have collected a specimen
and then, the night was very still. The puma lay crouched together, watching us with shining eyes, a black heap in the corner of its cage. Montgomery produced some cigars. He talked to me of London in a tone of half-painful remi- niscence, asking all kinds of questions about changes that had taken place. He spoke like a man who had loved his life there, and had been suddenly and irrevocably cut off from it. I gossiped as well as I could of this and that. All the time the strangeness of him was shaping itself in my mind; and as I talked I peered at his odd, pallid face in the dim light of the binnacle lantern behind me. Then I looked out at the darkling sea, where in the dimness his little island was hid- den.
This man, it seemed to me, had come out of Immensity merely to save my life. To-morrow he would drop over the side, and vanish again out of my existence. Even had it been under commonplace circumstances, it would have made me a trifle thoughtful; but in the first place was the singulari- ty of an educated man living on this unknown little island, and coupled with that the extraordinary nature of his lug- gage. I found myself repeating the captain’s question, What did he want with the beasts? Why, too, had he pretended they were not his when I had remarked about them at first? Then, again, in his personal attendant there was a bizarre quality which had impressed me profoundly. These circum- stances threw a haze of mystery round the man. They laid hold of my imagination, and hampered my tongue.
Towards midnight our talk of London died away, and we stood side by side leaning over the bulwarks and staring
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dreamily over the silent, starlit sea, each pursuing his own thoughts. It was the atmosphere for sentiment, and I began upon my gratitude.
‘If I may say it,’ said I, after a time, ‘you have saved my life.’
‘Chance,’ he answered. ‘Just chance.’ ‘I prefer to make my thanks to the accessible agent.’ ‘Thank no one. You had the need, and I had the knowl-
edge; and I injected and fed you much as I might have collected a specimen. I was bored and wanted something to do. If I’d been jaded that day, or hadn’t liked your face, well—it’s a curious question where you would have been now!’
This damped my mood a little. ‘At any rate,’ I began. ‘It’s chance, I tell you,’ he interrupted, ‘as everything is
in a man’s life. Only the asses won’t see it! Why am I here now, an outcast from civilisation, instead of being a happy man enjoying all the pleasures of London? Simply because eleven years ago— I lost my head for ten minutes on a foggy night.’
He stopped. ‘Yes?’ said I. ‘That’s all.’ We relapsed into silence. Presently he laughed. ‘There’s
something in this starlight that loosens one’s tongue. I’m an ass, and yet somehow I would like to tell you.’
‘Whatever you tell me, you may rely upon my keeping to myself— if that’s it.’
He was on the point of beginning, and then shook his head, doubtfully.
The Island of Doctor Moreau��
