Latest / Adventure Books Collection / 22 - The Island of Dr Moreau - H G Wells
Transcript
- Twenty two, the man alone in the evening, I started and drove out to the sea before a gentle wind from the southeast, slowly, steadily, and the island grew smaller and smaller, and the lank spire of smoke dwindled to a finer and finer line Against the hot sunset. The ocean rose up around me, hiding that low dark patch from my eyes. The daylight, the trailing glory of the sun went streaming out of the sky, was drawn aside like some luminous curtain. And at last I looked into the blue gulf of immensity which the sunshine hides, and saw the floating hosts of the stars. The sea was silent, the sky was silent. I was alone with the night and silence. So I drifted for three days, eating and drinking sparingly, and meditating upon all that had happened to me, me not desiring very greatly then to see men again. One unclean rag was about me, my hair a black tangle. No doubt, my discoverers thought me a madman. It is strange, but I felt no desire to return to mankind. I was only glad to be quit of the foulness of the beast people, and on the third day I was picked up by a brig from Apia to San Francisco. Neither the captain nor the mate would believe my story. Judging that solitude and danger had made me mad, and fearing their opinion might be that of others, I refrained from telling my adventure further, and professed to recall nothing that had happened to me between the loss of the Lady Vain and the time when I was picked up again, the space of a year. I had to act with the utmost circumspection to save myself from the suspicion of insanity. My memory of the law of the two dead sailors, of the amuse cards, of the darkness of the body in the canebrake haunted me, and unnatural, as it seems, with my return to mankind came instead of that confidence and sympathy I had expected, a strange enhancement of the uncertainty and dread I had experienced during my stay upon the island. No one would believe me I was almost as queer to men as I had been to the beast people. I may have caught something of the natural wildness of my companions they say that terror is a disease, And anyhow I can witness that for several years now a restless fear has dwelt in my mind, such a restless fear as a half tamed lion cub may feel. My trouble took the strangest form. I could not persuade myself that the men and women I met were not also another beast, people, animals half wrought into the outward image of human souls, and that they would presently begin to revert, to show first this best you'll mark, and then that. But I have confided my case to a strangely able man, a man who had known Moreau and had seemed half to credit my story, a mental specialist, and he has helped me mightily. Though I do not expect that the terror of that island will ever altogether leave me. At most times it lies far in the back of my mind, a mere distant cloud, a memory and a faint distrust. But there are times when the little cloud spreads until it obscures the whole sky. Then I look about me, at my fellow men, and I go and fear. I see faces keen and bright, others dull or dangerous, others, unsteady, insincere, none that have the calm authority of a reasonable soul. I feel as though the animal were surging up through them, that presently the degradation of the islanders will be played over again on a larger scale. I know this is an illusion, that these seeming men and women about me are indeed men and women, men and women forever perfectly reasonable creatures, full of human desires and tender solicitude, emancipated from instinct, and the slaves of no fantastic law. Being altogether different from the beast folk. Yet I shrink from them, from their curious glances, their inquiries and assistants, and long to be away from them and alone. For that reason, I live near the broad, free Downland, and can escape thither when this shadow is over my soul. And very sweet is the empty Downland, then under the windswept sky. When I lived in London, the horror was well nigh in suppor portable. I could not get away from men. Their voices came through windows, locked doors were flimsy safeguards. I would go out into the streets to fight with my delusion, and prowling women would mew after me. Furtive, craving men glanced jealously at me. Weary pale workers go coughing by me with tired eyes and eager paces like wounded deer dripping blood. Old people bent and dull past murmuring to themselves, and all unheeding a ragged tale of gibing children. Then I would turn aside into some chapel, and even there, such was my disturbance. It seemed that the preacher gibbered big thinks even as the ape man had done. Or into some library, and there the intint faces over the books seemed but patient creatures waiting for prey. Particularly nauseous were the blank, expressionless faces of people in trains and omnibuses. They seem no more my fellow creatures than dead bodies would be. So that I did not dare to travel unless I was assured of being alone and deeming. It seemed that I too was not a reasonable creature, but only an animal tormented with some strange disorder in its brain, which sent it to wander alone, like a sheep stricken with gid. This is a mood, however, that comes to me now, I thank God more rarely I have withdrawn myself from the confusion of cities and multitudes, and spent my days surrounded by wise books, bright windows. In this life of ours, lit by the shining souls of men, I see few strangers, and have but a small household. My days I devote to reading and to experiments in chemistry, and I spend many of the clear nights in the study of astronomy. There is, though I do not know how there is or why, there is a sense of peace and protection in the glittering hosts of heaven. There it must be, I think, in the vast and eternal laws of matter, and not in the daily cares and sins and troubles of men, that whatever is more than animal within us must find its solace and its hope. I hope, or I could not live, And so in hope in solitude my story ends. Edward Prindick. Note The substance of the chapter entitled Doctor Moreau Explains, which contains the essential idea of the story, appeared as a middle article in the Saturday Review in January eighteen ninety five. This is the only portion of this story that has been previously published, and it has been entirely recast to adapt it to the narrative form. End of the Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells