Latest / Daily Classic Sci Fi Books / 06 - The Island of Dr Moreau - H G Wells
Transcript
- Six the evil looking boatmen, but the islanders, seeing that I was really adrift, took pity on me. I drifted very slowly to the eastward, approaching the island slantingly, and presently I saw with hysterical relief, the launch come round and return towards me. She was heavily laden, and I could make out as she drew nearer Montgomery's white haired, broad shouldered companion sitting cramped up with the dogs in several packing cases in the stern sheets. This individual stared fixedly at me, without moving or speaking. The black faced cripple was glaring at me as fixedly. In the boughs near the puma, there were three other men, besides three strange, brutish looking fellows, at whom the stag hounds were snarling savagely. Montgomery, who was steering, brought the boat by me, and rising caught and fastened my painter to the tiller to tow me, for there was no room aboard. I had recovered from my hysterical phase by this time, and answered his hail as he approached. Bravely enough. I told him that Dinghy was nearly swamped, and he reached me a pigan I was jerked back as the rope tightened between the boats. For some time I was busy baling. It was not until I had got the water under for the water and the dinghy had been shipped the boat was perfectly sound, that I had leisure to look at the people in the launch again. The white haired man I found was still regarding me steadfastly, but with an expression as I now fancied, of some perplexity. When my eyes met his, he looked down at the staghound that sat between his knees. He was a powerfully built man, as I have said, with a fine forehead and rap the heavy features. But his eyes had that odd drooping of the skin above the lids which often comes with advancing years, and the fall of his mouth at the corners gave him an expression of pugnacious resolution. He talked to Montgomery in a tone too low for me to hear from him. My eyes traveled to his three men and a strange crew they were. I saw only their faces, Yet there was something in their faces I knew not what. That gave me a queer spasm of disgust. I looked steadily at them, and the impression did not pass, though I failed to see what had occasioned it. They seemed to me then to be brown men, but their limbs were oddly swathed in some thin, dirty white stuff down even to the fingers and feet. I have never seen men so wrapped up a four and women so only in the East. They wore turbans, too, and thereunder peered out their elfin faces at me, faces with protruding lower jaws and bright eyes. They had lank black hair, almost like horse hair, and seemed, as they sat, to exceed in stature any race of men I have seen. The white haired man, whom I knew was a good six feet in height, sat a head below any one of the three. I found afterwards that really none were taller than myself. But their bodies were abnormally long, and the thigh part of the leg short and curiously twisted. At any rate, they were an amazingly ugly gang. And over the heads of them, under the forward lug peered the black face of the man, whose eyes were luminous in the dark. As I stared at them, they met my gaze, and then first one and then another turned away from my direct stair and looked at me in an odd, furtive manner. It occurred to me that I was perhaps annoying them, and I turned my attention to the island we were approaching. It was low and covered with vegetation, chiefly a kind of palm that was new to me. From one point, a thin white thread of vapor rose slantingly to an immense height, and then frayed out like a down feather. We were now within the embrace of a broad bay, flanked on either hand by a low promontory. The beach was of dull gray sand and sloped steeply up to a ridge perhaps sixty or seventy feet above the sea level, and regularly set with trees and undergrowth. Half Way up was a square enclosure of some grayish stone, which I found subsequently was built partly of coral and partly of pumicious lava. Two thatched roofs heaped from within this enclosure. A man stood awaiting us at the water's edge. I fancied, while we were still far off that I saw some other and very grotesque looking creatures scuttle into the bushes upon the slope, But I saw nothing of these as we drew nearer. This man was of a moderate size and with a black negroid face. He had a large, almost lipless mouth, extraordinary lank arms, long thin feet and bow legs, and stood with his heavy face thrust forward staring at us. He was dressed like Montgomery and his white head companion, in jacket and trousers of blue surge. As we came still nearer, this individual began to run to and fro on the beach, making the most grotesque movements. At a word of command from Montgomery, the four men in the launch sprang up and, with singularly awkward gestures, struck the lug. Montgomery steered us round into a narrow little dock excavated into the beach. Then the man on the beach hastened towards us. This dock, as I call it, was really a mere ditch, just long enough at this phase of the tide to take the long boat. I heard the boughs ground in the sand, staved the dinghy off the rudder of the big boat with my piggin and freeing the painter landed. The three muffled men, with the clumsiest movements, scrambled out upon the sand and forthwith set to landing the cargo assisted by the man on the beach. I was struck, especially by the curious movements of the legs of the three swathed and bandaged boatmen. Not stiff they were, but distorted in some odd way, almost as if they were jointed in the wrong place. The dogs were still snarling and strained at their chains after these men. As the white haired man landed with them, the three big fellows spoke to one another in odd guttural tones, and the man who had waited for us on the beach began chattering to them excitedly a foreign language. As I fancied as they laid hands on some bales piled near the stern. Somewhere I had heard such a voice before, and I could not think where. The white haired man stood, holding in a tumult of six dogs and bawling orders over their din. Montgomery, having unshipped the rudder, landed likewise, and all set to work at unloading. I was too faint, what with my long fast in the sun beating down on my bare head, to offer any assistance. Presently, the white haired man seemed to recollect my presence and came up to me. You look, said he, as though you had scarcely pricked. His little eyes were a brilliant black under his heavy brows. I must apologize for that. Now you are our guest. We must make you comfortable, though you are uninvited, you know, he looked keenly into my face. Montgomery says, you are an educated man. Mister Prindick says, you know something of science. May I ask what that signifies? I told him I had spent some years at the Royal College of Science and had done some researches in biology under Huxley. He raised his eyebrows slightly at that. That alters the case a little. Mister Prindick, he said, with a trifle more respect in his manner. As it happens, we are biologists here. This is a biological station of a sort. His eyes rested on the men in white, who were easily hauling the puma on rollers towards the walled yard Ay and Montgomery at least, he added, Then when you will be able to get away, I can't say we are off the track to anywhere. We see a ship once in a twelve month or so. He left me abruptly and went up the beach past this group, and I think entered the enclosure. The other two men were with Montgomery erecting a pile of smaller packages on a low wheeled truck. The lama was still on the launch with the rabbit hutches. The staghounds were still lashed to the thwarts. The pile of things completed, all three men laid hold of the truck and began shoving the ton weight or so upon it after the puma. Presently, Montgomery left them, and, coming back to me, held out his hand. I'm glad, said he for my own part. That captain w a thilly asth he'd have made things lively for you. It was you, said I that saved me again, that de pinthe you'll find this island an infirmly rum plaith. I promise you I'd watch my goings carefully if I were you. He he hesitated and seemed to alter his mind about what was on his lips. I wish you'd help me with thee rabbits, he said. His procedure with the rabbits was singular. I waded in with him and helped him lug one of the hatches ashore. No sooner was that done than he opened the door of it and tilting the thing on one end, turned its living contents out on the ground. They fell in a struggling heap, one on top of the other. He clapped his hands, and forthwith they went off at that hopping of theirs, fifteen or twenty of them. I should think up the beach in Greeth and multiply, my friend, said Montgomery, Replyneth the island hitherto. We've had a certain lack of meat here. As I watched them disappearing, the white haired man returned with a brandy flask and some biscuits. Something to go on with, Priddock, said he in a far more familiar tone than before. I made no ado, but set to work on the biscuits at once, while the white haired man helped Montgomery to release about a score more of the rabbits. Three big hutches, however, went up to the house with the puma. The brandy I did not touch, for I have been an abstainer from my berth