The Island of Doctor Moreau Read online

  XVI. HOW THE BEAST FOLK TASTE BLOOD.

  MY inexperience as a writer betrays me, and I wander from the threadof my story.

  After I had breakfasted with Montgomery, he took me acrossthe island to see the fumarole and the source of the hot springinto whose scalding waters I had blundered on the previous day.Both of us carried whips and loaded revolvers. While going througha leafy jungle on our road thither, we heard a rabbit squealing.We stopped and listened, but we heard no more; and presently wewent on our way, and the incident dropped out of our minds.Montgomery called my attention to certain little pink animalswith long hind-legs, that went leaping through the undergrowth.He told me they were creatures made of the offspring of the Beast People,that Moreau had invented. He had fancied they might serve for meat,but a rabbit-like habit of devouring their young had defeatedthis intention. I had already encountered some of thesecreatures,--once during my moonlight flight from the Leopard-man,and once during my pursuit by Moreau on the previous day.By chance, one hopping to avoid us leapt into the hole causedby the uprooting of a wind-blown tree; before it could extricateitself we managed to catch it. It spat like a cat, scratched andkicked vigorously with its hind-legs, and made an attempt to bite;but its teeth were too feeble to inflict more than a painless pinch.It seemed to me rather a pretty little creature; and as Montgomery statedthat it never destroyed the turf by burrowing, and was very cleanlyin its habits, I should imagine it might prove a convenient substitutefor the common rabbit in gentlemen's parks.

  We also saw on our way the trunk of a tree barked in long stripsand splintered deeply. Montgomery called my attention to this."Not to claw bark of trees, _that_ is the Law," he said."Much some of them care for it!" It was after this, I think, that wemet the Satyr and the Ape-man. The Satyr was a gleam of classical memoryon the part of Moreau,--his face ovine in expression, like the coarserHebrew type; his voice a harsh bleat, his nether extremities Satanic.He was gnawing the husk of a pod-like fruit as he passed us.Both of them saluted Montgomery.

  "Hail," said they, "to the Other with the Whip!"

  "There's a Third with a Whip now," said Montgomery. "So you'dbetter mind!"

  "Was he not made?" said the Ape-man. "He said--he said he was made."

  The Satyr-man looked curiously at me. "The Third with the Whip,he that walks weeping into the sea, has a thin white face."

  "He has a thin long whip," said Montgomery.

  "Yesterday he bled and wept," said the Satyr. "You never bleed nor weep.The Master does not bleed or weep."

  "Ollendorffian beggar!" said Montgomery, "you'll bleed and weepif you don't look out!"

  "He has five fingers, he is a five-man like me," said the Ape-man.

  "Come along, Prendick," said Montgomery, taking my arm; and I wenton with him.

  The Satyr and the Ape-man stood watching us and making other remarksto each other.

  "He says nothing," said the Satyr. "Men have voices."

  "Yesterday he asked me of things to eat," said the Ape-man. "Hedid not know."

  Then they spoke inaudible things, and I heard the Satyr laughing.

  It was on our way back that we came upon the dead rabbit.The red body of the wretched little beast was rent to pieces, many ofthe ribs stripped white, and the backbone indisputably gnawed.

  At that Montgomery stopped. "Good God!" said he, stooping down,and picking up some of the crushed vertebrae to examine them more closely."Good God!" he repeated, "what can this mean?"

  "Some carnivore of yours has remembered its old habits,"I said after a pause. "This backbone has been bitten through."

  He stood staring, with his face white and his lip pulled askew."I don't like this," he said slowly.

  "I saw something of the same kind," said I, "the first day I came here."

  "The devil you did! What was it?"

  "A rabbit with its head twisted off."

  "The day you came here?"

  "The day I came here. In the undergrowth at the back of the enclosure,when I went out in the evening. The head was completely wrung off."

  He gave a long, low whistle.

  "And what is more, I have an idea which of your brutes did the thing.It's only a suspicion, you know. Before I came on the rabbit I saw oneof your monsters drinking in the stream."

  "Sucking his drink?"

  "Yes."

  "'Not to suck your drink; that is the Law.' Much the brutes carefor the Law, eh? when Moreau's not about!"

  "It was the brute who chased me."

  "Of course," said Montgomery; "it's just the way with carnivores.After a kill, they drink. It's the taste of blood, you know.--Whatwas the brute like?" he continued. "Would you know him again?"He glanced about us, standing astride over the mess of dead rabbit,his eyes roving among the shadows and screens of greenery,the lurking-places and ambuscades of the forest that bounded us in."The taste of blood," he said again.

  He took out his revolver, examined the cartridges in it and replaced it.Then he began to pull at his dropping lip.

  "I think I should know the brute again," I said. "I stunned him.He ought to have a handsome bruise on the forehead of him."

  "But then we have to _prove_ that he killed the rabbit," saidMontgomery. "I wish I'd never brought the things here."

  I should have gone on, but he stayed there thinking over the mangledrabbit in a puzzle-headed way. As it was, I went to such a distancethat the rabbit's remains were hidden.

  "Come on!" I said.

  Presently he woke up and came towards me. "You see," he said,almost in a whisper, "they are all supposed to have a fixed ideaagainst eating anything that runs on land. If some brute hasby any accident tasted blood--"

  We went on some way in silence. "I wonder what can have happened,"he said to himself. Then, after a pause again: "I did a foolishthing the other day. That servant of mine--I showed him how to skinand cook a rabbit. It's odd--I saw him licking his hands--It neveroccurred to me."

  Then: "We must put a stop to this. I must tell Moreau."

  He could think of nothing else on our homeward journey.

  Moreau took the matter even more seriously than Montgomery, and Ineed scarcely say that I was affected by their evident consternation.

  "We must make an example," said Moreau. "I've no doubt in my ownmind that the Leopard-man was the sinner. But how can we prove it?I wish, Montgomery, you had kept your taste for meat in hand, and gonewithout these exciting novelties. We may find ourselves in a mess yet,through it."

  "I was a silly ass," said Montgomery. "But the thing's done now;and you said I might have them, you know."

  "We must see to the thing at once," said Moreau. "I supposeif anything should turn up, M'ling can take care of himself?"

  "I'm not so sure of M'ling," said Montgomery. "I think I oughtto know him."

  In the afternoon, Moreau, Montgomery, myself, and M'ling wentacross the island to the huts in the ravine. We three were armed;M'ling carried the little hatchet he used in chopping firewood,and some coils of wire. Moreau had a huge cowherd's horn slung overhis shoulder.

  "You will see a gathering of the Beast People," said Montgomery."It is a pretty sight!"

  Moreau said not a word on the way, but the expression of his heavy,white-fringed face was grimly set.

  We crossed the ravine down which smoked the stream of hot water,and followed the winding pathway through the canebrakesuntil we reached a wide area covered over with a thick,powdery yellow substance which I believe was sulphur.Above the shoulder of a weedy bank the sea glittered. We came to a kindof shallow natural amphitheatre, and here the four of us halted.Then Moreau sounded the horn, and broke the sleeping stillnessof the tropical afternoon. He must have had strong lungs.The hooting note rose and rose amidst its echoes, to at last anear-penetrating intensity.

  "Ah!" said Moreau, letting the curved instrument fall to his side again.

  Immediately there was a crashing through the yellow canes,and a sound of voices from the dense gre
en jungle that markedthe morass through which I had run on the previous day.Then at three or four points on the edge of the sulphurous areaappeared the grotesque forms of the Beast People hurrying towards us.I could not help a creeping horror, as I perceived first one and thenanother trot out from the trees or reeds and come shambling alongover the hot dust. But Moreau and Montgomery stood calmly enough;and, perforce, I stuck beside them.

  First to arrive was the Satyr, strangely unreal for all that he casta shadow and tossed the dust with his hoofs. After him fromthe brake came a monstrous lout, a thing of horse and rhinoceros,chewing a straw as it came; then appeared the Swine-womanand two Wolf-women; then the Fox-bear witch, with her red eyesin her peaked red face, and then others,--all hurrying eagerly.As they came forward they began to cringe towards Moreau and chant,quite regardless of one another, fragments of the latter halfof the litany of the Law,--"His is the Hand that wounds;His is the Hand that heals," and so forth. As soon as they hadapproached within a distance of perhaps thirty yards they halted,and bowing on knees and elbows began flinging the white dust upontheir heads.

  Imagine the scene if you can! We three blue-clad men, with ourmisshapen black-faced attendant, standing in a wide expanseof sunlit yellow dust under the blazing blue sky, and surroundedby this circle of crouching and gesticulating monstrosities,--somealmost human save in their subtle expression and gestures,some like cripples, some so strangely distorted as to resemble nothingbut the denizens of our wildest dreams; and, beyond, the reedylines of a canebrake in one direction, a dense tangle of palm-treeson the other, separating us from the ravine with the huts,and to the north the hazy horizon of the Pacific Ocean.

  "Sixty-two, sixty-three," counted Moreau. "There are four more."

  "I do not see the Leopard-man," said I.

  Presently Moreau sounded the great horn again, and at the soundof it all the Beast People writhed and grovelled in the dust.Then, slinking out of the canebrake, stooping near the groundand trying to join the dust-throwing circle behind Moreau's back,came the Leopard-man. The last of the Beast People to arrive was the littleApe-man. The earlier animals, hot and weary with their grovelling,shot vicious glances at him.

  "Cease!" said Moreau, in his firm, loud voice; and the Beast Peoplesat back upon their hams and rested from their worshipping.

  "Where is the Sayer of the Law?" said Moreau, and the hairy-greymonster bowed his face in the dust.

  "Say the words!" said Moreau.

  Forthwith all in the kneeling assembly, swaying from side to sideand dashing up the sulphur with their hands,--first the right handand a puff of dust, and then the left,--began once more to chanttheir strange litany. When they reached, "Not to eat Flesh or Fish,that is the Law," Moreau held up his lank white hand.

  "Stop!" he cried, and there fell absolute silence upon them all.

  I think they all knew and dreaded what was coming.I looked round at their strange faces. When I saw their wincingattitudes and the furtive dread in their bright eyes, I wonderedthat I had ever believed them to be men.

  "That Law has been broken!" said Moreau.

  "None escape," from the faceless creature with the silvery hair."None escape," repeated the kneeling circle of Beast People.

  "Who is he?" cried Moreau, and looked round at their faces,cracking his whip. I fancied the Hyena-swine looked dejected,so too did the Leopard-man. Moreau stopped, facing this creature,who cringed towards him with the memory and dread of infinite torment.

  "Who is he?" repeated Moreau, in a voice of thunder.

  "Evil is he who breaks the Law," chanted the Sayer of the Law.

  Moreau looked into the eyes of the Leopard-man, and seemed to bedragging the very soul out of the creature.

  "Who breaks the Law--" said Moreau, taking his eyes off his victim,and turning towards us (it seemed to me there was a touch of exultationin his voice).

  "Goes back to the House of Pain," they all clamoured,--"goes backto the House of Pain, O Master!"

  "Back to the House of Pain,--back to the House of Pain,"gabbled the Ape-man, as though the idea was sweet to him.

  "Do you hear?" said Moreau, turning back to the criminal,"my friend--Hullo!"

  For the Leopard-man, released from Moreau's eye, had risen straightfrom his knees, and now, with eyes aflame and his huge feline tusksflashing out from under his curling lips, leapt towards his tormentor.I am convinced that only the madness of unendurable fear could haveprompted this attack. The whole circle of threescore monsters seemedto rise about us. I drew my revolver. The two figures collided.I saw Moreau reeling back from the Leopard-man's blow. There was afurious yelling and howling all about us. Every one was moving rapidly.For a moment I thought it was a general revolt. The furious faceof the Leopard-man flashed by mine, with M'ling close in pursuit.I saw the yellow eyes of the Hyena-swine blazing with excitement,his attitude as if he were half resolved to attack me.The Satyr, too, glared at me over the Hyena-swine's hunched shoulders.I heard the crack of Moreau's pistol, and saw the pink flashdart across the tumult. The whole crowd seemed to swing roundin the direction of the glint of fire, and I too was swung roundby the magnetism of the movement. In another second I was running,one of a tumultuous shouting crowd, in pursuit of the escapingLeopard-man.

  That is all I can tell definitely. I saw the Leopard-man strike Moreau,and then everything spun about me until I was running headlong.M'ling was ahead, close in pursuit of the fugitive. Behind, their tonguesalready lolling out, ran the Wolf-women in great leaping strides.The Swine folk followed, squealing with excitement, and the twoBull-men in their swathings of white. Then came Moreau in acluster of the Beast People, his wide-brimmed straw hat blown off,his revolver in hand, and his lank white hair streaming out.The Hyena-swine ran beside me, keeping pace with me and glancing furtivelyat me out of his feline eyes, and the others came pattering and shoutingbehind us.

  The Leopard-man went bursting his way through the long canes,which 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 reachedthe brake. The chase lay through the brake for perhaps a quarterof a mile, and then plunged into a dense thicket, which retardedour movements exceedingly, though we went through it in a crowdtogether,--fronds flicking into our faces, ropy creepers catchingus under the chin or gripping our ankles, thorny plants hooking intoand tearing cloth and flesh together.

  "He has gone on all-fours through this," panted Moreau, now justahead of me.

  "None escape," said the Wolf-bear, laughing into my face withthe exultation of hunting. We burst out again among rocks,and saw the quarry ahead running lightly on all-fours and snarlingat 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 furtivedroop 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 falleninto a longer and steadier stride. I saw as we traversed the openthat 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 wasmaking for the projecting cape upon which he had stalked meon 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 byferns and reeds, I helped to pursue the Leopard-man who had brokenthe 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 chaselest I should be left alone with this horrible companion.I staggered on in spite of infinite fatigue and the dense heat of thetropical afternoon.

  At last the fury of the hunt slackened. We had pinned the wretchedbrute
into a corner of the island. Moreau, whip in hand, marshalled usall into an irregular line, and we advanced now slowly, shouting to oneanother as we advanced and tightening the cordon about our victim.He lurked noiseless and invisible in the bushes through which Ihad run from him during that midnight pursuit.

  "Steady!" cried Moreau, "steady!" as the ends of the line creptround 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 beatalong the beach beneath. Slowly we pushed in among the frettednetwork 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 hadinspired in me. I heard the twigs snap and the boughs swish asidebefore the heavy tread of the Horse-rhinoceros upon my right.Then suddenly through a polygon of green, in the half darknessunder 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 thefact,--but now, seeing the creature there in a perfectly animalattitude, with the light gleaming in its eyes and its imperfectlyhuman face distorted with terror, I realised again the fact of itshumanity. In another moment other of its pursuers would see it,and it would be overpowered and captured, to experience once morethe horrible tortures of the enclosure. Abruptly I slipped outmy revolver, aimed between its terror-struck eyes, and fired.As I did so, the Hyena-swine saw the Thing, and flung itself uponit with an eager cry, thrusting thirsty teeth into its neck.All about me the green masses of the thicket were swaying and crackingas the Beast People came rushing together. One face and thenanother appeared.

  "Don't kill it, Prendick!" cried Moreau. "Don't kill it!"and I saw him stooping as he pushed through under the frondsof the big ferns.

  In another moment he had beaten off the Hyena-swine with the handle ofhis whip, and he and Montgomery were keeping away the excited carnivorousBeast 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 anearer view.

  "Confound you, Prendick!" said Moreau. "I wanted him."

  "I'm sorry," said I, though I was not. "It was the impulseof the moment." I felt sick with exertion and excitement.Turning, I pushed my way out of the crowding Beast People and wenton alone up the slope towards the higher part of the headland.Under the shouted directions of Moreau I heard the three white-swathedBull-men begin dragging the victim down towards the water.

  It was easy now for me to be alone. The Beast People manifested a quitehuman 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 againstthe evening sky as they carried the weighted dead body out to sea;and like a wave across my mind came the realisation of the unspeakableaimlessness of things upon the island. Upon the beach amongthe rocks beneath me were the Ape-man, the Hyena-swine, and severalother of the Beast People, standing about Montgomery and Moreau.They were all still intensely excited, and all overflowing with noisyexpressions of their loyalty to the Law; yet I felt an absoluteassurance in my own mind that the Hyena-swine was implicatedin 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 cameto 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 hadbeen beasts, their instincts fitly adapted to their surroundings,and happy as living things may be. Now they stumbled in the shacklesof humanity, lived in a fear that never died, fretted by a law theycould 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 atleast 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 werethrown 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 heldthem back from a brief hot struggle and a decisive end to theirnatural animosities.

  In those days my fear of the Beast People went the way of my personalfear 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 worldwhen I saw it suffering the painful disorder of this island.A blind Fate, a vast pitiless mechanism, seemed to cut andshape the fabric of existence and I, Moreau (by his passionfor research), Montgomery (by his passion for drink), the BeastPeople with their instincts and mental restrictions, were tornand crushed, ruthlessly, inevitably, amid the infinite complexityof its incessant wheels. But this condition did not come all at once:I think indeed that I anticipate a little in speaking ofit now.