or another running on toes and finger-tips, and quite unable to recover the
vertical attitude. They held things more clumsily; drinking by suction,
feeding by gnawing, grew commoner every day. I realised more keenly than ever
what Moreau had told me about the "stubborn beast-flesh." They were reverting,
and reverting very rapidly.
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Some of them -- the pioneers in this, I noticed with some surprise, were all
females -- began to disregard the injunction of decency, deliberately for the
most part. Others even attempted public outrages upon the institution of
monogamy. The tradition of the Law was clearly losing its force. I cannot
pursue this disagreeable subject.
My Dog-man imperceptibly slipped back to the dog again; day by day he became
dumb, quadrupedal, hairy. I scarcely noticed the transition from the companion
on my right hand to the lurching dog at my side.
As the carelessness and disorganisation increased from day to day, the lane
of dwelling places, at no time very sweet, became so loathsome that I left it,
and going across the island made myself a hovel of boughs amid the black ruins
of Moreau's enclosure. Some memory of pain, I found, still made that place the
safest from the Beast Folk.
It would be impossible to detail every step of the lapsing of these monsters,
-- to tell how, day by day, the human semblance left them; how they gave up
bandagings and wrappings, abandoned at last every stitch of clothing; how the
hair began to spread over the exposed limbs; how their foreheads fell away and
their faces projected; how the quasi-human intimacy I had permitted myself
with some of them in the first month of my loneliness became a shuddering
horror to recall.
The change was slow and inevitable. For them and for me it came without any
definite shock. I still went among them in safety, because no jolt in the
downward glide had released the increasing charge of explosive animalism that
ousted the human day by day. But I began to fear that soon now that shock must
come. My Saint-Bernard-brute followed me to the enclosure every night, and his
vigilance enabled me to sleep at times in something like peace. The little
pink sloth-thing became shy and left me, to crawl back to its natural life
once more among the tree-branches. We were in just the state of equilibrium
that would remain in one of those "Happy Family" cages which animal-tamers
exhibit, if the tamer were to leave it for ever.
Of course these creatures did not decline into such beasts as the reader has
seen in zoological gardens, -- into ordinary bears, wolves, tigers, oxen,
swine, and apes. There was still something strange about each; in each Moreau
had blended this animal with that. One perhaps was ursine chiefly, another
feline chiefly, another bovine chiefly; but each was tainted with other
creatures, -- a kind of generalised animalism appearing through the specific
dispositions. And the dwindling shreds of the humanity still startled me every
now and then, -- a momentary recrudescence of speech perhaps, an unexpected
dexterity of the fore-feet, a pitiful attempt to walk erect.
I too must have undergone strange changes. My clothes hung about me as yellow
rags, through whose rents showed the tanned skin. My hair grew long, and
became matted together. I am told that even now my eyes have a strange
brightness, a swift alertness of movement.
At first I spent the daylight hours on the southward beach watching for a
ship, hoping and praying for a ship. I counted on the "Ipecacuanha" returning
as the year wore on; but she never came. Five times I saw sails, and thrice
smoke; but nothing ever touched the island. I always had a bonfire ready, but
no doubt the volcanic reputation of the island was taken to account for that.
It was only about September or October that I began to think of making a
raft. By that time my arm had healed, and both my hands were at my service
again. At first, I found my helplessness appalling. I had never done any
carpentry or such-like work in my life, and I spent day after day in
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experimental chopping and binding among the trees. I had no ropes, and could
hit on nothing wherewith to make ropes; none of the abundant creepers seemed
limber or strong enough, and with all my litter of scientific education I
could not devise any way of making them so. I spent more than a fortnight
grubbing among the black ruins of the enclosure and on the beach where the
boats had been burnt, looking for nails and other stray pieces of metal that
might prove of service. Now and then some Beast-creature would watch me, and
go leaping off when I called to it. There came a season of thunder-storms and
heavy rain, which greatly retarded my work; but at last the raft was
completed.
I was delighted with it. But with a certain lack of practical sense which has
always been my bane, I had made it a mile or more from the sea; and before I
had dragged it down to the beach the thing had fallen to pieces. Perhaps it is
as well that I was saved from launching it; but at the time my misery at my
failure was so acute that for some days I simply moped on the beach, and
stared at the water and thought of death.
I did not, however, mean to die, and an incident occurred that warned me
unmistakably of the folly of letting the days pass so, -- for each fresh day
was fraught with increasing danger from the Beast People.
I was lying in the shade of the enclosure wall, staring out to sea, when I
was startled by something cold touching the skin of my heel, and starting
round found the little pink sloth- creature blinking into my face. He had long
since lost speech and active movement, and the lank hair of the little brute
grew thicker every day and his stumpy claws more askew. He made a moaning
noise when he was he had attracted my attention, went a little way towards the
bushes and looked back at me.
At first I did not understand, but presently it occurred to me that he wished
me to follow him; and this I did at last, -- slowly, for the day was hot. When
we reached the trees he clambered into them, for he could travel better among
their swinging creepers than on the ground. And suddenly in a trampled space I
came upon a ghastly group. My Saint-Bernard- creature lay on the ground, dead;
and near his body crouched the Hyena-swine, gripping the quivering flesh with
its misshapen claws, gnawing at it, and snarling with delight. As I
approached, the monster lifted its glaring eyes to mine, its lips went
trembling back from its red-stained teeth, and it growled menacingly. It was
not afraid and not ashamed; the last vestige of the human taint had vanished.
I advanced a step farther, stopped, and pulled out my revolver. At last I had
him face to face.
The brute made no sign of retreat; but its ears went back, its hair bristled,
and its body crouched together. I aimed between the eyes and fired. As I did
so, the Thing rose straight at me in a leap, and I was knocked over like a
ninepin. It clutched at me with its crippled hand, and struck me in the face.
Its spring carried it over me. I fell under the hind part of its body; but
luckily I had hit as I meant, and it had died even as it leapt. I crawled out [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]