The Island of Doctor Moreau (17 page)

This, I say, was in the earlier weeks of my solitude among these brutes.
During that time they respected the usage established by the Law,
and behaved with general decorum. Once I found another rabbit torn
to pieces,—by the Hyena-swine, I am assured,—but that was all.
It was about May when I first distinctly perceived a growing difference
in their speech and carriage, a growing coarseness of articulation,
a growing disinclination to talk. My Monkey-man's jabber multiplied
in volume but grew less and less comprehensible, more and more simian.
Some of the others seemed altogether slipping their hold upon speech,
though they still understood what I said to them at that time.
(Can you imagine language, once clear-cut and exact, softening and
guttering, losing shape and import, becoming mere lumps of sound again?)
And they walked erect with an increasing difficulty. Though they
evidently felt ashamed of themselves, every now and then I would come
upon one or another running on toes and finger-tips, and quite unable
to recover the vertical attitude. They held things more clumsily;
drinking by suction, feeding by gnawing, grew commoner every day.
I realised more keenly than ever what Moreau had told me about
the "stubborn beast-flesh." They were reverting, and reverting very
rapidly.

Some of them—the pioneers in this, I noticed with some surprise,
were all females—began to disregard the injunction of decency,
deliberately for the most part. Others even attempted public outrages
upon the institution of monogamy. The tradition of the Law was clearly
losing its force. I cannot pursue this disagreeable subject.

My Dog-man imperceptibly slipped back to the dog again; day by day
he became dumb, quadrupedal, hairy. I scarcely noticed the transition
from the companion on my right hand to the lurching dog at my side.

As the carelessness and disorganisation increased from day to day,
the lane of dwelling places, at no time very sweet, became so
loathsome that I left it, and going across the island made myself
a hovel of boughs amid the black ruins of Moreau's enclosure.
Some memory of pain, I found, still made that place the safest from
the Beast Folk.

It would be impossible to detail every step of the lapsing of
these monsters,—to tell how, day by day, the human semblance left them;
how they gave up bandagings and wrappings, abandoned at last every
stitch of clothing; how the hair began to spread over the exposed limbs;
how their foreheads fell away and their faces projected;
how the quasi-human intimacy I had permitted myself with some
of them in the first month of my loneliness became a shuddering
horror to recall.

The change was slow and inevitable. For them and for me it came
without any definite shock. I still went among them in safety,
because no jolt in the downward glide had released the increasing
charge of explosive animalism that ousted the human day by day.
But I began to fear that soon now that shock must come.
My Saint-Bernard-brute followed me to the enclosure every night,
and his vigilance enabled me to sleep at times in something like peace.
The little pink sloth-thing became shy and left me, to crawl back
to its natural life once more among the tree-branches. We were in just
the state of equilibrium that would remain in one of those "Happy Family"
cages which animal-tamers exhibit, if the tamer were to leave it
for ever.

Of course these creatures did not decline into such beasts as
the reader has seen in zoological gardens,—into ordinary bears,
wolves, tigers, oxen, swine, and apes. There was still something
strange about each; in each Moreau had blended this animal with that.
One perhaps was ursine chiefly, another feline chiefly, another
bovine chiefly; but each was tainted with other creatures,—a kind
of generalised animalism appearing through the specific dispositions.
And the dwindling shreds of the humanity still startled me every
now and then,—a momentary recrudescence of speech perhaps,
an unexpected dexterity of the fore-feet, a pitiful attempt to
walk erect.

I too must have undergone strange changes. My clothes hung about
me as yellow rags, through whose rents showed the tanned skin.
My hair grew long, and became matted together. I am told that
even now my eyes have a strange brightness, a swift alertness
of movement.

At first I spent the daylight hours on the southward beach
watching for a ship, hoping and praying for a ship.
I counted on the "Ipecacuanha" returning as the year wore on;
but she never came. Five times I saw sails, and thrice smoke;
but nothing ever touched the island. I always had a bonfire ready,
but no doubt the volcanic reputation of the island was taken to account
for that.

It was only about September or October that I began to think of making
a raft. By that time my arm had healed, and both my hands were at
my service again. At first, I found my helplessness appalling.
I had never done any carpentry or such-like work in my life, and I spent
day after day in experimental chopping and binding among the trees.
I had no ropes, and could hit on nothing wherewith to make ropes;
none of the abundant creepers seemed limber or strong enough,
and with all my litter of scientific education I could not devise
any way of making them so. I spent more than a fortnight
grubbing among the black ruins of the enclosure and on
the beach where the boats had been burnt, looking for nails
and other stray pieces of metal that might prove of service.
Now and then some Beast-creature would watch me, and go leaping
off when I called to it. There came a season of thunder-storms
and heavy rain, which greatly retarded my work; but at last the raft
was completed.

I was delighted with it. But with a certain lack of practical sense
which has always been my bane, I had made it a mile or more from the sea;
and before I had dragged it down to the beach the thing had fallen
to pieces. Perhaps it is as well that I was saved from launching it;
but at the time my misery at my failure was so acute that for some
days I simply moped on the beach, and stared at the water and thought
of death.

I did not, however, mean to die, and an incident occurred that warned
me unmistakably of the folly of letting the days pass so,—for each
fresh day was fraught with increasing danger from the Beast People.

I was lying in the shade of the enclosure wall, staring out to sea,
when I was startled by something cold touching the skin of my heel,
and starting round found the little pink sloth-creature blinking
into my face. He had long since lost speech and active movement,
and the lank hair of the little brute grew thicker every day and his
stumpy claws more askew. He made a moaning noise when he saw he had
attracted my attention, went a little way towards the bushes and looked
back at me.

At first I did not understand, but presently it occurred to me that
he wished me to follow him; and this I did at last,—slowly, for the day
was hot. When we reached the trees he clambered into them, for he could
travel better among their swinging creepers than on the ground.
And suddenly in a trampled space I came upon a ghastly group.
My Saint-Bernard-creature lay on the ground, dead; and near
his body crouched the Hyena-swine, gripping the quivering flesh
with its misshapen claws, gnawing at it, and snarling with delight.
As I approached, the monster lifted its glaring eyes to mine,
its lips went trembling back from its red-stained teeth,
and it growled menacingly. It was not afraid and not ashamed;
the last vestige of the human taint had vanished. I advanced a step
farther, stopped, and pulled out my revolver. At last I had him face
to face.

The brute made no sign of retreat; but its ears went back,
its hair bristled, and its body crouched together.
I aimed between the eyes and fired. As I did so, the Thing rose
straight at me in a leap, and I was knocked over like a ninepin.
It clutched at me with its crippled hand, and struck me in the face.
Its spring carried it over me. I fell under the hind part of its body;
but luckily I had hit as I meant, and it had died even as it leapt.
I crawled out from under its unclean weight and stood up trembling,
staring at its quivering body. That danger at least was over;
but this, I knew was only the first of the series of relapses that
must come.

I burnt both of the bodies on a pyre of brushwood; but after that I saw
that unless I left the island my death was only a question of time.
The Beast People by that time had, with one or two exceptions,
left the ravine and made themselves lairs according to their taste
among the thickets of the island. Few prowled by day, most of
them slept, and the island might have seemed deserted to a new-comer;
but at night the air was hideous with their calls and howling.
I had half a mind to make a massacre of them; to build traps,
or fight them with my knife. Had I possessed sufficient cartridges,
I should not have hesitated to begin the killing. There could
now be scarcely a score left of the dangerous carnivores;
the braver of these were already dead. After the death of this poor
dog of mine, my last friend, I too adopted to some extent the practice
of slumbering in the daytime in order to be on my guard at night.
I rebuilt my den in the walls of the enclosure, with such a narrow
opening that anything attempting to enter must necessarily make
a considerable noise. The creatures had lost the art of fire too,
and recovered their fear of it. I turned once more, almost passionately
now, to hammering together stakes and branches to form a raft for
my escape.

I found a thousand difficulties. I am an extremely unhandy man
(my schooling was over before the days of Slojd); but most
of the requirements of a raft I met at last in some clumsy,
circuitous way or other, and this time I took care of the strength.
The only insurmountable obstacle was that I had no vessel to contain
the water I should need if I floated forth upon these untravelled seas.
I would have even tried pottery, but the island contained no clay.
I used to go moping about the island trying with all my might
to solve this one last difficulty. Sometimes I would give
way to wild outbursts of rage, and hack and splinter some
unlucky tree in my intolerable vexation. But I could think
of nothing.

And then came a day, a wonderful day, which I spent in ecstasy.
I saw a sail to the southwest, a small sail like that of a little schooner;
and forthwith I lit a great pile of brushwood, and stood by it in
the heat of it, and the heat of the midday sun, watching. All day I
watched that sail, eating or drinking nothing, so that my head reeled;
and the Beasts came and glared at me, and seemed to wonder,
and went away. It was still distant when night came and swallowed
it up; and all night I toiled to keep my blaze bright and high,
and the eyes of the Beasts shone out of the darkness, marvelling.
In the dawn the sail was nearer, and I saw it was the dirty
lug-sail of a small boat. But it sailed strangely. My eyes were
weary with watching, and I peered and could not believe them.
Two men were in the boat, sitting low down,—one by the bows,
the other at the rudder. The head was not kept to the wind; it yawed and
fell away.

As the day grew brighter, I began waving the last rag of my jacket to them;
but they did not notice me, and sat still, facing each other. I went
to the lowest point of the low headland, and gesticulated and shouted.
There was no response, and the boat kept on her aimless course,
making slowly, very slowly, for the bay. Suddenly a great white bird
flew up out of the boat, and neither of the men stirred nor noticed it;
it circled round, and then came sweeping overhead with its strong
wings outspread.

Then I stopped shouting, and sat down on the headland and rested my chin
on my hands and stared. Slowly, slowly, the boat drove past towards
the west. I would have swum out to it, but something—a cold, vague
fear—kept me back. In the afternoon the tide stranded the boat, and left
it a hundred yards or so to the westward of the ruins of the enclosure.
The men in it were dead, had been dead so long that they fell
to pieces when I tilted the boat on its side and dragged them out.
One had a shock of red hair, like the captain of the "Ipecacuanha," and
a dirty white cap lay in the bottom of the boat.

As I stood beside the boat, three of the Beasts came slinking
out of the bushes and sniffing towards me. One of my spasms
of disgust came upon me. I thrust the little boat down the beach
and clambered on board her. Two of the brutes were Wolf-beasts,
and came forward with quivering nostrils and glittering eyes;
the third was the horrible nondescript of bear and bull.
When I saw them approaching those wretched remains, heard them
snarling at one another and caught the gleam of their teeth,
a frantic horror succeeded my repulsion. I turned my back upon them,
struck the lug and began paddling out to sea. I could not bring myself
to look behind me.

I lay, however, between the reef and the island that night,
and the next morning went round to the stream and filled the empty
keg aboard with water. Then, with such patience as I could command,
I collected a quantity of fruit, and waylaid and killed two rabbits
with my last three cartridges. While I was doing this I left
the boat moored to an inward projection of the reef, for fear
of the Beast People.

IN the evening I started, and drove out to sea before a gentle wind
from the southwest, slowly, steadily; and the island grew smaller
and smaller, and the lank spire of smoke dwindled to a finer and
finer line against the hot sunset. The ocean rose up around me,
hiding that low, dark patch from my eyes. The daylight, the trailing
glory of the sun, went streaming out of the sky, was drawn aside
like some luminous curtain, and at last I looked into the blue
gulf of immensity which the sunshine hides, and saw the floating
hosts of the stars. The sea was silent, the sky was silent.
I was alone with the night and silence.