The Island of Doctor Moreau (2 page)

"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.

He seemed interested in this. "I've done some science myself. I did
my Biology at University College,—getting out the ovary of the earthworm
and the radula of the snail, and all that. Lord! It's ten years ago.
But go on! go on! tell me about the boat."

He was evidently satisfied with the frankness of my story,
which I told in concise sentences enough, for I felt horribly weak;
and when it was finished he reverted at once to the topic
of Natural History and his own biological studies. He began to
question me closely about Tottenham Court Road and Gower Street.
"Is Caplatzi still flourishing? What a shop that was!"
He had evidently been a very ordinary medical student, and drifted
incontinently to the topic of the music halls. He told me
some anecdotes.

"Left it all," he said, "ten years ago. How jolly it all used to be!
But I made a young ass of myself,—played myself out before I was
twenty-one. I daresay it's all different now. But I must look up
that ass of a cook, and see what he's done to your mutton."

The growling overhead was renewed, so suddenly and with so much savage
anger that it startled me. "What's that?" I called after him,
but the door had closed. He came back again with the boiled mutton,
and I was so excited by the appetising smell of it that I forgot
the noise of the beast that had troubled me.

After a day of alternate sleep and feeding I was so far recovered
as to be able to get from my bunk to the scuttle, and see the green
seas trying to keep pace with us. I judged the schooner was running
before the wind. Montgomery—that was the name of the flaxen-haired
man—came in again as I stood there, and I asked him for some clothes.
He lent me some duck things of his own, for those I had worn in the boat
had been thrown overboard. They were rather loose for me, for he was
large and long in his limbs. He told me casually that the captain
was three-parts drunk in his own cabin. As I assumed the clothes,
I began asking him some questions about the destination of the ship.
He said the ship was bound to Hawaii, but that it had to land
him first.

"Where?" said I.

"It's an island, where I live. So far as I know, it hasn't got
a name."

He stared at me with his nether lip dropping, and looked so wilfully
stupid of a sudden that it came into my head that he desired
to avoid my questions. I had the discretion to ask no more.

WE left the cabin and found a man at the companion obstructing
our way. He was standing on the ladder with his back to us,
peering over the combing of the hatchway. He was, I could see,
a misshapen man, short, broad, and clumsy, with a crooked back,
a hairy neck, and a head sunk between his shoulders. He was dressed
in dark-blue serge, and had peculiarly thick, coarse, black hair.
I heard the unseen dogs growl furiously, and forthwith he ducked
back,—coming into contact with the hand I put out to fend him off
from myself. He turned with animal swiftness.

In some indefinable way the black face thus flashed upon me
shocked me profoundly. It was a singularly deformed one.
The facial part projected, forming something dimly suggestive
of a muzzle, and the huge half-open mouth showed as big white teeth
as I had ever seen in a human mouth. His eyes were blood-shot
at the edges, with scarcely a rim of white round the hazel pupils.
There was a curious glow of excitement in his face.

"Confound you!" said Montgomery. "Why the devil don't you get
out of the way?"

The black-faced man started aside without a word.
I went on up the companion, staring at him instinctively
as I did so. Montgomery stayed at the foot for a moment.
"You have no business here, you know," he said in a deliberate tone.
"Your place is forward."

The black-faced man cowered. "They—won't have me forward."
He spoke slowly, with a queer, hoarse quality in his voice.

"Won't have you forward!" said Montgomery, in a menacing voice.
"But I tell you to go!" He was on the brink of saying something further,
then looked up at me suddenly and followed me up the ladder.

I had paused half way through the hatchway, looking back, still astonished
beyond measure at the grotesque ugliness of this black-faced creature.
I had never beheld such a repulsive and extraordinary face before,
and yet—if the contradiction is credible—I experienced at
the same time an odd feeling that in some way I
had
already
encountered exactly the features and gestures that now amazed me.
Afterwards it occurred to me that probably I had seen him as I
was lifted aboard; and yet that scarcely satisfied my suspicion
of a previous acquaintance. Yet how one could have set eyes on
so singular a face and yet have forgotten the precise occasion,
passed my imagination.

Montgomery's movement to follow me released my attention, and I
turned and looked about me at the flush deck of the little schooner.
I was already half prepared by the sounds I had heard for what I saw.
Certainly I never beheld a deck so dirty. It was littered with
scraps of carrot, shreds of green stuff, and indescribable filth.
Fastened by chains to the mainmast were a number of grisly staghounds,
who now began leaping and barking at me, and by the mizzen a huge puma was
cramped in a little iron cage far too small even to give it turning room.
Farther under the starboard bulwark were some big hutches containing
a number of rabbits, and a solitary llama was squeezed in a mere
box of a cage forward. The dogs were muzzled by leather straps.
The only human being on deck was a gaunt and silent sailor at
the wheel.

The patched and dirty spankers were tense before the wind,
and up aloft the little ship seemed carrying every sail she had.
The sky was clear, the sun midway down the western sky;
long waves, capped by the breeze with froth, were running with us.
We went past the steersman to the taffrail, and saw the water come
foaming under the stern and the bubbles go dancing and vanishing
in her wake. I turned and surveyed the unsavoury length of
the ship.

"Is this an ocean menagerie?" said I.

"Looks like it," said Montgomery.

"What are these beasts for? Merchandise, curios? Does the captain
think he is going to sell them somewhere in the South Seas?"

"It looks like it, doesn't it?" said Montgomery, and turned towards
the wake again.

Suddenly we heard a yelp and a volley of furious blasphemy
from the companion hatchway, and the deformed man with the black
face came up hurriedly. He was immediately followed by a heavy
red-haired man in a white cap. At the sight of the former
the staghounds, who had all tired of barking at me by this time,
became furiously excited, howling and leaping against their chains.
The black hesitated before them, and this gave the red-haired man
time to come up with him and deliver a tremendous blow between
the shoulder-blades. The poor devil went down like a felled ox,
and rolled in the dirt among the furiously excited dogs.
It was lucky for him that they were muzzled. The red-haired man gave
a yawp of exultation and stood staggering, and as it seemed to me
in serious danger of either going backwards down the companion hatchway
or forwards upon his victim.

So soon as the second man had appeared, Montgomery had started forward.
"Steady on there!" he cried, in a tone of remonstrance.
A couple of sailors appeared on the forecastle. The black-faced man,
howling in a singular voice rolled about under the feet of the dogs.
No one attempted to help him. The brutes did their best to worry him,
butting their muzzles at him. There was a quick dance of their
lithe grey-figured bodies over the clumsy, prostrate figure.
The sailors forward shouted, as though it was admirable sport.
Montgomery gave an angry exclamation, and went striding down
the deck, and I followed him. The black-faced man scrambled
up and staggered forward, going and leaning over the bulwark
by the main shrouds, where he remained, panting and glaring
over his shoulder at the dogs. The red-haired man laughed a
satisfied laugh.

"Look here, Captain," said Montgomery, with his lisp a little accentuated,
gripping the elbows of the red-haired man, "this won't do!"

I stood behind Montgomery. The captain came half round,
and regarded him with the dull and solemn eyes of a drunken man.
"Wha' won't do?" he said, and added, after looking sleepily into
Montgomery's face for a minute, "Blasted Sawbones!"

With a sudden movement he shook his arms free, and after two
ineffectual attempts stuck his freckled fists into his side pockets.

"That man's a passenger," said Montgomery. "I'd advise you to keep
your hands off him."

"Go to hell!" said the captain, loudly. He suddenly turned
and staggered towards the side. "Do what I like on my own ship,"
he said.

I think Montgomery might have left him then, seeing the brute was drunk;
but he only turned a shade paler, and followed the captain
to the bulwarks.

"Look you here, Captain," he said; "that man of mine is not to be
ill-treated. He has been hazed ever since he came aboard."

For a minute, alcoholic fumes kept the captain speechless.
"Blasted Sawbones!" was all he considered necessary.

I could see that Montgomery had one of those slow, pertinacious tempers
that will warm day after day to a white heat, and never again
cool to forgiveness; and I saw too that this quarrel had been
some time growing. "The man's drunk," said I, perhaps officiously;
"you'll do no good."

Montgomery gave an ugly twist to his dropping lip. "He's always drunk.
Do you think that excuses his assaulting his passengers?"

"My ship," began the captain, waving his hand unsteadily
towards the cages, "was a clean ship. Look at it now!"
It was certainly anything but clean. "Crew," continued the captain,
"clean, respectable crew."

"You agreed to take the beasts."

"I wish I'd never set eyes on your infernal island. What the
devil—want beasts for on an island like that? Then, that man of
yours—understood he was a man. He's a lunatic; and he hadn't no
business aft. Do you think the whole damned ship belongs to you?"

"Your sailors began to haze the poor devil as soon as he came aboard."

"That's just what he is—he's a devil! an ugly devil! My men
can't stand him.
I
can't stand him. None of us can't stand him.
Nor
you
either!"

Montgomery turned away. "
You
leave that man alone, anyhow," he said,
nodding his head as he spoke.

But the captain meant to quarrel now. He raised his voice. "If he comes
this end of the ship again I'll cut his insides out, I tell you.
Cut out his blasted insides! Who are you, to tell me what I'm to do?
I tell you I'm captain of this ship,—captain and owner.
I'm the law here, I tell you,—the law and the prophets.
I bargained to take a man and his attendant to and from Arica,
and bring back some animals. I never bargained to carry a mad devil
and a silly Sawbones, a—"

Well, never mind what he called Montgomery. I saw the latter take
a step forward, and interposed. "He's drunk," said I. The captain
began some abuse even fouler than the last. "Shut up!" I said,
turning on him sharply, for I had seen danger in Montgomery's white face.
With that I brought the downpour on myself.

However, I was glad to avert what was uncommonly near a scuffle,
even at the price of the captain's drunken ill-will. I do not think
I have ever heard quite so much vile language come in a continuous
stream from any man's lips before, though I have frequented eccentric
company enough. I found some of it hard to endure, though I am
a mild-tempered man; but, certainly, when I told the captain to
"shut up" I had forgotten that I was merely a bit of human flotsam,
cut off from my resources and with my fare unpaid; a mere casual
dependant on the bounty, or speculative enterprise, of the ship.
He reminded me of it with considerable vigour; but at any rate I prevented
a fight.

THAT night land was sighted after sundown, and the schooner
hove to. Montgomery intimated that was his destination.
It was too far to see any details; it seemed to me then simply
a low-lying patch of dim blue in the uncertain blue-grey sea.
An almost vertical streak of smoke went up from it into the sky.
The captain was not on deck when it was sighted. After he had vented
his wrath on me he had staggered below, and I understand he went to sleep
on the floor of his own cabin. The mate practically assumed the command.
He was the gaunt, taciturn individual we had seen at the wheel.
Apparently he was in an evil temper with Montgomery. He took
not the slightest notice of either of us. We dined with him in a
sulky silence, after a few ineffectual efforts on my part to talk.
It struck me too that the men regarded my companion and his animals
in a singularly unfriendly manner. I found Montgomery very reticent
about his purpose with these creatures, and about his destination;
and though I was sensible of a growing curiosity as to both, I did not
press him.