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15 - The Island of Dr Moreau - H G Wells · Classic Science Fiction Books

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Speaker 1: Fifteen concerning the beast folk, I woke early. Moreau's explanation
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Speaker 1: stood before my mind, clear and definite from the moment
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Speaker 1: of my awakening. I got out of the hammock and
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Speaker 1: went to the door to assure myself that the key
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Speaker 1: was turned. Then I tried the window bar and found
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Speaker 1: it firmly fixed that these manlike creatures were, in truth
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Speaker 1: only bestial monsters. Mere grotesque travesties of men filled me
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Speaker 1: with a vague uncertainty of their possibilities, which was far
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Speaker 1: worse than any definite fear it. Tapping came at the door,
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Speaker 1: and I heard the gluttonous accents of himlings speaking. I
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Speaker 1: pocketed one of the revolvers, keeping one hand upon it,
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Speaker 1: and opened to him. Good mornin, sir, he said, bringing
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Speaker 1: in in addition to the customary herb brec an ill
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Speaker 1: cooked rabbit. Montgomery followed him. His roving eye caught the
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Speaker 1: position of my arm, and he smiled askew. The puma
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Speaker 1: was resting to heal that day, but Moreau, who was
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Speaker 1: singularly solitary in his habits, did not join us. I
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Speaker 1: talked with Montgomery to clear my ideas of the way
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Speaker 1: in which the beast folk lived. In particular, I was
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Speaker 1: urgent to know how these inhuman monsters were kept from
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Speaker 1: 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 instinct 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 being east people, became oddly weakened about nightfall,
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Speaker 1: that then the animal was at its strongest, that a
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Speaker 1: spirit of adventure sprang up in them at the dusk,
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Speaker 1: when they would dare things they never seemed to dream
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Speaker 1: about by day. To that I owed my stalking by
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Speaker 1: the leopard man on the night of my arrival. But
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Speaker 1: during these earlier days of my stay they broke the
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Speaker 1: law only furtively, and after dark. In the daylight there
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Speaker 1: was a general atmosphere of respect for its multifarious prohibitions.
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Speaker 1: And here perhaps I may give a few general facts
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Speaker 1: about the island and the beast people. The island, which
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Speaker 1: was 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 these 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. In answer to my question,
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Speaker 1: Montgomery said that they actually bore off spring, but that
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Speaker 1: these generally die when they lived. Moreau took them and
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Speaker 1: stamped the human form upon them. There was no evidence
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Speaker 1: of the inheritance of their acquired human characteristics. The females
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Speaker 1: were less numerous than the males, and liable to much
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Speaker 1: furtive persecution. In spite of the monogamy, the law enjoined,
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Speaker 1: it would be impossible for me to describe these beast
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Speaker 1: people in detail. My eye has had no training in details,
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Speaker 1: and unhappily I cannot sketch most striking Perhaps in their
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Speaker 1: general appearance was the disproportion between the legs of these
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Speaker 1: creatures and the length of their bodies. And yet so
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Speaker 1: relative is our idea of grace. My eye became habituated
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Speaker 1: to their forms, and at last I even fell in
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Speaker 1: with their persuasion that my own long thighs were ungainly.
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Speaker 1: Another point was the forward carriage of the head, in
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Speaker 1: the clumsy and inhuman curvature of the spine. Even the
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Speaker 1: aped men lacked that inward, sinuous curve of the back
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Speaker 1: which makes the human figure so graceful. Most had their
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Speaker 1: shoulders hunched clumsily, and their short forearms hung weakly at
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Speaker 1: their sides. Few of them were conspicuously hairy, at least
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Speaker 1: until the end of my time upon the island. The
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Speaker 1: next most obvious deformity was in their faces, almost all
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Speaker 1: of which were prognathus malformed about the ears, with large
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Speaker 1: proturberent noses, very furry or very bristly hair, and often
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Speaker 1: strangely colored or strangely placed eyes. None could laugh, though
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Speaker 1: the ape man had a chattering titter. Beyond these general characters,
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Speaker 1: their heads had little in common. Each preserved the quality
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Speaker 1: of its particular species. Their human mark distorted, but did
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Speaker 1: not hide the leopard, the ox, or the sow, or
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Speaker 1: other animal or animals from which the creature had been molded.
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Speaker 1: The voices too very exceedingly. The hands were always malformed,
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Speaker 1: and though some surprised me by their unexpected human appearance,
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Speaker 1: almost all were deficient in the number of digits, clumsy
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Speaker 1: about the finger nails, and lacking any tactile sensibility. The
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Speaker 1: two most formidable animal men were my leopard man and
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Speaker 1: a creature made of hyaena and swine. Larger than these
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Speaker 1: were the three bull creatures who pulled in the boat.
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Speaker 1: Then came the silvery hairy man, who was also the
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Speaker 1: sayer of the law imling, and a satyrlike creature of
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Speaker 1: ape and goat. There were the three swine men and
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Speaker 1: a swine woman, a mere rhinoceros creature, and several other
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Speaker 1: females whose sources I did not ascertain. There were several
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Speaker 1: wolf creatures, a bare bull, and a saint Bernard man
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Speaker 1: I have already described the ape man. And there was
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Speaker 1: a particularly hateful and evil smelling old woman made of
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Speaker 1: vixen and bear, whom I hated from the beginning. She
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Speaker 1: was said to be a passionate votary of the law.
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Speaker 1: Smaller creatures were certain dappled youths, and my little sloth creature.
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Speaker 1: But enough of this catalog. At first I had a
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Speaker 1: shivering horror of the brutes, felt all too keenly that
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Speaker 1: they were still brutes. But insensibly I became a little
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Speaker 1: habituated to the idea of them. And moreover, I was
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Speaker 1: affected by Montgomery's attitude towards them. He had been with
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Speaker 1: them so long that he had come to regard them
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Speaker 1: as almost normal human beings. His London days seemed a
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Speaker 1: glorious impossible passed to him. Only once in a year
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Speaker 1: or so did he go to Arica to deal with
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Speaker 1: Moreau's agents, a trader in animals, There he hardly met
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Speaker 1: the finest type of mankind in that seafaring village of
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Speaker 1: Spanish mongrels. The men aboard ship, he told me, seemed
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Speaker 1: at first just as strange to him as the beast.
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Speaker 1: Men seemed to me unnaturally long in the leg, flat
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Speaker 1: in the face, prominent in the forehead, suspicious, dangerous, and
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Speaker 1: cold hearted. In fact, he did not like men. His
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Speaker 1: heart had warmed to me, he thought, because he had
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Speaker 1: saved my life. I fancied even then that he had
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Speaker 1: a sneaking kindness for some of these metamorphosed brutes, a
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Speaker 1: vicious sympathy with some of their ways, but that he
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Speaker 1: attempted to veil it from me at first imling the
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Speaker 1: black Faced Man, Montgomery's attendant, the thirst of the beasts
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Speaker 1: Folk I had encountered, did not live with the others
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Speaker 1: across the island, but in a small kennel at the
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Speaker 1: back of the enclosure. The creature was scarcely so intelligent
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Speaker 1: as the ape man, but far more docile and the
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Speaker 1: most human looking of all the beasts. Folk and Montgomery
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Speaker 1: had trained it to prepare food and indeed to discharge
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Speaker 1: all the trivial domestic offices that were required. It was
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Speaker 1: a complex trophy of Moreau's horrible skill, A bear tainted
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Speaker 1: with dog and ox, and one of the most elaborately
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Speaker 1: made of all his creatures. It treated Montgomery with a
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Speaker 1: strange tenderness and devotion. Sometimes he would notice it, pat it,
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Speaker 1: call it half mocking, half jocular names, and so make
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Speaker 1: it caper with extraordinary delight. Sometimes he would ill treat it,
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Speaker 1: especially after he had been at the whisky, kicking it,
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Speaker 1: beating it, pelting it with stones or lighted fuses. But
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Speaker 1: whether he treated it well or ill, it loved nothing
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Speaker 1: so much as to be near him. I say I
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Speaker 1: became habituated to the beast people, that a thousand things
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Speaker 1: which had seemed unnatural and repulsive speedily became natural and
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Speaker 1: ordinary to me. I suppose everything in existence takes its
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Speaker 1: color from the average hue of our surroundings. Montgomery and
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Speaker 1: Moreau were too peculiar and individual to keep my general
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Speaker 1: impression of humanity well defined. I would see one of
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Speaker 1: the clumsy Beauvine creatures who worked the launch, treading heavily
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Speaker 1: through the undergrowth, and find myself asking, trying hard to
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Speaker 1: recall how he differed from some really human yokel trudging
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Speaker 1: from his mechanical labors. Or I would meet the foxspare
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Speaker 1: woman's vulpene, shifty face, strangely human in its speculative cunning,
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Speaker 1: and even imagine I had met it before in some
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Speaker 1: city byway. Yet every now and then the beast would
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Speaker 1: flash out upon me, beyond any doubt or denial, an
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Speaker 1: ugly looking man, a hunched back human, savage to all appearance,
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Speaker 1: squatting in the aperture of one of the dens which stretches,
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Speaker 1: arms in yawn, showing with startling suddenness, scissor edged incisors
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Speaker 1: and saber like canines, keen and brilliant as knives. Or
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Speaker 1: in some narrow pathway, glancing with a transitory daring into
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Speaker 1: the eyes of some lithe white swathed female figure, I
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Speaker 1: would suddenly see with a spasmodic revulsion that she had
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Speaker 1: slit like pupils, or glancing down, note the curving nail
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Speaker 1: with which she held her shapeless wrap about her. It
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Speaker 1: is a curious thing, by the bye, for which I
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Speaker 1: am quite unable to account that these weird creatures, the
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Speaker 1: females I mean, had in the earlier days of my stay,
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Speaker 1: an instinctive sense of their own repulsive clumsiness, and displayed
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Speaker 1: in consequence a more than human regard for the decency
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Speaker 1: and decorum of extensive costume