The Greatest Science Fiction Novels & Stories by H. G. Wells. Герберт Уэллс

      I fancied even then that he had a sneaking kindness for some of these metamorphosed brutes, a vicious sympathy with some of their ways, but that he attempted to veil from me at first.

      M’ling, the blackfaced man, his attendant, the first of the Beast Folk I had encountered, did not live with the others across the island, but in a small kennel at the back of the enclosure. The creature was scarcely so intelligent as the Ape Man, but far more docile, and the most human-looking of all the Beast Folk, and Montgomery had trained it to prepare food and indeed to discharge all the trivial domestic offices that were required. It was a complex trophy of Moreau’s horrible skill, a bear, tainted with dog and ox, and one of the most elaborately made of all the creatures. It treated Montgomery with a strange tenderness and devotion; sometimes he would notice it, pat it, call it half-mocking, half-jocular names, and so make it caper with extraordinary delight; sometimes he would ill-treat it, especially after he had been at the whisky, kicking it, beating it, pelting it with stones or lighted fuses. But whether he treated it well or ill, it loved nothing so much as to be near him.

      I say I became habituated to the Beast People, that a thousand things that had seemed unnatural and repulsive speedily became natural and ordinary to me. I suppose everything in existence takes its colour from the average hue of our surroundings: Montgomery and Moreau were too peculiar and individual to keep my general impressions of humanity well defined. I would see one of the bovine creatures who worked the launch treading heavily through the undergrowth, and find myself trying hard to recall how he differed from some really human yokel trudging home from his mechanical labours; or I would meet the Fox-Bear Woman’s vulpine shifty face, strangely human in its speculative cunning, and even imagine I had met it before in some city byway.

      Yet every now and then the beast would flash out upon me beyond doubt or denial. An ugly-looking man, a hunchbacked human savage to all appearance, squatting in the aperture of one of the dens, would stretch his arms and yawn, showing with startling suddenness scissor-edged incisors and sabre-like canines, keen and brilliant as knives. Or in some narrow pathway, glancing with a transitory daring into the eyes of some lithe white-swathed female figure, I would suddenly see with a spasmodic revulsion that they had slit-like pupils, or, glancing down, note the curving nail with which she held her shapeless wrap about her. It is a curious thing, by the by, for which I am quite unable to account, that these weird creatures — the females I mean — had in the earlier days of my stay an instinctive sense of their own repulsive clumsiness, and displayed in consequence a more than human regard for the decencies and decorum of external costume.

      CHAPTER 16

       HOW THE BEAST FOLK TASTED BLOOD

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      But my inexperience as a writer betrays me, and I wander from the thread of my story. After I had breakfasted with Montgomery he took me across the island to see the fumarole and the source of the hot spring, into whose scalding waters I had blundered on the previous day. Both of us carried whips and loaded revolvers. While going through a leafy jungle on our road thither we heard a rabbit squealing. We stopped and listened, but we heard no more; and presently we went on our way and the incident dropped out of our minds. Montgomery called my attention to certain little pink animals with long hind legs, that went leaping through the undergrowth. He told me they were creatures made of the offspring of the Beast People, that Moreau had invented. He had fancied they might serve for meat, but a rabbit-like habit of devouring their young had defeated this intention. I had already encountered some of these creatures, once during my moonlight flight from the Leopard Man, and once during my pursuit by Moreau on the previous day. By chance, one hopping to avoid us leapt into the hole caused by the uprooting of a windblown tree. Before it could extricate itself we managed to catch it. It spat like a cat, scratched and kicked vigorously with its hind legs and made an attempt to bite, but its teeth were too feeble to inflict more than a painless pinch. It seemed to me rather a pretty little creature, and as Montgomery stated that it never destroyed the turf by burrowing, and was very cleanly in its habits, I should imagine it might prove a convenient substitute for the common rabbit in gentlemen’s parks.

      We also saw on our way the trunk of a tree barked in long strips and splintered deeply. Montgomery called my attention to this. `Not to claw Bark of Trees; that is the Law,’ he said. `Much some of them care for it!’ It was after this, I think, that we met the Satyr and the Ape Man. The Satyr was a gleam of classical memory on the part of Moreau, his face ovine in expression — like the coarser Hebrew type — his voice a harsh bleat, his nether extremities Satanic. He was gnawing the husk of a pod-like fruit as he passed us. Both of them saluted Montgomery.

      `Hail,’ said they, `to the Other with the whip!’

      `There’s a third with a whip now,’ said Montgomery. `So you’d better mind!’

      `Was he not made?’ said the Ape Man. `He said — he said he was made.’

      The Satyr Man looked curiously at me. `The Third with the whip, he that walks sweeping into the sea, has a thin white face.’

      `He has a thin long whip,’ said Montgomery.

      `Yesterday he bled and wept,’ said the Satyr. `You never bleed nor weep. The Master does not bleed nor weep.

      `Ollendorffian beggar!’ said Montgomery. `You’ll bleed and weep if you don’t look out.’

      `He has five fingers; he is a five-man like me,’ said the Ape Man.

      `Come along, Prendick,’ said Montgomery, taking my arm, and I went on with him.

      The Satyr and the Ape Man stood watching us and making other remarks to each other.

      `He says nothing,’ said the Satyr. `Men have voices.’

      `Yesterday he asked me of things to eat,’ said the Ape Man. `He did not know.’ Then they spoke inaudible things, and I heard the Satyr laughing.

      It was on our way back that we came upon the dead rabbit. The red body of the wretched little beast was rent to pieces, many of the ribs stripped white, and the backbone indisputably gnawed.

      At that Montgomery stopped. `Good God!’ said he, stooping down and picking up some of the crushed vertebrae to examine them more closely. `Good God!’ he repeated, `what can this mean?’

      `Some carnivore of yours has remembered its old habits,’ I said, after a pause. `This backbone has been bitten through.’

      He stood staring, with his face white and his lip pulled askew. `I don’t like this,’ he said slowly.

      `I saw something of the same kind,’ said I, `the first day I came here.’

      `The devil you did! What was it?’

      `A rabbit with its head twisted off.’

      `The day you came here?’

      `The day I came here. In the undergrowth, at the back of the enclosure, when I came out in the evening. The head was completely wrung off.’

      He gave a low whistle.

      `And what is more, I have an idea which of your brutes did the thing. It’s only a suspicion, you know. Before I came on the rabbit I saw one of your monsters drinking in the stream.’

      `Sucking his drink?’

      `Yes.’

      `Not to suck your Drink; that is the Law. Much the brutes care for the Law, eh — when Moreau’s not about?’

      `It was the brute who chased me.’

      `Of course,’ said Montgomery; `it’s just the way with carnivores. After a kill they drink. It’s the taste of blood, you know.’

      `What was the brute like?’ he asked. `Would you know him again?’ He glanced about us, standing astride over the mess of dead rabbit, his eyes roving among the shadows and screens of greenery, the lurking-places and ambuscades of the forest, that bounded us