Latest / The H. G. Wells Library / The Island of Doctor Moreau Chapter 8 - The Crying of the Puma

Transcript

The Island of Doctor Moreau Chapter 8 - The Crying of the Puma · The H. G. Wells Library

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Section nine of the Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Tom Hare eight the crying of the Puma. Montgomery interrupted
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: my tangle of mystification and suspicion about one o'clock, and
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: his grotesque attintant followed him with the tray bearing bread,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: some herbs and other eatables, a flask of whisky, a
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: jug of water, and three glasses and knives. I glanced
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: askance at this strange creature and found him watching me
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: with his queer, restless eyes. Montgomery said he would lunch
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: with me, but that Moreau was too preoccupied with some
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: work to come. Moreau said, I I know that name
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: the devil you do? Said he? What an earth I
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: worth to mention it to you? I might have thought, anyhow,
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: it will give you an inkling of our myth to
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: wreath with GI no thanks. I'm an abstainer I with
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: I had been, but it's no use locking the door
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: after the steed hath dolen. It was that infernal stuff
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: which led to my coming here. That and a foggy night,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: I thought myself in luck at the time when Moreau
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: offered to get me off. It's queer, Montgomery said I suddenly,
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: as the outer door closed. Why has your man pointed ears? Damn,
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: he said, over his first mouthful of food. He stared
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: at me for a moment, and then repeated pointed earth,
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: little points them, said I, as calmly as possible, with
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: a catch in my breath and a fine black fur
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: at the edges. He helped himself to whiskey and water
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: with great deliberation. I was under the impression that his
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: hair covered his earth. I saw them as he stooped
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: by me to put that coffee assent to me on
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: the table, and his eyes shine in the dark. By
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: this time Montgomery had recovered from the surprise of my question.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: I always thought, he said, deliberately, with a certain accentuation
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: of his flavoring of lisp, that there was something the
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: matter with the earth from the way he covered them.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: What were they like? I was persuaded from his manner
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: that this ignorance was a pretense. Still, I could hardly
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: tell the man that I thought him a liar, pointed,
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: I said, rather small and furry, distinctly furry. But the
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: whole man is one of the strangest beings I ever
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: set eyes on. A sharp, hoarse cry of animal pain
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: came from the enclosure behind us. Its depth and volume
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: testified to the puma. I saw Montgomery WinCE. Yes, he said,
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: where did you pick up the creature than Francisco Heath,
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: an ugly brute. I admit, half witted, you know, can't
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: remember where he came from. But I'm youth to him.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: You know we both are. How doth he strike you?
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: He's unnatural? I said, there's something about him. Don't think
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: me fanciful, but it gives me a nasty little sensation,
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: a tightening of my muscles when he comes near me.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: It's a touch of the diabolical. In fact, Montgomery had
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: stopped eating while I told him this rum. He said,
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: I can't see it. He resumed his meal. I had
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: no idea of it, he said, and masticated. The crew
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: of the schooner must have felt it. The theame made
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: a dead fetter at the poor devil, you thaw the captain. Suddenly,
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: the puma howled again, this time more painfully. Montgomery swore
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: under his breath, I had half a mind to attack him.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: About the men on the beach and the poor brute
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: within gave vent to a series of short, sharp cries.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: Your men on the beach, said I, what race are they?
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: Excellent fellow thaughn't they said, he absent mindedly knitting his brows.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: As the animal yelled out sharply, I said no more.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: There was another outcry, worse than the former. He looked
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: at me with his dull gray eyes, and then took
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: some more whiskey. He tried to draw me into a
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: discussion about alcohol, professing to have saved my life with it.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: He seemed anxious to lay stress on the fact that
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: I owed my life to him. I answered him distractedly.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: Presently our meal came to an end. Then the shapen
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: monster with the pointy years cleared the remains away, and
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: Montgomery left me alone in the room again. All the
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: time he had been in a state of ill concealed
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: irritation at the noise of the vivisected puma. He had
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: spoken of his odd want of nerve, and left me
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: to the obvious application. I found myself that the cries
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: were singularly irritating, and it grew in depth and intensity
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: as the afternoon wore on. They were painful at first,
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: but their constant resurgence. At last, altogether upset my balance,
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: I flung aside a crib of horrors I had been reading,
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: and began to clinch my fists, to bite my lips,
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: and to pace the room. Presently I got to stopping
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: my ears with my fingers. The emotional appeal of those
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: yells grew upon me steadily, grew at last to such
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: an exquisite expression of suffering that I could stand it
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: in that confined room no longer. I stepped out of
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: the door into the slumbrous heat of the late afternoon,
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: and walking past the main entrance locked again, I noticed
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: turned the corner of the wall, the crying sounded even
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: louder out of doors. It was as if all the
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: pain in the world had found a voice. Yet, had
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: I known such pain was in the next room, and
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: had it been dumb, I believe I have thought, since
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: I could have stood it well enough. It is when
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: suffering finds a voice and sets our nerves quivering that
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: this pity comes troubling us. But in spite of the
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: brilliant sunlight and the green fans of the trees waving
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: in the soothing sea breeze, the world was a confusion
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: blurred with drifting black and red phantasms until I was
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: out of earshot of the house in the checkered wall.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: End of Section nine.