Latest / The H. G. Wells Library / The Island of Doctor Moreau Chapter 14 - Doctor Moreau Explains

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The Island of Doctor Moreau Chapter 14 - Doctor Moreau Explains · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Section fifteen of the Island of Doctor Moreau 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. Fourteen. Doctor Moreau explains, And now Prindick, I
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  Speaker 1: will explain, said doctor Moreau. As soon as we had
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  Speaker 1: eaten and drunk, I must confess that you are the
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  Speaker 1: most dictatorial guest I ever entertained. I warned you that
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  Speaker 1: this is the last I shall do to oblige you.
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  Speaker 1: The next thing you threatened to commit suicide about I
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  Speaker 1: shan'n't do, even at some personal inconvenience. He sat in
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  Speaker 1: my deck chair, a cigar, half consumed in his white
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  Speaker 1: dexterous looking fingers. The light of the swinging lamp fell
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  Speaker 1: on his white hair. He stared through the little window
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  Speaker 1: out at the starlight. I sat as far away from
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  Speaker 1: him as possible. The table between us and the revolvers
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  Speaker 1: to hand. Montgomery was not present. I did not care
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  Speaker 1: to be with the two of them in such a
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  Speaker 1: little room. You admit that the vivisected human being, as
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  Speaker 1: you called it, is, after all, only the puma, said Moreau.
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  Speaker 1: He made me visit that horror in the inner room
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  Speaker 1: to assure myself of its inhumanity. It is the puma,
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  Speaker 1: I said, still alive, but so cut and mutilated, as
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  Speaker 1: I pray, I may never see living flesh again. Of
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  Speaker 1: all vile, Never mind that, said Moreau. At least spare
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  Speaker 1: me your youthful horrors. Montgomery used to be just the same.
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  Speaker 1: You admit that it is the puma. Now be quiet
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  Speaker 1: while I reel off my physiological lecture to you, and forthwith,
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  Speaker 1: beginning in the tone of a man supremely bored, but
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  Speaker 1: presently warming a little, he explained his work to me.
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  Speaker 1: He was very simple and convincing. Now and then there
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  Speaker 1: was a touch of sarcasm in his voice. Presently I
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  Speaker 1: found myself hot with shame at our mutual positions. The
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  Speaker 1: creatures I had seen were not men, had never been men.
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  Speaker 1: They were animals, humanized animals, triumphs of vivisection. You forget
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  Speaker 1: all that a skilled vivisector can do with living things,
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  Speaker 1: said Moreau. For my own part, I'm puzzled why the
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  Speaker 1: things I have done here have not been done before.
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  Speaker 1: Small efforts, of course, have been made. Amputation, tongue cutting excisions.
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  Speaker 1: Of course, you know a squint may be induced or
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  Speaker 1: cured by surgery. Then in the case of excisions, you
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  Speaker 1: of all kinds of secondary changes, pigmentary disturbances, modifications of
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  Speaker 1: the passions, alterations in the secretion of fatty tissue. I
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  Speaker 1: have no doubt you have heard of these things, of course,
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  Speaker 1: said I. But these foul creatures of yours, all in
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  Speaker 1: good time, said he, waving his hand at me. I
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  Speaker 1: am only the beginning. Those are trivial cases of alteration.
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  Speaker 1: Surgery can do better things than that. There is building
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  Speaker 1: up as well as breaking down and changing. You have heard,
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  Speaker 1: perhaps of a common surgical operation resorted to in cases
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  Speaker 1: where the nose has been destroyed. A flap of skin
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  Speaker 1: is cut from the forehead, turned down on the nose,
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  Speaker 1: and heels in the new position. This is a kind
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  Speaker 1: of grafting, and a new position of part of an
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  Speaker 1: animal upon itself. Grafting of freshly obtained material from another
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  Speaker 1: animal is also possible. The case of teeth, for example,
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  Speaker 1: the grafting of skin and bone is done to facilitate healing.
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  Speaker 1: The surgeon places in the middle of the wound pieces
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  Speaker 1: of skin snipped from another animal, or fragments of bone
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  Speaker 1: from a victim freshly killed hunter's cock spur. Possibly you
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  Speaker 1: have heard of that flourished on the bull's neck, and
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  Speaker 1: the rhinoceros rats of the Algerian zouaves are also to
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  Speaker 1: be thought of. Monsters manufactured by transferring a slip from
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  Speaker 1: the tail of an ordinary rat to its snout and
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  Speaker 1: allowing it to heal in that position. Monsters manufactured, said I,
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  Speaker 1: then you mean to tell me, yes, these creatures you
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  Speaker 1: have seen are animals carvin and rot into new shapes.
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  Speaker 1: To that, to the study of the plasticity of living forms,
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  Speaker 1: my life has been devoted. I have studied for years,
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  Speaker 1: gaining in knowledge as I go. I see you look horrified,
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  Speaker 1: and yet I am telling you nothing new. It all
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  Speaker 1: lay in the surface of practical anatomy years ago, but
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  Speaker 1: no one had the temerity to touch it. It is
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  Speaker 1: not simply the outward form of an animal which I
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  Speaker 1: can change. The physiology, the chemical rhythm of the creature
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  Speaker 1: may also be made to undergo an enduring modification, of
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  Speaker 1: which vaccination and other methods of inoculation with living or
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  Speaker 1: dead matter are examples that will no doubt be familiar
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  Speaker 1: to you. A similar operation is the transfusion of blood,
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  Speaker 1: with which subject, indeed, I began. These are all familiar cases.
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  Speaker 1: Less so, and probably far more extensive, were the operations
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  Speaker 1: of those medieval practitioners who may dwarfs and beggar cripples
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  Speaker 1: show monsters, some vestiges of whose art still remains in
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  Speaker 1: the preliminary manipulation of the young montebank or contortionist. Victor
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  Speaker 1: Hugo gives an account of them in lum Quirie. But
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  Speaker 1: perhaps my meaning grows plain now you begin to see
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  Speaker 1: that it is a possible thing to transplant tissue from
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  Speaker 1: one part of an animal to another, or from one
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  Speaker 1: animal to another, to alter its chemical reactions and methods
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  Speaker 1: of growth, to modify the articulations of its limbs, and
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  Speaker 1: indeed to change it in its most intimate structure. And
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  Speaker 1: yet this extraordinary branch of knowledge has never been sought
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  Speaker 1: as an end and systematically my modern investigators, until I
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  Speaker 1: took it up. Some such things have been hit upon
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  Speaker 1: in the last result of surgery. Most of the kindred
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  Speaker 1: evidence that will recur to your mind has been demonstrated,
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  Speaker 1: as it were, by accident, by tyrants, by criminals, by
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  Speaker 1: the breeders of horses and dogs, by all kinds of untrained,
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  Speaker 1: clumsy handed men working for their own immediate ends. I
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  Speaker 1: was the first man to take up this question, armed
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  Speaker 1: with antiseptic surgery and with a really scientific knowledge of
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  Speaker 1: the laws of growth. Yet one would imagine it must
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  Speaker 1: have been practiced in secret before such creatures as the
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  Speaker 1: Siamese twins, and in the vaults of the Inquisition. No
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  Speaker 1: doubt their chief aim was artistic torture. But some at
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  Speaker 1: least of the inquisitors must have had a touch of
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  Speaker 1: scientific curiosity. But said I, these things, these animals talk.
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  Speaker 1: He said, that was so, and proceeded to point out
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  Speaker 1: that the possibility of vivisection does not stop at a
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  Speaker 1: mere physical metamorphosis. A pig may be educated. The mental
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  Speaker 1: structure is even less determinate than the bodily. In our
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  Speaker 1: growing science of hypnotism, we find the promise of a
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  Speaker 1: possibility of superseding old inherent instincts by new suggestions, grafting
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  Speaker 1: upon or replacing the inherited fixed ideas. Very much indeed,
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  Speaker 1: of what we call moral education, he said, is such
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  Speaker 1: an artificial modification and perversion of instinct. Pugnacity is trained
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  Speaker 1: into courageous self sacrifice, and suppressed sexuality into religious emotion.
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  Speaker 1: And the great difference between man and monkey is in
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  Speaker 1: the larynx, he continued, in the capacity to frame delicately
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  Speaker 1: different sound symbols by which thought could be sustained. In
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  Speaker 1: this I failed to agree with him, but with a
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  Speaker 1: certain incivility, he declined to notice my objection. He repeated
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  Speaker 1: that the thing was so, and continued his account of
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  Speaker 1: his work. I asked him why he had taken the
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  Speaker 1: human form as a model. There seemed to me then,
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  Speaker 1: and there still seems to me now a strange wickedness
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  Speaker 1: for that choice. He confessed that he had chosen that
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  Speaker 1: form by chance. I might as well have worked to
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  Speaker 1: form sheep into lamas and llamas into sheep. I suppose
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  Speaker 1: there is something in the human form that appeals to
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  Speaker 1: the artistic turn of mind more powerfully than any animal
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  Speaker 1: sheepe can but have not confined myself to man makes
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  Speaker 1: king once or twice he was silent for a minute.
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  Speaker 1: Perhaps these years, how they have slipped by, And here
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  Speaker 1: I have wasted a day saving your life, and am
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  Speaker 1: now wasting an hour explaining myself. But said I, I
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  Speaker 1: still do not understand. Where is your justification for inflicting
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  Speaker 1: all this pain? The only thing that could excuse vivisection
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  Speaker 1: to me would be some application precisely, said he. But
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  Speaker 1: you see I am differently constituted. We are on different platforms.
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  Speaker 1: You are a materialist. I am not a materialist. I
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  Speaker 1: began hotly in my view, in my view, for it
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  Speaker 1: is just this question of pain that parts us. So
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  Speaker 1: long as visible or audible pain turns you sick, so
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  Speaker 1: long as your our own pain drives you, so long
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  Speaker 1: as pain underlies your propositions about sin, so long I
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  Speaker 1: tell you are an animal thinking a little less obscurely
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  Speaker 1: what an animal feels this pain? I gave an impatient
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  Speaker 1: shrug at such sophistry. Oh but it is such a
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  Speaker 1: little thing. A mind truly open to what science has
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  Speaker 1: to teach must see that it is a little thing.
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  Speaker 1: It may be that save in this little planet, this
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  Speaker 1: speck of cosmic dust, invisible long before the nearest star
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  Speaker 1: could be attained. It may be, I say that nowhere
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  Speaker 1: else does this thing called pain occur. But the laws
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  Speaker 1: we feel our way towards. Why, even on this earth,
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  Speaker 1: even among living things, what pain is there? As he spoke,
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  Speaker 1: he drew a little penknife from his pocket, open the
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  Speaker 1: smaller blade, and moved his chair so that I could
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  Speaker 1: see his thigh. Then, choosing the place deliberately, he drove
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  Speaker 1: the blade into his leg and withdrew it. No doubt,
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  Speaker 1: he said, you have seen that before. It does not
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  Speaker 1: hurt a pinprick. But what does it show? The capacity
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  Speaker 1: for pain is not kneaded in the muscle, and is
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  Speaker 1: not placed. There is but little kneaded in the skin,
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  Speaker 1: And only here and there over the thigh is a
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  Speaker 1: spot capable of feeling pain. Pain is simply our intrinsic
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  Speaker 1: medical adviser to warn us and stimulate us. Not all
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  Speaker 1: living flesh is painful, nor is all nerve, not even
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  Speaker 1: all sensory nerve. There's no taint of pain, real pain
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  Speaker 1: in the sensations of the optic nerve. If you wound
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  Speaker 1: the optic nerve, you merely see flashes of light, just
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  Speaker 1: as disease of the auditory nerve merely means a humming
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  Speaker 1: in our ears. Plants do not feel pain, nor the
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  Speaker 1: lower animals. It's possible that such animals as the starfish
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  Speaker 1: and crayfish do not feel pain at all. Then with men,
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  Speaker 1: the more intelligent they become, the more intelligently they will
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  Speaker 1: see after their own welfare. And the less they will
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  Speaker 1: need to God to keep them out of danger. I
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  Speaker 1: never heard of a useless thing that was not ground
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  Speaker 1: out of existence by evolution. Sooner or later did you?
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  Speaker 1: And pain gets needless? Then I am a religious man,
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  Speaker 1: predict as every sane man must be. It may be
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  Speaker 1: I fancy that I have seen more of the ways
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  Speaker 1: of this world's maker than you, For I have sought
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  Speaker 1: his laws in my way all my life, while you,
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  Speaker 1: I understand, have been collecting butterflies. And I tell you,
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  Speaker 1: pleasure and pain have nothing to do with heaven or hell.
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  Speaker 1: Pleasure and pain, Bah, what is your theologian's ecstasy but
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  Speaker 1: Mahomet's owery in the dark. This store which men and
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  Speaker 1: women set on pleasure and pain, predict, is the mark
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  Speaker 1: of the beast upon them, the mark of the beast
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  Speaker 1: from which they came. Pain, pain and pleasure they are
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  Speaker 1: for us only so long as we wriggle in the dust.
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  Speaker 1: You see, I went on with this research just the
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  Speaker 1: way it led me. That is the only way I
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  Speaker 1: ever heard of true research going. I asked a question,
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  Speaker 1: devised some method of obtaining an answer, and got a
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  Speaker 1: fresh question. Was this possible or that possible? You cannot
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  Speaker 1: imagine what this means to an investigator, what an intellectual
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  Speaker 1: passion grows upon him. You cannot imagine the strange, colorless
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  Speaker 1: delight of these intellectual desires. The thing before you is
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  Speaker 1: no longer an animal, a fellow creature, but a proper
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  Speaker 1: sympathetic pain. All I know of it I remember as
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  Speaker 1: a thing I used to suffer from years ago. I
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  Speaker 1: wanted it was the one thing I wanted to find
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  Speaker 1: out the extreme limit of plasticity in a living shape.
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  Speaker 1: But said I, the thing is in abomination. To this
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  Speaker 1: day I have never troubled about the ethics of the matter,
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  Speaker 1: he continued, The study of nature makes a man at
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  Speaker 1: last as remorseless as nature. I have gone on, not
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  Speaker 1: heeding anything but the question I was pursuing, and the
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  Speaker 1: material has tripped into the huts yonder. It is nearly
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  Speaker 1: eleven years since we came here, I in Montgomery and
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  Speaker 1: six Kannakas. I remember the green stillness of the island
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  Speaker 1: and the empty ocean about us, as though it was yesterday.
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  Speaker 1: The place seemed waiting for me. The stores were landed
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  Speaker 1: and the house was built. The cannarchers found some huts
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  Speaker 1: near the ravine. I went to work here upon what
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  Speaker 1: I had brought with me. There were some disagreeable things happened.
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  Speaker 1: At first. I began with the sheep and killed it
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  Speaker 1: after a day and a half by a slip of
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  Speaker 1: the scalpel. I took another sheep and made a thing
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  Speaker 1: of pain and fear, and left it bound up to heal.
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  Speaker 1: It looked quite human to me when I had finished it,
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  Speaker 1: but when I went to it I was discontented with it.
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  Speaker 1: It remembered me and was terrified beyond imagination, and it
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  Speaker 1: had no more than the wits of a sheep. The
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  Speaker 1: more I looked at it, the clumsier it seemed, until
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  Speaker 1: at last I put the monster out of its misery.
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  Speaker 1: These animals without courage, these fear haunted, pain driven things,
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  Speaker 1: without a spark of pugnacious energy to face torment, they
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  Speaker 1: are no good for man making. Then I took a
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  Speaker 1: gorilla I had, and upon that, working with infinite care
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  Speaker 1: and mastering difficulty after difficulty, I made my first man.
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  Speaker 1: All the week, night and day I molded him. With him,
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  Speaker 1: it was chiefly the brain that needed molting. Much had
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  Speaker 1: to be added, much changed. I thought him a fair
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  Speaker 1: specimen of the negroid type. When I had finished him,
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  Speaker 1: and he lay bandaged, bound and motionless before me. It
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  Speaker 1: was only when his life was assured that I left
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  Speaker 1: him and came into his room again and found Montgomery
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  Speaker 1: much as you are. He had heard some of the
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: cries as the thing grew, human cries like those that
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  Speaker 1: disturbed you. So I didn't take him completely into my
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  Speaker 1: confidence at first, and the cannachers too had realized something
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  Speaker 1: of it. They were scared out of the wits by
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: the sight of me. I got Montgomery over to me
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  Speaker 1: in a way, but I and he had the hardest
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  Speaker 1: job to prevent the Kannaka's deserted. Finally they did, and
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  Speaker 1: so we lost the yacht. I spent many days educating
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  Speaker 1: the brute. Altogether, I had him for three or four months.
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  Speaker 1: I taught him the rudiments of English, gave him ideas
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  Speaker 1: of counting, even made the thing read the alphabet. But
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: at that he was slow, though I've met with idiots slower.
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  Speaker 1: He began with a clean sheet mentally, had no memories
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  Speaker 1: left in his mind of what he had been. When
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  Speaker 1: his scars were quite healed, and he was no longer
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  Speaker 1: anything but painful and stiff, and able to converse a little.
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  Speaker 1: I took him yonder and introduced him to the Canakers
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  Speaker 1: as an interesting stowaway. They were horribly afraid of him
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  Speaker 1: at first, somehow, which offended me rather, for I was
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  Speaker 1: conceited about him. But his ways seemed so mild, and
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  Speaker 1: he was so abject, that after a time they received
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  Speaker 1: him and took his education in hand. He was to
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  Speaker 1: learn very imitative and adaptive, and built himself a hovel,
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  Speaker 1: rather better, it seemed to me, than their own shanties.
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  Speaker 1: There was one among the boys a bit of a missionary,
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  Speaker 1: and he taught the thing to read, or at least
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  Speaker 1: to pick out letters, and gave him some rudimentary ideas
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  Speaker 1: of morality. But it seems the beast's habits were not
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  Speaker 1: all that is desirable. I rested from work for some
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  Speaker 1: days after this, and it was in a mind to
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: write an account of the whole affair, to wake up
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  Speaker 1: English physiology. Then I came upon the creature squatting up
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  Speaker 1: in a tree and gibbering at two of the kanakas
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  Speaker 1: who had been teasing him. I threatened him, told him.
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  Speaker 1: The inhumanity of such a proceeding aroused his sense of shame,
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: and came home resolved to do better before I took
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  Speaker 1: my work back to England. I have been doing better,
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: but somehow the things drift back again. The stubborn beast
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  Speaker 1: flesh grows day by day back again. But I mean
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  Speaker 1: to do better things still. I mean to conquer that
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: this puma. But that's the story. All the Kannaker boys
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: are dead now. One fell overboard of the launch, and
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: one died of a wounded heel that he poisoned in
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: some way with plant juice. Three went away in the yacht,
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  Speaker 1: and I suppose and hope were drowned. The other one
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: was killed. Well, I have replaced them, Montgomery went on,
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: as much as you are disposed to do at first.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: And then what became of the other one, said I sharply,
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  Speaker 1: the other Kannaka who was killed. The fact is, after
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  Speaker 1: I had made a number of human creatures, I made
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  Speaker 1: a thing. He hesitated. Yes, said I it was killed.
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  Speaker 1: I don't understand, said I do you mean to say
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  Speaker 1: it killed the canaka? Yes, it killed several other things
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  Speaker 1: that it caught. We chased it for a couple of days.
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  Speaker 1: It got loose by accident. I never meant it to
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  Speaker 1: get away. It was unfinished. It was purely an experiment.
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  Speaker 1: It was a limbless thing with a horrible face that
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: writhed along the ground in a serpentine fashion. It was
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  Speaker 1: immensely strong and in infuriating pain. It lurked in the
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: woods for some days until we hunted it, and then
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: it wriggled into the northern part of the island, and
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: we divided the party to close in upon it. Montgomery
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: insisted upon coming with me. The man had a rifle,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: and when his body was found, one of the beryls
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: was curved into the shape of an ass and very
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: nearly bitten through. Montgomery shot the thing. After that I
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: stuck to the ideal of humanity except for little things.
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  Speaker 1: He became silent. I sat in silence watching his face.
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  Speaker 1: So for twenty years altogether, counting nine years in England,
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  Speaker 1: I have been going on. And there is still something
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  Speaker 1: in everything I do that defeats me, makes me dissatisfied,
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  Speaker 1: challenges me to further effort. Sometimes I rise above my level,
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  Speaker 1: sometimes I fall below it, but always I fall short
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  Speaker 1: of the things I dream. The human shape I can
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  Speaker 1: get now almost with ease, so that it is lithe
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  Speaker 1: and graceful, or thick and strong, But often there is
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: trouble with the hands and the claws, painful things that
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: I dare not shape too freely. But it is in
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: the subtle grafting and re shaping one must needs do
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  Speaker 1: to the brain that my trouble lies. The intelligence is
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: often oddly low, with unaccountable blank INDs, unexpected gaps, and
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: least satisfactory of all is something that I cannot touch.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: Somewhere I cannot determine where in the seat of the emotions, cravings, instincts,
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: desires that harm humanity, a strange hidden reservoir to burst
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: forth suddenly and inundate the whole being of the creature
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: with anger, hate, or fear. These creatures of mine seemed
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: strange and uncanny to you so soon as you began
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: to observe them. But to me, just after I make them,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: they seemed to be indisputably human beings. It's afterwards, as
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: I observed them that the persuasion fades. First one animal trait,
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: then another creeps to the surface and stares out at me.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: But I will conquer. Yet, each time I dip a
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: living creature into the bath of burning pain, I say,
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: this time I will burn out all the animal. This
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: time I will make a rational creature of my own.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: After all, what is ten years? Men have been a
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: hundred thousand in the making, he thought darkly. But I
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: am drawing near the fastness this puma of mine. After
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: a silence, and they revert. As soon as my hand
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: is taken from them. The beast begins to creep back,
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: begins to assert itself again. Another long silence. Then you
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: take the things you make into those dens, said I.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: They go. I turn them out when I begin to
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: feel the beast in them, and presently they wander there.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: They all dread this house and me. There's a kind
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: of travesty of humanity over there. Montgomery knows about it,
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: for he interferes in their affairs. He has trained one
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: or two of them to our service. He's ashamed of it,
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: but I believe he half likes some of those beasts.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: It's his business, not mine. They only sicken me with
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: a sense of failure. I take no interest in them.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: I fancy they follow in the lines the cannock a
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: missionary marked out, and have a kind of mockery of
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: a rational life. Poor beasts. There's something they call the
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: law seeing hymns about all thine. They build themselves, their dins,
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: gather fruit and pull herbs, marry even. But I can
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: see through it all, see into their very souls, and
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: see there nothing but the soul of beasts, beasts that perish, anger,
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: and the lusts to live and gratify themselves. Yet there
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: odd complex, like everything else alive, there is a kind
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: of upward striving in them, part vanity, part waste sexual emotion,
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: part waste curiosity. It only mocks me. I have some
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: hope of this puma. I have worked hard at her
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: head and brain. And now, said he, standing up, after
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: a long gap of silence, during which we had each
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: pursued our own thoughts. What do you think? Are you
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: in fear of me? Still? I looked at him and
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: saw but a white faced, white haired man with calm eyes.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: Save for his serenity, the touch almost of beauty that
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: resulted from his set tranquility, and his magnificent build, he
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: might have passed Muster among a hundred other comfortable old gentleman.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: Then I shivered. By way of answer to his second question,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: I handed him a revolver with either hand. Keep them,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: he said, and snatched a yawn. He stood up, stared
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: at me for a moment and smiled. You've had two
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: eventful days, said he. I should advise some sleep. I'm
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: glad it's all clear. Good Night, he thought me over
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: for a moment that went out by the inner door.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: I immediately turned the key in the outer one. I sat
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: down again, sat for a time in a kind of
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: stagnant mood, so weary emotionally, mentally, and physically that I
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: could not think beyond the point at which he had
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: left me. The black window stared at me like an eye.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: At last, with an effort, I put out the light
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: and got into the hammock. Very soon I was asleep.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: End of Section fifteen.