The island of Doctor Moreau
brute’s loose! Tore the fetter out of the wall! Have you seen them?”
Then sharply, seeing I gripped my arm, “What’s the matter?”
“I was standing in the doorway,” said I.
He came forward and took my arm. “Blood on the sleeve,” said he, and
rolled back the flannel. He pocketed his weapon, felt my arm about
painfully, and led me inside. “Your arm is broken,” he said, and then,
“Tell me exactly how it happened—what happened?”
I told him what I had seen; told him in broken sentences, with gasps of
pain between them, and very dexterously and swiftly he bound my arm
meanwhile. He slung it from my shoulder, stood back and looked at me.
“You’ll do,” he said. “And now?”
He thought. Then he went out and locked the gates of the enclosure. He
was absent some time.
I was chiefly concerned about my arm. The incident seemed merely one
more of many horrible things. I sat down in the deck chair, and I must
admit swore heartily at the island. The first dull feeling of injury in
my arm had already given way to a burning pain when Montgomery
reappeared. His face was rather pale, and he showed more of his lower
gums than ever.
“I can neither see nor hear anything of him,” he said. “I’ve been
thinking he may want my help.” He stared at me with his expressionless
eyes. “That was a strong brute,” he said. “It simply wrenched its
fetter out of the wall.” He went to the window, then to the door, and
there turned to me. “I shall go after him,” he said. “There’s another
revolver I can leave with you. To tell you the truth, I feel anxious
somehow.”
He obtained the weapon, and put it ready to my hand on the table; then
went out, leaving a restless contagion in the air. I did not sit long
after he left, but took the revolver in hand and went to the doorway.
The morning was as still as death. Not a whisper of wind was stirring;
the sea was like polished glass, the sky empty, the beach desolate. In
my half-excited, half-feverish state, this stillness of things
oppressed me. I tried to whistle, and the tune died away. I swore
again,—the second time that morning. Then I went to the corner of the
enclosure and stared inland at the green bush that had swallowed up
Moreau and Montgomery. When would they return, and how? Then far away
up the beach a little grey Beast Man appeared, ran down to the water’s
edge and began splashing about. I strolled back to the doorway, then to
the corner again, and so began pacing to and fro like a sentinel upon
duty. Once I was arrested by the distant voice of Montgomery bawling,
“Coo-ee—Moreau!” My arm became less painful, but very hot. I got
feverish and thirsty. My shadow grew shorter. I watched the distant
figure until it went away again. Would Moreau and Montgomery never
return? Three sea-birds began fighting for some stranded treasure.
Then from far away behind the enclosure I heard a pistol-shot. A long
silence, and then came another. Then a yelling cry nearer, and another
dismal gap of silence. My unfortunate imagination set to work to
torment me. Then suddenly a shot close by. I went to the corner,
startled, and saw Montgomery,—his face scarlet, his hair disordered,
and the knee of his trousers torn. His face expressed profound
consternation. Behind him slouched the Beast Man, M’ling, and round
M’ling’s jaws were some queer dark stains.
“Has he come?” said Montgomery.
“Moreau?” said I. “No.”
“My God!” The man was panting, almost sobbing. “Go back in,” he said,
taking my arm. “They’re mad. They’re all rushing about mad. What can
have happened? I don’t know. I’ll tell you, when my breath comes.
Where’s some brandy?”
Montgomery limped before me into the room and sat down in the deck
chair. M’ling flung himself down just outside the doorway and began
panting like a dog. I got Montgomery some brandy-and-water. He sat
staring in front of him at nothing, recovering his breath. After some
minutes he began to tell me what had happened.
He had followed their track for some way. It was plain enough at first
on account of the crushed and broken bushes, white rags torn from the
puma’s bandages, and occasional smears of blood on the leaves of the
shrubs and undergrowth. He lost the track, however, on the stony ground
beyond the stream where I had seen the Beast Man drinking, and went
wandering aimlessly westward shouting Moreau’s name. Then M’ling had
come to him carrying a light hatchet. M’ling had seen nothing of the
puma affair; had been felling wood, and heard him calling. They went on
shouting together. Two Beast Men came crouching and peering at them
through the undergrowth, with gestures and a furtive carriage that
alarmed Montgomery by their strangeness. He hailed them, and they fled
guiltily. He stopped shouting after that, and after wandering some time
farther in an undecided way, determined to visit the huts.
He found the ravine deserted.
Growing more alarmed every minute, he began to retrace his steps. Then
it was he encountered the two Swine-men I had seen dancing on the night
of my arrival; blood-stained they were about the mouth, and intensely
excited. They came crashing through the ferns, and stopped with fierce
faces when they saw him. He cracked his whip in some trepidation, and
forthwith they rushed at him. Never before had a Beast Man dared to do
that. One he shot through the head; M’ling flung himself upon the
other, and the two rolled grappling. M’ling got his brute under and
with his teeth in its throat, and Montgomery shot that too as it
struggled in M’ling’s grip. He had some difficulty in inducing M’ling
to come on with him. Thence they had hurried back to me. On the way,
M’ling had suddenly rushed into a thicket and driven out an under-sized
Ocelot-man, also blood-stained, and lame through a wound in the foot.
This brute had run a little way and then turned savagely at bay, and
Montgomery—with a certain wantonness, I thought—had shot him.
“What does it all mean?” said I.
He shook his head, and turned once more to the brandy.
XVIII.
THE FINDING OF MOREAU.
When I saw Montgomery swallow a third dose of brandy, I took it upon
myself to interfere. He was already more than half fuddled. I told him
that some serious thing must have happened to Moreau by this time, or
he would have returned before this, and that it behoved us to ascertain
what that catastrophe was. Montgomery raised some feeble objections,
and at last agreed. We had some food, and then all three of us started.
It is possibly due to the tension of my mind, at the time, but even now
that start into the hot stillness of the tropical afternoon is a
singularly vivid impression. M’ling went first, his shoulder hunched,
his strange black head moving with quick starts as he peered first on
this side of the way and then on that. He was unarmed; his axe he had
dropped when he encountered the Swine-man. Teeth were _his_ weapons,
when it came to fighting. Montgomery followed with stumbling footsteps,
his hands in his pockets, his face downcast; he was in a state of
muddled sullenness with me on account of the brandy. My left arm was in
a sling (it was lucky it was my left), and I carried my revolver in my
right. Soon we traced a narrow path through the wild luxuriance of the
island, going northwestward; and presently M’ling stopped, and became
rigid with watchfulness. Montgomery almost staggered into him, and then
stopped too. Then, listening intently, we heard coming through the
trees the sound of voices and footsteps approaching us.
“He is dead,” said a deep, vibrating voice.
“He is not dead; he is not dead,” jabbered another.
“We saw, we saw,” said several voices.
“_Hul_-lo!” suddenly shouted Montgomery, “Hullo, there!”
“Confound you!” said I, and gripped my pistol.
There was a silence, then a crashing among the interlacing vegetation,
first here, then there, and then half-a-dozen faces appeared,—strange
faces, lit by a strange light. M’ling made a growling noise in his
throat. I recognised the Ape-man: I had indeed already identified his
voice, and two of the white-swathed brown-featured creatures I had seen
in Montgomery’s boat. With these were the two dappled brutes and that
grey, horribly crooked creature who said the Law, with grey hair
streaming down its cheeks, heavy grey eyebrows, and grey locks pouring
off from a central parting upon its sloping forehead,—a heavy, faceless
thing, with strange red eyes, looking at us curiously from amidst the
green.
For a space no one spoke. Then Montgomery hiccoughed, “Who—said he was
dead?”
The Monkey-man looked guiltily at the hairy-grey Thing. “He is dead,”
said this monster. “They saw.”
There was nothing threatening about this detachment, at any rate. They
seemed awestricken and puzzled.
“Where is he?” said Montgomery.
“Beyond,” and the grey creature pointed.
“Is there a Law now?” asked the Monkey-man. “Is it still to be this and
that? Is he dead indeed?”
“Is there a Law?” repeated the man in white. “Is there a Law, thou
Other with the Whip?”
“He is dead,” said the hairy-grey Thing. And they all stood watching
us.
“Prendick,” said Montgomery, turning his dull eyes to me. “He’s dead,
evidently.”
I had been standing behind him during this colloquy. I began to see how
things lay with them. I suddenly stepped in front of Montgomery and
lifted up my voice:—“Children of the Law,” I said, “he is _not_ dead!”
M’ling turned his sharp eyes on me. “He has changed his shape; he has
changed his body,” I went on. “For a time you will not see him. He
is—there,” I pointed upward, “where he can watch you. You cannot see
him, but he can see you. Fear the Law!”
I looked at them squarely. They flinched.
“He is great, he is good,” said the Ape-man, peering fearfully upward
among the dense trees.
“And the other Thing?” I demanded.
“The Thing that bled, and ran screaming and sobbing,—that is dead too,”
said the grey Thing, still regarding me.
“That’s well,” grunted Montgomery.
“The Other with the Whip—” began the grey Thing.
“Well?” said I.
“Said he was dead.”
But Montgomery was still sober enough to understand my motive in
denying Moreau’s death. “He is not dead,” he said slowly, “not dead at
all. No more dead than I am.”
“Some,” said I, “have broken the Law: they will die. Some have died.
Show us now where his old body lies,—the body he cast away because he
had no more need of it.”
“It is this way, Man who walked in the Sea,” said the grey Thing.
And with these six creatures guiding us, we went through the tumult of
ferns and creepers and tree-stems towards the northwest. Then came a
yelling, a crashing among the branches, and a little pink homunculus
rushed by us shrieking. Immediately after appeared a monster in
headlong pursuit, blood-bedabbled, who was amongst us almost before he
could stop his career. The grey Thing leapt aside. M’ling, with a
snarl, flew at it, and was struck aside. Montgomery fired and missed,
bowed his head, threw up his arm, and turned to run. I fired, and the
Thing still came on; fired again, point-blank, into its ugly face. I
saw its features vanish in a flash: its face was driven in. Yet it
passed me, gripped Montgomery, and holding him, fell headlong beside
him and pulled him sprawling upon itself in its death-agony.
I found myself alone with M’ling, the dead brute, and the prostrate
man. Montgomery raised himself slowly and stared in a muddled way at
the shattered Beast Man beside him. It more than half sobered him. He
scrambled to his feet. Then I saw the grey Thing returning cautiously
through the trees.
“See,” said I, pointing to the dead brute, “is the Law not alive? This
came of breaking the Law.”
He peered at the body. “He sends the Fire that kills,” said he, in his
deep voice, repeating part of the Ritual. The others gathered round and