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The Island of Doctor Moreau Chapter 2 - The Man Who Was Going Nowhere · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Section three of the Island of Doctor Morreau by H. G. Wells.
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  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by
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  Speaker 1: Tom Hare two. The man who was going nowhere. The
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  Speaker 1: cabin in which I found myself was small and rather untidy.
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  Speaker 1: A youngish man with flaxen hair, a bristly straw colored mustache,
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  Speaker 1: and dropping nether lip was sitting and holding my wrist.
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  Speaker 1: For a minute, we stared at each other without speaking.
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  Speaker 1: He had waterly gray eyes, oddly void of expression. Then
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  Speaker 1: just overhead came a sound like an iron bedstead being
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  Speaker 1: knocked about, and the low, angry growling of some large animal.
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  Speaker 1: At the same time the man spoke up. He repeated
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  Speaker 1: his question, how do you feel now? I think? I said,
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  Speaker 1: I felt all right. I could not recollect how I
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  Speaker 1: had got there. He must have seen the question in
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  Speaker 1: my face, for my voice was in a accessible to me.
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  Speaker 1: You were picked up in a boat starving. The name
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  Speaker 1: on the boat was the Lady Vain, and there were
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  Speaker 1: spots of blood on the gunwale. At the same time,
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  Speaker 1: my eye caught my hand, so thin that it looked
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  Speaker 1: like a dirty skin purse full of loose bones. And
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  Speaker 1: all the business of the boat came back to me.
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  Speaker 1: Have thumb of this, said he, and gave me a
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  Speaker 1: dose of some scarlet stuff iced. It tasted like blood
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  Speaker 1: and made me feel stronger. You were in luck, said he,
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  Speaker 1: to get picked up by his ship with a medical
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  Speaker 1: man aboard. He spoke with a slobbering articulation, with the
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  Speaker 1: ghost of a lisp. What ship is this, I said, slowly,
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  Speaker 1: hoarse from my long silence. It's a little trader from
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  Speaker 1: Arica and Callao. I never asked where she came from
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  Speaker 1: in the beginning, out of the land of born fools,
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  Speaker 1: I gas, I'm a passenger myself from Attica. The Thiliad
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  Speaker 1: who owns her heath Captain too named Davies, he's lost
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  Speaker 1: his certificate or something. You know, the kind of man
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  Speaker 1: calls the thing the apecacuana of all thilly infernal names.
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  Speaker 1: Though when there's much of a thieg without any wind,
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  Speaker 1: she certainly acts according. Then the noise of a head
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  Speaker 1: began again, a snarling growl and the voice of a
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  Speaker 1: human being together, then another voice, telling some heaven forsake
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  Speaker 1: an idiot to desist. You were nearly dead, said my interlocutor.
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  Speaker 1: Twas the very near thing indeed, but they've put some
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  Speaker 1: stuff into you. Now, noticeth your arm's sore injections. You've
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  Speaker 1: been insensible for nearly thirty hours, I thought slowly. I
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  Speaker 1: was distracted now by the helping of a number of dogs.
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  Speaker 1: Am I eligible for solid food? I asked? Thank to me,
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  Speaker 1: he said, even now the mutton is boiling. Yes, I said,
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  Speaker 1: with assurance, I could eat some mutton. But said he,
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  Speaker 1: with a momentary hesitation. You know I'm dying to hear
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  Speaker 1: how you came to be alone in that boat. Damn
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  Speaker 1: that howling, I thought. I detected a certain suspicion in
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  Speaker 1: his eyes. He suddenly left the cabin, and I heard
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  Speaker 1: him in violent controversy with some one who seemed to
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  Speaker 1: me to talk gibberish in response to him. The matter
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  Speaker 1: sounded as though it ended in blows, but in that
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  Speaker 1: I thought my ears were mistaken. Then he shouted at
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  Speaker 1: the dogs and returned to the cabin. Well, said he
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  Speaker 1: in the doorway. You were just beginning to tell me.
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  Speaker 1: I told him my name, Edward Prindick, and how I
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  Speaker 1: had taken to natural history as a relief from the
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  Speaker 1: dulness of my comfortable independence. He seemed interested in this.
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  Speaker 1: I've done some thianth myself. I did my biology at
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  Speaker 1: University College, getting out the ovary of the earthworm and
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  Speaker 1: the radula of the th nail and all that. Lord,
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  Speaker 1: it's ten years ago. Go on, go on, tell me
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  Speaker 1: about the boat. He is evidently satisfied with the frankness
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  Speaker 1: of my story, which it told in concise sentences, enough
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  Speaker 1: for I felt horribly weak, And when it was finished,
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  Speaker 1: he reverted at once to the topic of natural history
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  Speaker 1: and his own biological studies. He began to question me
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  Speaker 1: closely about Tottenham Court Road and Gower Street, with Kaplathi
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  Speaker 1: still flourishing. What a shot that was. He had evidently
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  Speaker 1: been a very ordinary medical student, and drifted incontinently to
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  Speaker 1: the topic of the music. Hause he told me some
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  Speaker 1: anecdotes left it all, He said, ten years ago, how
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  Speaker 1: jolly it all youth to be. But I made a
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  Speaker 1: young ath of my thelf plain myself out before I
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  Speaker 1: was twenty one. A dare say it's all different now,
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  Speaker 1: But I must look up that ath of a cook
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  Speaker 1: and thie what he done to your mutton? The growling
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  Speaker 1: overhead was renewed so suddenly and with so much savage anger,
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  Speaker 1: that It startled me. What's that? I called after him,
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  Speaker 1: but the door had closed. He came back again with
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  Speaker 1: the boiled mutton, and I was so excited by the
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  Speaker 1: appetizing smell of it that I forgot the noise of
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  Speaker 1: the beast that had troubled me. After a day of
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  Speaker 1: alternate sleep and feeding, I was so far recovered to
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  Speaker 1: be able to get from my bunk to the scuttle
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  Speaker 1: and see the green seas trying to keep pace with us.
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  Speaker 1: I judged the schooner was running before the wind. Montgomery,
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  Speaker 1: that was the name of the flaxen haired man, came
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  Speaker 1: in again as I stood there, and I asked him
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  Speaker 1: for some clothes. He lent me some duck things of
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  Speaker 1: his own, for those I had worn in the boat
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  Speaker 1: had been thrown overboard. They were rather loose for me,
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  Speaker 1: for he was large and long in his limbs. He
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  Speaker 1: told me casually that the captain was three parts drunk
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  Speaker 1: in his own cabin. As I assumed the clothes, I
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  Speaker 1: began asking him some questions about the destination of the ship.
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  Speaker 1: He said the ship was bound to Hawaii, but that
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  Speaker 1: it had to land him first. Where, said I. It's
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  Speaker 1: an island where I live so far as I know it,
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  Speaker 1: hathn't got a name. He stared at me with his
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  Speaker 1: nether lip dropping, and looked so wilfully stupid of a
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  Speaker 1: sudden that it came into my head that he desired
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  Speaker 1: to avoid my questions. I had the discretion to ask
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  Speaker 1: no more. End of Section three.