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22 - The Island of Dr Moreau - H G Wells · Adventure Books Library

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