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15 - The Island of Dr Moreau - H G Wells · Adventure Books Collection

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  Fifteen concerning the beast folk, I woke early. Moreau's explanation stood before my
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  mind, clear and definite from the moment of my awakening. I got out
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  of the hammock and went to the door to assure myself that the key was
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  turned. Then I tried the window bar and found it firmly fixed that these
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  manlike creatures were, in truth only bestial monsters. Mere grotesque travesties of men
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  filled me with a vague uncertainty of their possibilities, which was far worse than
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  any definite fear it. Tapping came at the door, and I heard the
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  gluttonous accents of himlings speaking. I pocketed one of the revolvers, keeping one
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  hand upon it, and opened to him. Good mornin, sir, he
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  said, bringing in in addition to the customary herb brec an ill cooked rabbit.
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  Montgomery followed him. His roving eye caught the position of my arm,
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  and he smiled askew. The puma was resting to heal that day, but
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  Moreau, who was singularly solitary in his habits, did not join us.
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  I talked with Montgomery to clear my ideas of the way in which the beast
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  folk lived. In particular, I was urgent to know how these inhuman monsters
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  were kept from falling upon Moreau and Montgomery and from rending one another. He
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  explained to me that the comparative safety of Moreau and himself was due to the
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  limited mental scope of these monsters, in spite of their increased intelligence and the
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  tendency of their animal instincts to reawaken. They had certain fixed ideas implanted by
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  Moreau into their minds which absolutely bounded their imaginations. They were really hypnotized,
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  had been told that certain things were possible, and that certain things were not
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  to be done, and these prohibitions were woven into the texture of their minds
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  beyond any possibility of disobedience or dispute. Certain matters, however, in which
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  all instinct was at war with Moreau's convenience, were in a less stable condition.
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  A series of propositions called the law I had already heard them recited,
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  battled in their minds with the deep seated, ever rebellious cravings of their animal
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  natures. This law they were ever repeating, I found and ever breaking.
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  Both Montgomery and Moreau displayed particular solicitude to keep them ignorant of the taste of
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  blood, they feared the inevitable suggestions of that flavor. Montgomery told me that
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  the law, especially among the feline being east people, became oddly weakened about
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  nightfall, that then the animal was at its strongest, that a spirit of
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  adventure sprang up in them at the dusk, when they would dare things they
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  never seemed to dream about by day. To that I owed my stalking by
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  the leopard man on the night of my arrival. But during these earlier days
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  of my stay they broke the law only furtively, and after dark. In
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  the daylight there was a general atmosphere of respect for its multifarious prohibitions. And
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  here perhaps I may give a few general facts about the island and the beast
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  people. The island, which was of irregular outline and lay low upon the
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  wide sea, had a total area, I suppose of seven or eight square
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  miles. It was volcanic in origin, and was now fringed on three sides
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  by coral reefs. Some fumaroles to the northward, and a hot spring were
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  the only vestiges of the forces that had long since originated it. Now and
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  then a faint quiver of an earthquake would be sensible, and sometimes the ascent
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  of the spire of smoke would be rendered tumultuous by gusts of steam. But
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  that was all. The population of the island, Montgomery informed me, now
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  numbered rather more than sixty of these strange creations of Moreau's art, not counting
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  these smaller monstrosities which lived in the undergrowth and were without human form. Altogether
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  he had made nearly a hundred and twenty, but many had died, and
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  others, like the writhing, footless thing of which he had told me,
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  had come by violent ends. In answer to my question, Montgomery said that
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  they actually bore off spring, but that these generally die when they lived.
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  Moreau took them and stamped the human form upon them. There was no evidence
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  of the inheritance of their acquired human characteristics. The females were less numerous than
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  the males, and liable to much furtive persecution. In spite of the monogamy,
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  the law enjoined, it would be impossible for me to describe these beast
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  people in detail. My eye has had no training in details, and unhappily
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  I cannot sketch most striking Perhaps in their general appearance was the disproportion between the
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  legs of these creatures and the length of their bodies. And yet so relative
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  is our idea of grace. My eye became habituated to their forms, and
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  at last I even fell in with their persuasion that my own long thighs were
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  ungainly. Another point was the forward carriage of the head, in the clumsy
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  and inhuman curvature of the spine. Even the aped men lacked that inward,
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  sinuous curve of the back which makes the human figure so graceful. Most had
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  their shoulders hunched clumsily, and their short forearms hung weakly at their sides.
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  Few of them were conspicuously hairy, at least until the end of my time
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  upon the island. The next most obvious deformity was in their faces, almost
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  all of which were prognathus malformed about the ears, with large proturberent noses,
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  very furry or very bristly hair, and often strangely colored or strangely placed eyes.
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  None could laugh, though the ape man had a chattering titter. Beyond
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  these general characters, their heads had little in common. Each preserved the quality
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  of its particular species. Their human mark distorted, but did not hide the
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  leopard, the ox, or the sow, or other animal or animals from
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  which the creature had been molded. The voices too very exceedingly. The hands
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  were always malformed, and though some surprised me by their unexpected human appearance,
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  almost all were deficient in the number of digits, clumsy about the finger nails,
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  and lacking any tactile sensibility. The two most formidable animal men were my
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  leopard man and a creature made of hyaena and swine. Larger than these were
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  the three bull creatures who pulled in the boat. Then came the silvery hairy
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  man, who was also the sayer of the law imling, and a satyrlike
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  creature of ape and goat. There were the three swine men and a swine
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  woman, a mere rhinoceros creature, and several other females whose sources I did
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  not ascertain. There were several wolf creatures, a bare bull, and a
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  saint Bernard man I have already described the ape man. And there was a
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  particularly hateful and evil smelling old woman made of vixen and bear, whom I
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  hated from the beginning. She was said to be a passionate votary of the
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  law. Smaller creatures were certain dappled youths, and my little sloth creature.
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  But enough of this catalog. At first I had a shivering horror of the
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  brutes, felt all too keenly that they were still brutes. But insensibly I
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  became a little habituated to the idea of them. And moreover, I was
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  affected by Montgomery's attitude towards them. He had been with them so long that
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  he had come to regard them as almost normal human beings. His London days
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  seemed a glorious impossible passed to him. Only once in a year or so
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  did he go to Arica to deal with Moreau's agents, a trader in animals,
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  There he hardly met the finest type of mankind in that seafaring village of
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  Spanish mongrels. The men aboard ship, he told me, seemed at first
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  just as strange to him as the beast. Men seemed to me unnaturally long
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  in the leg, flat in the face, prominent in the forehead, suspicious,
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  dangerous, and cold hearted. In fact, he did not like men.
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  His heart had warmed to me, he thought, because he had saved
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  my life. I fancied even then that he had a sneaking kindness for some
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  of these metamorphosed brutes, a vicious sympathy with some of their ways, but
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  that he attempted to veil it from me at first imling the black Faced Man,
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  Montgomery's attendant, the thirst of the beasts Folk I had encountered, did
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  not live with the others across the island, but in a small kennel at
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  the back of the enclosure. The creature was scarcely so intelligent as the ape
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  man, but far more docile and the most human looking of all the beasts.
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  Folk and Montgomery had trained it to prepare food and indeed to discharge all
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  the trivial domestic offices that were required. It was a complex trophy of Moreau's
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  horrible skill, A bear tainted with dog and ox, and one of the
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  most elaborately made of all his creatures. It treated Montgomery with a strange tenderness
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  and devotion. Sometimes he would notice it, pat it, call it half
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  mocking, half jocular names, and so make it caper with extraordinary delight.
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  Sometimes he would ill treat it, especially after he had been at the whisky,
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  kicking it, beating it, pelting it with stones or lighted fuses.
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  But whether he treated it well or ill, it loved nothing so much as
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  to be near him. I say I became habituated to the beast people,
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  that a thousand things which had seemed unnatural and repulsive speedily became natural and ordinary
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  to me. I suppose everything in existence takes its color from the average hue
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  of our surroundings. Montgomery and Moreau were too peculiar and individual to keep my
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  general impression of humanity well defined. I would see one of the clumsy Beauvine
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  creatures who worked the launch, treading heavily through the undergrowth, and find myself
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  asking, trying hard to recall how he differed from some really human yokel trudging
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  from his mechanical labors. Or I would meet the foxspare woman's vulpene, shifty
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  face, strangely human in its speculative cunning, and even imagine I had met
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  it before in some city byway. Yet every now and then the beast would
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  flash out upon me, beyond any doubt or denial, an ugly looking man,
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  a hunched back human, savage to all appearance, squatting in the aperture
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  of one of the dens which stretches, arms in yawn, showing with startling
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  suddenness, scissor edged incisors and saber like canines, keen and brilliant as knives.
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  Or in some narrow pathway, glancing with a transitory daring into the eyes
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  of some lithe white swathed female figure, I would suddenly see with a spasmodic
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  revulsion that she had slit like pupils, or glancing down, note the curving
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  nail with which she held her shapeless wrap about her. It is a curious
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  thing, by the bye, for which I am quite unable to account that
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  these weird creatures, the females I mean, had in the earlier days of
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  my stay, an instinctive sense of their own repulsive clumsiness, and displayed in
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  consequence a more than human regard for the decency and decorum of extensive costume