Moreau’s hands. I had shivered only
at the days of actual torment in the enclosure. But now that seemed to
me the lesser part. Before, they had been beasts, their instincts fitly
adapted to their surroundings, and happy as living things may be. Now
they stumbled in the shackles of humanity, lived in a fear that never
died, fretted by a law they could not understand; their mock-human
existence, begun in an agony, was one long internal struggle, one long
dread of Moreau—and for what? It was the wantonness of it that stirred
me.
Had Moreau had any intelligible object, I could have sympathised at
least a little with him. I am not so squeamish about pain as that. I
could have forgiven him a little even, had his motive been only hate.
But he was so irresponsible, so utterly careless! His curiosity, his
mad, aimless investigations, drove him on; and the Things were thrown
out to live a year or so, to struggle and blunder and suffer, and at
last to die painfully. They were wretched in themselves; the old animal
hate moved them to trouble one another; the Law held them back from a
brief hot struggle and a decisive end to their natural animosities.
In those days my fear of the Beast People went the way of my personal
fear for Moreau. I fell indeed into a morbid state, deep and enduring,
and alien to fear, which has left permanent scars upon my mind. I must
confess that I lost faith in the sanity of the world when I saw it
suffering the painful disorder of this island. A blind Fate, a vast
pitiless mechanism, seemed to cut and shape the fabric of existence and
I, Moreau (by his passion for research), Montgomery (by his passion for
drink), the Beast People with their instincts and mental restrictions,
were torn and crushed, ruthlessly, inevitably, amid the infinite
complexity of its incessant wheels. But this condition did not come all
at once: I think indeed that I anticipate a little in speaking of it
now.
XVII.
A CATASTROPHE.
Scarcely six weeks passed before I had lost every feeling but dislike
and abhorrence for this infamous experiment of Moreau’s. My one idea
was to get away from these horrible caricatures of my Maker’s image,
back to the sweet and wholesome intercourse of men. My
fellow-creatures, from whom I was thus separated, began to assume
idyllic virtue and beauty in my memory. My first friendship with
Montgomery did not increase. His long separation from humanity, his
secret vice of drunkenness, his evident sympathy with the Beast People,
tainted him to me. Several times I let him go alone among them. I
avoided intercourse with them in every possible way. I spent an
increasing proportion of my time upon the beach, looking for some
liberating sail that never appeared,—until one day there fell upon us
an appalling disaster, which put an altogether different aspect upon my
strange surroundings.
It was about seven or eight weeks after my landing,—rather more, I
think, though I had not troubled to keep account of the time,—when this
catastrophe occurred. It happened in the early morning—I should think
about six. I had risen and breakfasted early, having been aroused by
the noise of three Beast Men carrying wood into the enclosure.
After breakfast I went to the open gateway of the enclosure, and stood
there smoking a cigarette and enjoying the freshness of the early
morning. Moreau presently came round the corner of the enclosure and
greeted me. He passed by me, and I heard him behind me unlock and enter
his laboratory. So indurated was I at that time to the abomination of
the place, that I heard without a touch of emotion the puma victim
begin another day of torture. It met its persecutor with a shriek,
almost exactly like that of an angry virago.
Then suddenly something happened,—I do not know what, to this day. I
heard a short, sharp cry behind me, a fall, and turning saw an awful
face rushing upon me,—not human, not animal, but hellish, brown, seamed
with red branching scars, red drops starting out upon it, and the
lidless eyes ablaze. I threw up my arm to defend myself from the blow
that flung me headlong with a broken forearm; and the great monster,
swathed in lint and with red-stained bandages fluttering about it,
leapt over me and passed. I rolled over and over down the beach, tried
to sit up, and collapsed upon my broken arm. Then Moreau appeared, his
massive white face all the more terrible for the blood that trickled
from his forehead. He carried a revolver in one hand. He scarcely
glanced at me, but rushed off at once in pursuit of the puma.
I tried the other arm and sat up. The muffled figure in front ran in
great striding leaps along the beach, and Moreau followed her. She
turned her head and saw him, then doubling abruptly made for the
bushes. She gained upon him at every stride. I saw her plunge into
them, and Moreau, running slantingly to intercept her, fired and missed
as she disappeared. Then he too vanished in the green confusion. I
stared after them, and then the pain in my arm flamed up, and with a
groan I staggered to my feet. Montgomery appeared in the doorway,
dressed, and with his revolver in his hand.
“Great God, Prendick!” he said, not noticing that I was hurt, “that