he companion obstructing
‘You were nearly dead,’ said my interlocutor. ‘It was a very near thing, indeed. But I’ve put some stuff into you now. Notice your arm’s sore? Injections. You’ve been insensible for nearly thirty hours.’
I thought slowly. (I was distracted now by the yelping of a number of dogs.) ‘Am I eligible for solid food?’ I asked.
‘Thanks to me,’ he said. ‘Even now the mutton is boiling.’ ‘Yes,’ I said with assurance; ‘I could eat some mutton.’ ‘But,’ said he with a momentary hesitation, ‘you know
I’m dying to hear of how you came to be alone in that boat. Damn that howling!’ I thought I detected a certain suspi- cion in his eyes.
He suddenly left the cabin, and I heard him in violent controversy with some one, who seemed to me to talk gib-
The Island of Doctor Moreau10
berish in response to him. The matter sounded as though it ended in blows, but in that I thought my ears were mistaken. Then he shouted at the dogs, and returned to the cabin.
‘Well?’ said he in the doorway. ‘You were just beginning to tell me.’
I told him my name, Edward Prendick, and how I had taken to Natural History as a relief from the dulness of my comfortable independence.
He seemed interested in this. ‘I’ve done some science myself. I did my Biology at University College,—getting out the ovary of the earthworm and the radula of the snail, and all that. Lord! It’s ten years ago. But go on! go on! tell me about the boat.’
He was evidently satisfied with the frankness of my story, which I told in concise sentences enough, for I felt horribly weak; and when it was finished he reverted at once to the topic of Natural History and his own biological studies. He began to question me closely about Tottenham Court Road and Gower Street. ‘Is Caplatzi still flourishing? What a shop that was!’ He had evidently been a very ordinary medical student, and drifted incontinently to the topic of the music halls. He told me some anecdotes.
‘Left it all,’ he said, ‘ten years ago. How jolly it all used to be! But I made a young ass of myself,—played myself out before I was twenty-one. I daresay it’s all different now. But I must look up that ass of a cook, and see what he’s done to your mutton.’
The growling overhead was renewed, so suddenly and with so much savage anger that it startled me. ‘What’s that?’
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I called after him, but the door had closed. He came back again with the boiled mutton, and I was so excited by the appetising smell of it that I forgot the noise of the beast that had troubled me.
After a day of alternate sleep and feeding I was so far re- covered as to be able to get from my bunk to the scuttle, and see the green seas trying to keep pace with us. I judged the schooner was running before the wind. Montgomery—that was the name of the flaxen-haired man— came in again as I stood there, and I asked him for some clothes. He lent me some duck things of his own, for those I had worn in the boat had been thrown overboard. They were rather loose for me, for he was large and long in his limbs. He told me casually that the captain was three-parts drunk in his own cabin. As I assumed the clothes, I began asking him some questions about the destination of the ship. He said the ship was bound to Hawaii, but that it had to land him first.
‘Where?’ said I. ‘It’s an island, where I live. So far as I know, it hasn’t got
a name.’ He stared at me with his nether lip dropping, and looked
so wilfully stupid of a sudden that it came into my head that he desired to avoid my questions. I had the discretion to ask no more.
The Island of Doctor Moreau1�
III. THE STRANGE FACE.
WE left the cabin and found a man at the companion obstructing our way. He was standing on the ladder with his back to us, peering over the combing of the hatch- way. He was, I could see, a misshapen man, short, broad, and clumsy, with a crooked back, a hairy neck, and a head sunk between his shoulders. He was dressed in dark-blue serge, and had peculiarly thick, coarse, black hair. I heard the unseen dogs growl furiously, and forthwith he ducked back,— coming into contact with the hand I put out to fend him off from myself. He turned with animal swiftness.
In some indefinable way the black face thus flashed upon me shocked me profoundly. It was a singularly deformed one. The facial part projected, forming something dim- ly suggestive of a muzzle, and the huge half-open mouth showed as big white teeth as I had ever seen in a human mouth. His eyes were blood-shot at the edges, with scarcely a rim of white round the hazel pupils. There was a curious glow of excitement in his face.
‘Confound you!’ said Montgomery. ‘Why the devil don’t you get out of the way?’
The black-faced man started aside without a word. I went on up the companion, staring at him instinctively as I did so. Montgomery stayed at the foot for a moment. ‘You have no business here, you know,’ he said in a deliberate tone.
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‘Your place is forward.’ The black-faced man cowered. ‘They—won’t have me for-
ward.’ He spoke slowly, with a queer, hoarse quality in his voice.
