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The Island of Doctor Moreau Chapter 15 - Concerning the Beast Folk · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Section sixteen of the Island of Doctor Moreau A. 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 fifteen. Concerning the beast folk, I woke early.
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  Speaker 1: Moreau's explanation stood before my mind clear and definite from
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  Speaker 1: the moment of my awakening. I got out of the
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  Speaker 1: hammock and went to the door to assure myself that
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  Speaker 1: the key was turned. Then I tried the window bar
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  Speaker 1: and found it firmly fixed that these manlike creatures were,
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  Speaker 1: in truth only bestial monsters. Mere grotesque travesties of men.
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  Speaker 1: Filled me with a vague uncertainty of their possibilities, which
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  Speaker 1: was far worse than any definite fear. The tapping came
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  Speaker 1: at the door, and I heard the gluttonous accents of
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  Speaker 1: himling speaking. I pocketed one of the revolvers, keeping one
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  Speaker 1: hand upon it, and open to him. Good morning, sir,
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  Speaker 1: he said, bringing in, in addition to the customary herb breakfast,
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  Speaker 1: an ill cooked rabbit. Montgomery followed him. His roving eye
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  Speaker 1: caught the position of my arm, and he smiled askew.
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  Speaker 1: The puma was resting to heal that day, but Moreau,
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  Speaker 1: who was singularly solitary in his habits, did not join us.
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  Speaker 1: I talked with Montgomery to clear my ideas of the
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  Speaker 1: way in which the beast folk lived. In particular, I
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  Speaker 1: was urgent to know how these inhuman monsters were kept
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  Speaker 1: from falling upon Moreau and Montgomery and from rending one another.
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  Speaker 1: He explained to me that the comparative safety of Moreau
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  Speaker 1: and himself was due to the limited mental scope of
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  Speaker 1: these monsters, in spite of their increased intelligence and the
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  Speaker 1: tendency of their animal instincts to reawaken. They had certain
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  Speaker 1: fixed ideas implanted by Moreau into their minds which absolutely
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  Speaker 1: bounded their imaginations. They were really hypnotized, had been told
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  Speaker 1: that certain things were possible and that certain things were
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  Speaker 1: not to be done, and these prohibitions were woven into
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  Speaker 1: the texture of their minds beyond any possibility of disobedience
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  Speaker 1: or dispute. Certain matters, however, in which all distinct was
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  Speaker 1: at war with Moreau's convenience, were in a less stable condition.
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  Speaker 1: A series of propositions called the Law I had already
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  Speaker 1: heard them recited, battled in their minds with the deep seated,
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  Speaker 1: ever rebellious cravings of their animal natures. This law they
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  Speaker 1: were ever repeating, I found, and ever breaking. Both Montgomery
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  Speaker 1: and Moreau displayed particular solicitude to keep them ignorant of
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  Speaker 1: the taste of blood. They feared the inevitable suggestions of
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  Speaker 1: that flavor. Montgomery told me that the law, especially among
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  Speaker 1: the feline beast people, became oddly weakened about nightfall, that
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  Speaker 1: then the animal was at its strongest, that a spirit
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  Speaker 1: of adventure sprang up in them at the dusk, when
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  Speaker 1: they would dare things they never seemed to dream about
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  Speaker 1: by day. To that, I owed my stalking by the
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  Speaker 1: leopard man on the night of my arrival. But during
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  Speaker 1: these earlier days of my stay they broke the law
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  Speaker 1: only furtively and after dark. In the daylight there was
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  Speaker 1: a general atmosphere of respect for its multifarious prohibitions. And
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  Speaker 1: here perhaps I may give a few general facts about
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  Speaker 1: the island and the beast people. The island, which was
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  Speaker 1: of irregular outline and lay low upon the wide sea,
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  Speaker 1: had a total area I suppose of seven or eight
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  Speaker 1: square miles. It was volcanic in origin, and was now
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  Speaker 1: fringed on three sides by coral reefs, some fumaroles to
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  Speaker 1: the northward and a hot spring were the only vestiges
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  Speaker 1: of the forces that had long since originated it. Now
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  Speaker 1: and then a faint quiver of an earthquake would be sensible,
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  Speaker 1: and sometimes the ascent of the spire of smoke would
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  Speaker 1: be rendered tumultuous by gusts of steam. But that was all.
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  Speaker 1: The population of the island, Montgomery informed me, now numbered
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  Speaker 1: rather more than sixty of these strange creations of Moreau's art,
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  Speaker 1: not counting the smaller monstrosities which lived in the undergrowth
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  Speaker 1: and were without human form. Altogether, he had made nearly
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  Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty, but many had died, and others,
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  Speaker 1: like the writhing, footless thing of which he had told me,
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  Speaker 1: had come by violent ends. An answer to my question,
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  Speaker 1: Montgomery said that they actually bore offspring, but that these
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  Speaker 1: generally died. When they lived. Moreau took them and stamped
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  Speaker 1: the human form upon them. There was no evidence of
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  Speaker 1: the inheritance of their acquired human characteristics. The females were
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  Speaker 1: less numerous than the males and liable to much furtive persecution.
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  Speaker 1: In spite of the monogamy, the law enjoined, it would
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  Speaker 1: be impossible for me to describe these beast people. In detail,
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  Speaker 1: my eye has had no training in details, and unhappily
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  Speaker 1: I cannot sketch. Most striking, perhaps in their general appearance,
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  Speaker 1: was the disproportion between the legs of these creatures and
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  Speaker 1: the length of their bodies. And yet so relative is
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  Speaker 1: our idea of grace. My eye became habituated to their forms,
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  Speaker 1: and at last I even fell in with their persuasion
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  Speaker 1: that my own long thighs were ungainly. Another point was
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  Speaker 1: the forward carriage of the head, in the clumsy and
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  Speaker 1: inhuman curvature of the spine. Even the ape man lacked
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  Speaker 1: that inward, sinuous curve of the back which makes the
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  Speaker 1: human figure so graceful. Most had their shoulders hunched clumsily,
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  Speaker 1: and their short forearms hung weakly at their sides. Few
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  Speaker 1: of them were conspicuously hairy, at least until the end
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  Speaker 1: of my time upon the island. The next most obvious
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  Speaker 1: deformity was in their faces, almost all of which were
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  Speaker 1: prognathus malformed about the ears, with large proturberent noses, very
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  Speaker 1: furry or very bristly hair, and often strangely colored or
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  Speaker 1: strangely placed eyes. None could laugh, though the ape man
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  Speaker 1: had chattering titter. Beyond these general characters, their heads had
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  Speaker 1: little in common. Each preserved the quality of its particular species.
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  Speaker 1: Their human mark distorted, but did not hide the leopard,
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  Speaker 1: the ox, or the sow, or other animal or animals
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  Speaker 1: from which the creature had been molded. The voices too
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  Speaker 1: very exceedingly. The hands were always malformed, and though some
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  Speaker 1: surprised me by their unexpected human appearance, almost all were
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  Speaker 1: deficient in the number of digits, clumsy about the finger nails,
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  Speaker 1: and lacking any tactile sensibility. The two most formidable animal
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  Speaker 1: men were my leopard man and a creature made of
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  Speaker 1: hyaena and swine. Larger than these were the three bull
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  Speaker 1: creatures who pulled in the boat. Then came the silvery
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  Speaker 1: hairy man, who was also the sayer of the law imling,
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  Speaker 1: and a satyaike creature of ape and goat. There were
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  Speaker 1: the three swine men and a swine woman, a mere
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  Speaker 1: rhinoceros creature, and several other females whose sources I did
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  Speaker 1: not ascertain. There were several wolf creatures, a bare bull,
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  Speaker 1: and a Saint Bernard man. I have already described the
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  Speaker 1: ape man, and there was a particularly hateful and evil
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  Speaker 1: smelling old woman made of vixen and bear, whom I
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  Speaker 1: hated from the beginning. She was said to be a
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  Speaker 1: passionate votary of the law. Smaller creatures were certain dappled youths,
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  Speaker 1: and my little sloth creature. But enough of this catalog.
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  Speaker 1: At first I had a shivering horror of the brutes,
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  Speaker 1: felt all too keenly that they were still brutes. But
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  Speaker 1: insensibly I became a little habituated to the idea of them,
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  Speaker 1: And moreover I was affected by Montgomery's attitude towards them.
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  Speaker 1: He had been with them so long that he had
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  Speaker 1: come to regard them as almost normal human beings. His
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  Speaker 1: London days seemed a glorious, impossible pass to him. Only
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  Speaker 1: once in a year or so did he go to
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  Speaker 1: Arica to deal with Moreau's agents, a trader in animals.
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  Speaker 1: There he hardly met the finest type of mankind in
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  Speaker 1: that seafaring village of Spanish mongrels. The men a bold ship,
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  Speaker 1: he told me, seemed at first just as strange to
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  Speaker 1: him as the beast men seemed to me. Unnaturally long
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  Speaker 1: in the leg, flat in the face, prominent in the forehead, suspicious, dangerous,
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  Speaker 1: and cold hearted. In fact, he did not like men.
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  Speaker 1: His heart had warmed to me, he thought, because he
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  Speaker 1: had saved my life. I fancied even then that he
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  Speaker 1: had a sneaking kindness for some of these metamorphosed brutes,
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  Speaker 1: a a vicious sympathy with some of their ways, but
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  Speaker 1: that he attempted to veil it from me at first Imling.
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  Speaker 1: The Black Faced Man, Montgomery's attendant, the first of the
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  Speaker 1: beast folk I had encountered, did not live with the
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  Speaker 1: others across the island, but in a small kennel at
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  Speaker 1: the back of the enclosure. The creature was scarcely so
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  Speaker 1: intelligent as the ape man, but far more docile and
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  Speaker 1: the most human looking of all the beast's folk, and
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  Speaker 1: Montgomery had trained it to prepare food, and indeed to
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  Speaker 1: discharge all the trivial domestic offices that were required. It
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  Speaker 1: was a complex trophy of Moreau's horrible skill, A bear
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  Speaker 1: tainted with dog and ox, and one of the most
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  Speaker 1: elaborately made of all his creatures. It treated Montgomery with
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  Speaker 1: a strange tenderness and devotion. Sometimes he would notice it,
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  Speaker 1: pat it, call it half mocking, half joculine names, and
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  Speaker 1: so make it caper with extraordinary delight. Sometimes he would
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  Speaker 1: ill treat it, especially after he had been at the whiskey,
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  Speaker 1: kicking it, beating it, pelting it with stones or lighted fuses.
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  Speaker 1: But whether he treated it well or ill, it loved
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  Speaker 1: nothing so much as to be near him. I say
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  Speaker 1: I became habituated to the beast people, that a thousand
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  Speaker 1: things which had seemed unnatural and repulsive speedily became natural
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  Speaker 1: and ordinary to me. I suppose everything in existence takes
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  Speaker 1: its color from the average hue of our surroundings. Montgomery
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  Speaker 1: and Moreau were too peculiar and individual to keep my
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  Speaker 1: general impression of humanity well defined. I would see one
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  Speaker 1: of the clumsy bovine creatures who worked the launch, treading
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  Speaker 1: heavily through the undergrowth, and find myself asking, trying hard
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  Speaker 1: to recall how he did from some really human yokel
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  Speaker 1: trudging from his mechanical labors. Or I would meet the
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  Speaker 1: fox spare woman's vulpene shifty face, strangely human in its
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  Speaker 1: speculative cunning, and even imagine I had met it before
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  Speaker 1: in some city byway. Yet every now and then the
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  Speaker 1: beast would flash out upon me, beyond any doubt or denial,
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  Speaker 1: an ugly looking man, a hunched back human savage to
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  Speaker 1: all appearance, squatting in the aperture of one of the
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  Speaker 1: dens which stretches, arms in yawn, showing with startling suddenness,
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  Speaker 1: scissor edged incisors and saber like canines, keen and brilliant
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  Speaker 1: as knives, Or in some narrow pathway, glancing with a
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  Speaker 1: transitory daring into the eyes of some lithe white swathed
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  Speaker 1: female figure, I would suddenly see with a spasmodic revulsion
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  Speaker 1: that she had slit like pupils or glee dancing down
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  Speaker 1: Note the curving nail with which she held her shapeless
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  Speaker 1: wrap about her. It is a curious thing, by the bye,
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  Speaker 1: for which I am quite unable to account that these
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  Speaker 1: weird creatures, the females I mean, had in the earlier
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  Speaker 1: days of my stay, an instinctive sense of their own
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  Speaker 1: repulsive clumsiness, and displayed in consequence a more than human
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  Speaker 1: regard for the decency and decorum of extensive costume. End
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  Speaker 1: of Section sixteen