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08 - The Island of Dr Moreau - H G Wells · Science Fiction Books - Daily

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  Eight the crying of the puma. Montgomery interrupted my tangle of mystification and suspicion
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  about one o'clock, and his grotesque attintant followed him with a tray bearing bread,
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  some herbs, and other eatables, a flask of whisky, a jug
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  of water, and three glasses and knives. I glanced askance at this strange
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  creature, and found him watching me with his queer, restless eyes. Montgomery
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  said he would lunch with me, but that Moreau was too preoccupied with some
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  work to come. Moreau said, I I know that name the devil,
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  you do, said he? What an ath I was to mention it to
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  you? I might have thought, anyhow, it will give you an inkling
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  of our myth to wreathe with GI no thanks. I'm an abstainer I with
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  I had been, But it's no use locking the door after the steed hath
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  stolen. It was that infernal stuff which led to my coming here, that
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  and a foggy night. I thought myself in luck at the time when Moreau
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  offered to get me off. It's queer, Montgomery said, I Suddenly,
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  as the outer door closed, Why has your man pointed ears? Damn?
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  He said, over his first mouthful of food. He stared at me for
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  a moment, and then repeated pointed earth, little points to them, said
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  I, as calmly as possible, with a catch in my breath and a
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  fine black fur at the edges. He helped himself to whiskey and water with
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  great deliberation. I was under the impression that his hair covered his earth.
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  I saw them as he stooped by me to put that coffee assent to me
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  on the table, and his eyes shine in the dark. By this time
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  Montgomery had recovered from the surprise of my question. I always thought, he
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  said, deliberately, with a certain accentuation of his flavoring of lisp, that
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  there was something the matter with the earth from the way he covered them.
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  What were they like? I was persuaded from his manner that this ignorance was
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  a pretense. Still, I could hardly tell the man that I thought him
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  a liar, pointed, I said, rather small and furry, distinctly furry.
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  But the whole man is one of the strangest beings I ever set eyes
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  on. A sharp, hoarse cry of animal pain came from the enclosure behind
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  us. Its depth and volume testified to the puma. I saw Montgomery WinCE.
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  Yes, he said, where did you pick up the creature? Than
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  Francisco Heath an ugly brute, I admit, half witted, you know,
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  can't remember where he came from. But I'm youth to him, you know,
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  we both are. How does he strike you? He's unnatural, I
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  said, there's something about him. Don't think me fanciful, but it gives
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  me a nasty little sensation, a tightening of my muscles when he comes near
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  me. It's a touch of the diabolical. In fact, Montgomery had stopped
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  eating while I told him this rum. He said, I can't see it.
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  He resumed his meal. I had no idea of it, he said,
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  and masticated. The crew of the schooner must have felt it. The
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  fame made a dead fete at the poor devil, you saw the captain.
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  Suddenly the puma howled again, this time more painfully. Montgomery swore under his
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  breath, I had half a mind to attack him. About the men on
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  the beach, and the poor brute within gave vent to a series of short,
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  sharp cries. Your men on the beach, said I what race are
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  they? Excellent fellows? Tha'n't they said, He absent mindedly knitting his brows
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  as the animal yelled out sharply. I said, no more was another outcry,
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  worse than the former. He looked at me with his dull gray eyes,
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  and then took some more whiskey. He tried to draw me into a
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  discussion about alcohol, professing to have saved my life with it. He seemed
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  anxious to lay stress on the fact that I owed my life to him.
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  I answered him distractedly. Presently our meal came to an end. The misshapen
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  monster, with the point of years, cleared the remains away, and Montgomery
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  left me alone in the room again. All the time he had been in
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  a state of ill concealed irritation at the noise of the vivisected puma. He
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  had spoken of his odd want of nerve, and left me to the obvious
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  application. I found myself that the cries were singularly irritating, and it grew
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  in depth and intensity as the afternoon wore on. They were pained meaningful at
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  first, but their constant resurgence at last altogether upset my balance. I flung
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  aside a crib of horrors I had been reading, and began to clinch my
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  fists, to bite my lips, and to pace the room. Presently I
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  got to stopping my ears with my fingers. The emotional appeal of those yells
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  grew upon me steadily, grew at last to such an exquisite expression of suffering
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  that I could stand it in that confined room no longer. I stepped out
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  of the door into the slumberous heat of the late afternoon, and walking past
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  the main entrance, locked again, I noticed turned the corner of the wall,
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  the crying sounded even louder out of doors. It was as if all
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  the pain in the world had found a voice. Yet, had I known
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  such pain was in the next room, and had it been dumb, I
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  believe I have thought, since I could have stood it well enough. It
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  is when suffering finds a voice and sets our nerves quivering that this pity comes
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  troubling us. But in spite of the brilliant sunlight and the green fans of
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  the trees waving in the soothing sea breeze, the world was a confusion,
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  blurred with drifting black and red phantasms. Until I was out of earshot of
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  the house, in the checkered wall