Latest / Classic Science Fiction Books / 21 - The Island of Dr Moreau - H G Wells

Transcript

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

0:00
Speaker 1: Twenty one, the reversion of the beast folk. In this way,
0:06
Speaker 1: I became one among the beast people in the island
0:08
Speaker 1: of Doctor Moreau. When I awoke, it was dark about me,
0:14
Speaker 1: my arm ached in its bandages. I sat up, wondering
0:18
Speaker 1: at first where I might be. I heard coarse voices
0:22
Speaker 1: talking outside. Then I saw that my barricade had gone,
0:26
Speaker 1: and that the opening of the hut stood clear. My
0:29
Speaker 1: revolver was still in my hand. I heard something breathing,
0:34
Speaker 1: saw something crouch together close beside me. I held my breath,
0:38
Speaker 1: trying to see what it was. It began to move slowly, interminably.
0:44
Speaker 1: Then something soft and warm and moist passed across my hand.
0:48
Speaker 1: All my muscles contracted. I snatched my hand away. A
0:53
Speaker 1: cry of alarm began and was stifled in my throat.
0:57
Speaker 1: Then I just realized what had happened sufficiently disday my
1:00
Speaker 1: fingers on the revolver. Who is that? I said, in
1:05
Speaker 1: a hoarse whisper. The revolver still pointed, A master. Who
1:14
Speaker 1: are you? They say there is no master now, But
1:20
Speaker 1: I know, I know. I carried the bodies into the sea,
1:26
Speaker 1: O walker in the sea, the bodies of those you
1:30
Speaker 1: slew I am your slave. Master. Are you the one
1:36
Speaker 1: I met on the beach? I asked the same master.
1:42
Speaker 1: The thing was evidently faithful enough for it might have
1:45
Speaker 1: fallen upon me as I slept. It is well, I said,
1:50
Speaker 1: extending my hand for another licking kiss. I began to
1:54
Speaker 1: realize what its presence meant, and the tide of my
1:57
Speaker 1: courage flowed. Where are the others, I asked? They are mad.
2:04
Speaker 1: They are fools, said the dog man. Even now they
2:09
Speaker 1: talk together beyond there they say, the master is dead.
2:16
Speaker 1: The other with the whip is dead. The other who
2:20
Speaker 1: walked in the sea is as we are. We have
2:25
Speaker 1: no master, no whips, no house of pain any more.
2:31
Speaker 1: There is an end. We love the law and will
2:34
Speaker 1: keep it. But there is no pain, no master, no
2:38
Speaker 1: whips for ever again, so they say. But I know, Master,
2:46
Speaker 1: I know, I felt in the darkness and patted the
2:51
Speaker 1: dark Man's head. It is well, I said again. Presently
2:58
Speaker 1: you will slay them all, said the dog man. Presently,
3:04
Speaker 1: I answered, I will slay them all. After certain days
3:09
Speaker 1: and certain things have come to pass. Every one of them,
3:12
Speaker 1: save those you spare, every one of them shall be slain.
3:17
Speaker 1: What the Master wishes to kill The master kills, said
3:23
Speaker 1: the dog man, with a certain satisfaction in his voice,
3:28
Speaker 1: and that their sins may grow. I said. Let them
3:31
Speaker 1: live in their folly until their time is ripe. Let
3:35
Speaker 1: them not know that I am the master. The master's
3:39
Speaker 1: will is sweet, said the dog man, with the ready
3:44
Speaker 1: tact of his canine blood. But one has sinned, said
3:50
Speaker 1: I him. I will kill whenever I may meet him.
3:56
Speaker 1: When I say to you, that is he, see that
3:58
Speaker 1: you fall upon him. And now I will go to
4:02
Speaker 1: the men and women who are assembled together for a moment.
4:06
Speaker 1: The opening of the hut was blackened by the exit
4:09
Speaker 1: of the dog man. Then I followed and stood up
4:13
Speaker 1: almost in the exact spot where I had been when
4:15
Speaker 1: I had heard Moreau and his stag hound pursuing me.
4:20
Speaker 1: But now it was night, and all the meres Mattic
4:23
Speaker 1: ravine about me was black, and beyond instead of a green,
4:27
Speaker 1: sunlit slope, I saw a red fire, before which hunched
4:31
Speaker 1: grotesque figures. Moved to and fro Farther were the thick trees,
4:37
Speaker 1: a bank of darkness fringed above with the black lace
4:40
Speaker 1: of the upper branches. The moon was just riding up
4:43
Speaker 1: on the edge of the ravine, and like a bar
4:46
Speaker 1: across its face drove the spire of vapor that was
4:49
Speaker 1: forever streaming from the fumeroles of the island. Walk by me,
4:55
Speaker 1: said I, nerving myself in. Side by side, we walked
4:59
Speaker 1: down the narrow way, taking little heed of the dim
5:02
Speaker 1: things that peered at us out of the huts. None
5:06
Speaker 1: about the fire attempted to salute me. Most of them
5:09
Speaker 1: disregarded me ostentatiously. I looked round for the hyena swine,
5:15
Speaker 1: but he was not there. Altogether, perhaps twenty of the
5:18
Speaker 1: beast folks squatted, staring into the fire or talking to
5:22
Speaker 1: one another. He is dead. He is dead. The Master
5:28
Speaker 1: is dead, said the voice of the ape man. To
5:32
Speaker 1: the right of me, the house of pain. There is
5:37
Speaker 1: no house of pain. He is not dead, said I,
5:42
Speaker 1: in a loud voice. Even now he watches us. This
5:47
Speaker 1: startled them. Twenty pairs of eyes regarded me. The house
5:52
Speaker 1: of pain is gone, said I. It will come again.
5:57
Speaker 1: The Master, you cannot see yet, even now he listens
6:00
Speaker 1: among you. True, true, said the dog man. They were
6:08
Speaker 1: staggered at my assurance. An animal may be ferocious and
6:12
Speaker 1: cunning enough, but it takes a real man to tell
6:15
Speaker 1: a lie. The man with the bandaged arms speaks a
6:20
Speaker 1: strange thing, said one of the beast folk. I tell you,
6:25
Speaker 1: it is so, I said the master, and the house
6:29
Speaker 1: of pain will come back again. Woe be to him
6:32
Speaker 1: who breaks the law. They looked curiously at one another,
6:38
Speaker 1: with an affectation of indifference. I began to chop idly
6:41
Speaker 1: at the ground in front of me with my hatchet.
6:44
Speaker 1: They looked. I noticed at the deep cuts I made
6:47
Speaker 1: in the turf. Then the satier raised a doubt, I
6:52
Speaker 1: answered him. Then one of the dapple things objected in
6:56
Speaker 1: an animated discussion sprang up round the fire. Every moment
7:00
Speaker 1: I began to feel more convinced of my present security.
7:04
Speaker 1: I talked now without the catching in my breath due
7:06
Speaker 1: to the intensity of my excitement that had troubled me
7:09
Speaker 1: at first. In the course of about an hour, I
7:13
Speaker 1: had really convinced several of the beast folk of the
7:15
Speaker 1: truth of my assertions, and talked most of the others
7:18
Speaker 1: into a dubious state. I kept a sharp eye for
7:22
Speaker 1: my enemy, the hyena swine, but he never appeared. Every
7:27
Speaker 1: now and then a suspicious movement would startle me, But
7:30
Speaker 1: my confidence grew rapidly. Then, as the moon crept down
7:34
Speaker 1: from the zenith. One by one, the listeners began to yawn,
7:39
Speaker 1: showing the oddest teeth in the light of the sinking fire,
7:43
Speaker 1: and first one and then another retired towards the dins
7:46
Speaker 1: in the ravine, and I, dreading the silence and darkness,
7:51
Speaker 1: went with them, knowing it was safer with several of
7:54
Speaker 1: them than with one alone. In this manner began the
7:59
Speaker 1: longer part of my sojourn upon the island of Doctor Moreau.
8:03
Speaker 1: But from that night until the end came, there was
8:07
Speaker 1: but one thing happened to tell, save a series of
8:09
Speaker 1: innumerable small, unpleasant details and the fretting of an incessant uneasiness.
8:15
Speaker 1: So that I prefer to make no chronicle for that
8:17
Speaker 1: gap of time, to tell only one cardinal incident. Of
8:20
Speaker 1: the ten months I spent as an intimate of these
8:23
Speaker 1: half humanized brutes, there is much that sticks in my
8:27
Speaker 1: memory that I could write, things that I would cheerfully
8:30
Speaker 1: give my right hand to forget, but they do not
8:34
Speaker 1: help the telling of the story. In the retrospect, it
8:39
Speaker 1: is strange to remember how soon I fell in with
8:42
Speaker 1: these monsters ways and gained my confidence again. I had
8:46
Speaker 1: my quarrels with them, of course, and could show some
8:49
Speaker 1: of their teeth marks still. But they soon gained a
8:52
Speaker 1: wholesome respect for my trick of throwing stones and for
8:55
Speaker 1: the bite of my hatchet, and my saint Bernard Man's
8:59
Speaker 1: loyalty was of infinite service to me. I found their
9:03
Speaker 1: simple scale of honor was based mainly on the capacity
9:06
Speaker 1: for inflicting trenchant wounds. Indeed, I may say without vanity,
9:11
Speaker 1: I hope that I held something like pre eminence among them,
9:16
Speaker 1: one or two whom, in a rare access of high spirits,
9:20
Speaker 1: I had scarred rather badly, bore me a grudge, but
9:24
Speaker 1: invented itself chiefly behind my back and at a safe
9:27
Speaker 1: distance from my missiles. In grimaces. The hyena swine avoided me,
9:33
Speaker 1: and I was always on the alert for him. My
9:36
Speaker 1: inseparable dog Man hated and dreaded him intensely. I really
9:41
Speaker 1: believed that was at the root of the brute's attachment
9:43
Speaker 1: to me. It was soon evident to me that the
9:46
Speaker 1: former monster had tasted blood and gone the way of
9:50
Speaker 1: the leopard man. He formed a lair somewhere in the
9:54
Speaker 1: forest and became solitary. Once I tried to induce the
9:59
Speaker 1: beast folk to hunt it, but I lacked the authority
10:02
Speaker 1: to make them co operate for one end. Again and
10:05
Speaker 1: again I tried to approach his den and come upon
10:08
Speaker 1: him unaware, but always he was too acute for me
10:13
Speaker 1: and saw or winded me and got away. He too,
10:17
Speaker 1: made every forest pathway dangerous to me and my ally
10:20
Speaker 1: with his lurking ambuscards. The dog man scarcely dared to
10:25
Speaker 1: leave my side. In the first month or so, the
10:30
Speaker 1: beast folk, compared with their latter condition, were human enough,
10:35
Speaker 1: and for one or two besides my canine friend, I
10:38
Speaker 1: even conceived a friendly tolerance. The little pink sloth creature
10:42
Speaker 1: displayed in odd affection for me and took to following
10:45
Speaker 1: me about. The monkey man bored me, however, he assumed,
10:50
Speaker 1: on the strength of his five digits that he was
10:53
Speaker 1: my equal, and was forever jabbering at me, jabbering the
10:57
Speaker 1: most errant nonsense. One thing about him entertained me a little.
11:02
Speaker 1: He had a fantastic trick of coining new words. He
11:06
Speaker 1: had an idea, I believe that to gabble about names
11:09
Speaker 1: that meant nothing was the proper use of speech. He
11:13
Speaker 1: called it big thinks to distinguish it from little thinks,
11:17
Speaker 1: the sane, every day interests of life. If ever I
11:21
Speaker 1: made a remark he did not understand, he would praise
11:24
Speaker 1: it very much, ask me to say it again, learn
11:27
Speaker 1: it by heart, and go off repeating it with a
11:29
Speaker 1: word wrong here or there, to all the milder of
11:34
Speaker 1: the beast people. He thought nothing of what was plain
11:37
Speaker 1: and comprehensible. I invented some very curious big thinks for
11:42
Speaker 1: his especial use. I think now he was the silliest
11:46
Speaker 1: creature I had ever met. He had developed, in the
11:49
Speaker 1: most wonderful way, the distinctive silliness of man, without losing
11:52
Speaker 1: one jot of the natural folly of a monkey. This,
11:57
Speaker 1: I say, was in the earlier weeks of my solitude
12:00
Speaker 1: among these brutes. During that time they respected the usage
12:04
Speaker 1: established by the law and behaved with general decorum. Once
12:09
Speaker 1: I found another rabbit torn to pieces by the hyena swine,
12:12
Speaker 1: I am assured. But that was all it was about
12:17
Speaker 1: May when I first distinctly perceived a growing difference in
12:20
Speaker 1: their speech and carriage, a growing coarseness of articulation, a
12:25
Speaker 1: growing disinclination to talk. My monkey man's jabber multiplied in volume,
12:31
Speaker 1: but grew less and less comprehensible, more and more simian.
12:36
Speaker 1: Some of the others seemed altogether slipping their hold upon speech,
12:40
Speaker 1: though they still understood what I said to them at
12:43
Speaker 1: that time. Can you imagine language, once clear cut and exact,
12:47
Speaker 1: softening and guttering, losing shape and import, becoming mere lumps
12:53
Speaker 1: of sound again? And they walked erect with an increasing difficulty,
12:59
Speaker 1: though they evidently felt ashamed of themselves. Every now and
13:02
Speaker 1: then I would come upon one or another, running on
13:05
Speaker 1: toes and fingertips, and quite unable to recover the vertical attitude.
13:11
Speaker 1: They held things more clumsily, Drinking by suction, feeding by gnawing,
13:16
Speaker 1: grew commoner. Every day. I realized, more keenly than ever
13:21
Speaker 1: what Moreau had told me about the stubborn beast flesh.
13:25
Speaker 1: They were reverting, and reverting very rapidly. Some of them,
13:31
Speaker 1: the pioneers in this I noticed with some surprise, were
13:34
Speaker 1: all females. Began to disregard the injunction of decency deliberately
13:39
Speaker 1: for the most part. Others even attempted public outrages upon
13:43
Speaker 1: the institution of monogamy. The tradition of the law was
13:47
Speaker 1: clearly losing its force. I cannot pursue this disagreeable subject.
13:54
Speaker 1: My dog man imperceptibly slipped back to the dog again.
13:58
Speaker 1: Day by day he became dumb, quadrupedal, hairy. I scarcely
14:03
Speaker 1: noticed the transition from the companion on my right hand
14:06
Speaker 1: to the lurching dog at my side. As the carelessness
14:10
Speaker 1: and disorganization increased from day to day, the lane of
14:14
Speaker 1: dwelling places, at no time very sweet, became so loathsome
14:18
Speaker 1: that I left it, and, going across the island, made
14:21
Speaker 1: myself a hovel of boughs amid the black ruins of
14:24
Speaker 1: morose enclosure. Some memory of pain I found still made
14:30
Speaker 1: that place the safest from the beast folk. It would
14:34
Speaker 1: be impossible to detail every step of the lapsing of
14:37
Speaker 1: these monsters, to tell how, day by day the human
14:41
Speaker 1: semblance left them, how they gave up bandagings and wrappings,
14:46
Speaker 1: abandoned at last every stitch of clothing, How the hair
14:49
Speaker 1: began to spread over the exposed limbs, how their foreheads
14:53
Speaker 1: fell away and their faces projected, How the quasi human
14:57
Speaker 1: intimacy I had permitted myself with some of them in
14:59
Speaker 1: the first month of my loneliness became a shuddering horror
15:03
Speaker 1: to recall. The change was slow and inevitable for them.
15:10
Speaker 1: For me, it came without any definite shock. I still
15:13
Speaker 1: went among them in safety, because no jolt in the
15:16
Speaker 1: downward glide had released the increasing charge of explosive animalism
15:20
Speaker 1: that ousted the human day by day. But I began
15:25
Speaker 1: to fear that soon now that shock must come. My
15:31
Speaker 1: saint Bernard Brute followed me to the enclosure every night,
15:34
Speaker 1: and his vigilance enabled me to sleep at times in
15:37
Speaker 1: something like peace. The little pink sloth thing became shy
15:42
Speaker 1: and left me to crawl back to its natural life
15:45
Speaker 1: once more. Among the tree branches. We were in just
15:49
Speaker 1: the state of equilibrium that would remain in one of
15:51
Speaker 1: those happy family cages which animal tamers exhibit, if the
15:56
Speaker 1: tamer were to leave it forever. Of course, these did
16:00
Speaker 1: not decline into such beasts as the reader has seen
16:03
Speaker 1: in zoological gardens, into ordinary bears, wolves, tigers, oxen, swine,
16:08
Speaker 1: and apes. There was still something strange about each. In
16:15
Speaker 1: each Moreau had blended this animal with that. One perhaps
16:20
Speaker 1: was ersine chiefly, another feline chiefly, another bovine chiefly, But
16:25
Speaker 1: each was tainted with other creatures, a kind of generalized
16:29
Speaker 1: animalism appearing through the specific dispositions, and the dwindling shreds
16:35
Speaker 1: of the humanity still startled me every now and then,
16:39
Speaker 1: a momentary recrudescence of speech, perhaps an unexpected dexterity of
16:44
Speaker 1: the forefoot, a pitiful attempt to walk erect. I too,
16:50
Speaker 1: must have undergone strange changes. My clothes hung about me
16:54
Speaker 1: as yellow rags, through whose rents showed the tanned skin.
16:59
Speaker 1: My hair grew long and became matted together. I am
17:03
Speaker 1: told that even now my eyes have a strange brightness,
17:06
Speaker 1: a swift alertness of movement. At first, I spent the
17:11
Speaker 1: daylight hours on the southward beach, watching for a ship,
17:15
Speaker 1: hoping and praying for a ship. I counted on the
17:19
Speaker 1: Ipaquana returning as the year wore on, but she never came.
17:25
Speaker 1: Five times I saw sails and thrice smoke, but nothing
17:30
Speaker 1: ever touched the island. I always had a bonfire ready,
17:34
Speaker 1: but no doubt the volcanic reputation of the island was
17:37
Speaker 1: taken into account for that. It was only about September
17:42
Speaker 1: or October that I began to think of making a raft.
17:45
Speaker 1: By that time my arm had healed and both hands
17:48
Speaker 1: were at my service again. At first I found my
17:51
Speaker 1: helplessness appalling. I had never done any carpentry or such
17:57
Speaker 1: like work in my life, and I spent day at
18:00
Speaker 1: to day in experimental chopping and binding among the trees.
18:05
Speaker 1: I had no ropes, and could hit on nothing wherewith
18:08
Speaker 1: to make ropes. None of the abundant creepers seemed limber
18:12
Speaker 1: or strong enough, and with all my litter of scientific education,
18:16
Speaker 1: I could not devise any way of making them. So
18:20
Speaker 1: I spent more than a fortnight grubbing among the black
18:22
Speaker 1: ruins of the enclosure and on the beach where the
18:25
Speaker 1: boats had been burnt, looking for nails and other stray
18:28
Speaker 1: pieces of metal that might prove of service. Now and
18:32
Speaker 1: then some beast creature would watch me and go leaping
18:35
Speaker 1: off when I called to it. There came a season
18:39
Speaker 1: of thunder storms and heavy rain, which greatly retarded my work.
18:43
Speaker 1: But at last the raft was completed. I was delighted
18:48
Speaker 1: with it, but with a certain lack of practical sense,
18:52
Speaker 1: which has always been my bane. I had made it
18:55
Speaker 1: a mile or more from the sea, and before I
18:58
Speaker 1: had dragged it down to the beach, the thing had
19:01
Speaker 1: fallen to pieces perhaps it is as well that I
19:05
Speaker 1: was saved from launching it. But at the time my
19:08
Speaker 1: misery at my failure was so acute that for some
19:11
Speaker 1: days I simply moped on the beach and stared at
19:14
Speaker 1: the water and thought of death. I did not, however,
19:19
Speaker 1: mean to die, and an incident occurred that warn me
19:22
Speaker 1: unmistakably of the folly of letting the days pass, so,
19:26
Speaker 1: for each fresh day was fraught with increasing danger from
19:29
Speaker 1: the beast people. I was lying in the shade of
19:32
Speaker 1: the enclosure wall, staring out to sea, when I was
19:36
Speaker 1: startled by something cold touching the skin of my heel,
19:39
Speaker 1: and starting round, found the little pink sloth creature blinking
19:43
Speaker 1: into my face. He had long since lost speech an
19:47
Speaker 1: active movement, and the lank hair of the little brute
19:50
Speaker 1: grew thicker every day, and his stumpy claws more askew.
19:55
Speaker 1: He made a moaning noise when he saw he had
19:57
Speaker 1: attracted my attention, went a little way towards the bushes,
20:01
Speaker 1: and looked back at me. At first I did not understand,
20:06
Speaker 1: but presently it occurred to me that he wished me
20:09
Speaker 1: to follow him, and this I did at last, slowly,
20:13
Speaker 1: for the day was hot When we reached the trees,
20:17
Speaker 1: he clambered into them, for he could travel better among
20:20
Speaker 1: their swinging creepers than on the ground. And suddenly, in
20:24
Speaker 1: a trampled space, I came upon a ghostly group. My
20:28
Speaker 1: saint Bernard creature lay on the ground, dead, and near
20:32
Speaker 1: his body crouched the hyena swine, gripping the quivering flesh
20:36
Speaker 1: with its misshapen claws, gnawing at it and snarling with delight.
20:42
Speaker 1: As I approached, the monster lifted its glaring eyes to mine.
20:46
Speaker 1: Its lips went trembling back from its red stained teeth,
20:49
Speaker 1: and it growled menacingly. It was not afraid and not ashamed.
20:55
Speaker 1: The last vestige of the human taint had vanished. I
20:59
Speaker 1: advanced step farther, stopped, and pulled out my revolver. At last,
21:05
Speaker 1: I had him face to face. The brute made no
21:09
Speaker 1: sign of retreat, but its ears went back, its hair bristled,
21:12
Speaker 1: and its body crouched together. I aimed between the eyes
21:17
Speaker 1: and fired. As I did so, the thing rose straight
21:21
Speaker 1: at me in a leap, and I was knocked over
21:23
Speaker 1: like a nine pin. It clutched at me with its
21:27
Speaker 1: crippled hand and struck me in the face. Its spring
21:30
Speaker 1: carried it over me. I fell under the hind part
21:34
Speaker 1: of its body, but luckily I had hit as I meant,
21:38
Speaker 1: and it had died even as it leapt. I crawled
21:42
Speaker 1: out from under its unclean weight and stood up, trembling,
21:45
Speaker 1: staring at its quivering body. That danger, at least was over,
21:51
Speaker 1: But this I knew was only the first of the
21:55
Speaker 1: series of relapses that must come. I burnt both of
22:00
Speaker 1: the bodies on a pyre of brushwood. But after that
22:03
Speaker 1: I saw that unless I left the island, my death
22:06
Speaker 1: was only a question of time. The beast people by
22:10
Speaker 1: that time had, with one or two exceptions, left the
22:14
Speaker 1: ravine and made themselves layers according to their taste. Among
22:17
Speaker 1: the thickets of the island, few prowled. By day, most
22:22
Speaker 1: of them slept, and the island might have seemed deserted
22:24
Speaker 1: to a newcomer. But at night the air was hideous
22:28
Speaker 1: with their calls and howling. I had half a mind
22:32
Speaker 1: to make a massacre of them, to build traps, or
22:35
Speaker 1: fight them with my knife. Had I possessed sufficient cartridges,
22:40
Speaker 1: I should not have hesitated to begin the killing. There
22:44
Speaker 1: can now be scarcely a score left of the dangerous carnivores.
22:48
Speaker 1: The braver of these were already dead. After the death
22:52
Speaker 1: of this poor dog of mine, my last friend, I
22:56
Speaker 1: too adopted to some extent the practice of slumbering in
22:59
Speaker 1: the daytime in order to be on my guard at night.
23:03
Speaker 1: I rebuilt my den in the walls of the enclosure,
23:07
Speaker 1: with such a narrow opening that anything attempting to enter
23:10
Speaker 1: must necessarily make a considerable noise. The creature had lost
23:15
Speaker 1: the art of fire too, and recovered their fear of it.
23:20
Speaker 1: I turned once more, almost passionately, now to hammering together
23:24
Speaker 1: stakes and branches to form a raft for my escape.
23:30
Speaker 1: I found a thousand difficulties. I am an extremely unhandy man.
23:35
Speaker 1: My schooling was over before the days of Sliord. But
23:39
Speaker 1: most of the requirements of a raft I met at
23:41
Speaker 1: last in some clumsy, circuitous way or another, And this
23:45
Speaker 1: time I took care of the strength. The only insurmountable
23:49
Speaker 1: obstacle was that I had no vessel to contain the
23:52
Speaker 1: water I should need if I floated forth upon these
23:55
Speaker 1: untraveled seas. I would have even tried pottery, but the
23:59
Speaker 1: eye and contained no clay. I used to go moping
24:04
Speaker 1: about the island, trying with all my might to solve
24:06
Speaker 1: this one last difficulty. Sometimes I would give way to
24:10
Speaker 1: wild outbursts of rage, and hack and splinter some unlucky
24:14
Speaker 1: tree in my intolerable vexation. But I could think of nothing.
24:20
Speaker 1: And then came a day, a wonderful day, which I
24:23
Speaker 1: spent in ecstasy. I saw a sail to the southwest,
24:28
Speaker 1: a small sail like that of a little schooner, and
24:31
Speaker 1: forthwith I lit a great pile of brushwood, and stood
24:34
Speaker 1: by it in the heat of it and the heat
24:36
Speaker 1: of the midday sun, watching All day, I watched that sail,
24:41
Speaker 1: eating or drinking nothing, so that my head reeled, and
24:44
Speaker 1: the beasts came and glared at me, and seemed to
24:47
Speaker 1: wander and went away. It was still distant when night
24:52
Speaker 1: came and swallowed it up, And all night I toiled
24:55
Speaker 1: to keep my blaze bright and high, and the eyes
24:58
Speaker 1: of the beasts shone out of the darkness, marveling in
25:03
Speaker 1: the dawn. The sail was nearer, and I saw it
25:06
Speaker 1: was the dirty lug sail of a small boat, but
25:09
Speaker 1: it sailed strangely. My eyes were weary with watching, and
25:15
Speaker 1: I peered and could not believe them. Two men were
25:18
Speaker 1: in the boat sitting low down, one by the boughs,
25:22
Speaker 1: the other at the rudder. The head was not kept
25:25
Speaker 1: in the wind. It yarred and fell away. As the
25:29
Speaker 1: day grew brighter, I began waving the last rag of
25:32
Speaker 1: my jacket to them, but they did not notice me,
25:35
Speaker 1: and sat still facing each other. I went to the
25:39
Speaker 1: lowest point of the low headland and gesticulated and shouted.
25:43
Speaker 1: There was no response, and the boat kept on her
25:46
Speaker 1: aimless course, making slowly, very slowly for the bay. Suddenly,
25:53
Speaker 1: a great white bird flew up out of the boat,
25:55
Speaker 1: and neither of the men stirred or noticed it. It
25:59
Speaker 1: circled round and then came sweeping overhead with its strong
26:02
Speaker 1: wings outspread. Then I stopped shouting and sat down on
26:07
Speaker 1: the headland and rested my chin on my hands and
26:09
Speaker 1: stared slowly slowly. The boat drove past towards the west.
26:17
Speaker 1: I would have swum out to it, but something, a cold,
26:21
Speaker 1: vague fear, kept me back. In the afternoon, the tide
26:26
Speaker 1: stranded the boat and left it a hundred yards or
26:28
Speaker 1: so to the westward of the ruins of the enclosure.
26:32
Speaker 1: The men in it were dead, had been dead so
26:36
Speaker 1: long that they fell to pieces. When I tilted the
26:38
Speaker 1: boat on its side and dragged them out. One had
26:42
Speaker 1: a shock of red hair like the captain of the
26:45
Speaker 1: ipa Quana, and a dirty white cap lay in the
26:48
Speaker 1: bottom of the boat. As I stood beside the boat,
26:52
Speaker 1: three of the beasts came slinking out of the bushes
26:54
Speaker 1: and sniffing towards me. One of my spasms of disgust
26:59
Speaker 1: came upon me. I thrust the little boat down the
27:02
Speaker 1: beach and clambered on board her. Two of the brutes
27:05
Speaker 1: were wolf beasts, and came forward with quivering nostrils and
27:09
Speaker 1: glittering eyes. The third was the horrible nondescript of bear
27:14
Speaker 1: and bull. When I saw them approaching those wretched remains,
27:19
Speaker 1: heard them snarling at one another, and caught the gleam
27:22
Speaker 1: of their teeth, A frantic horror succeeded my repulsion. I
27:27
Speaker 1: turned my back upon them, struck the lug, and again,
27:29
Speaker 1: paddling out to sea, I could not bring myself to
27:33
Speaker 1: look behind me. I lay, however, between the reef and
27:38
Speaker 1: the island. That night and the next morning went round
27:42
Speaker 1: to the stream and filled the empty keg aboard with water. Then,
27:47
Speaker 1: with such patience as I could command, I collected a
27:50
Speaker 1: quantity of fruit and waylaid and killed two rabbits with
27:54
Speaker 1: my last three cartridges. While I was doing this, I
27:59
Speaker 1: left the boat in word to an inward projection of
28:01
Speaker 1: the wreath, for fear of the beast people,