Section 15

In this manner began the longer part of my
sojourn upon this Island of Doctor Moreau.
But from that night until the end came, there
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was but one thing happened to tell save a series
of innumerable small unpleasant details and the
fretting of an incessant uneasiness. So that I
prefer to make no chronicle for that gap of
time, to tell only one cardinal incident of the
ten months I spent as an intimate of these half-
humanised brutes. There is much that sticks
in my memory that I could write, — things that
I would cheerfully give my right hand to forget ;
but they do not help the telling of the story.

In the retrospect it is strange to remember
how soon I fell in with these monsters' ways,
and gained my confidence again. I had my
quarrels with them of course, and could show
some of their teeth-marks still ; but they soon
gained a wholesome respect for my trick of
throwing stones and for the bite of my hatchet.
And my Saint-Bernard-man's loyalty was of infi-
nite service to me. I found their simple scale of
honour was based mainly on the capacity for
inflicting trenchant wounds. Indeed, I may
say — without vanity, I hope — that I held
something like pre-eminence among them. One
or two, whom in a rare access of high spirits I
had scarred rather badly, bore me a grudge ; but
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it vented itself chiefly behind my back, and at
a safe distance from my missiles, in grimaces.

The Hyena-swine avoided me, and I was
always on the alert for him. My inseparable
Dog-man hated and dreaded him intensely. I
really believe that was at the root of the brute's
attachment to me. It was soon evident to me
that the former monster had tasted blood, and
gone the way of the Leopard-man. He formed
a lair somewhere in the forest, and became soli-
tary. Once I tried to induce the Beast Folk to
hunt him, but I lacked the authority to make
them co-operate for one end. Again and again
I tried to approach his den and come upon him
unaware ; but always he was too acute for me,
and saw or winded me and got away. He too
made every forest pathway dangerous to me and
my ally with his lurking ambuscades. The
Dog-man scarcely dared to leave my side.

In the first month or so the Beast Folk, com-
pared with their latter condition, were human
enough, and for one or two besides my canine
friend I even conceived a friendly tolerance.
The little pink sloth-creature displayed an odd
affection for me, and took to following me
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The Reversion of the Beast Folk.

about. The Monkey-man bored me, however ;
he assumed, on the strength of his five digits,
that he was my equal, and was for ever jabber-
ing at me, — jabbering the most arrant non-
sense. One thing about him entertained me a
little : he had a fantastic trick of coining new
words. He had an idea, I believe, that to
gabble about names that meant nothing was the
proper use of speech. He called it " Big
Thinks " to distinguish it from "Little Thinks,"
the sane every-day interests of life. If ever I
made a remark he did not understand, he would
praise it very much, ask me to say it again,
learn it by heart, and go off repeating it,
with a word wrong here or there, to all the
milder of the Beast People. He thought
nothing of what was plain and comprehensible.
I invented some very curious "Big Thinks"
for his especial use. I think now that he was
the silliest creature I ever met ; he had devel-
oped in the most wonderful way the distinctive
silliness of man without losing one jot of the
natural folly of a monkey.

This, I say, was in the earlier weeks of my
solitude among these brutes. During that time
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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 dis-
tinctly 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 alto-
gether 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 limps of sound
again ?) And they walked erect with an in-
creasing 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 real-
ised more keenly than ever what Moreau had
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The Reversion of the Beast Folk.

told me about the "stubborn beast-flesh.'*
They were reverting, and reverting very
rapidly.

Some of them — the pioneers in this, I no-
ticed 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 in-
creased from day to day, the lane of dwelling-
places, at no time very sweet, became so loath-
some 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
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the lapsing of these monsters, — to tell how,
day by day, the human semblance left them 3
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 shud-
dering 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 re-
leased the increasing charge of explosive animal-
ism 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
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The Reversion of the Beast Folk.

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 some-
thing 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 ap-
pearing through the specific dispositions. And
the dwindling shreds of the humanity still
startled me every now and then, — a momen-
tary recrudescence of speech perhaps, an un-
expected 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

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The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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
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The Reversion of the Beast Folk.

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. Per-
haps it is as well that I was saved from launch-
ing 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

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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, gnaw-
ing 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

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The Reversion of the Beast Folk.

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

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massacre of them ; to build traps, or fight them
with my knife. Had I possessed sufficient cart-
ridges, 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 slumber-
ing 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 any-
thing 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 insur-
mountable obstacle was that I had no vessel to
contain the water I should need if I floated forth

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The Reversion of the Beast Folk.

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

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The Island of Doctor Moreau.

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
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