THE

The Island of Dr. Moreau

ISLAND
OF
DR.
“‘Who breaks the Law -’ said Moreau,
taking his eyes off his victim and
turning towards us. It seemed to me
there was a touch of exultation in

MOREAU
his voice. ‘- goes back to the House of
Pain,’ they all clamoured; ‘goes back
to the House of Pain, O Master!’”
H.G. Wells,
The Island of Dr. Moreau

h.g.wells
h.g.wells

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The
Island
of Dr.
Moreau
h.g.wells

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Author: H.G. Wells

Edition dates: 1896 - first print

Cover photo: @Pixabay

Cover art: Zander Catta Preta
Book design: Zander Catta preta

ISBN: xxx.xxx.xxx.xx-xx
Publisher: Zander Catta Preta @ Z Edições

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The
Island
of Dr.
Moreau
h.g.wells

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This is a public domain work.

Be free to copy, modify, distribute and
perform the work, even for commercial
purposes, all without asking permission.

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Summary

H. G. Wells (a biography).....................................11

The Island of Dr. Moreau (an introduction)....... 56

Introduction (prelude).......................................... 78

In the Dingey of the Lady Vain...........................81

The Man Who Was Going Nowhere................. 86

The Strange Face................................................. 91

At the Schooner’s Rail.......................................... 99

The Man Who Had Nowhere to Go.................105

The Evil-Looking Boatmen...............................111

The Locked Door...............................................119

The Crying of the Puma................................... 126

The Thing in the Forest.....................................131

The Crying of the Man......................................144

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The Hunting of the Man....................................150

The Sayers of the Law........................................158

A Parley...............................................................170

Doctor Moreau Explains.....................................177

Concerning the Beast Folk............................... 192

How the Beast Folk Taste Blood....................... 200

A Catastrophe.....................................................217

The Finding of Moreau..................................... 225

Mont g omer y ’s Bank Holiday........................231

Alone with the Beast Folk................................. 242

The Reversion of the Beast Folk........................ 250

The Man Alone.................................................. 266

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H.G.Wells — Photograph by George Charles Beresford, 1920

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H. G. Wells

~a biography~1

1 Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._G._Wells

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H erbert George Wells2 3 (21 September 1866

– 13 August 1946) was an English writer.
He was prolific in many genres, writing dozens
of novels, short stories, and works of social
commentary, satire, biography, and autobiography,
and even including two books on recreational war
games. He is now best remembered for his science
fiction novels and is often called a “father of
science fiction”, along with Jules Verne and Hugo
Gernsback.4 5
During his own lifetime, however, he was most
prominent as a forward-looking, even prophetic
social critic who devoted his literary talents to the
development of a progressive vision on a global
scale. A futurist, he wrote a number of utopian
works and foresaw the advent of aircraft, tanks,
space travel, nuclear weapons, satellite television
and something resembling the World Wide Web. 6
His science fiction imagined time travel, alien
invasion, invisibility, and biological engineering.
Brian Aldiss referred to Wells as the “Shakespeare

2 “Wells, H. G.”. Revised 20 May 2015. The Encyclopedia of Science Fic-

tion (sf-encyclopedia.com). Retrieved 2015-08-22. Entry by ‘JC/BS’,
John Clute and Brian Stableford.

3 Parrinder, Patrick (2004). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ox-

ford University Press.

4 Adam Charles Roberts (2000), “The History of Science Fiction”, page 48.
In Science Fiction, Routledge. ISBN 0-415-19204-8.

5 Siegel, Mark Richard (1988). Hugo Gernsback, Father of Modern Science

Fiction: With Essays on Frank Herbert and Bram Stoker. Borgo Pr. ISBN
0-89370-174-2.

6 “HG Wells: A visionary who should be remembered for his social predic-
tions, not just his scientific ones”. The Independent. 9 October 2017.

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of science fiction”.7 His most notable science

fiction works include The Time Machine (1895),
The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible
Man (1897), The War of the Worlds (1898) and
the military science fiction The War in the Air
(1907). Wells was nominated for the Nobel Prize
in Literature four times.8
Wells’s earliest specialised training was in
biology, and his thinking on ethical matters
took place in a specifically and fundamentally
Darwinian context.9 He was also from an early
date an outspoken socialist, often (but not always,
as at the beginning of the First World War)
sympathising with pacifist views. His later works
became increasingly political and didactic, and he
wrote little science fiction, while he sometimes
indicated on official documents that his profession
was that of journalist.10 Novels such as Kipps and
The History of Mr Polly, which describe lower-
middle-class life, led to the suggestion that he
was a worthy successor to Charles Dickens,11 but
Wells described a range of social strata and even

7 Wagar, W. Warren (2004). H. G. Wells: Traversing Time. Wesleyan Uni-

versity Press. p. 7.

8 “Nomination Database: Herbert G Wells”. Nobel Prize.org. Retrieved 19

March 2015.

9 Robert M. Philmus and David Y. Hughes, ed., H. G. Wells: Early Writ-

ings in Science and Science Fiction (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London:
University of California Press, 1975), p. 179.

10 Vincent Brome, H. G. Wells: A Biography (London, New York, and To-

ronto: Longmans, Green, 1951).

11 Vincent Brome, H. G. Wells: A Biography (London, New York, and To-

ronto: Longmans, Green, 1951), p. 99.

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attempted, in Tono-Bungay (1909), a diagnosis

of English society as a whole. A diabetic, Wells
co-founded the charity The Diabetic Association
(known today as Diabetes UK) in 1934.12

Life

E a r ly l i f e

H erbert George Wells was born at Atlas House,

162 High Street in Bromley, Kent,13 on 21
September 1866. Called “Bertie” in the family,
he was the fourth and last child of Joseph Wells
(a former domestic gardener, and at the time a
shopkeeper and professional cricketer) and his
wife, Sarah Neal (a former domestic servant). An
inheritance had allowed the family to acquire a
shop in which they sold china and sporting goods,
although it failed to prosper: the stock was old and

12 “H G Wells - Author, Historian, Teacher with Type 2 Diabetes”. www.

diabetes.co.uk. Retrieved 2019-02-18.

13 Wells, H. G. (2005) [1905]. Claeys, Gregory; Parrinder, Patrick, eds. A

Modern Utopia. Gregory Claeys, Francis Wheen, Andy Sawyer. Penguin
Classics. ISBN 978-0-14-144112-2.

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worn out, and the location was poor. Joseph Wells

managed to earn a meagre income, but little of it
came from the shop and he received an unsteady
amount of money from playing professional
cricket for the Kent county team.14 Payment for
skilled bowlers and batsmen came from voluntary
donations afterwards, or from small payments
from the clubs where matches were played.
A defining incident of young Wells’s life was
an accident in 1874 that left him bedridden with
a broken leg. To pass the time he began to read
books from the local library, brought to him by his
father. He soon became devoted to the other worlds
and lives to which books gave him access; they also
stimulated his desire to write. Later that year he
entered Thomas Morley’s Commercial Academy,
a private school founded in 1849, following the
bankruptcy of Morley’s earlier school. The teaching
was erratic, the curriculum mostly focused, Wells
later said, on producing copperplate handwriting
and doing the sort of sums useful to tradesmen.
Wells continued at Morley’s Academy until 1880. In
1877, his father, Joseph Wells, suffered a fractured
thigh. The accident effectively put an end to Joseph’s
career as a cricketer, and his subsequent earnings as
a shopkeeper were not enough to compensate for
the loss of the primary source of family income.15

14 Smith, David C. (1986) H. G. Wells: Desperately mortal. A biography.

Yale University Press, New Haven and London. ISBN 0-300-03672-8

“Sep. 21, 1866: Wells Springs Forth”. Wired. 9 October 2017.

15 

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Wells spent the winter of 1887/88 convalescing at

Uppark, where his mother, Sarah, was housekeeper.16
No longer able to support themselves financially,
the family instead sought to place their sons as
apprentices in various occupations.17 From 1880
to 1883, Wells had an unhappy apprenticeship
as a draper at the Southsea Drapery Emporium,
Hyde’s.18 His experiences at Hyde’s, where
he worked a thirteen-hour day and slept in a
dormitory with other apprentices, later inspired
his novels The Wheels of Chance, The History of
Mr Polly, and Kipps, which portray the life of a
draper’s apprentice as well as providing a critique of
society’s distribution of wealth.19
Wells’s parents had a turbulent marriage, owing
primarily to his mother’s being a Protestant and
his father’s being a freethinker. When his mother
returned to work as a lady’s maid (at Uppark, a
country house in Sussex), one of the conditions
of work was that she would not be permitted to
have living space for her husband and children.
Thereafter, she and Joseph lived separate lives,
though they never divorced and remained faithful
to each other. As a consequence, Herbert’s personal
troubles increased as he subsequently failed as

16 Nairn, Ian; Pevsner, Nikolaus (1965). The Buildings of England: Sussex.

Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. pp. 358–60. ISBN 0-14-071028-0.

17 “HG Wells: prophet of free love”. The Guardian. 11 October 2017.

18 Wells, Geoffrey H. (1925). The Works of H. G. Wells. London: Rout-

ledge. p. xvi. ISBN 0-86012-096-1. OCLC 458934085.

19 Batchelor, John (1985). H. G. Wells. Cambridge, England: Cambridge

University Press. p. 2. ISBN 0-521-27804-X.

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a draper and also, later, as a chemist’s assistant.

However, Uppark had a magnificent library in
which he immersed himself, reading many classic
works, including Plato’s Republic, Thomas More’s
Utopia, and the works of Daniel Defoe. 20 This
would be the beginning of Wells’s venture into
literature.

Te ac h e r

In October 1879, Wells’s mother arranged

through a distant relative, Arthur Williams, for him
to join the National School at Wookey in Somerset
as a pupil–teacher, a senior pupil who acted as a
teacher of younger children.[18] In December
that year, however, Williams was dismissed for
irregularities in his qualifications and Wells was
returned to Uppark. After a short apprenticeship at
a chemist in nearby Midhurst and an even shorter
stay as a boarder at Midhurst Grammar School, he
signed his apprenticeship papers at Hyde’s. In 1883,
Wells persuaded his parents to release him from
the apprenticeship, taking an opportunity offered
by Midhurst Grammar School again to become a
pupil–teacher; his proficiency in Latin and science
during his earlier short stay had been remembered.
The years he spent in Southsea had been the
most miserable of his life to that point, but his

20 Pilkington, Ace G. (2017). Science Fiction and Futurism: Their Terms

and Ideas. McFarland. p. 137.

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good fortune at securing a position at Midhurst

Grammar School meant that Wells could continue
his self-education in earnest. The following year,
Wells won a scholarship to the Normal School of
Science (later the Royal College of Science in South
Kensington, now part of Imperial College London)
in London, studying biology under Thomas Henry
Huxley. 21 As an alumnus, he later helped to set
up the Royal College of Science Association, of
which he became the first president in 1909. Wells
studied in his new school until 1887, with a weekly
allowance of 21 shillings (a guinea) thanks to his
scholarship. This ought to have been a comfortable
sum of money (at the time many working class
families had “round about a pound a week” as their
entire household income)22 yet in his Experiment
in Autobiography, Wells speaks of constantly being
hungry, and indeed photographs of him at the time
show a youth who is very thin and malnourished. 23
He soon entered the Debating Society of the
school. These years mark the beginning of his
interest in a possible reformation of society. At first
approaching the subject through Plato’s Republic,
he soon turned to contemporary ideas of socialism
as expressed by the recently formed Fabian Society
and free lectures delivered at Kelmscott House, the
home of William Morris. He was also among the

21 Batchelor, John (1985). H. G. Wells. CUP Archive. p. 164.

22 Reeves, M.S. Round About a Pound a Week. New York: Garland Pub.,
1980. ISBN 0-8240-0119-2. Some of the text is available online.

23 Brome, Vincent (2008). H. G. Wells. House of Stratus. p. 180.

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founders of The Science School Journal, a school

magazine that allowed him to express his views on
literature and society, as well as trying his hand at
fiction; a precursor to his novel The Time Machine
was published in the journal under the title The
Chronic Argonauts. The school year 1886–87 was
the last year of his studies.
During 1888, Wells stayed in Stoke-on-Trent,
living in Basford. The unique environment of The
Potteries was certainly an inspiration. He wrote in a
letter to a friend from the area that “the district made
an immense impression on me.” The inspiration for
some of his descriptions in The War of the Worlds
is thought to have come from his short time spent
here, seeing the iron foundry furnaces burn over
the city, shooting huge red light into the skies. His
stay in The Potteries also resulted in the macabre
short story “The Cone” (1895, contemporaneous
with his famous The Time Machine), set in the
north of the city. 24
After teaching for some time, he was briefly
on the staff of Holt Academy in Wales25 – Wells
found it necessary to supplement his knowledge
relating to educational principles and methodology
and entered the College of Preceptors (College
of Teachers). He later received his Licentiate and
Fellowship FCP diplomas from the College. It

24 Hammond, John R. (22 July 2014). A Preface to H G Wells. Routledge.

pp. 90–. ISBN 978-1-317-87701-1.

25 Bowman, Jamie (2016-10-03). “Teaching spell near Wrexham inspired

one of the nation’s greatest science fiction writers”. The Leader. Wrexham.
Retrieved 2018-05-13.

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was not until 1890 that Wells earned a Bachelor

of Science degree in zoology from the University
of London External Programme. In 1889–90, he
managed to find a post as a teacher at Henley House
School, where he taught A. A. Milne. 26 27 His first
published work was a Text-Book of Biology in two
volumes (1893). 28
Upon leaving the Normal School of Science,
Wells was left without a source of income. His aunt
Mary—his father’s sister-in-law—invited him to stay
with her for a while, which solved his immediate
problem of accommodation. During his stay at his
aunt’s residence, he grew increasingly interested
in her daughter, Isabel. He would later go on to
court her. To earn money, he began writing short
humorous articles for journals such as The Pall
Mall Gazette, later collecting these in volume form
as Select Conversations with an Uncle (1895) and
Certain Personal Matters (1897). So prolific did
Wells become at this mode of journalism that many
of his early pieces remain unidentified. According
to David C Smith, “Most of Wells’s occasional pieces
have not been collected, and many have not even
been identified as his. Wells did not automatically
receive the byline his reputation demanded until

26 “Hampstead: Education”. A History of the County of Middlesex. 9: 159–

169. 1989. Retrieved 9 June 2008.

27 Liukkonen, Petri. “A. A. Milne”. Books and Writers (kirjasto.sci.fi). Fin-

land: Kuusankoski Public Library. Archived from the original on 22 Feb-
ruary 2014.

28 H. G. Wells Under Revision: Proceedings of the International H. G. Wells

Symposium, London, July 1986. Associated University Presse. 1990. p.
123.

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after 1896 or so… As a result, many of his early

pieces are unknown. It is obvious that many early
Wells items have been lost.” 29 His success with
these shorter pieces encouraged him to write book-
length work, and he published his first novel, The
Time Machine, in 1895. 30

Personal life

In 1891, Wells married his cousin Isabel Mary

Wells. The couple agreed to separate in 1894 when he
fell in love with one of his students, Amy Catherine
Robbins (later known as Jane), with whom he moved
to Woking, Surrey in May 1895. They lived in a rented
house, ‘Lynton’, (now No.141) Maybury Road in the
town centre for just under 18 months31 and married at
St Pancras register office in October 1895.32 His short
period in Woking was perhaps the most creative and
productive of his whole writing career, for while there
he planned and wrote The War of the Worlds and
The Time Machine, completed The Island of Doctor
Moreau, wrote and published The Wonderful Visit

29 David C Smith (1986). H. G. Wells: Desperately Mortal: A Biography.

New Haven: Yale University Press. p. 35. ISBN 0300036728.

30 Hammond, John R. (2004). H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine: A Refer-

ence Guide. Westport, Conn.: Praeger. p. 50.

31 Wells In Woking: 150th Anniversary 1866–2016: Free Souvenir Pro-

gramme (PDF). Woking, Surrey: Woking Borough Council. 2016. pp.
4–5. Retrieved 5 March 2017.

32 Batchelor (1985: 165)

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and The Wheels of Chance, and began writing two

other early books, When the Sleeper Wakes and Love
and Mr Lewisham.33
In late summer 1896, Wells and Jane moved to a
larger house in Worcester Park, near Kingston upon
Thames, for two years; this lasted until his poor
health took them to Sandgate, near Folkestone, where
he constructed a large family home, Spade House,
in 1901. He had two sons with Jane: George Philip
(known as “Gip”; 1901–1985) and Frank Richard
(1903–1982).34
With his wife Jane’s consent, Wells had affairs
with a number of women, including the American
birth control activist Margaret Sanger, adventurer
and writer Odette Keun, Soviet spy Moura Budberg
and novelist Elizabeth von Arnim.35 In 1909, he had a
daughter, Anna-Jane, with the writer Amber Reeves,36
whose parents, William and Maud Pember Reeves, he
had met through the Fabian Society; and in 1914, a
son, Anthony West (1914–1987), by the novelist and
feminist Rebecca West, 26 years his junior.37 After

33 In the run-up to the 143rd anniversary of Wells’s birth, Google published
a cartoon riddle series with the solution being the coordinates of Woking’s
nearby Horsell Common—the location of the Martian landings in The
War Of The Worlds—described in newspaper article by Schofield, Jack
(21 September 2009). “HG Wells – Google reveals answer to teaser doo-
dles”. The Guardian. Retrieved 5 March 2017.

34 Wager, Warren W. (2004). H. G. Wells: Traversing Time. Wesleyan Uni-

versity Press. p. 295.

35 Lynn, Andrea (2001). Shadow Lovers: The Last Affairs of H. G. Wells.

Boulder, CO: Westview. pp. 10, 14, 47 et sec. ISBN 978-0-8133-3394-6.

36 Margaret Drabble (1 April 2005). “A room of her own”. The Guardian.

37 Liukkonen, Petri. “H. G. Wells”. Books and Writers (kirjasto.sci.fi). Fin-

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Beatrice Webb voiced disapproval of Wells’ “sordid

intrigue” with the daughter of veteran Fabian Sydney
Olivier, he responded by lampooning Beatrice Webb
and her husband Sidney Webb in his 1911 novel
The New Machiavelli as ‘Altiora and Oscar Bailey’,
a pair of short-sighted, bourgeois manipulators. In
Experiment in Autobiography (1934), Wells wrote: “I
was never a great amorist, though I have loved several
people very deeply”.38 David Lodge’s novel A Man
of Parts (2011)—a ‘narrative based on factual sources’
(author’s note)—gives a convincing and generally
sympathetic account of Wells’s relations with the
women mentioned above, and others.39 Director
Simon Wells (born 1961), the author’s great-grandson,
was a consultant on the future scenes in Back to the
Future Part II (1989).40

A rtist

One of the ways that Wells expressed himself was

through his drawings and sketches. One common
location for these was the endpapers and title pages
of his own diaries, and they covered a wide variety

land: Kuusankoski Public Library. Archived from the original on 21 Feb-

ruary 2015.

38 Wells, Herbert G. (1934). H. G. Wells: Experiment in Autobiography.

New York: J. B. Lippincott Co.

39 Lodge, David (2011). A Man of Parts. Random House.

40 “Simon Wells”. British Film Institute. 22 October 2017.

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of topics, from political commentary to his feelings

toward his literary contemporaries and his current
romantic interests. During his marriage to Amy
Catherine, whom he nicknamed Jane, he drew a
considerable number of pictures, many of them
being overt comments on their marriage. During
this period, he called these pictures “picshuas”.41
These picshuas have been the topic of study by
Wells scholars for many years, and in 2006, a book
was published on the subject.42

Wr i t e r

Some of his early novels, called “scientific

romances”, invented several themes now classic in
science fiction in such works as The Time Machine,
The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man,
The War of the Worlds, When the Sleeper Wakes,
and The First Men in the Moon. He also wrote
realistic novels that received critical acclaim,
including Kipps and a critique of English culture
during the Edwardian period, Tono-Bungay. Wells
also wrote dozens of short stories and novellas,
including, “The Flowering of the Strange Orchid”,
which helped bring the full impact of Darwin’s

41 “H. G. Wells’ cartoons, a window on his second marriage, focus of new

book | Archives | News Bureau”. University of Illinois. 31 May 2006. Re-
trieved 10 June 2012.

42 Rinkel, Gene and Margaret. The Picshuas of H. G. Wells: A burlesque

diary. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006. ISBN 0-252-03045-1
(cloth : acid-free paper).

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revolutionary botanical ideas to a wider public, and

was followed by many later successes such as “The
Country of the Blind” (1904).43
According to James Gunn, one of Wells’s major
contributions to the science fiction genre was his
approach, which he referred to as his “new system
of ideas”.44 In his opinion, the author should always
strive to make the story as credible as possible, even if
both the writer and the reader knew certain elements
are impossible, allowing the reader to accept the ideas
as something that could really happen, today referred
to as “the plausible impossible” and “suspension of
disbelief”. While neither invisibility nor time travel
was new in speculative fiction, Wells added a sense
of realism to the concepts which the readers were
not familiar with. He conceived the idea of using a
vehicle that allows an operator to travel purposely
and selectively forwards or backwards in time. The
term “time machine”, coined by Wells, is now almost
universally used to refer to such a vehicle. He explained
that while writing The Time Machine, he realized that
“the more impossible the story I had to tell, the more
ordinary must be the setting, and the circumstances
in which I now set the Time Traveller were all that
I could imagine of solid upper-class comforts.”45 In

43 “British Journal for the History of Science”. Cambridge University Press.

Retrieved 17 June 2016

44 “The Man Who Invented Tomorrow” In 1902, when Arnold Bennett was
writing a long article for Cosmopolitan about Wells as a serious writer,
Wells expressed his hope that Bennett would stress his “new system of
ideas”. Wells developed a theory to justify the way he wrote (he was fond
of theories), and these theories helped others write in similar ways.

45 “The Time Machine – Scientists and Gentlemen – WriteWork”. www.

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“Wells’s Law”, a science fiction story should contain

only a single extraordinary assumption. Being
aware the notion of magic as something real had
disappeared from society, he, therefore, used scientific
ideas and theories as a substitute for magic to justify
the impossible. Wells’s best-known statement of the
“law” appears in his introduction to The Scientific
Romances of H. G. Wells (1933),
As soon as the magic trick has been done the
whole business of the fantasy writer is to keep
everything else human and real. Touches of prosaic
detail are imperative and a rigorous adherence
to the hypothesis. Any extra fantasy outside the
cardinal assumption immediately gives a touch of
irresponsible silliness to the invention.46
Dr. Griffin/The Invisible Man is a brilliant research
scientist who discovers a method of invisibility, but finds
himself unable to reverse the process. An enthusiast
of random and irresponsible violence, Griffin has
become an iconic character in horror fiction.47 The
Island of Doctor Moreau sees a shipwrecked man left
on the island home of Doctor Moreau, a mad scientist
who creates human-like hybrid beings from animals
via vivisection.48 The earliest depiction of uplift, the
novel deals with a number of philosophical themes,

writework.com.

46 D. Behlkar, Ratnakar (2009). Science Fiction: Fantasy and Reality. Atlan-
tic Publishers & Dist. p. 19.

47 The Science of Fiction and the Fiction of Science: Collected Essays on SF

Storytelling and the Gnostic Imagination. McFarland. 2009. pp. 41, 42.

48 “Novels: The Island of Doctor Moreau”. Retrieved 16 October 2017.

26

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 ~ The Island of Dr. Moreau ~

including pain and cruelty, moral responsibility,

human identity, and human interference with
nature.49 Though Tono-Bungay is not a science-
fiction novel, radioactive decay plays a small but
consequential role in it. Radioactive decay plays a
much larger role in The World Set Free (1914). This
book contains what is surely his biggest prophetic
“hit”, with the first description of a nuclear weapon.50
Scientists of the day were well aware that the natural
decay of radium releases energy at a slow rate over
thousands of years. The rate of release is too slow to
have practical utility, but the total amount released is
huge. Wells’s novel revolves around an (unspecified)
invention that accelerates the process of radioactive
decay, producing bombs that explode with no more
than the force of ordinary high explosives—but which
“continue to explode” for days on end. “Nothing could
have been more obvious to the people of the earlier
twentieth century”, he wrote, “than the rapidity with
which war was becoming impossible… [but] they
did not see it until the atomic bombs burst in their
fumbling hands”. In 1932, the physicist and conceiver
of nuclear chain reaction Leó Szilárd read The
World Set Free (the same year Sir James Chadwick
discovered the neutron), a book which he said made a
great impression on him.51

49 Barnes & Noble. “The Island of Doctor Moreau: Original and Un-
abridged”. Barnes & Noble.

50 Wells, Herbert George (2001). The Last War: A World Set Free. Univer-
sity of Nebraska Press. p. XIX.

51 Richard Rhodes (1986). The Making of the Atomic Bomb. New York:
Simon & Schuster. p. 24. ISBN 0-684-81378-5.

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Wells also wrote non-fiction. His first non-

fiction bestseller was Anticipations of the Reaction
of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human
Life and Thought (1901). When originally serialised
in a magazine it was subtitled “An Experiment in
Prophecy”, and is considered his most explicitly
futuristic work. It offered the immediate political
message of the privileged sections of society
continuing to bar capable men from other classes
from advancement until war would force a need to
employ those most able, rather than the traditional
upper classes, as leaders. Anticipating what the world
would be like in the year 2000, the book is interesting
both for its hits (trains and cars resulting in the
dispersion of populations from cities to suburbs; moral
restrictions declining as men and women seek greater
sexual freedom; the defeat of German militarism, and
the existence of a European Union) and its misses (he
did not expect successful aircraft before 1950, and
averred that “my imagination refuses to see any sort
of submarine doing anything but suffocate its crew
and founder at sea”).52 53
His bestselling two-volume work, The Outline
of History (1920), began a new era of popularised
world history. It received a mixed critical response

52 “Annual HG Wells Award for Outstanding Contributions to Transhu-

manism”. Web.archive.org. 20 May 2009. Archived from the original on
20 May 2009. Retrieved 10 June 2012.

53 Turner, Frank Miller (1993). “Public Science in Britain 1880–1919”. Con-

testing Cultural Authority: Essays in Victorian Intellectual Life. Cam-
bridge University Press. pp. 219–20. ISBN 0-521-37257-7.

28

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 ~ The Island of Dr. Moreau ~

from professional historians. 54 However, it was very

popular amongst the general population and made
Wells a rich man. Many other authors followed
with “Outlines” of their own in other subjects. He
reprised his Outline in 1922 with a much shorter
popular work, A Short History of the World, a
history book praised by Albert Einstein, 55 and two
long efforts, The Science of Life (1930) and The
Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind (1931). 56
57
The “Outlines” became sufficiently common for
James Thurber to parody the trend in his humorous
essay, “An Outline of Scientists”—indeed, Wells’s
Outline of History remains in print with a new
2005 edition, while A Short History of the World
has been re-edited (2006). 58
From quite early in Wells’s career, he sought a
better way to organise society and wrote a number
of Utopian novels. The first of these was A Modern
Utopia (1905), which shows a worldwide utopia

54 “The Outline of History—H. G. Wells”. Cs.clemson.edu. 20 April 2003.

Archived from the original on 30 April 2009. Retrieved 21 September
2009.

55 Einstein, Albert (1994). “Education and World Peace, A Message to the

Progressive Education Association, November 23, 1934”. Ideas and Opin-
ions: With An Introduction by Alan Lightman, Based on Mein Weltbild,
edited by Carl Seelig, and Other Sources, New Translations and Revisions
by Sonja Bargmann. New York: The Modern Library. p. 63.

56 H. G. Wells, The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind (London:

William Heinemann, 1932), p. 812.

57 “Wells, H. G. 1922. A Short History of the World”. Bartleby.com. Ar-

chived from the original on 19 October 2009. Retrieved 21 September
2009.

58 Wells, H. G. (2006). A Short History of the World. Penguin UK.

29

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with “no imports but meteorites, and no exports

at all”;59 two travellers from our world fall into its
alternate history. The others usually begin with the
world rushing to catastrophe, until people realise a
better way of living: whether by mysterious gases
from a comet causing people to behave rationally
and abandoning a European war (In the Days of
the Comet (1906)), or a world council of scientists
taking over, as in The Shape of Things to Come
(1933, which he later adapted for the 1936 Alexander
Korda film, Things to Come). This depicted, all too
accurately, the impending World War, with cities
being destroyed by aerial bombs. He also portrayed
the rise of fascist dictators in The Autocracy of Mr
Parham (1930) and The Holy Terror (1939). Men
Like Gods (1923) is also a utopian novel. Wells in this
period was regarded as an enormously influential
figure; the critic Malcolm Cowley stated: “by the
time he was forty, his influence was wider than any
other living English writer”.60
Wells contemplates the ideas of nature and nurture
and questions humanity in books such as The Island
of Doctor Moreau. Not all his scientific romances
ended in a Utopia, and Wells also wrote a dystopian
novel, When the Sleeper Wakes (1899, rewritten as
The Sleeper Awakes, 1910), which pictures a future
society where the classes have become more and
more separated, leading to a revolt of the masses

A Modern Utopia
59 

60 Cowley, Malcolm. “Outline of Wells’s History”. The New Republic Vol.

81 Issue 1041, 14 November 1934 (pp. 22–23).

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against the rulers.61 The Island of Doctor Moreau is

even darker. The narrator, having been trapped on
an island of animals vivisected (unsuccessfully) into
human beings, eventually returns to England; like
Gulliver on his return from the Houyhnhnms, he
finds himself unable to shake off the perceptions of
his fellow humans as barely civilised beasts, slowly
reverting to their animal natures.62
Wells also wrote the preface for the first edition
of W. N. P. Barbellion’s diaries, The Journal of
a Disappointed Man, published in 1919. Since
“Barbellion” was the real author’s pen name, many
reviewers believed Wells to have been the true
author of the Journal; Wells always denied this,
despite being full of praise for the diaries.63
In 1927, a Canadian teacher and writer Florence
Deeks unsuccessfully sued Wells for infringement
of copyright and breach of trust, claiming that much
of The Outline of History had been plagiarised
from her unpublished manuscript,64 The Web of
the World’s Romance, which had spent nearly nine

61 William Steinhoff, “Utopia Reconsidered: Comments on 1984” 153, in

Eric S. Rabkin, Martin H. Greenberg, and Joseph D. Olander, eds., No
Place Else: Explorations in Utopian and Dystopian Fiction. ISBN 0-8093-
1113-5.

62 Wells, H. G. (2005). The Island of Dr Moreau. “Fear and Trembling”.

Penguin UK.

63 “A Barbellion Chronology”. Quotable Barbellion. Retrieved 21 October

2017

64 At the time of the alleged infringement in 1919–20, unpublished works

were protected in Canada under common law.Magnusson, Denis N.
(Spring 2004). “Hell Hath No Fury: Copyright Lawyers’ Lessons from
Deeks v. Wells”. Queen’s Law Journal. 29: 692, note 39.

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months in the hands of Wells’s Canadian publisher,

Macmillan Canada.65However, it was sworn on
oath at the trial that the manuscript remained in
Toronto in the safekeeping of Macmillan, and that
Wells did not even know it existed, let alone had
seen it.66 The court found no proof of copying, and
decided the similarities were due to the fact that the
books had similar nature and both writers had access
to the same sources.67 In 2000, A. B. McKillop,
a professor of history at Carleton University,
produced a book on the case, The Spinster & The
Prophet: Florence Deeks, H. G. Wells, and the
Mystery of the Purloined Past.68 According to
McKillop, the lawsuit was unsuccessful due to the
prejudice against a woman suing a well-known and
famous male author, and he paints a detailed story
based on the circumstantial evidence of the case.69
In 2004, Denis N. Magnusson, Professor Emeritus
of the Faculty of Law, Queen’s University, Ontario,
published an article on Deeks v. Wells. This re-
examines the case in relation to McKillop’s book.
While having some sympathy for Deeks, he argues
that she had a weak case that was not well presented,

65 Magnusson, Denis N. (Spring 2004). “Hell Hath No Fury: Copyright

Lawyers’ Lessons from Deeks v. Wells”. Queen’s Law Journal. 29: 682.

66 Clarke, Arthur C. (March 1978). “Professor Irwin and the Deeks Affair”.
p. 91. Science Fiction Studies. SF-TH Inc. 5

Florence A. Deeks v H.G. Wells… Supreme Court, p. 9.

67 

68 McKillop, A. B. (2000) Macfarlane Walter & Ross, Toronto.

69 Deeks, Florence A. (1930s) “Plagiarism?” unpublished typescript, copy in

Deeks Fonds, Baldwin Room, Toronto Reference Library, Toronto, On-
tario.

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and though she may have met with sexism from her
lawyers, she received a fair trial, adding that the law
applied is essentially the same law that would be
applied to a similar case today (i.e., 2004).70
In 1933, Wells predicted in The Shape of Things
to Come that the world war he feared would begin
in January 1940,71 a prediction which ultimately
came true four months early, in September 1939,
with the outbreak of World War II.72 In 1936,
before the Royal Institution, Wells called for the
compilation of a constantly growing and changing
World Encyclopaedia, to be reviewed by outstanding
authorities and made accessible to every human
being. In 1938, he published a collection of essays on
the future organisation of knowledge and education,
World Brain, including the essay “The Idea of a
Permanent World Encyclopaedia”.73
Prior to 1933, Wells’s books were widely read
in Germany and Austria, and most of his science
fiction works had been translated shortly after
publication.74 By 1933, he had attracted the attention

70 Magnusson, Denis N. (Spring 2004). “Hell Hath No Fury: Copyright

Lawyers’ Lessons from Deeks v. Wells”. Queen’s Law Journal. 29: 680,
684.

71 “9. The Last War Cyclone, 1940–50”. The shape of things to come: the
ultimate revolution (Penguin 2005 ed.). 1933. p. 208. ISBN 0-14-144104-
6.

72 Wagar, W. Warren (2004). H. G. Wells: traversing time. Middletown,

Conn: Wesleyan University Press. p. 209. ISBN 0-8195-6725-6.

73 Wells, H. G. (1938). World Brain. London: Methuen & Co., Ltd.; Garden
City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Co., Inc. Ebook: World Brain

74 Patrick Parrinder and John S. Partington (2005). The Reception of H. G.

Wells in Europe. pp. 106–108. Bloomsbury Publishing.

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 ~ H.G.Wells ~

of German officials because of his criticism of the

political situation in Germany, and on 10 May 1933,
Wells’s books were burned by the Nazi youth in
Berlin’s Opernplatz, and his works were banned
from libraries and book stores. Wells, as president
of PEN International (Poets, Essayists, Novelists),
angered the Nazis by overseeing the expulsion of the
German PEN club from the international body in
1934 following the German PEN’s refusal to admit
non-Aryan writers to its membership. At a PEN
conference in Ragusa, Wells refused to yield to Nazi
sympathisers who demanded that the exiled author
Ernst Toller be prevented from speaking. Near the
end of the World War II, Allied forces discovered
that the SS had compiled lists of people slated for
immediate arrest during the invasion of Britain in the
abandoned Operation Sea Lion, with Wells included
in the alphabetical list of “The Black Book”.75
Seeking a more structured way to play war games,
Wells also wrote Floor Games (1911) followed by
Little Wars (1913), which set out rules for fighting
battles with toy soldiers (miniatures).76 Little Wars is
recognised today as the first recreational war game
and Wells is regarded by gamers and hobbyists as
“the Father of Miniature War Gaming”.77 A pacifist
prior to the First World War, Wells stated “how
much better is this amiable miniature [war] than

75 Wells, Frank. H. G. Wells—A Pictorial Biography. London: Jupiter Books,

1977, p. 91.

76 Rundle, Michael (9 April 2013). “How H. G. Wells Invented Modern War

Games 100 Years Ago”. The Huffington Post.

77 The Miniatures Page. The World of Miniatures—An Overview.

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 ~ The Island of Dr. Moreau ~

the real thing”. According to Wells, the idea of

the miniature war game developed from a visit by
his friend Jerome K. Jerome. After dinner, Jerome
began shooting down toy soldiers with a toy
cannon and Wells joined in to compete.

Tr av e l s t o R u s s i a

Wells visited Russia three times: 1914, 1920 and

1934. During his second visit, he saw his old friend
Maxim Gorky and with Gorky’s help, met Vladimir
Lenin. In his book Russia in the Shadows, Wells
portrayed Russia as recovering from a total social
collapse, “the completest that has ever happened to
any modern social organisation.” 78 On 23 July 1934,
after visiting U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt,
Wells went to the Soviet Union and interviewed
Joseph Stalin for three hours for the New Statesman
magazine, which was extremely rare at that time.
He told Stalin how he had seen ‘the happy faces of
healthy people’ in contrast with his previous visit
to Moscow in 1920.79 However, he also criticised
the lawlessness, class-based discrimination, state
violence, and absence of free expression. Stalin
enjoyed the conversation and replied accordingly.
As the chairman of the London-based PEN Club,

78 H. G. Wells, Russia in the Shadows (New York: George H. Doran, 1921),
p. 21.

79 “H. G. Wells Interviews Joseph Stalin in 1934; Declares “I Am More to

The Left Than You, Mr. Stalin””. Open Culture. Retrieved 3 June 2018.

35

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 ~ H.G.Wells ~

which protected the rights of authors to write

without being intimidated, Wells hoped by his
trip to USSR, he could win Stalin over by force of
argument. Before he left, he realized that no reform
was to happen in the near future.80 81

Final years

Wells’s literary reputation declined as he spent

his later years promoting causes that were rejected
by most of his contemporaries as well as by younger
authors whom he had previously influenced. In this
connection, George Orwell described Wells as
“too sane to understand the modern world”.82 G. K.
Chesterton quipped: “Mr Wells is a born storyteller
who has sold his birthright for a pot of message”.83

80 Service, Robert (2007). Comrades. London: Macmillan. p. 205.

81 “MARXISM VERSUS LIBERALISM”. Red Star Press Ltd. Retrieved 3

June 2018.

82 Orwell, George (August 1941). “Wells, Hitler and the World State”. Hori-
zon. Archived from the original on 18 January 2016.

83 Chesterton’s reference is to the biblical “mess of pottage”, implying that

Wells had sold out his artistic birthright in mid-career: Rolfe, Christo-
pher; Parrinder, Patrick (1990). H. G. Wells under revision: proceedings
of the International H. G. Wells Symposium, London, July 1986. Selins-
grove, PA: Susquehanna University Press. p. 9. ISBN 0-945636-05-9.

36

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Wells had diabetes,84 and was a co-founder in 1934

of The Diabetic Association (now Diabetes UK, the
leading charity for people with diabetes in the UK).85
On 28 October 1940, on the radio station
KTSA in San Antonio, Texas, Wells took part in
a radio interview with Orson Welles, who two
years previously had performed a famous radio
adaptation of The War of the Worlds. During the
interview, by Charles C Shaw, a KTSA radio host,
Wells admitted his surprise at the widespread panic
that resulted from the broadcast but acknowledged
his debt to Welles for increasing sales of one of his
“more obscure” titles.86

D e at h

Wells died of unspecified causes on 13 August

1946, aged 79, at his home at 13 Hanover Terrace,
overlooking Regent’s Park, London.87 88 Some
reports also say he died of a heart attack at the

84 “HG Wells—Diabetes UK”. Diabetes.org.uk. 14 April 2008. Archived

from the original on 6 January 2011. Retrieved 10 June 2012.

85 “Diabetes UK: Our History”. diabetes.org.uk. Retrieved 10 December

2015

86 Flynn, John L. “The legacy of Orson Welles and the Radio Broadcast”.
War of the Worlds: from Wells to Spielberg by. Owens Mills, MD: Galac-
tic. p. 45. ISBN 978-0-9769400-0-5.

87 “H. G. Wells Dies in London”. St. Petersburg Times. 13 August 1946.

Retrieved 29 October 2008.

88 “Calendar”. Classics & Cheese. Archived from the original on 18 February

2008. Retrieved 12 February 2008.

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 ~ H.G.Wells ~

flat of a friend in London. In his preface to the

1941 edition of The War in the Air, Wells had
stated that his epitaph should be: “I told you so.
You damned fools”.89 Wells’ body was cremated
at Golders Green Crematorium on 16 August
1946; his ashes were subsequently scattered into
the English Channel at “Old Harry Rocks”.90
A commemorative blue plaque in his honour was
installed at his home in Regent’s Park in 1966.91

Political views

An avid reader of Wells’ books, Winston

Churchill wrote to the author in 1906, stating
“I owe you a great debt”, two days before giving
an early landmark speech that the state should
support its citizens, providing pensions, insurance
and child welfare.92

89 “Preface to the 1941 edition of The War in the Air”. Archived from the
original on 22 December 2008. Retrieved 11 February 2008.

90 West, Anthony. H. G. Wells: Aspects of a Life, p. 153. London: Hutchin-

son & Co, 1984. ISBN 0-09-134540-5.

91 “H. G. Wells (1866 - 1946)”. Blue Plaques. English Heritage.

92 “Churchill ‘borrowed’ famous lines from books by HG Wells”. The Inde-

pendent. 22 October 2017.

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Wells called his political views socialist. His

contemporary political impact was limited,
however, excluding his fiction’s positivist stance
on the leaps that could be made by physics towards
world peace. Winston Churchill was an avid reader
of Wells’ books, and after they first met in 1902
they kept in touch until Wells died in 1946. As
a junior minister Churchill borrowed lines from
Wells for one of his most famous early landmark
speeches in 1906, and as Prime Minister the
phrase “the gathering storm” — used by Churchill
to describe the rise of Nazi Germany — had been
written by Wells in The War of the Worlds, which
depicts an attack on Britain by Martians. Wells’s
extensive writings on equality and human rights,
most notably his most influential work, The Rights
of Man (1940), laid the groundwork for the 1948
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which
was adopted by the United Nations shortly after
his death.93 94
His efforts regarding the League of Nations,
on which he collaborated on the project with
Leonard Woolf with the booklets The Idea of a
League of Nations, Prolegomena to the Study of
World Organization, and The Way of the League
of Nations, became a disappointment as the
organization turned out to be a weak one unable
to prevent the Second World War, which itself

93 ‘Human Rights and Public Accountability in H. G. Wells’ Functional

World State’ | John Partington. Academia.edu. Retrieved on 9 August
2013.

94 “The scandalous sex life of HG Wells”. The Telegraph. 12 September 2017.

39

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 ~ H.G.Wells ~

occurred towards the very end of his life and only

increased the pessimistic side of his nature.95 In his
last book Mind at the End of Its Tether (1945), he
considered the idea that humanity being replaced
by another species might not be a bad idea. He
referred to the era between the two World Wars as
“The Age of Frustration”.96

Religious views

Wells wrote in his book God the Invisible King

(1917) that his idea of God did not draw upon the
traditional religions of the world:
This book sets out as forcibly and exactly as
possible the religious belief of the writer. [Which]
is a profound belief in a personal and intimate
God… Putting the leading idea of this book very
roughly, these two antagonistic typical conceptions
of God may be best contrasted by speaking of one
of them as God-as-Nature or the Creator, and of
the other as God-as-Christ or the Redeemer. One
is the great Outward God; the other is the Inmost

95 Herbert Wells, The Fate of Homo Sapiens, (London: Secker & Warburg,
1939), p 89-90.

96 Herbert George Wells Newsletter, Volume 2. p. 10. H. G. Wells Society,

1981

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God. The first idea was perhaps developed most

highly and completely in the God of Spinoza. It
is a conception of God tending to pantheism, to
an idea of a comprehensive God as ruling with
justice rather than affection, to a conception of
aloofness and awestriking worshipfulness. The
second idea, which is opposed to this idea of an
absolute God, is the God of the human heart. The
writer would suggest that the great outline of the
theological struggles of that phase of civilisation
and world unity which produced Christianity,
was a persistent but unsuccessful attempt to get
these two different ideas of God into one focus.97
Later in the work, he aligns himself with a
“renascent or modern religion… neither atheist nor
Buddhist nor Mohammedan nor Christian… [that]
he has found growing up in himself”.98
Of Christianity, he said: “it is not now true
for me… Every believing Christian is, I am sure,
my spiritual brother… but if systemically I called
myself a Christian I feel that to most men I should
imply too much and so tell a lie”. Of other world
religions, he writes: “All these religions are true for
me as Canterbury Cathedral is a true thing and as
a Swiss chalet is a true thing. There they are, and
they have served a purpose, they have worked. Only
they are not true for me to live in them… They do

97 Wells, H. G. (1917). “Preface”. God the Invisible King. London: Cassell.

ISBN 0-585-00604-0. OCLC 261326125.

98 Wells (1917: “The cosmology of modern religion”).

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 ~ H.G.Wells ~

not work for me”.99 In The Fate of Homo Sapiens

(1939), Wells criticised almost all world religions
and philosophies, stating “there is no creed, no way
of living left in the world at all, that really meets
the needs of the time… When we come to look
at them coolly and dispassionately, all the main
religions, patriotic, moral and customary systems
in which human beings are sheltering today, appear
to be in a state of jostling and mutually destructive
movement, like the houses and palaces and other
buildings of some vast, sprawling city overtaken by
a landslide.100

Literary influence

The science fiction historian John Clute describes

Wells as “the most important writer the genre
has yet seen”, and notes his work has been central
to both British and American science fiction.101
Science fiction author and critic Algis Budrys said
Wells “remains the outstanding expositor of both

99 Wells, H. G. (1908). First & last things; a confession of faith and rules of
life. Putnam. pp. 77–80. OCLC 68958585.

100 The Fate of Homo Sapiens, p 291.

101 John Clute, Science Fiction :The Illustrated Encyclopedia. Dorling

Kindersley London, ISBN 0751302023 p. 114–15.

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the hope, and the despair, which are embodied in

the technology and which are the major facts of life
in our world”.102 He was nominated for the Nobel
Prize in Literature in 1921, 1932, 1935, and 1946.
Wells so influenced real exploration of Mars that an
impact crater on the planet was named after him.103
In Britain, Wells’s work was a key model
for the British “Scientific Romance”, and other
writers in that mode, such as Olaf Stapledon104, J.
D. Beresford105, S. Fowler Wright106, and Naomi
Mitchison107, all drew on Wells’s example. Wells
was also an important influence on British science
fiction of the period after the Second World War,

102 Budrys, Algis (September 1968). “Galaxy Bookshelf”. Galaxy Science Fic-
tion. pp. 187–193.

103 Sagan, Carl (1978-05-28). “Growing up with Science Fiction”. The New
York Times. p. SM7. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2018-12-12.

104 A ndy Sawyer, “[William] Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950)”, in Fifty Key Fig-
ures in Science Fiction. New York: Routledge, 2010. ISBN 0203874706
(pp. 205–210).

105 R ichard Bleiler, “John Davis Beresford (1873–1947)” in Darren Har-

ris-Fain, ed. British Fantasy and Science Fiction Writers Before World
War I. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1997. pp. 27–34. ISBN 0810399415.

106 Brian Stableford, “Against the New Gods: The Speculative Fiction
of S. Fowler Wright”. in Against the New Gods and Other Essays
on Writers of Imaginative Fiction Wildside Press LLC, 2009 ISBN
1434457435 (pp. 9–90).

107 “Mitchison, Naomi”, in Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature: A Check-

list, 1700–1974: With Contemporary Science Fiction Authors II. Robert
Reginald, Douglas Menville, Mary A. Burgess. Detroit—Gale Research
Company. ISBN 0810310511 p. 1002.

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with Arthur C. Clarke108 and Brian Aldiss109

expressing strong admiration for Wells’s work.
Among contemporary British science fiction
writers, Stephen Baxter, Christopher Priest and
Adam Roberts have all acknowledged Wells’s
influence on their writing; all three are Vice-
Presidents of the H. G. Wells Society. He also had a
strong influence on British scientist J. B. S. Haldane,
who wrote Daedalus; or, Science and the Future
(1924), “The Last Judgement” and “On Being
the Right Size” from the essay collection Possible
Worlds (1927), and Biological Possibilities for the
Human Species in the Next Ten Thousand Years
(1963), which are speculations about the future of
human evolution and life on other planets. Haldane
gave several lectures about these topics which in
turn influenced other science fiction writers.110 111
In the United States, Hugo Gernsback reprinted
most of Wells’s work in the pulp magazine Amazing
Stories, regarding Wells’s work as “texts of central
importance to the self-conscious new genre”.
Later American writers such as Ray Bradbury112 ,

108 Michael D. Sharp, Popular Contemporary Writers, Marshall Cavendish,

2005 ISBN 0761476016 p. 422.

109 Michael R. Collings, Brian Aldiss. Mercer Island, WA : Starmont House,

1986. ISBN 0916732746 p. 60.

110 Hughes, JJ. “Back to the future. Contemporary biopolitics in 1920s’ Brit-
ish futurism”. EMBO Rep. 9 Suppl 1: S59–63. doi:10.1038/embor.2008.68.
PMC 3327541. PMID 18578028.

111 “On Being the Right Size – J. B. S. Haldane” (PDF).

112 “Ray Bradbury”. Strand Mag.

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Isaac Asimov113, Frank Herbert114 and Ursula K.

Le Guin115 all recalled being influenced by Wells’s
work.
Sinclair Lewis’s early novels were strongly
influenced by Wells’s realistic social novels, such as
The History of Mr Polly; Lewis would also name
his first son Wells after the author.116
In an interview with The Paris Review, Vladimir
Nabokov described Wells as his favourite writer
when he was a boy and “a great artist.”117 He went on
to cite The Passionate Friends, Ann Veronica, The
Time Machine, and The Country of the Blind as
superior to anything else written by Wells’s British
contemporaries. In an apparent allusion to Wells’s
socialism and political themes, Nabokov said: “His
sociological cogitations can be safely ignored, of
course, but his romances and fantasies are superb.”
Jorge Luis Borges wrote many short pieces on
Wells in which he demonstrates a deep familiarity
with much of Wells’s work.118 While Borges

113 In Memory Yet Green: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov 1920–1954.
Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1979. p. 167.

114 “Vertex Magazine Interview”. Archived from the original on 21 October

2012. Retrieved 21 October 2012. with Frank Herbert, by Paul Turner,
October 1973, Volume 1, Issue 4.

115John Huntington, “Utopian and Anti-Utopian Logic: H. G. Wells and his

Successors”. Science Fiction Studies, July 1982.

116 “The Romance of Sinclair Lewis”. The New York Review of Books. 22
September 2017.

117 Gold, Interviewed by Herbert. “Vladimir Nabokov, The Art of Fiction

No. 40”. The Paris Review. Retrieved 2017-02-09.

118 Borges, Jorge Luis. The Total Library. Edited by Eliot Weinberger. Lon-
don: Penguin Books, 1999. Pp. 150.

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wrote several critical reviews, including a mostly

negative review of Wells’s film Things to Come,119
he regularly treated Wells as a canonical figure of
fantastic literature. Late in his life, Borges included
The Invisible Man and The Time Machine in his
Prologue to a Personal Library,120 a curated list of
100 great works of literature that he undertook
at the behest of the Argentine publishing house
Emecé. Canadian author Margaret Atwood read
Wells’ books, and he also inspired writers of
European speculative fiction such as Karel Čapek
and Yevgeny Zamyatin.

Representations

Liter a ry

The superhuman protagonist of J. D. Beresford’s

1911 novel, The Hampdenshire Wonder, Victor
Stott, was based on Wells.

119 Borges, Jorge Luis. “Wells the Visionary” in The Total Library. Edited by
Eliot Weinberger. London: Penguin Books, 1999. Pp. 150.

120 “Jorge Luis Borges Selects 74 Books for Your Personal Library”. Open
culture.

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In M. P. Shiel’s short story “The Primate of the

Rose” (1928), there is an unpleasant womaniser
named E. P. Crooks, who was written as a parody
of Wells.121 Wells had attacked Shiel’s Prince Zaleski
when it was published in 1895, and this was Shiel’s
response. Wells praised Shiel’s The Purple Cloud
(1901); in turn Shiel expressed admiration for Wells,
referring to him at a speech to the Horsham Rotary
Club in 1933 as “my friend Mr. Wells”.
In C. S. Lewis’s novel That Hideous Strength
(1945), the character Jules is a caricature of Wells,122
and much of Lewis’s science fiction was written both
under the influence of Wells and as an antithesis to
his work (or, as he put it, an “exorcism”123 of the
influence it had on him).
In Brian Aldiss’s novella The Saliva Tree (1966),
Wells has a small off screen guest role.124
In Saul Bellow’s novel Mr. Sammler’s Planet
(1970), Wells is one of several historical figures the
protagonist met when he was a young man.125

121 George Hay, “Shiel Versus the Renegade Romantic”, in A. Reynolds

Morse, Shiel in Diverse Hands: A Collection of Essays. Cleveland, OH:
Reynolds Morse Foundation, 1983. pp. 109–113.

122 Rolfe; Parrinder (1990: 226)

123 L ewis, C. S., Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life. New York &
London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1955. p. 36.

124 “H.G. Wells: First Citizen of the Future”. Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. p.
173.

125 R . A. York, The Extension of Life: Fiction and History in the American
Novel. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003. ISBN 0838639895. p.
40.

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In The Map of Time (2008) by Spanish author

Félix J. Palma; Wells is one of several historical
characters.126
Wells is one of the two Georges in Paul Levinson’s
2013 time-travel novelette, “Ian, George, and
George,” published in Analog magazine.127

D r a m at ic

Rod Taylor portrays Wells128 129 in the 1960

science fiction film The Time Machine (based on
the novel of the same name), in which Wells uses his
time machine to try and find his Utopian society.
Malcolm McDowell portrays Wells in the 1979
science fiction film Time After Time, in which
Wells uses a time machine to pursue Jack the Ripper
to the present day. In the film, Wells meets “Amy” in
the future who then returns to 1893 to become his
second wife Amy Catherine Robbins.
Wells is portrayed in the 1985 story Timelash
from the 22nd season of the BBC science-fiction

126 L enny Picker (2011-04-04). “Victorian Time Travel: PW Talks with Fe-
lix J. Palma”. Publishersweekly.com. Retrieved 2012-01-17.

127 Paul Levinson, “Ian, George, and George,” Analog, December, 2013.

128 Booker, M. Keith (2006). Alternate Americas: Science Fiction Film and
American Culture. Westport: Praeger Publishing. p. 199. ISBN 978-0-
275-98395-6.

129 Palumbo, Donald E. (2014). The Monomyth in American Science Fiction

Films. Jefferson: McFarland & Company. pp. 33–38. ISBN 978-0-786-
47911-5.

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television series Doctor Who. In this story, Herbert,

an enthusiastic temporary companion to the Doctor,
is revealed to be a young H. G. Wells. The plot is
loosely based upon the themes and characters of
The Time Machine with references to The War of
the Worlds, The Invisible Man and The Island of
Doctor Moreau. The story jokingly suggests that
Wells’s inspiration for his later novels came from his
adventure with the Sixth Doctor.130
In the BBC2 anthology series Encounters about
imagined meetings between historical figures,
Beautiful Lies, by Paul Pender (15 August 1992)
centred on an acrimonious dinner party attended by
Wells (Richard Todd), George Orwell ( Jon Finch),
and William Empson (Patrick Ryecart).
The character of Wells also appeared in several
episodes of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of
Superman (1993–1997), usually pitted against the
time-travelling villain known as Tempus (Lane
Davies). Wells’s younger self was played by Terry
Kiser, and the older Wells was played by Hamilton
Camp.
In the British TV mini-series The Infinite Worlds
of H. G. Wells (2001), several of Wells’s short stories
are dramatised but are adapted using Wells himself
(Tom Ward) as the main protagonist in each story.
In the Disney Channel Original Series Phil of the
Future, which centres on time-travel, the present-

130“Timelash”. BBC. Retrieved 15 April 2017.

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 ~ H.G.Wells ~

day high school that the main characters attend is

named “H. G. Wells”.131
In the 2006 television docudrama H. G. Wells: War
with the World, Wells is played by Michael Sheen.132
On the science fiction television series Warehouse
13 (2009–2014), there is a female version Helena G.
Wells. When she appeared she explained that her
brother was her front for her writing because a female
science fiction author would not be accepted.133
Comedian Paul F. Tompkins portrays a fictional
Wells as the host of The Dead Authors Podcast,
wherein Wells uses his time machine to bring dead
authors (played by other comedians) to the present
and interview them.134 135
H. G. Wells as a young boy appears in the Legends
of Tomorrow episode “The Magnificent Eight”. In
this story, the boy Wells is dying of consumption
but is cured by a time-travelling Martin Stein.
In the four part series The Nightmare Worlds of H.
G. Wells (2016), Wells is played by Ray Winstone.136

131 “Phil of the Future Arch Enemies”. MTV. Retrieved 15 April 2017

132 “H G Wells: War With The World”. BBC. 22 October 2017.

133 “Warehouse 13: About the Series”. Syfy.com. Archived from the original
on 6 October 2016. Retrieved 15 April 2017.

134 Hardwick, Robin (21 April 2015). “Best Podcasts of the Week”. Entertain-
ment Weekly.

135 McWeeny, Drew (19 July 2015). “’Battlefield Earth’ is no longer the fun-
niest thing to result from Scientology”. Hitfix.

136 “Ray Winstone stars as HG Wells”. The Independent. 22 October 2017.

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In the 2017 television series version of Time

After Time, based on the 1979 film, H. G. Wells is
portrayed by Freddie Stroma.137

Literary papers

In 1954, the University of Illinois at Urbana–

Champaign purchased the H. G. Wells literary
papers and correspondence collection.138 The
University’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library
holds the largest collection of Wells manuscripts,
correspondence, first editions and publications in
the United States.139 Among these is an unpublished
material and the manuscripts of such works as
The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine.
The collection includes first editions, revisions,
translations. The letters contain general family
correspondence, communications from publishers,
material regarding the Fabian Society, and letters

137 Wagmeister, Elizabeth (17 February 2016). “ABC’s ‘Time After Time’ Pi-
lot Casts Josh Bowman, Freddie Stroma as Jack the Ripper & H. G. Wells”.
Variety. Retrieved 2017-03-09.

138 Wagmeister, Elizabeth (17 February 2016). “ABC’s ‘Time After Time’ Pi-
lot Casts Josh Bowman, Freddie Stroma as Jack the Ripper & H. G. Wells”.
Variety. Retrieved 2017-03-09.

139 “H. G. Wells Correspondence”. Library Illinois.

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 ~ H.G.Wells ~

from politicians and public figures, most notably

George Bernard Shaw and Joseph Conrad.

Bibliography

Science fiction magazine editors Hugo Gernsback

and John W. Campbell were the inaugural deceased
members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall
of Fame, inducted in 1996 and followed annually
by fiction writers Wells and Isaac Asimov, C. L.
Moore and Robert Heinlein, Abraham Merritt and
Jules Verne.140

140 “Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame”. Mid American Science Fic-
tion and Fantasy Conventions, Inc. (midamerican.org). 22 February
2008. Archived from the original on 22 July 2015. Retrieved 2015-08-22.
Last updated in 2008, this was the official homepage of the Hall of Fame
to 2004.

52

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Further reading

• Dickson, Lovat. H. G. Wells: His Turbulent

Life & Times. 1969.
• Gilmour, David. The Long Recessional: The
Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling. New York:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002 (paperback,
ISBN 0-374-18702-9); 2003 (paperback, ISBN
0-374-52896-9).
• Gomme, A. W., Mr. Wells as Historian.
Glasgow: MacLehose, Jackson, and Co., 1921.
• Gosling, John. Waging the War of the Worlds.
Jefferson, North Carolina, McFarland, 2009
(paperback, ISBN 0-7864-4105-4).
• Mackenzie, Norman and Jean, The Time
Traveller: the Life of H G Wells, London:
Weidenfeld, 1973, ISBN 0-2977-6531-0
• Mauthner, Martin. German Writers in French
Exile, 1933–1940, London: Vallentine and
Mitchell, 2007, ISBN 978-0-85303-540-4.
• McLean, Steven. ‘The Early Fiction of H. G.
Wells: Fantasies of Science’. Palgrave, 2009,
ISBN 9780230535626.
• Partington, John S. Building Cosmopolis: The
Political Thought of H. G. Wells. Ashgate,
2003, ISBN 978-0754633839.

53

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 ~ H.G.Wells ~

• Sherborne. Michael. H. G. Wells: Another Kind

of Life. London: Peter Owen, 2010, ISBN 978-
0-72061-351-3.
• Smith, David C., H. G. Wells: Desperately
Mortal: A Biography. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1986, ISBN 0-3000-3672-8
• West, Anthony. H. G. Wells: Aspects of a Life.
London: Hutchinson, 1984.
• Foot, Michael. H. G.: History of Mr. Wells.
Doubleday, 1985 (ISBN 978-1-887178-04-4),
Black Swan, New edition, Oct 1996 (paperback,
ISBN 0-552-99530-4)

54

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55

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The
Island of
Dr. Moreau

an introduction1

1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_of_Doctor_Moreau

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 ~ The Island of Dr. Moreau ~

Introduction

T he Island of Doctor Moreau is an 1896 science

fiction novel by English author H. G. Wells.
The text of the novel is the narration of Edward
Prendick, a shipwrecked man rescued by a passing
boat who is left on the island home of Doctor
Moreau, a mad scientist who creates human-like
hybrid beings from animals via vivisection. The
novel deals with a number of philosophical themes,
including pain and cruelty, moral responsibility,
human identity, and human interference with
nature. 2 Wells described it as “an exercise in
youthful blasphemy.” 3
The Island of Doctor Moreau is a classic of early
science fiction4 and remains one of Wells’ best-
known books. The novel is the earliest depiction of
the science fiction motif “uplift” in which a more
advanced race intervenes in the evolution of an

2 Barnes & Noble. “The Island of Doctor Moreau: Original and Un-
abridged”. Barnes & Noble.
3 Wells’s description of The Island of Dr. Moreau as youthful blasphemy
comes from his introduction to The Scientific Romances of H. G. Wells
(1933; published in the United States as Seven Famous Novels by H. G.
Wells, 1934). This Preface to the Scientific Romances is reprinted as a
chapter of editors Patrick Parrinder and Robert M. Philmus’s H. G. Wells’s
Literary Criticism (Sussex: The Harvester Press Limited, and New Jersey:
Barnes & Noble Books, 1980), see p. 243 for the line quoted.
4 See Mason Harris’s introduction and notes for the 2009 Broadview Books
edition of The Island of Dr. Moreau

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 ~ H.G.Wells ~

animal species to bring the latter to a higher level of

intelligence. 5 It has been adapted to film and other
media on many occasions, with Charles Laughton
(1933), Burt Lancaster (1977), and Marlon Brando
(1996) as the mad doctor6

5 Booker, Keith M. (2014). Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction in Lit-

erature. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 311.
6 “How Hollywood fell for a British visionary”. The Telegraph. Retrieved
14 March 2019.

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 ~ The Island of Dr. Moreau ~

Plot

T he Island of Doctor Moreau is the account

of Edward Prendick, an Englishman with a
scientific education who survives a shipwreck in
the southern Pacific Ocean. A passing ship takes
him aboard, and a man named Montgomery revives
him. Prendick also meets a grotesque bestial native
named M’ling, who appears to be Montgomery’s
manservant. The ship is transporting a number of
animals which belong to Montgomery. As they
approach the island, Montgomery’s destination,
the captain demands Prendick leave the ship with
Montgomery. Montgomery explains that he will
not be able to host Prendick on the island. Despite
this, the captain leaves Prendick in a dinghy and
sails away. Seeing that the captain has abandoned
Prendick, Montgomery takes pity and rescues him.
As ships rarely pass the island, Prendick will be
housed in an outer room of an enclosed compound.
The island belongs to Dr. Moreau. Prendick
remembers that he has heard of Moreau, formerly
an eminent physiologist in London whose gruesome
experiments in vivisection had been publicly exposed,
and who fled England as a result of his exposure.
The next day, Moreau begins working on a
puma. Prendick gathers that Moreau is performing a
painful experiment on the animal, and its anguished
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 ~ H.G.Wells ~

cries drive Prendick out into the jungle. While he

wanders, he comes upon a group of people who
seem human but have an unmistakable resemblance
to swine. As he walks back to the enclosure, he
suddenly realises he is being followed by a figure in
the jungle. He panics and flees, and the figure gives
chase. As his pursuer bears down on him, Prendick
manages to stun him with a stone and observes
the pursuer is a monstrous hybrid of animal and
man. When Prendrick returns to the enclosure and
questions Montgomery, Montgomery refuses to be
open with him. After failing to get an explanation,
Prendick finally gives in and takes a sleeping draught.
Prendick awakes the next morning with the
previous night’s activities fresh in his mind. Seeing
that the door to Moreau’s operating room has been
left unlocked, he walks in to find a humanoid form
lying in bandages on the table before he is ejected
by a shocked and angry Moreau. He believes that
Moreau has been vivisecting humans and that he is
the next test subject. He flees into the jungle where
he meets an Ape-Man who takes him to a colony of
similarly half-human/half-animal creatures. Their
leader is a large grey unspecified creature named
the Sayer of the Law who has him recite a strange
litany called the Law that involves prohibitions
against bestial behavior and praise for Moreau.
Suddenly, Dr. Moreau bursts into the colony
looking for Prendick, but Prendick escapes to the
jungle. He makes for the ocean, where he plans
to drown himself rather than allow Moreau to
experiment on him. Moreau explains that the
creatures called the Beast Folk were not formerly
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 ~ The Island of Dr. Moreau ~

men, but rather animals. Prendick returns to the

enclosure, where Moreau explains that he has been
on the island for eleven years and has been striving
to make a complete transformation of an animal
to a human. He explains that while he is getting
closer to perfection, his subjects have a habit of
reverting to their animal form and behaviour.
Moreau regards the pain he inflicts as insignificant
and an unavoidable side effect in the name of his
scientific experiments.
One day, Prendick and Montgomery encounter
a half-eaten rabbit. Since eating flesh and tasting
blood are strong prohibitions, Dr. Moreau calls
an assembly of the Beast Folk and identifies the
Leopard-Man (the same one that chased Prendick
the first time he wandered into the jungle) as the
transgressor. Knowing that he will be sent back to
Dr. Moreau’s compound for more painful sessions
of vivisection, the Leopard-Man flees. Eventually,
the group corners him in some undergrowth, but
Prendick takes pity and shoots him to spare him
from further suffering. Prendick also believes that
although the Leopard-Man was seen breaking
several laws, such as drinking water bent down like
an animal, chasing men (Prendick), and running
on all fours, the Leopard-Man was not solely
responsible for the deaths of the rabbits. It was
also the Hyena-Swine, the next most dangerous
Beast Man on the island. Dr. Moreau is furious
that Prendick killed the Leopard-Man but can do
nothing about the situation.
As time passes, Prendick becomes inured to
the grotesqueness of the Beast Folk. However one
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 ~ H.G.Wells ~

day, the half-finished puma woman rips free of her

restraints and escapes from the lab. Dr. Moreau
pursues her, but the two end up fighting each other
which ends in a mutual kill. Montgomery breaks
down and decides to share his alcohol with the Beast
Folk. Prendick resolves to leave the island, but later
hears a commotion outside in which Montgomery,
his servant M’ling, and the Sayer of the Law die
after a scuffle with the Beast Folk. At the same time,
the compound burns down because Prendick has
knocked over a lamp. With no chance of saving any
of the provisions stored in the enclosure, Prendick
realizes that during the night Montgomery has also
destroyed the only boats on the island.
Prendick lives with the Beast Folk on the
island for months after the deaths of Moreau and
Montgomery. As the time goes by, the Beast
Folk increasingly revert to their original animal
instincts, beginning to hunt the island’s rabbits,
returning to walking on all fours, and leaving
their shared living areas for the wild. They cease
to follow Prendick’s instructions. Eventually the
Hyena-Swine kills Prendick’s faithful companion,
the Dog-Man created from a St. Bernard, and
helped by the Sloth Creature he shoots the Hyena-
Swine in self-defence.
Prendick’s efforts to build a raft have been
unsuccessful, but luckily for him, a lifeboat that
carries two corpses drifts onto the beach (perhaps
the captain of the ship that picked Prendick up and
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 ~ The Island of Dr. Moreau ~

a sailor).7 Prendick uses the boat to leave the island

and is picked up three days later. When he tells his
story he is thought to be mad, so he feigns amnesia.
Upon his return to England, Prendick is no
longer comfortable in the presence of humans, all
of whom seem to him to be about to revert to an
animal state. He leaves London and lives in near-
solitude in the countryside, devoting himself to
chemistry as well as astronomy in the studies of
which he finds some peace.

7 Abbott (2011). “The Island of Dr. Moreau – H.G. Wells”. 463. Retrieved
11 February 2015.

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 ~ H.G.Wells ~

Main characters

Humans

• Edward Prendick – The narrator and protagonist.

• Dr. Moreau – A vivisectionist who has fled upon
his experiments being exposed and has moved to
a remote island in the Pacific Ocean to pursue his
research of perfecting his Beast Folk.
• Montgomery – Dr. Moreau’s assistant and
Prendick’s rescuer. A medical doctor who
enjoyed a measure of happiness in England, he
is an alcoholic who feels some sympathy for
the Beast Folk.

Beast Folk

The Beast Folk are animals which Moreau has

experimented upon, giving them human traits
via vivisection for which the surgery is extremely
painful. They include:
• M’ling – Montgomery’s servant who does
the cooking and cleaning. Moreau combined
a bear, a dog, and an ox to create him.
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 ~ The Island of Dr. Moreau ~

As Prendick describes M’ling, he states that

M’ling is a “complex trophy of Moreau’s skill,
a bear, tainted with dog and ox, and one of the
most elaborately made of all the creatures”. He
also sports glow-in-the-dark eyes and furry
ears. M’ling later dies protecting Montgomery
from the other Beast Folk on the beach.
• Sayer of the Law – A large, grey-haired animal
of unspecified combinations that recites Dr.
Moreau’s teachings about being men to the
other Beast Folk. The Sayer of the Law serves
as a governor and a priest to the Beast Folk.
He is later killed in an unseen scuffle between
Montgomery, M’ling, and the Beast Folk.
• Ape-Man – A monkey or ape creature that
considers himself equal to Prendick and refers
to himself and Prendick as “Five Men”, because
they both have five fingers on each hand, which
is uncommon among the Beast Folk. He is
the first Beast Man other than M’ling whom
Prendick speaks to. He has what he refers to as
“Big Thinks” which on his return to England,
Prendick likens to a priest’s sermon at the pulpit.
• Sloth Creature – A small, pink sloth-based
creation described by Prendick as resembling a
flayed child. He is one of the more relatively
benign creatures, and helps Prendick kill the
Hyena-Swine before fully regressing.
• Hyena-Swine – A carnivorous hybrid of hyena
and pig who becomes Prendick’s enemy in the
wake of Dr. Moreau’s death. He is later killed by
Prendick in self-defence.
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 ~ H.G.Wells ~

• Leopard-Man – A leopard-based rebel who

breaks the Law by running on all fours, drinking
from the stream, and chasing Prendick. The
Leopard-Man is killed by Prendick to spare him
further pain, much to the dismay of Dr. Moreau.
• Ox-Men – A group of gray ox-based creature
who appear twice, first when Prendrick is
introduced to the Beast Folk and then again
after Montgomery’s death.
• Satyr-Man – A hybrid of a goat and an ape.
Prendrick describes him as unsettling and
“Satanic” in form.
• Swine-Men and Swine-Woman – A group
of pig-based Beast Folk who appear during
Prendrick’s introduction to the Beast Folk.
• Mare-Rhinoceros Creature – A hybrid between a
horse and a Javan rhinoceros who appeared during
Prendrick’s introduction to the Beast Folk.
• Wolf-Men and Wolf Woman – A group of wolf-
based Beast Folk who appear during Prendrick’s
introduction to the Beast Folk.
• Bear-Bull Man - A hybrid of a bear and a cattle
who appeared during Pendrick’s introduction
to the Beast Folk.
• Dog-Man – A Beast Man created from a
St. Bernard who, near the end of the book,
becomes Prendick’s faithful companion. He
is so like a domestic dog in character that
Prendick is barely surprised when he reverts
to a more animalistic form. Dog-Man is later
killed by the Hyena-Swine.
• Fox-Bear Woman – A female hybrid of a fox
and a bear who passionately supports the Law.
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Prendick quickly takes a dislike to her and

described her as being evil-smelling.
• Half-Finished Puma-Woman – The last beast-
person created by Moreau. She is halfway
through her process of being turned into one of
the Beast Folk, but was in so much pain from the
surgery that she uses her strength to break free
of her restraints and escape. Moreau then chases
after her with a revolver. He and the creature
fight each other which ends in a mutual kill.
• Ocelot-Man – One of the smaller creatures
which briefly appears after Moreau’s death and
is shot by Montgomery during his scuffle with
the Beast Folk on the beach.

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Historical context

At the time of the novel’s publication in 1896,

there was growing discussion in Europe regarding
degeneration and animal vivisection. Several
interest groups were formed to oppose vivisection,
the two largest being the National Anti-Vivisection
Society in 1875 and the British Union for the
Abolition of Vivisection in 1898.8 The Island of
Dr. Moreau reflects these themes, along with
ideas of Darwinian evolution which were gaining
popularity and controversy in the late 1800s.

8 “Welcome”. politics.co.uk.

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Adaptations

The novel has been adapted into films and other

works, on multiple occasions:
• Ile d’Epouvante (1913, The Island of Terror), a
French silent film9 (also spelled L’Ile d’Epouvante
and Isle d’epouvante). The 23-minute two-
reeler film was directed by Joe Hamman in 1911
and then released in 1913. By late 1913, the film
had been picked up by US distributor George
Kleine and renamed The Island of Terror for its
release in Chicago.10
• Die Insel der Verschollenen (1921, The Island of
the Lost), a German silent adaption directed by
Urban Gad.
• Island of Lost Souls (1932), with Charles
Laughton and Bela Lugosi.
• Terror Is a Man (1959), with Francis Lederer, Greta
Thyssen, and Richard Derr. This Filipino film,
directed by Gerardo de Leon, was re-released in
the United States years later as Blood Creature.
• At the age of 13, Tim Burton made an amateur
adaptation of Wells’ novel, The Island of Doctor
Agor (1971).11

9 “Island of Lost Souls”. Turner Classic Movies.

10 “L’ile d’Epouvante (1913) in Silent Horror Forum”. Yuku.
11 “The Island of Doctor Agor”. IMDb.

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• The Twilight People (1972), starring John

Ashley and with an early role for Pam Grier, was
Eddie Romero’s version of the original story.
• Joseph Silva turned The Island of Dr Moreau
(1977), with Burt Lancaster and Michael York,
into a derivative published by Ace.
• David Calcutt adapted the story for a BBC
Radio 4 Saturday Night Theatre dramatisation
in 1990.
• In The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996), with Marlon
Brando, Val Kilmer, David Thewlis, Fairuza
Balk, and Ron Perlman, Dr. Moreau introduced
human DNA into the animals in his possession
to make them more human.
• Jonathan Pryce read a five-part abridgement for
Book at Bedtime on BBC Radio 4 in 2008.

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Inspirations and popular culture

The story, as well as the Litany of the Law, has

inspired multiple derivative works and popular
culture references.

I n l i t e r at u r e

• Moreau’s Other Island (1980), by Brian Aldiss,

is an updating of the original to a near-future
setting. US Under-Secretary of State Calvert
Madle Roberts is cast ashore on the eponymous
island where he discovers the cyborgised
Thalidomide victim Mortimer Dart carrying
on Moreau’s work. It transpires that Dart’s work
is intended to produce a ‘replacement’ race that
can survive a post-nuclear environment, and
that Roberts approved Dart’s funding.
• The Madman’s Daughter trilogy, written by
Megan Shepherd, tells the story of Dr. Moreau’s
daughter Juliet. However, each book is based on
a different classic novel: the first book is based on
this novel by Wells, the second one on Robert
Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and
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Mr Hyde (1886), and the final book is based on

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818).12
• In chapter 1 of Daniel Pinkwater’s novel Lizard
Music, Victor watches a late-night film on TV
which is identified in chapter 2 as The Island of
Dr Morbo.
• In chapter 61 of The Fallen (2013), book five of
Charlie Higson’s post-apocalyptic horror series,
The Enemy, the expedition party from the
museum encounters a strange set of malformed
children at the biomedical company Promithios,
who recite the Litany of the Law.13
• The Isles of Dr Moreau (2015), by Heather
O’Neill in her short story collection Daydreams
of Angels tells of a grandfather who, when he
was young, meets an eccentric, albeit humane
scientist named Dr Moreau on “the Isle of Noble
and Important and Respectable Betterment of
Homo sapiens and Their Consorts”. Moreau’s
experiments involve combining animal DNA
with human DNA and the story unfolds as the
grandfather meets (and dates) several of these
humanoid creatures.14
• Dr. Franklin’s Island (2002), by Ann Halam,
is a loose adaptation of the story, in which
the eponymous scientist performs transgenic
experiments upon the narrator and two other

12 “’The Madman’s Daughter’ author Megan Shepherd on her ‘Lost’ inspira-

tion and plans for a movie – EXCLUSIVE”.
13 Higson, Charlie (2013). The Fallen. US: Hyperion.
14 “The Isles of Dr. Moreau”

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survivors of a plane crash, transforming them

into mostly-animal hybrids.
• The Army of Dr Moreau (2012), by Guy Adams,
puts Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson on
the trail of several of the hybrids on the loose in
London.
• The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter
(2017) by Theodora Goss features the half-
finished puma woman from The Island of Dr
Moreau as one of its main characters, Catherine.

In music

• The song Toes by the alternative band Glass

Animals is based on the book’s story.15
• The music video for the song Eaten Alive by
Diana Ross.
• The song No Spill Blood by Oingo Boingo.
• The song Island of Lost Souls by The Meteors.
• The debut studio album by the American new
wave band Devo was titled Q. Are We Not
Men? A: We Are Devo! (1978) from a line in
the litany of the Law, spoken by the Speaker of
the Law to the Beast Folk.

15 Billboard (12 April 2015). “Glass Animals Coachella Interview: Inspira-

tions for New Record, “Black Mambo” & “Hazey”” – via YouTube.

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In television

• The Simpsons annual Halloween special adapted

the novel as a segment in their “Treehouse of
Horror XIII” episode called “The Island of Dr.
Hibbert”, in which the doctor invites unsuspecting
Springfield residents to his island resort, and turns
them into human-animal hybrids.16
• The cartoon series Spliced is a lighthearted take
on the concept.
• In the third season of BBC America’s science
fiction thriller TV series, Orphan Black, the
book plays an important role containing
Professor Duncan’s key to human cloning. The
fourth season establishes an island similar to
Moreau’s where the head of a mysterious and
powerful scientific elite performs experiments
on human subjects. Much of the fifth season is
set on the island.
• In the video game RWBY: Grimm Eclipse,
created based on the series RWBY, the main
antagonist is Dr. Merlot who was created in the
image of Dr. Moreau.

16 Curran, Kevin. (2002). Commentary for “Treehouse of Horror XIII”, in

The Simpsons: The Complete Fourteenth Season [DVD]. 20th Century
Fox

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In cinema

• The film Dr. Moreau’s House of Pain (2004),

made by cult horror studio Full Moon Pictures,
is billed as a sequel to the novel.17
• Christopher Lambert plays Dr. Moreau in the
2018 Italian horror film La Voce del Lupo.18

Sci en tific pl ausi bi lit y

In the short essay “The Limits of Individual

Plasticity” (1895), H.G. Wells expounded upon his
firm belief that the events depicted in The Island
of Doctor Moreau are entirely possible should
such vivisective experiments ever be tested outside
the confines of science fiction. However, modern
medicine has shown that non-human animals lack
the necessary brain structure to emulate human
faculties like speech. In addition, immune responses
to foreign tissues means that transplantation within
one species is very complicated, let alone between
species.

17 “Dr. Moreau’s House of Pain (DVD)”. FullMoonDirect.

18 https://johnnyalucard.com/2018/11/02/trieste-sf-review-la-voce-del-lu-
po/

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Further reading

• Canadas, Ivan. “Going Wilde: Prendick,

Montgomery and Late-Victorian Homosexuality
in The Island of Doctor Moreau.” JELL: Journal of
the English Language and Literature Association
of Korea, 56.3 ( June 2010): 461–485.
• Hoad, Neville. “Cosmetic Surgeons of the
Social: Darwin, Freud, and Wells and the Limits
of Sympathy on The Island of Dr. Moreau”, in:
Compassion: The Culture and Politics of an
Emotion, Ed. Lauren Berlant. London & New
York: Routledge, 2004. 187–217.
• Reed, John R., “The Vanity of Law in The
Island of Doctor Moreau”, in: H. G. Wells under
Revision: Proceedings of the International
H. G. Wells Symposium: London, July 1986,
Ed. Patrick Parrinder & Christopher Rolfe.
Selinsgrove: Susquehanna UP / London and
Toronto: Associated UPs, 1990. 134-44.
• Wells, H. G. The Island of Dr. Moreau, Ed.
Steven Palmé. Dover Thrift Editions. New
York: Dover Publications, 1996.
• Wells, H. G. The Island of Doctor Moreau: A
Critical Text of the 1896 London First Edition,
with Introduction and Appendices, Ed. Leon
Stover. The Annotated H.G. Wells, 2. Jefferson,
N.C., and London: McFarland, 1996.
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Introduction
(prelude)

O n February the first 1887, the Lady Vain was

lost by collision with a derelict when about the
latitude 1° S. and longitude 107° W.
On January the fifth, 1888—that is eleven months
and four days after—my uncle, Edward Prendick,
a private gentleman, who certainly went aboard the
Lady Vain at Callao, and who had been considered
drowned, was picked up in latitude 5° 3′ S. and
longitude 101° W. in a small open boat of which the
name was illegible, but which is supposed to have
belonged to the missing schooner Ipecacuanha.
He gave such a strange account of himself that he
was supposed demented. Subsequently he alleged
that his mind was a blank from the moment of his
escape from the Lady Vain. His case was discussed
among psychologists at the time as a curious
instance of the lapse of memory consequent upon
physical and mental stress. The following narrative
was found among his papers by the undersigned,
his nephew and heir, but unaccompanied by any
definite request for publication.
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The only island known to exist in the region

in which my uncle was picked up is Noble’s Isle,
a small volcanic islet and uninhabited. It was visited
in 1891 by HMS Scorpion. A party of sailors then
landed, but found nothing living thereon except
certain curious white moths, some hogs and rabbits,
and some rather peculiar rats. So that this narrative is
without confirmation in its most essential particular.
With that understood, there seems no harm in
putting this strange story before the public in
accordance, as I believe, with my uncle’s intentions.
There is at least this much in its behalf: my uncle
passed out of human knowledge about latitude
5° S. and longitude 105° E., and reappeared in
the same part of the ocean after a space of eleven
months. In some way he must have lived during
the interval. And it seems that a schooner called the
Ipecacuanha with a drunken captain, John Davies,
did start from Africa with a puma and certain other
animals aboard in January, 1887, that the vessel was
well known at several ports in the South Pacific,
and that it finally disappeared from those seas (with
a considerable amount of copra aboard), sailing to
its unknown fate from Bayna in December, 1887,
a date that tallies entirely with my uncle’s story.

Charles Edward Prendick.

(The Story written by Edward Prendick.)

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In the Dingey of the

Lady Vain

I do not propose to add anything to what has

already been written concerning the loss of the
Lady Vain. As everyone knows, she collided with
a derelict when ten days out from Callao. The
longboat, with seven of the crew, was picked up
eighteen days after by HM gunboat Myrtle, and
the story of their terrible privations has become
quite as well known as the far more horrible
Medusa case. But I have to add to the published
story of the Lady Vain another, possibly as horrible
and far stranger. It has hitherto been supposed that
the four men who were in the dingey perished,
but this is incorrect. I have the best of evidence for
this assertion: I was one of the four men.
But in the first place I must state that there never
were four men in the dingey—the number was
three. Constans, who was “seen by the captain to
jump into the gig,”1 luckily for us and unluckily
for himself did not reach us. He came down out of
the tangle of ropes under the stays of the smashed
bowsprit, some small rope caught his heel as he let
go, and he hung for a moment head downward,
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and then fell and struck a block or spar floating in

the water. We pulled towards him, but he never
came up.
I say luckily for us he did not reach us, and I
might almost say luckily for himself; for we had
only a small beaker of water and some soddened
ship’s biscuits with us, so sudden had been the
alarm, so unprepared the ship for any disaster. We
thought the people on the launch would be better
provisioned (though it seems they were not), and we
tried to hail them. They could not have heard us,
and the next morning when the drizzle cleared—
which was not until past midday—we could see
nothing of them. We could not stand up to look
about us, because of the pitching of the boat. The
two other men who had escaped so far with me
were a man named Helmar, a passenger like myself,
and a seaman whose name I don’t know—a short
sturdy man, with a stammer.
We drifted famishing, and, after our water had
come to an end, tormented by an intolerable thirst,
for eight days altogether. After the second day the
sea subsided slowly to a glassy calm. It is quite
impossible for the ordinary reader to imagine those
eight days. He has not, luckily for himself, anything
in his memory to imagine with. After the first day
we said little to one another, and lay in our places
in the boat and stared at the horizon, or watched,
with eyes that grew larger and more haggard every
day, the misery and weakness gaining upon our
companions. The sun became pitiless. The water
ended on the fourth day, and we were already
thinking strange things and saying them with our
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eyes; but it was, I think, the sixth before Helmar

gave voice to the thing we had all been thinking. I
remember our voices were dry and thin, so that we
bent towards one another and spared our words. I
stood out against it with all my might, was rather
for scuttling the boat and perishing together among
the sharks that followed us; but when Helmar said
that if his proposal was accepted we should have
drink, the sailor came round to him.
I would not draw lots however, and in the night
the sailor whispered to Helmar again and again, and
I sat in the bows with my clasp-knife in my hand,
though I doubt if I had the stuff in me to fight;
and in the morning I agreed to Helmar’s proposal,
and we handed halfpence to find the odd man. The
lot fell upon the sailor; but he was the strongest of
us and would not abide by it, and attacked Helmar
with his hands. They grappled together and
almost stood up. I crawled along the boat to them,
intending to help Helmar by grasping the sailor’s
leg; but the sailor stumbled with the swaying of
the boat, and the two fell upon the gunwale and
rolled overboard together. They sank like stones.
I remember laughing at that, and wondering why
I laughed. The laugh caught me suddenly like a
thing from without.
I lay across one of the thwarts for I know not
how long, thinking that if I had the strength I
would drink seawater and madden myself to die
quickly. And even as I lay there I saw, with no more
interest than if it had been a picture, a sail come
up towards me over the skyline. My mind must
have been wandering, and yet I remember all that
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happened, quite distinctly. I remember how my

head swayed with the seas, and the horizon with
the sail above it danced up and down; but I also
remember as distinctly that I had a persuasion that I
was dead, and that I thought what a jest it was that
they should come too late by such a little to catch
me in my body.
For an endless period, as it seemed to me, I lay
with my head on the thwart watching the schooner
(she was a little ship, schooner-rigged fore and aft)
come up out of the sea. She kept tacking to and
fro in a widening compass, for she was sailing
dead into the wind. It never entered my head to
attempt to attract attention, and I do not remember
anything distinctly after the sight of her side until I
found myself in a little cabin aft. There’s a dim half-
memory of being lifted up to the gangway, and of
a big round countenance covered with freckles and
surrounded with red hair staring at me over the
bulwarks. I also had a disconnected impression of
a dark face, with extraordinary eyes, close to mine;
but that I thought was a nightmare, until I met it
again. I fancy I recollect some stuff being poured in
between my teeth; and that is all.

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The Man Who Was

Going Nowhere

T he cabin in which I found myself was small

and rather untidy. A youngish man with
flaxen hair, a bristly straw-coloured moustache,
and a dropping nether lip, was sitting and holding
my wrist. For a minute we stared at each other
without speaking. He had watery grey eyes, oddly
void of expression. Then just overhead came a
sound like an iron bedstead being knocked about,
and the low angry growling of some large animal.
At the same time the man spoke. He repeated his
question—“How do you feel now?”
I think I said I felt all right. I could not recollect
how I had got there. He must have seen the question
in my face, for my voice was inaccessible to me.
“You were picked up in a boat, starving. The
name on the boat was the Lady Vain, and there
were spots of blood on the gunwale.”
At the same time my eye caught my hand, so
thin that it looked like a dirty skin-purse full of
loose bones, and all the business of the boat came
back to me.
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“Have some of this,” said he, and gave me a dose

of some scarlet stuff, iced.
It tasted like blood, and made me feel stronger.
“You were in luck,” said he, “to get picked up by
a ship with a medical man aboard.” He spoke with
a slobbering articulation, with the ghost of a lisp.
“What ship is this?” I said slowly, hoarse from
my long silence.
“It’s a little trader from Arica and Callao. I never
asked where she came from in the beginning—out
of the land of born fools, I guess. I’m a passenger
myself, from Arica. The silly ass who owns her—he’s
captain too, named Davies—he’s lost his certificate,
or something. You know the kind of man—calls
the thing the Ipecacuanha, of all silly, infernal
names; though when there’s much of a sea without
any wind, she certainly acts according.”
(Then the noise overhead began again, a snarling
growl and the voice of a human being together.
Then another voice, telling some “heaven-forsaken
idiot” to desist.)
“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.”
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“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 suspicion in his eyes.
He suddenly left the cabin, and I heard him in
violent controversy with someone, who seemed to
me to talk gibberish 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
dullness 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
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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?” 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 recovered 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.

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The Strange Face

W e 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 hatchway. 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 dimly 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 bloodshot 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?”
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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. “Your
place is forward.”
The black-faced man cowered. “They—won’t
have me forward.” He spoke slowly, with a queer,
hoarse quality in his voice.
“Won’t have you forward!” said Montgomery, in
a menacing voice. “But I tell you to go!” He was on
the brink of saying something further, then looked
up at me suddenly and followed me up the ladder.
I had paused half way through the hatchway,
looking back, still astonished beyond measure at the
grotesque ugliness of this black-faced creature. I had
never beheld such a repulsive and extraordinary face
before, and yet—if the contradiction is credible—I
experienced at the same time an odd feeling that
in some way I had already encountered exactly
the features and gestures that now amazed me.
Afterwards it occurred to me that probably I had
seen him as I was lifted aboard; and yet that scarcely
satisfied my suspicion of a previous acquaintance.
Yet how one could have set eyes on so singular a
face and yet have forgotten the precise occasion,
passed my imagination.
Montgomery’s movement to follow me released
my attention, and I turned and looked about me at
the flush deck of the little schooner. I was already
half prepared by the sounds I had heard for what
I saw. Certainly I never beheld a deck so dirty. It
was littered with scraps of carrot, shreds of green
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stuff, and indescribable filth. Fastened by chains to

the mainmast were a number of grisly staghounds,
who now began leaping and barking at me, and by
the mizzen a huge puma was cramped in a little
iron cage far too small even to give it turning
room. Farther under the starboard bulwark were
some big hutches containing a number of rabbits,
and a solitary llama was squeezed in a mere box of
a cage forward. The dogs were muzzled by leather
straps. The only human being on deck was a gaunt
and silent sailor at the wheel.
The patched and dirty spankers were tense before
the wind, and up aloft the little ship seemed carrying
every sail she had. The sky was clear, the sun midway
down the western sky; long waves, capped by the
breeze with froth, were running with us. We went
past the steersman to the taffrail, and saw the water
come foaming under the stern and the bubbles go
dancing and vanishing in her wake. I turned and
surveyed the unsavoury length of the ship.
“Is this an ocean menagerie?” said I.
“Looks like it,” said Montgomery.
“What are these beasts for? Merchandise, curios?
Does the captain think he is going to sell them
somewhere in the South Seas?”
“It looks like it, doesn’t it?” said Montgomery,
and turned towards the wake again.
Suddenly we heard a yelp and a volley of furious
blasphemy from the companion hatchway, and the
deformed man with the black face came up hurriedly.
He was immediately followed by a heavy red-haired
man in a white cap. At the sight of the former the
staghounds, who had all tired of barking at me by this
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time, became furiously excited, howling and leaping

against their chains. The black hesitated before them,
and this gave the red-haired man time to come up
with him and deliver a tremendous blow between the
shoulder-blades. The poor devil went down like a felled
ox, and rolled in the dirt among the furiously excited
dogs. It was lucky for him that they were muzzled. The
red-haired man gave a yawp of exultation and stood
staggering, and as it seemed to me in serious danger
of either going backwards down the companion
hatchway or forwards upon his victim.
So soon as the second man had appeared,
Montgomery had started forward. “Steady on
there!” he cried, in a tone of remonstrance. A couple
of sailors appeared on the forecastle. The black-faced
man, howling in a singular voice rolled about under
the feet of the dogs. No one attempted to help him.
The brutes did their best to worry him, butting their
muzzles at him. There was a quick dance of their
lithe grey-figured bodies over the clumsy, prostrate
figure. The sailors forward shouted, as though it
was admirable sport. Montgomery gave an angry
exclamation, and went striding down the deck, and
I followed him. The black-faced man scrambled up
and staggered forward, going and leaning over the
bulwark by the main shrouds, where he remained,
panting and glaring over his shoulder at the dogs.
The red-haired man laughed a satisfied laugh.
“Look here, Captain,” said Montgomery, with
his lisp a little accentuated, gripping the elbows of
the red-haired man, “this won’t do!”
I stood behind Montgomery. The captain came
half round, and regarded him with the dull and
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solemn eyes of a drunken man. “Wha’ won’t do?”

he said, and added, after looking sleepily into
Montgomery’s face for a minute, “Blasted sawbones!”
With a sudden movement he shook his arms free,
and after two ineffectual attempts stuck his freckled
fists into his side pockets.
“That man’s a passenger,” said Montgomery. “I’d
advise you to keep your hands off him.”
“Go to hell!” said the captain, loudly. He suddenly
turned and staggered towards the side. “Do what I
like on my own ship,” he said.
I think Montgomery might have left him then,
seeing the brute was drunk; but he only turned a
shade paler, and followed the captain to the bulwarks.
“Look you here, Captain,” he said; “that man of
mine is not to be ill-treated. He has been hazed
ever since he came aboard.”
For a minute, alcoholic fumes kept the captain
speechless. “Blasted sawbones!” was all he
considered necessary.
I could see that Montgomery had one of those
slow, pertinacious tempers that will warm day
after day to a white heat, and never again cool to
forgiveness; and I saw too that this quarrel had been
some time growing. “The man’s drunk,” said I,
perhaps officiously; “you’ll do no good.”
Montgomery gave an ugly twist to his dropping
lip. “He’s always drunk. Do you think that excuses
his assaulting his passengers?”
“My ship,” began the captain, waving his hand
unsteadily towards the cages, “was a clean ship.
Look at it now!” It was certainly anything but clean.
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“Crew,” continued the captain, “clean, respectable

crew.”
“You agreed to take the beasts.”
“I wish I’d never set eyes on your infernal island.
What the devil—want beasts for on an island like
that? Then, that man of yours—understood he was a
man. He’s a lunatic; and he hadn’t no business aft. Do
you think the whole damned ship belongs to you?”
“Your sailors began to haze the poor devil as
soon as he came aboard.”
“That’s just what he is—he’s a devil! an ugly devil!
My men can’t stand him. I can’t stand him. None of
us can’t stand him. Nor you either!”
Montgomery turned away. “You leave that man
alone, anyhow,” he said, nodding his head as he
spoke.
But the captain meant to quarrel now. He raised
his voice. “If he comes this end of the ship again I’ll
cut his insides out, I tell you. Cut out his blasted
insides! Who are you, to tell me what I’m to do?
I tell you I’m captain of this ship—captain and
owner. I’m the law here, I tell you—the law and
the prophets. I bargained to take a man and his
attendant to and from Arica, and bring back some
animals. I never bargained to carry a mad devil and
a silly sawbones, a—”
Well, never mind what he called Montgomery.
I saw the latter take a step forward, and interposed.
“He’s drunk,” said I. The captain began some
abuse even fouler than the last. “Shut up!” I said,
turning on him sharply, for I had seen danger in
Montgomery’s white face. With that I brought the
downpour on myself.
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However, I was glad to avert what was

uncommonly near a scuffle, even at the price of
the captain’s drunken ill-will. I do not think I have
ever heard quite so much vile language come in
a continuous stream from any man’s lips before,
though I have frequented eccentric company
enough. I found some of it hard to endure, though
I am a mild-tempered man; but, certainly, when I
told the captain to “shut up” I had forgotten that I
was merely a bit of human flotsam, cut off from my
resources and with my fare unpaid; a mere casual
dependant on the bounty, or speculative enterprise,
of the ship. He reminded me of it with considerable
vigour; but at any rate I prevented a fight.

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At the
Schooner’s Rail

T hat night land was sighted after sundown, and

the schooner hove to. Montgomery intimated
that was his destination. It was too far to see any
details; it seemed to me then simply a low-lying
patch of dim blue in the uncertain blue-grey sea.
An almost vertical streak of smoke went up from
it into the sky. The captain was not on deck when
it was sighted. After he had vented his wrath on
me he had staggered below, and I understand he
went to sleep on the floor of his own cabin. The
mate practically assumed the command. He was
the gaunt, taciturn individual we had seen at the
wheel. Apparently he was in an evil temper with
Montgomery. He took not the slightest notice of
either of us. We dined with him in a sulky silence,
after a few ineffectual efforts on my part to talk. It
struck me too that the men regarded my companion
and his animals in a singularly unfriendly manner. I
found Montgomery very reticent about his purpose
with these creatures, and about his destination; and
though I was sensible of a growing curiosity as to
both, I did not press him.
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We remained talking on the quarter deck

until the sky was thick with stars. Except for an
occasional sound in the yellow-lit forecastle and a
movement of the animals now 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 reminiscence, 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 hidden.
This man, it seemed to me, had come out of
immensity merely to save my life. Tomorrow 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 singularity
of an educated man living on this unknown little
island, and coupled with that the extraordinary
nature of his luggage. 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
circumstances threw a haze of mystery round
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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 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 knowledge; 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 a 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.”
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“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.
“Don’t,” said I. “It is all the same to me. After
all, it is better to keep your secret. There’s nothing
gained but a little relief if I respect your confidence.
If I don’t—well?”
He grunted undecidedly. I felt I had him at a
disadvantage, had caught him in the mood of
indiscretion; and to tell the truth I was not curious
to learn what might have driven a young medical
student out of London. I have an imagination. I
shrugged my shoulders and turned away. Over the
taffrail leant a silent black figure, watching the stars.
It was Montgomery’s strange attendant. It looked
over its shoulder quickly with my movement, then
looked away again.
It may seem a little thing to you, perhaps, but
it came like a sudden blow to me. The only light
near us was a lantern at the wheel. The creature’s
face was turned for one brief instant out of the
dimness of the stern towards this illumination, and
I saw that the eyes that glanced at me shone with a
pale-green light. I did not know then that a reddish
luminosity, at least, is not uncommon in human
eyes. The thing came to me as stark inhumanity.
That black figure with its eyes of fire struck down
through all my adult thoughts and feelings, and for
a moment the forgotten horrors of childhood came
back to my mind. Then the effect passed as it had
come. An uncouth black figure of a man, a figure
of no particular import, hung over the taffrail
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against the starlight, and I found Montgomery was

speaking to me.
“I’m thinking of turning in, then,” said he, “if
you’ve had enough of this.”
I answered him incongruously. We went below,
and he wished me good night at the door of my
cabin.
That night I had some very unpleasant dreams.
The waning moon rose late. Its light struck a
ghostly white beam across my cabin, and made an
ominous shape on the planking by my bunk. Then
the staghounds woke, and began howling and
baying; so that I dreamt fitfully, and scarcely slept
until the approach of dawn.

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The Man
Who Had
Nowhere to Go

I n the early morning (it was the second morning

after my recovery, and I believe the fourth after
I was picked up), I awoke through an avenue of
tumultuous dreams—dreams of guns and howling
mobs—and became sensible of a hoarse shouting
above me. I rubbed my eyes and lay listening to the
noise, doubtful for a little while of my whereabouts.
Then came a sudden pattering of bare feet, the sound
of heavy objects being thrown about, a violent
creaking and the rattling of chains. I heard the swish
of the water as the ship was suddenly brought round,
and a foamy yellow-green wave flew across the little
round window and left it streaming. I jumped into
my clothes and went on deck.
As I came up the ladder I saw against the flushed
sky—for the sun was just rising—the broad back
and red hair of the captain, and over his shoulder
the puma spinning from a tackle rigged on to the
mizzen spanker-boom.
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The poor brute seemed horribly scared, and

crouched in the bottom of its little cage.
“Overboard with ’em!” bawled the captain.
“Overboard with ’em! We’ll have a clean ship soon
of the whole bilin’ of ’em.”
He stood in my way, so that I had perforce to
tap his shoulder to come on deck. He came round
with a start, and staggered back a few paces to stare
at me. It needed no expert eye to tell that the man
was still drunk.
“Hullo!” said he, stupidly; and then with a light
coming into his eyes, “Why, it’s Mister—Mister?”
“Prendick,” said I.
“Prendick be damned!” said he. “Shut-up—that’s
your name. Mister Shut-up.”
It was no good answering the brute; but I
certainly did not expect his next move. He held out
his hand to the gangway by which Montgomery
stood talking to a massive grey-haired man in
dirty-blue flannels, who had apparently just come
aboard.
“That way, Mister Blasted Shut-up! that way!”
roared the captain.
Montgomery and his companion turned as he
spoke.
“What do you mean?” I said.
“That way, Mister Blasted Shut-up—that’s what
I mean! Overboard, Mister Shut-up—and sharp!
We’re cleaning the ship out—cleaning the whole
blessed ship out; and overboard you go!”
I stared at him dumfounded. Then it occurred
to me that it was exactly the thing I wanted. The
lost prospect of a journey as sole passenger with
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this quarrelsome sot was not one to mourn over. I

turned towards Montgomery.
“Can’t have you,” said Montgomery’s companion,
concisely.
“You can’t have me!” said I, aghast. He had the
squarest and most resolute face I ever set eyes upon.
“Look here,” I began, turning to the captain.
“Overboard!” said the captain. “This ship aint
for beasts and cannibals and worse than beasts,
anymore. Overboard you go, Mister Shut-up.
If they can’t have you, you goes overboard. But,
anyhow, you go—with your friends. I’ve done with
this blessed island for evermore, amen! I’ve had
enough of it.”
“But, Montgomery,” I appealed.
He distorted his lower lip, and nodded his head
hopelessly at the grey-haired man beside him, to
indicate his powerlessness to help me.
“I’ll see to you, presently,” said the captain.
Then began a curious three-cornered altercation.
Alternately I appealed to one and another of the three
men—first to the grey-haired man to let me land,
and then to the drunken captain to keep me aboard.
I even bawled entreaties to the sailors. Montgomery
said never a word, only shook his head. “You’re going
overboard, I tell you,” was the captain’s refrain. “Law
be damned! I’m king here.” At last I must confess
my voice suddenly broke in the middle of a vigorous
threat. I felt a gust of hysterical petulance, and went
aft and stared dismally at nothing.
Meanwhile the sailors progressed rapidly with the
task of unshipping the packages and caged animals.
A large launch, with two standing lugs, lay under
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the lee of the schooner; and into this the strange

assortment of goods were swung. I did not then see
the hands from the island that were receiving the
packages, for the hull of the launch was hidden from
me by the side of the schooner. Neither Montgomery
nor his companion took the slightest notice of me,
but busied themselves in assisting and directing the
four or five sailors who were unloading the goods.
The captain went forward interfering rather than
assisting. I was alternately despairful and desperate.
Once or twice as I stood waiting there for things to
accomplish themselves, I could not resist an impulse
to laugh at my miserable quandary. I felt all the
wretcheder for the lack of a breakfast. Hunger and a
lack of blood-corpuscles take all the manhood from
a man. I perceived pretty clearly that I had not the
stamina either to resist what the captain chose to do
to expel me, or to force myself upon Montgomery
and his companion. So I waited passively upon
fate; and the work of transferring Montgomery’s
possessions to the launch went on as if I did not exist.
Presently that work was finished, and then came
a struggle. I was hauled, resisting weakly enough, to
the gangway. Even then I noticed the oddness of the
brown faces of the men who were with Montgomery
in the launch; but the launch was now fully laden,
and was shoved off hastily. A broadening gap of
green water appeared under me, and I pushed back
with all my strength to avoid falling headlong. The
hands in the launch shouted derisively, and I heard
Montgomery curse at them; and then the captain,
the mate, and one of the seamen helping him, ran
me aft towards the stern.
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The dingey of the Lady Vain had been towing

behind; it was half full of water, had no oars, and was
quite unvictualled. I refused to go aboard her, and
flung myself full length on the deck. In the end, they
swung me into her by a rope (for they had no stern
ladder), and then they cut me adrift. I drifted slowly
from the schooner. In a kind of stupor I watched all
hands take to the rigging, and slowly but surely she
came round to the wind; the sails fluttered, and then
bellied out as the wind came into them. I stared at
her weather-beaten side heeling steeply towards me;
and then she passed out of my range of view.
I did not turn my head to follow her. At first I
could scarcely believe what had happened. I crouched
in the bottom of the dingey, stunned, and staring
blankly at the vacant, oily sea. Then I realised that
I was in that little hell of mine again, now half
swamped; and looking back over the gunwale, I saw
the schooner standing away from me, with the red-
haired captain mocking at me over the taffrail, and
turning towards the island saw the launch growing
smaller as she approached the beach.
Abruptly the cruelty of this desertion became
clear to me. I had no means of reaching the land
unless I should chance to drift there. I was still weak,
you must remember, from my exposure in the boat; I
was empty and very faint, or I should have had more
heart. But as it was I suddenly began to sob and
weep, as I had never done since I was a little child.
The tears ran down my face. In a passion of despair I
struck with my fists at the water in the bottom of the
boat, and kicked savagely at the gunwale. I prayed
aloud for God to let me die.
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The Evil-Looking
Boatmen

B ut the islanders, seeing that I was really adrift,

took pity on me. I drifted very slowly to
the eastward, approaching the island slantingly;
and presently I saw, with hysterical relief, the
launch come round and return towards me. She
was heavily laden, and I could make out as she
drew nearer Montgomery’s white-haired, broad-
shouldered companion sitting cramped up with
the dogs and several packing-cases in the stern
sheets. This individual stared fixedly at me without
moving or speaking. The black-faced cripple was
glaring at me as fixedly in the bows near the
puma. There were three other men besides—three
strange brutish-looking fellows, at whom the
staghounds were snarling savagely. Montgomery,
who was steering, brought the boat by me, and
rising, caught and fastened my painter to the tiller
to tow me, for there was no room aboard.
I had recovered from my hysterical phase by
this time and answered his hail, as he approached,
bravely enough. I told him the dingey was nearly
swamped, and he reached me a piggin. I was jerked
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back as the rope tightened between the boats. For

some time I was busy baling.
It was not until I had got the water under (for
the water in the dingey had been shipped; the boat
was perfectly sound) that I had leisure to look at the
people in the launch again.
The white-haired man I found was still
regarding me steadfastly, but with an expression,
as I now fancied, of some perplexity. When my
eyes met his, he looked down at the staghound that
sat between his knees. He was a powerfully-built
man, as I have said, with a fine forehead and rather
heavy features; but his eyes had that odd drooping
of the skin above the lids which often comes with
advancing years, and the fall of his heavy mouth at
the corners gave him an expression of pugnacious
resolution. He talked to Montgomery in a tone too
low for me to hear.
From him my eyes travelled to his three men;
and a strange crew they were. I saw only their faces,
yet there was something in their faces—I knew not
what—that gave me a queer spasm of disgust. I looked
steadily at them, and the impression did not pass,
though I failed to see what had occasioned it. They
seemed to me then to be brown men; but their limbs
were oddly swathed in some thin, dirty, white stuff
down even to the fingers and feet: I have never seen
men so wrapped up before, and women so only in the
East. They wore turbans too, and thereunder peered
out their elfin faces at me—faces with protruding
lower-jaws and bright eyes. They had lank black
hair, almost like horsehair, and seemed as they sat to
exceed in stature any race of men I have seen. The
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white-haired man, who I knew was a good six feet

in height, sat a head below anyone of the three. I
found afterwards that really none were taller than
myself; but their bodies were abnormally long, and
the thigh-part of the leg short and curiously twisted.
At any rate, they were an amazingly ugly gang, and
over the heads of them under the forward lug peered
the black face of the man whose eyes were luminous
in the dark. As I stared at them, they met my gaze;
and then first one and then another turned away
from my direct stare, and looked at me in an odd,
furtive manner. It occurred to me that I was perhaps
annoying them, and I turned my attention to the
island we were approaching.
It was low, and covered with thick vegetation—
chiefly a kind of palm, that was new to me. From
one point a thin white thread of vapour rose
slantingly to an immense height, and then frayed
out like a down feather. We were now within the
embrace of a broad bay flanked on either hand by a
low promontory. The beach was of dull-grey sand,
and sloped steeply up to a ridge, perhaps sixty or
seventy feet above the sea-level, and irregularly set
with trees and undergrowth. Half way up was a
square enclosure of some greyish stone, which I
found subsequently was built partly of coral and
partly of pumiceous lava. Two thatched roofs
peeped from within this enclosure. A man stood
awaiting us at the water’s edge. I fancied while we
were still far off that I saw some other and very
grotesque-looking creatures scuttle into the bushes
upon the slope; but I saw nothing of these as we
drew nearer. This man was of a moderate size, and
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with a black negroid face. He had a large, almost

lipless, mouth, extraordinary lank arms, long thin
feet, and bowlegs, and stood with his heavy face
thrust forward staring at us. He was dressed like
Montgomery and his white-haired companion, in
jacket and trousers of blue serge. As we came still
nearer, this individual began to run to and fro on
the beach, making the most grotesque movements.
At a word of command from Montgomery,
the four men in the launch sprang up, and with
singularly awkward gestures struck the lugs.
Montgomery steered us round and into a narrow
little dock excavated in the beach. Then the man on
the beach hastened towards us. This dock, as I call
it, was really a mere ditch just long enough at this
phase of the tide to take the longboat. I heard the
bows ground in the sand, staved the dingey off the
rudder of the big boat with my piggin, and freeing
the painter, landed. The three muffled men, with the
clumsiest movements, scrambled out upon the sand,
and forthwith set to landing the cargo, assisted by
the man on the beach. I was struck especially by the
curious movements of the legs of the three swathed
and bandaged boatmen—not stiff they were, but
distorted in some odd way, almost as if they were
jointed in the wrong place. The dogs were still
snarling, and strained at their chains after these
men, as the white-haired man landed with them.
The three big fellows spoke to one another in odd
guttural tones, and the man who had waited for us
on the beach began chattering to them excitedly—a
foreign language, as I fancied—as they laid hands on
some bales piled near the stern. Somewhere I had
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heard such a voice before, and I could not think

where. The white-haired man stood, holding in a
tumult of six dogs, and bawling orders over their din.
Montgomery, having unshipped the rudder, landed
likewise, and all set to work at unloading. I was too
faint, what with my long fast and the sun beating
down on my bare head, to offer any assistance.
Presently the white-haired man seemed to
recollect my presence, and came up to me.
“You look,” said he, “as though you had scarcely
breakfasted.” His little eyes were a brilliant black
under his heavy brows. “I must apologise for
that. Now you are our guest, we must make
you comfortable—though you are uninvited,
you know.” He looked keenly into my face.
“Montgomery says you are an educated man, Mr.
Prendick; says you know something of science.
May I ask what that signifies?”
I told him I had spent some years at the Royal
College of Science, and had done some researches
in biology under Huxley. He raised his eyebrows
slightly at that.
“That alters the case a little, Mr. Prendick,” he
said, with a trifle more respect in his manner. “As it
happens, we are biologists here. This is a biological
station—of a sort.” His eye rested on the men in
white who were busily hauling the puma, on rollers,
towards the walled yard. “I and Montgomery, at
least,” he added. Then, “When you will be able to
get away, I can’t say. We’re off the track to anywhere.
We see a ship once in a twelvemonth or so.”
He left me abruptly, and went up the beach past
this group, and I think entered the enclosure. The
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other two men were with Montgomery, erecting

a pile of smaller packages on a low-wheeled truck.
The llama was still on the launch with the rabbit
hutches; the staghounds were still lashed to the
thwarts. The pile of things completed, all three
men laid hold of the truck and began shoving the
ton-weight or so upon it after the puma. Presently
Montgomery left them, and coming back to me
held out his hand.
“I’m glad,” said he, “for my own part. That
captain was a silly ass. He’d have made things lively
for you.”
“It was you,” said I, “that saved me again.”
“That depends. You’ll find this island an infernally
rum place, I promise you. I’d watch my goings
carefully, if I were you. He—” He hesitated, and
seemed to alter his mind about what was on his lips.
“I wish you’d help me with these rabbits,” he said.
His procedure with the rabbits was singular. I
waded in with him, and helped him lug one of the
hutches ashore. No sooner was that done than he
opened the door of it, and tilting the thing on one
end turned its living contents out on the ground.
They fell in a struggling heap one on the top of
the other. He clapped his hands, and forthwith they
went off with that hopping run of theirs, fifteen or
twenty of them I should think, up the beach.
“Increase and multiply, my friends,” said
Montgomery. “Replenish the island. Hitherto we’ve
had a certain lack of meat here.”
As I watched them disappearing, the white-haired
man returned with a brandy-flask and some biscuits.
“Something to go on with, Prendick,” said he, in a
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far more familiar tone than before. I made no ado,

but set to work on the biscuits at once, while the
white-haired man helped Montgomery to release
about a score more of the rabbits. Three big hutches,
however, went up to the house with the puma. The
brandy I did not touch, for I have been an abstainer
from my birth.

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The Locked Door

T he reader will perhaps understand that at first

everything was so strange about me, and
my position was the outcome of such unexpected
adventures, that I had no discernment of the
relative strangeness of this or that thing. I followed
the llama up the beach, and was overtaken by
Montgomery, who asked me not to enter the stone
enclosure. I noticed then that the puma in its cage
and the pile of packages had been placed outside
the entrance to this quadrangle.
I turned and saw that the launch had now been
unloaded, run out again, and was being beached,
and the white-haired man was walking towards us.
He addressed Montgomery.
“And now comes the problem of this uninvited
guest. What are we to do with him?”
“He knows something of science,” said
Montgomery.
“I’m itching to get to work again—with this new
stuff,” said the white-haired man, nodding towards
the enclosure. His eyes grew brighter.
“I daresay you are,” said Montgomery, in
anything but a cordial tone.
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“We can’t send him over there, and we can’t spare

the time to build him a new shanty; and we certainly
can’t take him into our confidence just yet.”
“I’m in your hands,” said I. I had no idea of what he
meant by “over there.”
“I’ve been thinking of the same things,”
Montgomery answered. “There’s my room with the
outer door—”
“That’s it,” said the elder man, promptly, looking
at Montgomery; and all three of us went towards
the enclosure. “I’m sorry to make a mystery, Mr.
Prendick; but you’ll remember you’re uninvited. Our
little establishment here contains a secret or so, is a
kind of Bluebeard’s chamber, in fact. Nothing very
dreadful, really, to a sane man; but just now, as we
don’t know you—”
“Decidedly,” said I, “I should be a fool to take
offence at any want of confidence.”
He twisted his heavy mouth into a faint smile—
he was one of those saturnine people who smile
with the corners of the mouth down—and bowed
his acknowledgment of my complaisance. The main
entrance to the enclosure was passed; it was a heavy
wooden gate, framed in iron and locked, with the cargo
of the launch piled outside it, and at the corner we came
to a small doorway I had not previously observed. The
white-haired man produced a bundle of keys from the
pocket of his greasy blue jacket, opened this door, and
entered. His keys, and the elaborate locking-up of the
place even while it was still under his eye, struck me as
peculiar. I followed him, and found myself in a small
apartment, plainly but not uncomfortably furnished
and with its inner door, which was slightly ajar, opening
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into a paved courtyard. This inner door Montgomery

at once closed. A hammock was slung across the darker
corner of the room, and a small unglazed window
defended by an iron bar looked out towards the sea.
This the white-haired man told me was to be my
apartment; and the inner door, which “for fear of
accidents,” he said, he would lock on the other side,
was my limit inward. He called my attention to a
convenient deck chair before the window, and to an
array of old books, chiefly, I found, surgical works and
editions of the Latin and Greek classics (languages I
cannot read with any comfort), on a shelf near the
hammock. He left the room by the outer door, as if to
avoid opening the inner one again.
“We usually have our meals in here,” said
Montgomery, and then, as if in doubt, went out after
the other. “Moreau!” I heard him call, and for the
moment I do not think I noticed. Then as I handled
the books on the shelf it came up in consciousness:
Where had I heard the name of Moreau before? I sat
down before the window, took out the biscuits that
still remained to me, and ate them with an excellent
appetite. Moreau!
Through the window I saw one of those
unaccountable men in white, lugging a packing case
along the beach. Presently the window frame hid
him. Then I heard a key inserted and turned in the
lock behind me. After a little while I heard through
the locked door the noise of the staghounds, that had
now been brought up from the beach. They were
not barking, but sniffing and growling in a curious
fashion. I could hear the rapid patter of their feet, and
Montgomery’s voice soothing them.
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I was very much impressed by the elaborate

secrecy of these two men regarding the contents of
the place, and for some time I was thinking of that
and of the unaccountable familiarity of the name
of Moreau; but so odd is the human memory that
I could not then recall that well-known name in its
proper connection. From that my thoughts went to
the indefinable queerness of the deformed man on
the beach. I never saw such a gait, such odd motions
as he pulled at the box. I recalled that none of these
men had spoken to me, though most of them I had
found looking at me at one time or another in a
peculiarly furtive manner, quite unlike the frank
stare of your unsophisticated savage. Indeed, they
had all seemed remarkably taciturn, and when they
did speak, endowed with very uncanny voices. What
was wrong with them? Then I recalled the eyes of
Montgomery’s ungainly attendant.
Just as I was thinking of him he came in. He was
now dressed in white, and carried a little tray with
some coffee and boiled vegetables thereon. I could
hardly repress a shuddering recoil as he came, bending
amiably, and placed the tray before me on the table.
Then astonishment paralysed me. Under his stringy
black locks I saw his ear; it jumped upon me suddenly
close to my face. The man had pointed ears, covered
with a fine brown fur!
“Your breakfast, sair,” he said.
I stared at his face without attempting to answer
him. He turned and went towards the door, regarding
me oddly over his shoulder. I followed him out
with my eyes; and as I did so, by some odd trick of
unconscious cerebration, there came surging into
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my head the phrase, “The Moreau hollows”—was it?

“The Moreau—” Ah! It sent my memory back ten
years. “The Moreau horrors!” The phrase drifted loose
in my mind for a moment, and then I saw it in red
lettering on a little buff-coloured pamphlet, to read
which made one shiver and creep. Then I remembered
distinctly all about it. That long-forgotten pamphlet
came back with startling vividness to my mind. I had
been a mere lad then, and Moreau was, I suppose,
about fifty—a prominent and masterful physiologist,
well-known in scientific circles for his extraordinary
imagination and his brutal directness in discussion.
Was this the same Moreau? He had published
some very astonishing facts in connection with the
transfusion of blood, and in addition was known to
be doing valuable work on morbid growths. Then
suddenly his career was closed. He had to leave England.
A journalist obtained access to his laboratory in the
capacity of laboratory assistant, with the deliberate
intention of making sensational exposures; and by the
help of a shocking accident (if it was an accident), his
gruesome pamphlet became notorious. On the day of
its publication a wretched dog, flayed and otherwise
mutilated, escaped from Moreau’s house. It was in
the silly season, and a prominent editor, a cousin of
the temporary laboratory assistant, appealed to the
conscience of the nation. It was not the first time that
conscience has turned against the methods of research.
The doctor was simply howled out of the country. It
may be that he deserved to be; but I still think that
the tepid support of his fellow investigators and his
desertion by the great body of scientific workers
was a shameful thing. Yet some of his experiments,
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by the journalist’s account, were wantonly cruel.

He might perhaps have purchased his social peace
by abandoning his investigations; but he apparently
preferred the latter, as most men would who have
once fallen under the overmastering spell of research.
He was unmarried, and had indeed nothing but his
own interest to consider.
I felt convinced that this must be the same man.
Everything pointed to it. It dawned upon me to
what end the puma and the other animals—which
had now been brought with other luggage into
the enclosure behind the house—were destined;
and a curious faint odour, the halitus of something
familiar, an odour that had been in the background
of my consciousness hitherto, suddenly came
forward into the forefront of my thoughts. It was
the antiseptic odour of the dissecting room. I heard
the puma growling through the wall, and one of the
dogs yelped as though it had been struck.
Yet surely, and especially to another scientific
man, there was nothing so horrible in vivisection as
to account for this secrecy; and by some odd leap in
my thoughts the pointed ears and luminous eyes of
Montgomery’s attendant came back again before me
with the sharpest definition. I stared before me out at
the green sea, frothing under a freshening breeze, and
let these and other strange memories of the last few
days chase one another through my mind.
What could it all mean? A locked enclosure on a
lonely island, a notorious vivisector, and these crippled
and distorted men?

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The Crying
of the Puma

M ontgomery interrupted my tangle of

mystification and suspicion about one
o’clock, and his grotesque attendant followed him
with a tray bearing bread, some herbs and other
eatables, a flask of whiskey, a jug of water, and
three glasses and knives. I glanced askance at this
strange creature, and found him watching me
with his queer, restless eyes. Montgomery said he
would lunch with me, but that Moreau was too
preoccupied with some work to come.
“Moreau!” said I. “I know that name.”
“The devil you do!” said he. “What an ass I was to
mention it to you! I might have thought. Anyhow, it
will give you an inkling of our—mysteries. Whiskey?”
“No, thanks; I’m an abstainer.”
“I wish I’d been. But it’s no use locking the door
after the steed is stolen. It was that infernal stuff
which led to my coming here—that, and a foggy
night. I thought myself in luck at the time, when
Moreau offered to get me off. It’s queer—”
“Montgomery,” said I, suddenly, as the outer
door closed, “why has your man pointed ears?”
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“Damn!” he said, over his first mouthful of food.

He stared at me for a moment, and then repeated,
“Pointed ears?”
“Little points to them,” said I, as calmly as
possible, with a catch in my breath; “and a fine
black fur at the edges?”
He helped himself to whiskey and water with
great deliberation. “I was under the impression—
that his hair covered his ears.”
“I saw them as he stooped by me to put that
coffee you sent to me on the table. And his eyes
shine in the dark.”
By this time Montgomery had recovered from
the surprise of my question. “I always thought,”
he said deliberately, with a certain accentuation of
his flavouring of lisp, “that there was something
the matter with his ears, from the way he covered
them. What were they like?”
I was persuaded from his manner that this
ignorance was a pretence. Still, I could hardly tell
the man that I thought him a liar. “Pointed,” I said;
“rather small and furry—distinctly furry. But the
whole man is one of the strangest beings I ever set
eyes on.”
A sharp, hoarse cry of animal pain came from the
enclosure behind us. Its depth and volume testified
to the puma. I saw Montgomery wince.
“Yes?” he said.
“Where did you pick up the creature?”
“San Francisco. He’s an ugly brute, I admit.
Half-witted, you know. Can’t remember where he
came from. But I’m used to him, you know. We
both are. How does he strike you?”
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“He’s unnatural,” I said. “There’s something

about him—don’t think me fanciful, but it gives
me a nasty little sensation, a tightening of my
muscles, when he comes near me. It’s a touch—of
the diabolical, in fact.”
Montgomery had stopped eating while I
told him this. “Rum!” he said. “I can’t see it.” He
resumed his meal. “I had no idea of it,” he said, and
masticated. “The crew of the schooner must have
felt it the same. Made a dead set at the poor devil.
You saw the captain?”
Suddenly the puma howled again, this time more
painfully. Montgomery swore under his breath. I
had half a mind to attack him about the men on the
beach. Then the poor brute within gave vent to a
series of short, sharp cries.
“Your men on the beach,” said I; “what race are
they?”
“Excellent fellows, aren’t they?” said he,
absentmindedly, knitting his brows as the animal
yelled out sharply.
I said no more. There was another outcry worse
than the former. He looked at me with his dull grey
eyes, and then took some more whiskey. He tried to
draw me into a discussion about alcohol, professing
to have saved my life with it. He seemed anxious to
lay stress on the fact that I owed my life to him. I
answered him distractedly.
Presently our meal came to an end; the misshapen
monster with the pointed ears cleared the remains
away, and Montgomery left me alone in the room
again. All the time he had been in a state of ill-
concealed irritation at the noise of the vivisected
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puma. He had spoken of his odd want of nerve, and

left me to the obvious application.
I found myself that the cries were singularly
irritating, and they grew in depth and intensity
as the afternoon wore on. They were painful at
first, but their constant resurgence at last altogether
upset my balance. I flung aside a crib of Horace I
had been reading, and began to clench my fists, to
bite my lips, and to pace the room. Presently I got
to stopping my ears with my fingers.
The emotional appeal of those yells grew upon
me steadily, grew at last to such an exquisite
expression of suffering that I could stand it in that
confined room no longer. I stepped out of the door
into the slumberous heat of the late afternoon, and
walking past the main entrance—locked again, I
noticed—turned the corner of the wall.
The crying sounded even louder out of doors. It
was as if all the pain in the world had found a voice.
Yet had I known such pain was in the next room,
and had it been dumb, I believe—I have thought
since—I could have stood it well enough. It is when
suffering finds a voice and sets our nerves quivering
that this pity comes troubling us. But in spite of
the brilliant sunlight and the green fans of the trees
waving in the soothing sea breeze, the world was
a confusion, blurred with drifting black and red
phantasms, until I was out of earshot of the house
in the chequered wall.

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The Thing
in the Forest

I strode through the undergrowth that clothed the

ridge behind the house, scarcely heeding whither
I went; passed on through the shadow of a thick
cluster of straight-stemmed trees beyond it, and so
presently found myself some way on the other side
of the ridge, and descending towards a streamlet
that ran through a narrow valley. I paused and
listened. The distance I had come, or the intervening
masses of thicket, deadened any sound that might
be coming from the enclosure. The air was still.
Then with a rustle a rabbit emerged, and went
scampering up the slope before me. I hesitated, and
sat down in the edge of the shade.
The place was a pleasant one. The rivulet was
hidden by the luxuriant vegetation of the banks
save at one point, where I caught a triangular patch
of its glittering water. On the farther side I saw
through a bluish haze a tangle of trees and creepers,
and above these again the luminous blue of the sky.
Here and there a splash of white or crimson marked
the blooming of some trailing epiphyte. I let my
eyes wander over this scene for a while, and then
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began to turn over in my mind again the strange

peculiarities of Montgomery’s man. But it was too
hot to think elaborately, and presently I fell into a
tranquil state midway between dozing and waking.
From this I was aroused, after I know not how
long, by a rustling amidst the greenery on the
other side of the stream. For a moment I could see
nothing but the waving summits of the ferns and
reeds. Then suddenly upon the bank of the stream
appeared something—at first I could not distinguish
what it was. It bowed its round head to the water,
and began to drink. Then I saw it was a man, going
on all fours like a beast. He was clothed in bluish
cloth, and was of a copper-coloured hue, with
black hair. It seemed that grotesque ugliness was an
invariable character of these islanders. I could hear
the suck of the water at his lips as he drank.
I leant forward to see him better, and a piece of
lava, detached by my hand, went pattering down the
slope. He looked up guiltily, and his eyes met mine.
Forthwith he scrambled to his feet, and stood wiping
his clumsy hand across his mouth and regarding me.
His legs were scarcely half the length of his body.
So, staring one another out of countenance, we
remained for perhaps the space of a minute. Then,
stopping to look back once or twice, he slunk off
among the bushes to the right of me, and I heard the
swish of the fronds grow faint in the distance and
die away. Long after he had disappeared, I remained
sitting up staring in the direction of his retreat. My
drowsy tranquillity had gone.
I was startled by a noise behind me, and turning
suddenly saw the flapping white tail of a rabbit
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vanishing up the slope. I jumped to my feet. The

apparition of this grotesque, half-bestial creature
had suddenly populated the stillness of the afternoon
for me. I looked around me rather nervously, and
regretted that I was unarmed. Then I thought that
the man I had just seen had been clothed in bluish
cloth, had not been naked as a savage would have
been; and I tried to persuade myself from that fact
that he was after all probably a peaceful character,
that the dull ferocity of his countenance belied him.
Yet I was greatly disturbed at the apparition. I
walked to the left along the slope, turning my head
about and peering this way and that among the
straight stems of the trees. Why should a man go on
all fours and drink with his lips? Presently I heard an
animal wailing again, and taking it to be the puma, I
turned about and walked in a direction diametrically
opposite to the sound. This led me down to the
stream, across which I stepped and pushed my way
up through the undergrowth beyond.
I was startled by a great patch of vivid scarlet
on the ground, and going up to it found it to be
a peculiar fungus, branched and corrugated like a
foliaceous lichen, but deliquescing into slime at the
touch; and then in the shadow of some luxuriant
ferns I came upon an unpleasant thing—the dead
body of a rabbit covered with shining flies, but still
warm and with the head torn off. I stopped aghast at
the sight of the scattered blood. Here at least was one
visitor to the island disposed of! There were no traces
of other violence about it. It looked as though it had
been suddenly snatched up and killed; and as I stared
at the little furry body came the difficulty of how the
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thing had been done. The vague dread that had been
in my mind since I had seen the inhuman face of the
man at the stream grew distincter as I stood there.
I began to realise the hardihood of my expedition
among these unknown people. The thicket about me
became altered to my imagination. Every shadow
became something more than a shadow—became
an ambush; every rustle became a threat. Invisible
things seemed watching me. I resolved to go back to
the enclosure on the beach. I suddenly turned away
and thrust myself violently, possibly even frantically,
through the bushes, anxious to get a clear space
about me again.
I stopped just in time to prevent myself emerging
upon an open space. It was a kind of glade in the
forest, made by a fall; seedlings were already starting
up to struggle for the vacant space; and beyond, the
dense growth of stems and twining vines and splashes
of fungus and flowers closed in again. Before me,
squatting together upon the fungoid ruins of a huge
fallen tree and still unaware of my approach, were
three grotesque human figures. One was evidently a
female; the other two were men. They were naked,
save for swathings of scarlet cloth about the middle;
and their skins were of a dull pinkish-drab colour,
such as I had seen in no savages before. They had
fat, heavy, chinless faces, retreating foreheads, and a
scant bristly hair upon their heads. I never saw such
bestial-looking creatures.
They were talking, or at least one of the men
was talking to the other two, and all three had been
too closely interested to heed the rustling of my
approach. They swayed their heads and shoulders
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from side to side. The speaker’s words came thick

and sloppy, and though I could hear them distinctly
I could not distinguish what he said. He seemed
to me to be reciting some complicated gibberish.
Presently his articulation became shriller, and
spreading his hands he rose to his feet. At that
the others began to gibber in unison, also rising
to their feet, spreading their hands and swaying
their bodies in rhythm with their chant. I noticed
then the abnormal shortness of their legs, and their
lank, clumsy feet. All three began slowly to circle
round, raising and stamping their feet and waving
their arms; a kind of tune crept into their rhythmic
recitation, and a refrain—“aloola,” or “balloola,” it
sounded like. Their eyes began to sparkle, and their
ugly faces to brighten, with an expression of strange
pleasure. Saliva dripped from their lipless mouths.
Suddenly, as I watched their grotesque and
unaccountable gestures, I perceived clearly for the first
time what it was that had offended me, what had given
me the two inconsistent and conflicting impressions
of utter strangeness and yet of the strangest familiarity.
The three creatures engaged in this mysterious rite
were human in shape, and yet human beings with
the strangest air about them of some familiar animal.
Each of these creatures, despite its human form, its
rag of clothing, and the rough humanity of its bodily
form, had woven into it—into its movements, into
the expression of its countenance, into its whole
presence—some now irresistible suggestion of a hog,
a swinish taint, the unmistakable mark of the beast.
I stood overcome by this amazing realisation and
then the most horrible questionings came rushing
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into my mind. They began leaping in the air, first one

and then the other, whooping and grunting. Then
one slipped, and for a moment was on all fours—to
recover, indeed, forthwith. But that transitory gleam
of the true animalism of these monsters was enough.
I turned as noiselessly as possible, and becoming
every now and then rigid with the fear of being
discovered, as a branch cracked or a leaf rustled, I
pushed back into the bushes. It was long before I
grew bolder, and dared to move freely. My only
idea for the moment was to get away from these
foul beings, and I scarcely noticed that I had
emerged upon a faint pathway amidst the trees.
Then suddenly traversing a little glade, I saw with
an unpleasant start two clumsy legs among the
trees, walking with noiseless footsteps parallel with
my course, and perhaps thirty yards away from me.
The head and upper part of the body were hidden
by a tangle of creeper. I stopped abruptly, hoping
the creature did not see me. The feet stopped as I
did. So nervous was I that I controlled an impulse
to headlong flight with the utmost difficulty.
Then looking hard, I distinguished through the
interlacing network the head and body of the brute
I had seen drinking. He moved his head. There
was an emerald flash in his eyes as he glanced at
me from the shadow of the trees, a half-luminous
colour that vanished as he turned his head again.
He was motionless for a moment, and then with a
noiseless tread began running through the green
confusion. In another moment he had vanished
behind some bushes. I could not see him, but I felt
that he had stopped and was watching me again.
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What on earth was he—man or beast? What did

he want with me? I had no weapon, not even a stick.
Flight would be madness. At any rate the thing,
whatever it was, lacked the courage to attack me.
Setting my teeth hard, I walked straight towards
him. I was anxious not to show the fear that seemed
chilling my backbone. I pushed through a tangle
of tall white-flowered bushes, and saw him twenty
paces beyond, looking over his shoulder at me
and hesitating. I advanced a step or two, looking
steadfastly into his eyes.
“Who are you?” said I.
He tried to meet my gaze. “No!” he said
suddenly, and turning went bounding away from
me through the undergrowth. Then he turned and
stared at me again. His eyes shone brightly out of
the dusk under the trees.
My heart was in my mouth; but I felt my only
chance was bluff, and walked steadily towards him.
He turned again, and vanished into the dusk. Once
more I thought I caught the glint of his eyes, and
that was all.
For the first time I realised how the lateness of
the hour might affect me. The sun had set some
minutes since, the swift dusk of the tropics was
already fading out of the eastern sky, and a pioneer
moth fluttered silently by my head. Unless I would
spend the night among the unknown dangers of
the mysterious forest, I must hasten back to the
enclosure. The thought of a return to that pain-
haunted refuge was extremely disagreeable, but still
more so was the idea of being overtaken in the open
by darkness and all that darkness might conceal.
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I gave one more look into the blue shadows that had
swallowed up this odd creature, and then retraced
my way down the slope towards the stream, going
as I judged in the direction from which I had come.
I walked eagerly, my mind confused with many
things, and presently found myself in a level place
among scattered trees. The colourless clearness
that comes after the sunset flush was darkling; the
blue sky above grew momentarily deeper, and the
little stars one by one pierced the attenuated light;
the interspaces of the trees, the gaps in the further
vegetation, that had been hazy blue in the daylight,
grew black and mysterious. I pushed on. The
colour vanished from the world. The treetops rose
against the luminous blue sky in inky silhouette,
and all below that outline melted into one formless
blackness. Presently the trees grew thinner, and the
shrubby undergrowth more abundant. Then there
was a desolate space covered with a white sand,
and then another expanse of tangled bushes. I did
not remember crossing the sand-opening before.
I began to be tormented by a faint rustling upon
my right hand. I thought at first it was fancy, for
whenever I stopped there was silence, save for the
evening breeze in the treetops. Then when I turned
to hurry on again there was an echo to my footsteps.
I turned away from the thickets, keeping to the
more open ground, and endeavouring by sudden
turns now and then to surprise something in
the act of creeping upon me. I saw nothing, and
nevertheless my sense of another presence grew
steadily. I increased my pace, and after some time
came to a slight ridge, crossed it, and turned
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sharply, regarding it steadfastly from the further

side. It came out black and clear-cut against the
darkling sky; and presently a shapeless lump heaved
up momentarily against the skyline and vanished
again. I felt assured now that my tawny-faced
antagonist was stalking me once more; and coupled
with that was another unpleasant realisation, that I
had lost my way.
For a time I hurried on hopelessly perplexed, and
pursued by that stealthy approach. Whatever it was,
the thing either lacked the courage to attack me,
or it was waiting to take me at some disadvantage.
I kept studiously to the open. At times I would
turn and listen; and presently I had half persuaded
myself that my pursuer had abandoned the chase, or
was a mere creation of my disordered imagination.
Then I heard the sound of the sea. I quickened my
footsteps almost into a run, and immediately there
was a stumble in my rear.
I turned suddenly, and stared at the uncertain
trees behind me. One black shadow seemed to leap
into another. I listened, rigid, and heard nothing
but the creep of the blood in my ears. I thought that
my nerves were unstrung, and that my imagination
was tricking me, and turned resolutely towards the
sound of the sea again.
In a minute or so the trees grew thinner, and I
emerged upon a bare, low headland running out
into the sombre water. The night was calm and
clear, and the reflection of the growing multitude
of the stars shivered in the tranquil heaving of the
sea. Some way out, the wash upon an irregular
band of reef shone with a pallid light of its own.
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Westward I saw the zodiacal light mingling with

the yellow brilliance of the evening star. The coast
fell away from me to the east, and westward it was
hidden by the shoulder of the cape. Then I recalled
the fact that Moreau’s beach lay to the west.
A twig snapped behind me, and there was a
rustle. I turned, and stood facing the dark trees. I
could see nothing—or else I could see too much.
Every dark form in the dimness had its ominous
quality, its peculiar suggestion of alert watchfulness.
So I stood for perhaps a minute, and then, with an
eye to the trees still, turned westward to cross the
headland; and as I moved, one among the lurking
shadows moved to follow me.
My heart beat quickly. Presently the broad
sweep of a bay to the westward became visible, and
I halted again. The noiseless shadow halted a dozen
yards from me. A little point of light shone on the
further bend of the curve, and the grey sweep of the
sandy beach lay faint under the starlight. Perhaps
two miles away was that little point of light. To get
to the beach I should have to go through the trees
where the shadows lurked, and down a bushy slope.
I could see the thing rather more distinctly now. It
was no animal, for it stood erect. At that I opened my
mouth to speak, and found a hoarse phlegm choked
my voice. I tried again, and shouted, “Who is there?”
There was no answer. I advanced a step. The thing
did not move, only gathered itself together. My foot
struck a stone. That gave me an idea. Without taking
my eyes off the black form before me, I stooped and
picked up this lump of rock; but at my motion the
thing turned abruptly as a dog might have done,
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and slunk obliquely into the further darkness. Then

I recalled a schoolboy expedient against big dogs,
and twisted the rock into my handkerchief, and
gave this a turn round my wrist. I heard a movement
further off among the shadows, as if the thing was
in retreat. Then suddenly my tense excitement gave
way; I broke into a profuse perspiration and fell
a-trembling, with my adversary routed and this
weapon in my hand.
It was some time before I could summon
resolution to go down through the trees and bushes
upon the flank of the headland to the beach. At
last I did it at a run; and as I emerged from the
thicket upon the sand, I heard some other body
come crashing after me. At that I completely lost
my head with fear, and began running along the
sand. Forthwith there came the swift patter of soft
feet in pursuit. I gave a wild cry, and redoubled my
pace. Some dim, black things about three or four
times the size of rabbits went running or hopping
up from the beach towards the bushes as I passed.
So long as I live, I shall remember the terror of
that chase. I ran near the water’s edge, and heard
every now and then the splash of the feet that
gained upon me. Far away, hopelessly far, was the
yellow light. All the night about us was black and
still. Splash, splash, came the pursuing feet, nearer
and nearer. I felt my breath going, for I was quite
out of training; it whooped as I drew it, and I felt
a pain like a knife at my side. I perceived the thing
would come up with me long before I reached
the enclosure, and, desperate and sobbing for my
breath, I wheeled round upon it and struck at it as
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it came up to me—struck with all my strength. The

stone came out of the sling of the handkerchief as
I did so. As I turned, the thing, which had been
running on all fours, rose to its feet, and the missile
fell fair on its left temple. The skull rang loud, and
the animal-man blundered into me, thrust me back
with its hands, and went staggering past me to fall
headlong upon the sand with its face in the water;
and there it lay still.
I could not bring myself to approach that black
heap. I left it there, with the water rippling round
it, under the still stars, and giving it a wide berth
pursued my way towards the yellow glow of the
house; and presently, with a positive effect of relief,
came the pitiful moaning of the puma, the sound
that had originally driven me out to explore this
mysterious island. At that, though I was faint
and horribly fatigued, I gathered together all my
strength, and began running again towards the
light. I thought I heard a voice calling me.

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The Crying
of the Man

A s I drew near the house I saw that the light shone

from the open door of my room; and then I heard
coming from out of the darkness at the side of that
orange oblong of light, the voice of Montgomery
shouting, “Prendick!” I continued running. Presently
I heard him again. I replied by a feeble “Hullo!” and
in another moment had staggered up to him.
“Where have you been?” said he, holding me at
arm’s length, so that the light from the door fell
on my face. “We have both been so busy that we
forgot you until about half an hour ago.” He led
me into the room and sat me down in the deck
chair. For awhile I was blinded by the light. “We
did not think you would start to explore this island
of ours without telling us,” he said; and then, “I was
afraid—But—what—Hullo!”
My last remaining strength slipped from me,
and my head fell forward on my chest. I think he
found a certain satisfaction in giving me brandy.
“For God’s sake,” said I, “fasten that door.”
“You’ve been meeting some of our curiosities,
eh?” said he.
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He locked the door and turned to me again. He

asked me no questions, but gave me some more
brandy and water and pressed me to eat. I was in a
state of collapse. He said something vague about his
forgetting to warn me, and asked me briefly when
I left the house and what I had seen.
I answered him as briefly, in fragmentary
sentences. “Tell me what it all means,” said I, in a
state bordering on hysterics.
“It’s nothing so very dreadful,” said he. “But I
think you have had about enough for one day.” The
puma suddenly gave a sharp yell of pain. At that he
swore under his breath. “I’m damned,” said he, “if
this place is not as bad as Gower Street, with its cats.”
“Montgomery,” said I, “what was that thing that
came after me? Was it a beast or was it a man?”
“If you don’t sleep tonight,” he said, “you’ll be off
your head tomorrow.”
I stood up in front of him. “What was that thing
that came after me?” I asked.
He looked me squarely in the eyes, and twisted
his mouth askew. His eyes, which had seemed
animated a minute before, went dull. “From your
account,” said he, “I’m thinking it was a bogle.”
I felt a gust of intense irritation, which passed
as quickly as it came. I flung myself into the chair
again, and pressed my hands on my forehead. The
puma began once more.
Montgomery came round behind me and put his
hand on my shoulder. “Look here, Prendick,” he said, “I
had no business to let you drift out into this silly island
of ours. But it’s not so bad as you feel, man. Your nerves
are worked to rags. Let me give you something that
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will make you sleep. That—will keep on for hours yet.

You must simply get to sleep, or I won’t answer for it.”
I did not reply. I bowed forward, and covered
my face with my hands. Presently he returned with
a small measure containing a dark liquid. This he
gave me. I took it unresistingly, and he helped me
into the hammock.
When I awoke, it was broad day. For a little while
I lay flat, staring at the roof above me. The rafters, I
observed, were made out of the timbers of a ship. Then
I turned my head, and saw a meal prepared for me on
the table. I perceived that I was hungry, and prepared
to clamber out of the hammock, which, very politely
anticipating my intention, twisted round and deposited
me upon all fours on the floor.
I got up and sat down before the food. I had a heavy
feeling in my head, and only the vaguest memory at
first of the things that had happened over night. The
morning breeze blew very pleasantly through the
unglazed window, and that and the food contributed
to the sense of animal comfort which I experienced.
Presently the door behind me—the door inward
towards the yard of the enclosure—opened. I turned
and saw Montgomery’s face.
“All right,” said he. “I’m frightfully busy.” And he
shut the door.
Afterwards I discovered that he forgot to re-lock it.
Then I recalled the expression of his face the previous
night, and with that the memory of all I had experienced
reconstructed itself before me. Even as that fear came
back to me came a cry from within; but this time it was
not the cry of a puma. I put down the mouthful that
hesitated upon my lips, and listened. Silence, save for
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the whisper of the morning breeze. I began to think

my ears had deceived me.
After a long pause I resumed my meal, but with my
ears still vigilant. Presently I heard something else, very
faint and low. I sat as if frozen in my attitude. Though
it was faint and low, it moved me more profoundly
than all that I had hitherto heard of the abominations
behind the wall. There was no mistake this time in the
quality of the dim, broken sounds; no doubt at all of
their source. For it was groaning, broken by sobs and
gasps of anguish. It was no brute this time; it was a
human being in torment!
As I realised this I rose, and in three steps had crossed
the room, seized the handle of the door into the yard,
and flung it open before me.
“Prendick, man! Stop!” cried Montgomery,
intervening.
A startled deerhound yelped and snarled. There
was blood, I saw, in the sink—brown, and some
scarlet—and I smelt the peculiar smell of carbolic
acid. Then through an open doorway beyond,
in the dim light of the shadow, I saw something
bound painfully upon a framework, scarred, red,
and bandaged; and then blotting this out appeared
the face of old Moreau, white and terrible. In a
moment he had gripped me by the shoulder with
a hand that was smeared red, had twisted me off
my feet, and flung me headlong back into my own
room. He lifted me as though I was a little child.
I fell at full length upon the floor, and the door
slammed and shut out the passionate intensity of
his face. Then I heard the key turn in the lock, and
Montgomery’s voice in expostulation.
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“Ruin the work of a lifetime,” I heard Moreau say.

“He does not understand,” said Montgomery. and
other things that were inaudible.
“I can’t spare the time yet,” said Moreau.
The rest I did not hear. I picked myself up and
stood trembling, my mind a chaos of the most
horrible misgivings. Could it be possible, I thought,
that such a thing as the vivisection of men was
carried on here? The question shot like lightning
across a tumultuous sky; and suddenly the clouded
horror of my mind condensed into a vivid realisation
of my own danger.

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The Hunting
of the Man

I t came before my mind with an unreasonable

hope of escape that the outer door of my room was
still open to me. I was convinced now, absolutely
assured, that Moreau had been vivisecting a
human being. All the time since I had heard his
name, I had been trying to link in my mind in
some way the grotesque animalism of the islanders
with his abominations; and now I thought I saw it
all. The memory of his work on the transfusion of
blood recurred to me. These creatures I had seen
were the victims of some hideous experiment.
These sickening scoundrels had merely intended
to keep me back, to fool me with their display of
confidence, and presently to fall upon me with a
fate more horrible than death—with torture; and
after torture the most hideous degradation it is
possible to conceive—to send me off a lost soul, a
beast, to the rest of their Comus rout.
I looked round for some weapon. Nothing. Then
with an inspiration I turned over the deck chair, put
my foot on the side of it, and tore away the side
rail. It happened that a nail came away with the
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wood, and projecting, gave a touch of danger to

an otherwise petty weapon. I heard a step outside,
and incontinently flung open the door and found
Montgomery within a yard of it. He meant to lock
the outer door! I raised this nailed stick of mine
and cut at his face; but he sprang back. I hesitated a
moment, then turned and fled, round the corner of
the house. “Prendick, man!” I heard his astonished
cry, “don’t be a silly ass, man!”
Another minute, thought I, and he would have
had me locked in, and as ready as a hospital rabbit for
my fate. He emerged behind the corner, for I heard
him shout, “Prendick!” Then he began to run after
me, shouting things as he ran. This time running
blindly, I went northeastward in a direction at
right angles to my previous expedition. Once, as
I went running headlong up the beach, I glanced
over my shoulder and saw his attendant with him.
I ran furiously up the slope, over it, then turning
eastward along a rocky valley fringed on either
side with jungle I ran for perhaps a mile altogether,
my chest straining, my heart beating in my ears;
and then hearing nothing of Montgomery or his
man, and feeling upon the verge of exhaustion, I
doubled sharply back towards the beach as I judged,
and lay down in the shelter of a canebrake. There I
remained for a long time, too fearful to move, and
indeed too fearful even to plan a course of action.
The wild scene about me lay sleeping silently under
the sun, and the only sound near me was the thin
hum of some small gnats that had discovered me.
Presently I became aware of a drowsy breathing
sound, the soughing of the sea upon the beach.
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After about an hour I heard Montgomery

shouting my name, far away to the north. That set
me thinking of my plan of action. As I interpreted
it then, this island was inhabited only by these two
vivisectors and their animalised victims. Some of
these no doubt they could press into their service
against me if need arose. I knew both Moreau and
Montgomery carried revolvers; and, save for a feeble
bar of deal spiked with a small nail, the merest
mockery of a mace, I was unarmed.
So I lay still there, until I began to think of food
and drink; and at that thought the real hopelessness
of my position came home to me. I knew no way of
getting anything to eat. I was too ignorant of botany
to discover any resort of root or fruit that might lie
about me; I had no means of trapping the few rabbits
upon the island. It grew blanker the more I turned
the prospect over. At last in the desperation of my
position, my mind turned to the animal men I had
encountered. I tried to find some hope in what I
remembered of them. In turn I recalled each one I
had seen, and tried to draw some augury of assistance
from my memory.
Then suddenly I heard a staghound bay, and at that
realised a new danger. I took little time to think, or
they would have caught me then, but snatching up my
nailed stick, rushed headlong from my hiding place
towards the sound of the sea. I remember a growth of
thorny plants, with spines that stabbed like penknives.
I emerged bleeding and with torn clothes upon the lip
of a long creek opening northward. I went straight
into the water without a minute’s hesitation, wading
up the creek, and presently finding myself kneedeep in
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a little stream. I scrambled out at last on the westward

bank, and with my heart beating loudly in my ears,
crept into a tangle of ferns to await the issue. I heard
the dog (there was only one) draw nearer, and yelp
when it came to the thorns. Then I heard no more,
and presently began to think I had escaped.
The minutes passed; the silence lengthened out,
and at last after an hour of security my courage
began to return to me. By this time I was no longer
very much terrified or very miserable. I had, as it
were, passed the limit of terror and despair. I felt now
that my life was practically lost, and that persuasion
made me capable of daring anything. I had even a
certain wish to encounter Moreau face to face; and
as I had waded into the water, I remembered that if
I were too hard pressed at least one path of escape
from torment still lay open to me—they could not
very well prevent my drowning myself. I had half
a mind to drown myself then; but an odd wish to
see the whole adventure out, a queer, impersonal,
spectacular interest in myself, restrained me. I
stretched my limbs, sore and painful from the
pricks of the spiny plants, and stared around me at
the trees; and, so suddenly that it seemed to jump
out of the green tracery about it, my eyes lit upon a
black face watching me. I saw that it was the simian
creature who had met the launch upon the beach.
He was clinging to the oblique stem of a palm tree.
I gripped my stick, and stood up facing him. He
began chattering. “You, you, you,” was all I could
distinguish at first. Suddenly he dropped from the
tree, and in another moment was holding the fronds
apart and staring curiously at me.
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I did not feel the same repugnance towards this

creature which I had experienced in my encounters
with the other beast men. “You,” he said, “in the
boat.” He was a man, then—at least as much of a
man as Montgomery’s attendant—for he could talk.
“Yes,” I said, “I came in the boat. From the ship.”
“Oh!” he said, and his bright, restless eyes travelled
over me, to my hands, to the stick I carried, to my
feet, to the tattered places in my coat, and the cuts
and scratches I had received from the thorns. He
seemed puzzled at something. His eyes came back
to my hands. He held his own hand out and counted
his digits slowly, “One, two, three, four, five—eigh?”
I did not grasp his meaning then; afterwards I
was to find that a great proportion of these beast
people had malformed hands, lacking sometimes
even three digits. But guessing this was in some
way a greeting, I did the same thing by way of
reply. He grinned with immense satisfaction. Then
his swift roving glance went round again; he made
a swift movement—and vanished. The fern fronds
he had stood between came swishing together.
I pushed out of the brake after him, and was
astonished to find him swinging cheerfully by one
lank arm from a rope of creepers that looped down
from the foliage overhead. His back was to me.
“Hullo!” said I.
He came down with a twisting jump, and stood
facing me.
“I say,” said I, “where can I get something to eat?”
“Eat!” he said. “Eat man’s food, now.” And his
eye went back to the swing of ropes. “At the huts.”
“But where are the huts?”
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“Oh!”
“I’m new, you know.”
At that he swung round, and set off at a quick
walk. All his motions were curiously rapid. “Come
along,” said he.
I went with him to see the adventure out. I
guessed the huts were some rough shelter where he
and some more of these beast people lived. I might
perhaps find them friendly, find some handle in
their minds to take hold of. I did not know how far
they had forgotten their human heritage.
My apelike companion trotted along by my side,
with his hands hanging down and his jaw thrust
forward. I wondered what memory he might have in
him. “How long have you been on this island?” said I.
“How long?” he asked; and after having the
question repeated, he held up three fingers.
The creature was little better than an idiot. I tried
to make out what he meant by that, and it seems
I bored him. After another question or two he
suddenly left my side and went leaping at some fruit
that hung from a tree. He pulled down a handful
of prickly husks and went on eating the contents. I
noted this with satisfaction, for here at least was a hint
for feeding. I tried him with some other questions,
but his chattering, prompt responses were as often as
not quite at cross purposes with my question. Some
few were appropriate, others quite parrot-like.
I was so intent upon these peculiarities that I
scarcely noticed the path we followed. Presently we
came to trees, all charred and brown, and so to a
bare place covered with a yellow-white incrustation,
across which a drifting smoke, pungent in whiffs to
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nose and eyes, went drifting. On our right, over

a shoulder of bare rock, I saw the level blue of the
sea. The path coiled down abruptly into a narrow
ravine between two tumbled and knotty masses of
blackish scoriae. Into this we plunged.
It was extremely dark, this passage, after the
blinding sunlight reflected from the sulphurous
ground. Its walls grew steep, and approached each
other. Blotches of green and crimson drifted across
my eyes. My conductor stopped suddenly. “Home!”
said he, and I stood in a floor of a chasm that was
at first absolutely dark to me. I heard some strange
noises, and thrust the knuckles of my left hand into
my eyes. I became aware of a disagreeable odor, like
that of a monkey’s cage ill-cleaned. Beyond, the
rock opened again upon a gradual slope of sunlit
greenery, and on either hand the light smote down
through narrow ways into the central gloom.

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The Sayers
of the Law

T hen something cold touched my hand. I

started violently, and saw close to me a dim
pinkish thing, looking more like a flayed child
than anything else in the world. The creature had
exactly the mild but repulsive features of a sloth,
the same low forehead and slow gestures.
As the first shock of the change of light passed,
I saw about me more distinctly. The little sloth-
like creature was standing and staring at me. My
conductor had vanished. The place was a narrow
passage between high walls of lava, a crack in the
knotted rock, and on either side interwoven heaps
of sea-mat, palm-fans, and reeds leaning against
the rock formed rough and impenetrably dark dens.
The winding way up the ravine between these was
scarcely three yards wide, and was disfigured by
lumps of decaying fruit pulp and other refuse, which
accounted for the disagreeable stench of the place.
The little pink sloth-creature was still blinking
at me when my ape-man reappeared at the aperture
of the nearest of these dens, and beckoned me in.
As he did so a slouching monster wriggled out of
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one of the places, further up this strange street,

and stood up in featureless silhouette against the
bright green beyond, staring at me. I hesitated,
having half a mind to bolt the way I had come;
and then, determined to go through with the
adventure, I gripped my nailed stick about the
middle and crawled into the little evil-smelling
lean-to after my conductor.
It was a semicircular space, shaped like the half
of a beehive; and against the rocky wall that formed
the inner side of it was a pile of variegated fruits,
coconuts among others. Some rough vessels of lava
and wood stood about the floor, and one on a rough
stool. There was no fire. In the darkest corner of the
hut sat a shapeless mass of darkness that grunted
“Hey!” as I came in, and my ape-man stood in
the dim light of the doorway and held out a split
coconut to me as I crawled into the other corner and
squatted down. I took it, and began gnawing it, as
serenely as possible, in spite of a certain trepidation
and the nearly intolerable closeness of the den. The
little pink sloth-creature stood in the aperture of
the hut, and something else with a drab face and
bright eyes came staring over its shoulder.
“Hey!” came out of the lump of mystery opposite.
“It is a man.”
“It is a man,” gabbled my conductor, “a man, a
man, a five-man, like me.”
“Shut up!” said the voice from the dark, and
grunted. I gnawed my coconut amid an impressive
stillness.
I peered hard into the blackness, but could
distinguish nothing.
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“It is a man,” the voice repeated. “He comes to

live with us?”
It was a thick voice, with something in it—a kind
of whistling overtone—that struck me as peculiar;
but the English accent was strangely good.
The ape-man looked at me as though he expected
something. I perceived the pause was interrogative.
“He comes to live with you,” I said.
“It is a man. He must learn the law.”
I began to distinguish now a deeper blackness
in the black, a vague outline of a hunched-up
figure. Then I noticed the opening of the place
was darkened by two more black heads. My hand
tightened on my stick.
The thing in the dark repeated in a louder tone,
“Say the words.” I had missed its last remark. “Not
to go on all fours; that is the law,” it repeated in a
kind of singsong.
I was puzzled.
“Say the words,” said the ape-man, repeating,
and the figures in the doorway echoed this, with a
threat in the tone of their voices.
I realised that I had to repeat this idiotic formula;
and then began the insanest ceremony. The voice
in the dark began intoning a mad litany, line by
line, and I and the rest to repeat it. As they did so,
they swayed from side to side in the oddest way, and
beat their hands upon their knees; and I followed
their example. I could have imagined I was already
dead and in another world. That dark hut, these
grotesque dim figures, just flecked here and there
by a glimmer of light, and all of them swaying in
unison and chanting,
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“Not to go on all fours; that is the law. Are we

not men?
“Not to suck up drink; that is the law. Are we not
men?
“Not to eat fish or flesh; that is the law. Are we
not men?
“Not to claw the bark of trees; that is the law. Are
we not men?
“Not to chase other men; that is the law. Are we
not men?”
And so from the prohibition of these acts of folly,
on to the prohibition of what I thought then were
the maddest, most impossible, and most indecent
things one could well imagine. A kind of rhythmic
fervour fell on all of us; we gabbled and swayed faster
and faster, repeating this amazing law. Superficially
the contagion of these brutes was upon me, but deep
down within me the laughter and disgust struggled
together. We ran through a long list of prohibitions,
and then the chant swung round to a new formula.
“His is the house of pain.
“His is the hand that makes.
“His is the hand that wounds.
“His is the hand that heals.”
And so on for another long series, mostly quite
incomprehensible gibberish to me about him,
whoever he might be. I could have fancied it was a
dream, but never before have I heard chanting in a
dream.
“His is the lightning flash,” we sang. “His is the
deep, salt sea.”
A horrible fancy came into my head that Moreau,
after animalising these men, had infected their
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dwarfed brains with a kind of deification of himself.

However, I was too keenly aware of white teeth
and strong claws about me to stop my chanting on
that account.
“His are the stars in the sky.”
At last that song ended. I saw the ape-man’s face
shining with perspiration; and my eyes being now
accustomed to the darkness, I saw more distinctly
the figure in the corner from which the voice came.
It was the size of a man, but it seemed covered with
a dull grey hair almost like a Skye terrier. What was
it? What were they all? Imagine yourself surrounded
by all the most horrible cripples and maniacs it is
possible to conceive, and you may understand a little
of my feelings with these grotesque caricatures of
humanity about me.
“He is a five-man, a five-man, a five-man—like
me,” said the ape-man.
I held out my hands. The grey creature in the
corner leant forward.
“Not to run on all fours; that is the law. Are we
not men?” he said.
He put out a strangely distorted talon and gripped
my fingers. The thing was almost like the hoof
of a deer produced into claws. I could have yelled
with surprise and pain. His face came forward and
peered at my nails, came forward into the light of
the opening of the hut and I saw with a quivering
disgust that it was like the face of neither man nor
beast, but a mere shock of grey hair, with three
shadowy over-archings to mark the eyes and mouth.
“He has little nails,” said this grisly creature in
his hairy beard. “It is well.”
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He threw my hand down, and instinctively I

gripped my stick.
“Eat roots and herbs; it is his will,” said the ape-man.
“I am the sayer of the law,” said the grey figure.
“Here come all that be new to learn the law. I sit in
the darkness and say the law.”
“It is even so,” said one of the beasts in the
doorway.
“Evil are the punishments of those who break
the law. None escape.”
“None escape,” said the beast folk, glancing
furtively at one another.
“None, none,” said the ape-man—“none escape.
See! I did a little thing, a wrong thing, once. I
jabbered, jabbered, stopped talking. None could
understand. I am burnt, branded in the hand. He is
great. He is good!”
“None escape,” said the grey creature in the
corner.
“None escape,” said the beast people, looking
askance at one another.
“For everyone the want that is bad,” said the grey
sayer of the law. “What you will want we do not
know; we shall know. Some want to follow things
that move, to watch and slink and wait and spring;
to kill and bite, bite deep and rich, sucking the
blood. It is bad. ‘Not to chase other men; that is the
law. Are we not men? Not to eat flesh or fish; that
is the law. Are we not men?’ ”
“None escape,” said a dappled brute standing in
the doorway.
“For everyone the want is bad,” said the grey
sayer of the law. “Some want to go tearing with
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teeth and hands into the roots of things, snuffing

into the earth. It is bad.”
“None escape,” said the men in the door.
“Some go clawing trees; some go scratching
at the graves of the dead; some go fighting with
foreheads or feet or claws; some bite suddenly, none
giving occasion; some love uncleanness.”
“None escape,” said the ape-man, scratching his calf.
“None escape,” said the little pink sloth-creature.
“Punishment is sharp and sure. Therefore learn
the law. Say the words.”
And incontinently he began again the strange
litany of the law, and again I and all these creatures
began singing and swaying. My head reeled with
this jabbering and the close stench of the place; but
I kept on, trusting to find presently some chance of
a new development.
“Not to go on all fours; that is the law. Are we
not men?”
We were making such a noise that I noticed
nothing of a tumult outside, until someone, who
I think was one of the two swine men I had seen,
thrust his head over the little pink sloth-creature and
shouted something excitedly, something that I did
not catch. Incontinently those at the opening of the
hut vanished; my ape-man rushed out; the thing that
had sat in the dark followed him (I only observed
that it was big and clumsy, and covered with silvery
hair), and I was left alone. Then before I reached the
aperture I heard the yelp of a staghound.
In another moment I was standing outside the
hovel, my chair rail in my hand, every muscle of
me quivering. Before me were the clumsy backs
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of perhaps a score of these beast people, their

misshapen heads half hidden by their shoulder
blades. They were gesticulating excitedly. Other
half-animal faces glared interrogation out of the
hovels. Looking in the direction in which they
faced, I saw coming through the haze under the
trees beyond the end of the passage of dens the
dark figure and awful white face of Moreau. He
was holding the leaping staghound back, and close
behind him came Montgomery revolver in hand.
For a moment I stood horror-struck. I turned
and saw the passage behind me blocked by another
heavy brute, with a huge grey face and twinkling
little eyes, advancing towards me. I looked round
and saw to the right of me and a half-dozen yards in
front of me a narrow gap in the wall of rock through
which a ray of light slanted into the shadows.
“Stop!” cried Moreau as I strode towards this,
and then, “Hold him!”
At that, first one face turned towards me and
then others. Their bestial minds were happily slow.
I dashed my shoulder into a clumsy monster who
was turning to see what Moreau meant, and flung
him forward into another. I felt his hands fly round,
clutching at me and missing me. The little pink
sloth-creature dashed at me, and I gashed down its
ugly face with the nail in my stick and in another
minute was scrambling up a steep side pathway, a
kind of sloping chimney, out of the ravine. I heard
a howl behind me, and cries of “Catch him!” “Hold
him!” and the grey-faced creature appeared behind
me and jammed his huge bulk into the cleft. “Go
on! go on!” they howled. I clambered up the narrow
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cleft in the rock and came out upon the sulphur on

the westward side of the village of the beast men.
That gap was altogether fortunate for me, for
the narrow chimney, slanting obliquely upward,
must have impeded the nearer pursuers. I ran over
the white space and down a steep slope, through
a scattered growth of trees, and came to a low-
lying stretch of tall reeds, through which I pushed
into a dark, thick undergrowth that was black and
succulent under foot. As I plunged into the reeds,
my foremost pursuers emerged from the gap. I
broke my way through this undergrowth for some
minutes. The air behind me and about me was soon
full of threatening cries. I heard the tumult of my
pursuers in the gap up the slope, then the crashing
of the reeds, and every now and then the crackling
crash of a branch. Some of the creatures roared like
excited beasts of prey. The staghound yelped to the
left. I heard Moreau and Montgomery shouting in
the same direction. I turned sharply to the right. It
seemed to me even then that I heard Montgomery
shouting for me to run for my life.
Presently the ground gave rich and oozy under
my feet; but I was desperate and went headlong
into it, struggled through kneedeep, and so came
to a winding path among tall canes. The noise of
my pursuers passed away to my left. In one place
three strange, pink, hopping animals, about the size
of cats, bolted before my footsteps. This pathway
ran up hill, across another open space covered with
white incrustation, and plunged into a canebrake
again. Then suddenly it turned parallel with the
edge of a steep-walled gap, which came without
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warning, like the ha-ha of an English park—turned

with an unexpected abruptness. I was still running
with all my might, and I never saw this drop until I
was flying headlong through the air.
I fell on my forearms and head, among thorns,
and rose with a torn ear and bleeding face. I had
fallen into a precipitous ravine, rocky and thorny,
full of a hazy mist which drifted about me in wisps,
and with a narrow streamlet from which this mist
came meandering down the centre. I was astonished
at this thin fog in the full blaze of daylight; but I
had no time to stand wondering then. I turned to
my right, downstream, hoping to come to the sea in
that direction, and so have my way open to drown
myself. It was only later I found that I had dropped
my nailed stick in my fall.
Presently the ravine grew narrower for a space,
and carelessly I stepped into the stream. I jumped out
again pretty quickly, for the water was almost boiling.
I noticed too there was a thin sulphurous scum
drifting upon its coiling water. Almost immediately
came a turn in the ravine, and the indistinct blue
horizon. The nearer sea was flashing the sun from
a myriad facets. I saw my death before me; but I
was hot and panting, with the warm blood oozing
out on my face and running pleasantly through my
veins. I felt more than a touch of exultation too, at
having distanced my pursuers. It was not in me then
to go out and drown myself yet. I stared back the
way I had come.
I listened. Save for the hum of the gnats and the
chirp of some small insects that hopped among
the thorns, the air was absolutely still. Then came
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the yelp of a dog, very faint, and a chattering and

gibbering, the snap of a whip, and voices. They
grew louder, then fainter again. The noise receded
up the stream and faded away. For a while the chase
was over; but I knew now how much hope of help
for me lay in the beast people.

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A Parley

I turned again and went on down towards the sea.

I found the hot stream broadened out to a shallow,
weedy sand, in which an abundance of crabs and
long-bodied, many-legged creatures started from
my footfall. I walked to the very edge of the salt
water, and then I felt I was safe. I turned and stared,
arms akimbo, at the thick green behind me, into
which the steamy ravine cut like a smoking gash.
But, as I say, I was too full of excitement and (a
true saying, though those who have never known
danger may doubt it) too desperate to die.
Then it came into my head that there was
one chance before me yet. While Moreau and
Montgomery and their bestial rabble chased me
through the island, might I not go round the beach
until I came to their enclosure—make a flank march
upon them, in fact, and then with a rock lugged
out of their loosely-built wall, perhaps, smash in the
lock of the smaller door and see what I could find
(knife, pistol, or whatnot) to fight them with when
they returned? It was at any rate something to try.
So I turned to the westward and walked along
by the water’s edge. The setting sun flashed his
blinding heat into my eyes. The slight pacific tide
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was running in with a gentle ripple. Presently the

shore fell away southward, and the sun came round
upon my right hand. Then suddenly, far in front of
me, I saw first one and then several figures emerging
from the bushes—Moreau, with his grey staghound,
then Montgomery, and two others. At that I stopped.
They saw me, and began gesticulating and
advancing. I stood watching them approach. The
two beast men came running forward to cut me off
from the undergrowth, inland. Montgomery came,
running also, but straight towards me. Moreau
followed slower with the dog.
At last I roused myself from my inaction, and
turning seaward walked straight into the water. The
water was very shallow at first. I was thirty yards out
before the waves reached to my waist. Dimly I could
see the intertidal creatures darting away from my feet.
“What are you doing, man?” cried Montgomery.
I turned, standing waist deep, and stared at them.
Montgomery stood panting at the margin of the
water. His face was bright-red with exertion, his long
flaxen hair blown about his head, and his dropping
nether lip showed his irregular teeth. Moreau was
just coming up, his face pale and firm, and the dog at
his hand barked at me. Both men had heavy whips.
Farther up the beach stared the beast men.
“What am I doing? I am going to drown myself,”
said I.
Montgomery and Moreau looked at each other.
“Why?” asked Moreau.
“Because that is better than being tortured by you.”
“I told you so,” said Montgomery, and Moreau
said something in a low tone.
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“What makes you think I shall torture you?”

asked Moreau.
“What I saw,” I said. “And those—yonder.”
“Hush!” said Moreau, and held up his hand.
“I will not,” said I. “They were men: what are
they now? I at least will not be like them.”
I looked past my interlocutors. Up the beach
were M’ling, Montgomery’s attendant, and one of
the white-swathed brutes from the boat. Farther
up, in the shadow of the trees, I saw my little ape-
man, and behind him some other dim figures.
“Who are these creatures?” said I, pointing to
them and raising my voice more and more that
it might reach them. “They were men, men like
yourselves, whom you have infected with some
bestial taint—men whom you have enslaved, and
whom you still fear.
“You who listen,” I cried, pointing now to
Moreau and shouting past him to the beast men—
“You who listen! Do you not see these men still fear
you, go in dread of you? Why, then, do you fear
them? You are many—”
“For God’s sake,” cried Montgomery, “stop that,
Prendick!”
“Prendick!” cried Moreau.
They both shouted together, as if to drown my
voice; and behind them lowered the staring faces
of the beast men, wondering, their deformed hands
hanging down, their shoulders hunched up. They
seemed, as I fancied, to be trying to understand me, to
remember, I thought, something of their human past.
I went on shouting, I scarcely remember what—
that Moreau and Montgomery could be killed, that
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they were not to be feared: that was the burden of

what I put into the heads of the beast people. I saw
the green-eyed man in the dark rags, who had met
me on the evening of my arrival, come out from
among the trees, and others followed him, to hear
me better. At last for want of breath I paused.
“Listen to me for a moment,” said the steady
voice of Moreau; “and then say what you will.”
“Well?” said I.
He coughed, thought, then shouted: “Latin,
Prendick! bad Latin, schoolboy Latin; but try and
understand. Hi non sunt homines; sunt animalia qui
nos habemus—vivisected. A humanising process. I
will explain. Come ashore.”
I laughed. “A pretty story,” said I. “They talk,
build houses. They were men. It’s likely I’ll come
ashore.”
“The water just beyond where you stand is
deep—and full of sharks.”
“That’s my way,” said I. “Short and sharp.
Presently.”
“Wait a minute.” He took something out of his
pocket that flashed back the sun, and dropped the
object at his feet. “That’s a loaded revolver,” said
he. “Montgomery here will do the same. Now we
are going up the beach until you are satisfied the
distance is safe. Then come and take the revolvers.”
“Not I! You have a third between you.”
“I want you to think over things, Prendick. In
the first place, I never asked you to come upon this
island. If we vivisected men, we should import men,
not beasts. In the next, we had you drugged last
night, had we wanted to work you any mischief;
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and in the next, now your first panic is over and

you can think a little, is Montgomery here quite up
to the character you give him? We have chased you
for your good. Because this island is full of inimical
phenomena. Besides, why should we want to shoot
you when you have just offered to drown yourself?”
“Why did you set—your people onto me when I
was in the hut?”
“We felt sure of catching you, and bringing you
out of danger. Afterwards we drew away from the
scent, for your good.”
I mused. It seemed just possible. Then I
remembered something again. “But I saw,” said I,
“in the enclosure—”
“That was the puma.”
“Look here, Prendick,” said Montgomery,
“you’re a silly ass! Come out of the water and take
these revolvers, and talk. We can’t do anything
more than we could do now.”
I will confess that then, and indeed always, I
distrusted and dreaded Moreau; but Montgomery
was a man I felt I understood.
“Go up the beach,” said I, after thinking, and
added, “holding your hands up.”
“Can’t do that,” said Montgomery, with an
explanatory nod over his shoulder. “Undignified.”
“Go up to the trees, then,” said I, “as you please.”
“It’s a damned silly ceremony,” said Montgomery.
Both turned and faced the six or seven grotesque
creatures, who stood there in the sunlight, solid,
casting shadows, moving, and yet so incredibly
unreal. Montgomery cracked his whip at them, and
forthwith they all turned and fled helter skelter into
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the trees; and when Montgomery and Moreau were

at a distance I judged sufficient, I waded ashore, and
picked up and examined the revolvers. To satisfy
myself against the subtlest trickery, I discharged one
at a round lump of lava, and had the satisfaction of
seeing the stone pulverised and the beach splashed
with lead. Still I hesitated for a moment.
“I’ll take the risk,” said I, at last; and with a revolver
in each hand I walked up the beach towards them.
“That’s better,” said Moreau, without affectation.
“As it is, you have wasted the best part of my day
with your confounded imagination.” And with a
touch of contempt which humiliated me, he and
Montgomery turned and went on in silence before
me.
The knot of beast men, still wondering, stood
back among the trees. I passed them as serenely as
possible. One started to follow me, but retreated
again when Montgomery cracked his whip. The
rest stood silent—watching. They may once have
been animals; but I never before saw an animal
trying to think.

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Doctor Moreau
Explains

“A nd now, Prendick, I will explain,” said

Doctor Moreau, so soon as we had eaten
and drunk. “I must confess that you are the most
dictatorial guest I ever entertained. I warn you
that this is the last I shall do to oblige you. The
next thing you threaten to commit suicide about, I
shan’t do—even at some personal inconvenience.”
He sat in my deck chair, a cigar half consumed in
his white, dexterous-looking fingers. The light of
the swinging lamp fell on his white hair; he stared
through the little window out at the starlight. I sat
as far away from him as possible, the table between
us and the revolvers to hand. Montgomery was not
present. I did not care to be with the two of them
in such a little room.
“You admit that the vivisected human being,
as you called it, is, after all, only the puma?” said
Moreau. He had made me visit that horror in the
inner room, to assure myself of its inhumanity.
“It is the puma,” I said, “still alive, but so cut
and mutilated as I pray I may never see living flesh
again. Of all vile—”
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“Never mind that,” said Moreau; “at least, spare

me those youthful horrors. Montgomery used to be
just the same. You admit that it is the puma. Now
be quiet, while I reel off my physiological lecture
to you.”
And forthwith, beginning in the tone of a man
supremely bored, but presently warming a little,
he explained his work to me. He was very simple
and convincing. Now and then there was a touch
of sarcasm in his voice. Presently I found myself hot
with shame at our mutual positions.
The creatures I had seen were not men, had
never been men. They were animals, humanised
animals—triumphs of vivisection.
“You forget all that a skilled vivisector can do
with living things,” said Moreau. “For my own
part, I’m puzzled why the things I have done here
have not been done before. Small efforts, of course,
have been made—amputation, tongue-cutting,
excisions. Of course you know a squint may be
induced or cured by surgery? Then in the case of
excisions you have all kinds of secondary changes,
pigmentary disturbances, modifications of the
passions, alterations in the secretion of fatty tissue.
I have no doubt you have heard of these things?”
“Of course,” said I. “But these foul creatures of
yours—”
“All in good time,” said he, waving his hand
at me; “I am only beginning. Those are trivial
cases of alteration. Surgery can do better things
than that. There is building up as well as breaking
down and changing. You have heard, perhaps, of
a common surgical operation resorted to in cases
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where the nose has been destroyed: a flap of skin is

cut from the forehead, turned down on the nose,
and heals in the new position. This is a kind of
grafting in a new position of part of an animal
upon itself. Grafting of freshly obtained material
from another animal is also possible—the case of
teeth, for example. The grafting of skin and bone is
done to facilitate healing: the surgeon places in the
middle of the wound pieces of skin snipped from
another animal, or fragments of bone from a victim
freshly killed. Hunter’s cockspur—possibly you
have heard of that—flourished on the bull’s neck;
and the rhinoceros rats of the Algerian zouaves are
also to be thought of—monsters manufactured by
transferring a slip from the tail of an ordinary rat
to its snout, and allowing it to heal in that position.”
“Monsters manufactured!” said I. “Then you
mean to tell me—”
“Yes. These creatures you have seen are animals
carven and wrought into new shapes. To that, to
the study of the plasticity of living forms, my life
has been devoted. I have studied for years, gaining
in knowledge as I go. I see you look horrified,
and yet I am telling you nothing new. It all lay
in the surface of practical anatomy years ago,
but no one had the temerity to touch it. It is not
simply the outward form of an animal which I
can change. The physiology, the chemical rhythm
of the creature, may also be made to undergo an
enduring modification—of which vaccination and
other methods of inoculation with living or dead
matter are examples that will, no doubt, be familiar
to you. A similar operation is the transfusion of
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blood—with which subject, indeed, I began. These

are all familiar cases. Less so, and probably far more
extensive, were the operations of those medieval
practitioners who made dwarfs and beggar-cripples,
show-monsters—some vestiges of whose art still
remain in the preliminary manipulation of the
young mountebank or contortionist. Victor Hugo
gives an account of them in L’Homme qui Rit.—
But perhaps my meaning grows plain now. You
begin to see that it is a possible thing to transplant
tissue from one part of an animal to another, or
from one animal to another; to alter its chemical
reactions and methods of growth; to modify the
articulations of its limbs; and, indeed, to change it
in its most intimate structure.
“And yet this extraordinary branch of knowledge
has never been sought as an end, and systematically,
by modern investigators until I took it up! Some
such things have been hit upon in the last resort
of surgery; most of the kindred evidence that will
recur to your mind has been demonstrated as it
were by accident—by tyrants, by criminals, by
the breeders of horses and dogs, by all kinds of
untrained clumsy-handed men working for their
own immediate ends. I was the first man to take
up this question armed with antiseptic surgery, and
with a really scientific knowledge of the laws of
growth. Yet one would imagine it must have been
practised in secret before. Such creatures as the
siamese twins—And in the vaults of the Inquisition.
No doubt their chief aim was artistic torture, but
some at least of the inquisitors must have had a
touch of scientific curiosity.”
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“But,” said I, “these things—these animals talk!”

He said that was so, and proceeded to point
out that the possibility of vivisection does not
stop at a mere physical metamorphosis. A pig
may be educated. The mental structure is even
less determinate than the bodily. In our growing
science of hypnotism we find the promise of a
possibility of superseding old inherent instincts
by new suggestions, grafting upon or replacing
the inherited fixed ideas. Very much indeed of
what we call moral education, he said, is such an
artificial modification and perversion of instinct;
pugnacity is trained into courageous self-sacrifice,
and suppressed sexuality into religious emotion.
And the great difference between man and monkey
is in the larynx, he continued—in the incapacity to
frame delicately different sound-symbols by which
thought could be sustained. In this I failed to agree
with him, but with a certain incivility he declined
to notice my objection. He repeated that the thing
was so, and continued his account of his work.
I asked him why he had taken the human form
as a model. There seemed to me then, and there
still seems to me now, a strange wickedness for that
choice.
He confessed that he had chosen that form by
chance. “I might just as well have worked to form
sheep into llamas and llamas into sheep. I suppose
there is something in the human form that appeals
to the artistic turn of mind more powerfully than
any animal shape can. But I’ve not confined myself
to man-making. Once or twice—” He was silent,
for a minute perhaps. “These years! How they have
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slipped by! And here I have wasted a day saving

your life, and am now wasting an hour explaining
myself!”
“But,” said I, “I still do not understand. Where
is your justification for inflicting all this pain? The
only thing that could excuse vivisection to me
would be some application—”
“Precisely,” said he. “But, you see, I am differently
constituted. We are on different platforms. You are
a materialist.”
“I am not a materialist,” I began hotly.
“In my view—in my view. For it is just this
question of pain that parts us. So long as visible or
audible pain turns you sick; so long as your own
pains drive you; so long as pain underlies your
propositions about sin—so long, I tell you, you are
an animal, thinking a little less obscurely what an
animal feels. This pain—”
I gave an impatient shrug at such sophistry.
“Oh, but it is such a little thing! A mind truly
opened to what science has to teach must see that
it is a little thing. It may be that save in this little
planet, this speck of cosmic dust, invisible long
before the nearest star could be attained—it may be,
I say, that nowhere else does this thing called pain
occur. But the laws we feel our way towards—Why,
even on this earth, even among living things, what
pain is there?”
As he spoke he drew a little penknife from his
pocket, opened the smaller blade, and moved his
chair so that I could see his thigh. Then, choosing
the place deliberately, he drove the blade into his
leg and withdrew it.
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“No doubt,” he said, “you have seen that before.

It does not hurt a pinprick. But what does it show?
The capacity for pain is not needed in the muscle,
and it is not placed there—is but little needed in
the skin, and only here and there over the thigh is
a spot capable of feeling pain. Pain is simply our
intrinsic medical adviser to warn us and stimulate
us. Not all living flesh is painful; nor is all nerve,
not even all sensory nerve. There’s no taint of pain,
real pain, in the sensations of the optic nerve. If you
wound the optic nerve, you merely see flashes of
light—just as disease of the auditory nerve merely
means a humming in our ears. Plants do not feel
pain, nor the lower animals; it’s possible that such
animals as the starfish and crayfish do not feel
pain at all. Then with men, the more intelligent
they become, the more intelligently they will see
after their own welfare, and the less they will need
the goad to keep them out of danger. I never yet
heard of a useless thing that was not ground out
of existence by evolution sooner or later. Did you?
And pain gets needless.
“Then I am a religious man, Prendick, as every
sane man must be. It may be, I fancy, that I have
seen more of the ways of this world’s maker than
you—for I have sought his laws, in my way, all my
life, while you, I understand, have been collecting
butterflies. And I tell you, pleasure and pain have
nothing to do with heaven or hell. Pleasure and
pain—bah! What is your theologian’s ecstasy but
Mahomet’s houri in the dark? This store which
men and women set on pleasure and pain, Prendick,
is the mark of the beast upon them—the mark of
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the beast from which they came! Pain, pain and

pleasure, they are for us only so long as we wriggle
in the dust.
“You see, I went on with this research just the
way it led me. That is the only way I ever heard of
true research going. I asked a question, devised some
method of obtaining an answer, and got a fresh
question. Was this possible or that possible? You
cannot imagine what this means to an investigator,
what an intellectual passion grows upon him! You
cannot imagine the strange, colourless delight of
these intellectual desires! The thing before you is no
longer an animal, a fellow-creature, but a problem!
Sympathetic pain—all I know of it I remember as a
thing I used to suffer from years ago. I wanted—it
was the one thing I wanted—to find out the extreme
limit of plasticity in a living shape.”
“But,” said I, “the thing is an abomination—”
“To this day I have never troubled about the ethics
of the matter,” he continued. “The study of nature
makes a man at last as remorseless as nature. I have
gone on, not heeding anything but the question I
was pursuing; and the material has—dripped into
the huts yonder. It is nearly eleven years since we
came here, I and Montgomery and six Kanakas. I
remember the green stillness of the island and the
empty ocean about us, as though it was yesterday.
The place seemed waiting for me.
“The stores were landed and the house was built.
The Kanakas founded some huts near the ravine. I
went to work here upon what I had brought with
me. There were some disagreeable things happened
at first. I began with a sheep, and killed it after a
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day and a half by a slip of the scalpel. I took another

sheep, and made a thing of pain and fear and left
it bound up to heal. It looked quite human to me
when I had finished it; but when I went to it I was
discontented with it. It remembered me, and was
terrified beyond imagination; and it had no more
than the wits of a sheep. The more I looked at it the
clumsier it seemed, until at last I put the monster
out of its misery. These animals without courage,
these fear-haunted, pain-driven things, without a
spark of pugnacious energy to face torment—they
are no good for man-making.
“Then I took a gorilla I had; and upon that,
working with infinite care and mastering difficulty
after difficulty, I made my first man. All the week,
night and day, I moulded him. With him it was
chiefly the brain that needed moulding; much had
to be added, much changed. I thought him a fair
specimen of the negroid type when I had finished
him, and he lay bandaged, bound, and motionless
before me. It was only when his life was assured that
I left him and came into this room again, and found
Montgomery much as you are. He had heard some of
the cries as the thing grew human—cries like those
that disturbed you so. I didn’t take him completely
into my confidence at first. And the Kanakas too,
had realised something of it. They were scared out
of their wits by the sight of me. I got Montgomery
over to me—in a way; but I and he had the hardest
job to prevent the Kanakas deserting. Finally they
did; and so we lost the yacht. I spent many days
educating the brute—altogether I had him for
three or four months. I taught him the rudiments
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of English; gave him ideas of counting; even made

the thing read the alphabet. But at that he was slow,
though I’ve met with idiots slower. He began with
a clean sheet, mentally; had no memories left in his
mind of what he had been. When his scars were
quite healed, and he was no longer anything but
painful and stiff, and able to converse a little, I took
him yonder and introduced him to the Kanakas as
an interesting stowaway.
“They were horribly afraid of him at first,
somehow—which offended me rather, for I was
conceited about him; but his ways seemed so mild,
and he was so abject, that after a time they received
him and took his education in hand. He was quick
to learn, very imitative and adaptive, and built
himself a hovel rather better, it seemed to me, than
their own shanties. There was one among the boys
a bit of a missionary, and he taught the thing to
read, or at least to pick out letters, and gave him
some rudimentary ideas of morality; but it seems
the beast’s habits were not all that is desirable.
“I rested from work for some days after this, and
was in a mind to write an account of the whole affair
to wake up English physiology. Then I came upon
the creature squatting up in a tree and gibbering
at two of the Kanakas who had been teasing him.
I threatened him, told him the inhumanity of such
a proceeding, aroused his sense of shame, and came
home resolved to do better before I took my work
back to England. I have been doing better. But
somehow the things drift back again: the stubborn
beast-flesh grows day by day back again. But I

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mean to do better things still. I mean to conquer

that. This puma—
“But that’s the story. All the Kanaka boys are
dead now; one fell overboard of the launch, and
one died of a wounded heel that he poisoned in
some way with plant-juice. Three went away in the
yacht, and I suppose and hope were drowned. The
other one—was killed. Well, I have replaced them.
Montgomery went on much as you are disposed to
do at first, and then—
“What became of the other one?” said I, sharply—
“the other Kanaka who was killed?”
“The fact is, after I had made a number of human
creatures I made a thing—” He hesitated.
“Yes?” said I.
“It was killed.”
“I don’t understand,” said I; “do you mean to
say—”
“It killed the Kanaka—yes. It killed several other
things that it caught. We chased it for a couple of
days. It only got loose by accident—I never meant
it to get away. It wasn’t finished. It was purely an
experiment. It was a limbless thing, with a horrible
face, that writhed along the ground in a serpentine
fashion. It was immensely strong, and in infuriating
pain. It lurked in the woods for some days, until we
hunted it; and then it wriggled into the northern
part of the island, and we divided the party to close
in upon it. Montgomery insisted upon coming
with me. The man had a rifle; and when his body
was found, one of the barrels was curved into
the shape of an S and very nearly bitten through.

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Montgomery shot the thing. After that I stuck to

the ideal of humanity—except for little things.”
He became silent. I sat in silence watching his
face.
“So for twenty years altogether—counting nine
years in England—I have been going on; and there
is still something in everything I do that defeats
me, makes me dissatisfied, challenges me to further
effort. Sometimes I rise above my level, sometimes
I fall below it; but always I fall short of the things
I dream. The human shape I can get now, almost
with ease, so that it is lithe and graceful, or thick
and strong; but often there is trouble with the
hands and the claws—painful things, that I dare not
shape too freely. But it is in the subtle grafting and
reshaping one must needs do to the brain that my
trouble lies. The intelligence is often oddly low, with
unaccountable blank ends, unexpected gaps. And
least satisfactory of all is something that I cannot
touch, somewhere—I cannot determine where—
in the seat of the emotions. Cravings, instincts,
desires that harm humanity, a strange hidden
reservoir to burst forth suddenly and inundate the
whole being of the creature with anger, hate, or
fear. These creatures of mine seemed strange and
uncanny to you so soon as you began to observe
them; but to me, just after I make them, they seem
to be indisputably human beings. It’s afterwards,
as I observe them, that the persuasion fades. First
one animal trait, then another, creeps to the surface
and stares out at me. But I will conquer yet! Each
time I dip a living creature into the bath of burning
pain, I say, ‘This time I will burn out all the animal;
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this time I will make a rational creature of my

own!’ After all, what is ten years? Men have been
a hundred thousand in the making.” He thought
darkly. “But I am drawing near the fastness. This
puma of mine—” After a silence, “And they revert.
As soon as my hand is taken from them the beast
begins to creep back, begins to assert itself again.”
Another long silence.
“Then you take the things you make into those
dens?” said I.
“They go. I turn them out when I begin to feel
the beast in them, and presently they wander there.
They all dread this house and me. There is a kind
of travesty of humanity over there. Montgomery
knows about it, for he interferes in their affairs. He
has trained one or two of them to our service. He’s
ashamed of it, but I believe he half likes some of
those beasts. It’s his business, not mine. They only
sicken me with a sense of failure. I take no interest
in them. I fancy they follow in the lines the Kanaka
missionary marked out, and have a kind of mockery
of a rational life, poor beasts! There’s something
they call the law. Sing hymns about ‘all thine.’
They build themselves their dens, gather fruit, and
pull herbs—marry even. But I can see through it
all, see into their very souls, and see there nothing
but the souls of beasts, beasts that perish, anger and
the lusts to live and gratify themselves.—Yet they’re
odd; complex, like everything else alive. There is a
kind of upward striving in them, part vanity, part
waste sexual emotion, part waste curiosity. It only
mocks me. I have some hope of this puma. I have
worked hard at her head and brain—
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“And now,” said he, standing up after a long gap

of silence, during which we had each pursued our
own thoughts, “what do you think? Are you in fear
of me still?”
I looked at him, and saw but a white-faced,
white-haired man, with calm eyes. Save for his
serenity, the touch almost of beauty that resulted
from his set tranquillity and his magnificent build,
he might have passed muster among a hundred
other comfortable old gentlemen. Then I shivered.
By way of answer to his second question, I handed
him a revolver with either hand.
“Keep them,” he said, and snatched at a yawn.
He stood up, stared at me for a moment, and
smiled. “You have had two eventful days,” said he.
“I should advise some sleep. I’m glad it’s all clear.
Good night.” He thought me over for a moment,
then went out by the inner door.
I immediately turned the key in the outer
one. I sat down again; sat for a time in a kind of
stagnant mood, so weary, emotionally, mentally,
and physically, that I could not think beyond the
point at which he had left me. The black window
stared at me like an eye. At last with an effort I put
out the light and got into the hammock. Very soon
I was asleep.

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Concerning
the Beast Folk

I woke early. Moreau’s explanation stood before

my mind, clear and definite, from the moment
of my awakening. I got out of the hammock
and went to the door to assure myself that the
key was turned. Then I tried the window bar,
and found it firmly fixed. That these manlike
creatures were in truth only bestial monsters,
mere grotesque travesties of men, filled me with a
vague uncertainty of their possibilities which was
far worse than any definite fear.
A tapping came at the door, and I heard the
glutinous accents of M’ling speaking. I pocketed
one of the revolvers (keeping one hand upon it),
and opened to him.
“Good morning, sair,” he said, bringing in, in
addition to the customary herb-breakfast, an ill-
cooked rabbit. Montgomery followed him. His
roving eye caught the position of my arm and he
smiled askew.
The puma was resting to heal that day; but
Moreau, who was singularly solitary in his habits,
did not join us. I talked with Montgomery to clear
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my ideas of the way in which the beast folk lived.

In particular, I was urgent to know how these
inhuman monsters were kept from falling upon
Moreau and Montgomery and from rending one
another. He explained to me that the comparative
safety of Moreau and himself was due to the limited
mental scope of these monsters. In spite of their
increased intelligence and the tendency of their
animal instincts to reawaken, they had certain fixed
ideas implanted by Moreau in their minds, which
absolutely bounded their imaginations. They were
really hypnotised; had been told that certain things
were impossible, and that certain things were not
to be done, and these prohibitions were woven into
the texture of their minds beyond any possibility of
disobedience or dispute.
Certain matters, however, in which old instinct
was at war with Moreau’s convenience, were in a
less stable condition. A series of propositions called
the law (I had already heard them recited) battled
in their minds with the deep-seated, ever-rebellious
cravings of their animal natures. This law they
were ever repeating, I found, and ever breaking.
Both Montgomery and Moreau displayed particular
solicitude to keep them ignorant of the taste of
blood; they feared the inevitable suggestions of that
flavour. Montgomery told me that the law, especially
among the feline beast people, became oddly
weakened about nightfall; that then the animal was
at its strongest; that a spirit of adventure sprang up in
them at the dusk, when they would dare things they
never seemed to dream about by day. To that I owed
my stalking by the leopard-man, on the night of my
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arrival. But during these earlier days of my stay they

broke the law only furtively and after dark; in the
daylight there was a general atmosphere of respect
for its multifarious prohibitions.
And here perhaps I may give a few general facts
about the island and the beast people. The island,
which was of irregular outline and lay low upon the
wide sea, had a total area, I suppose, of seven or eight
square miles.2 It was volcanic in origin, and was now
fringed on three sides by coral reefs; some fumaroles
to the northward, and a hot spring, were the only
vestiges of the forces that had long since originated
it. Now and then a faint quiver of earthquake would
be sensible, and sometimes the ascent of the spire of
smoke would be rendered tumultuous by gusts of
steam; but that was all. The population of the island,
Montgomery informed me, now numbered rather
more than sixty of these strange creations of Moreau’s
art, not counting the smaller monstrosities which lived
in the undergrowth and were without human form.
Altogether he had made nearly a hundred and twenty;
but many had died, and others—like the writhing
footless thing of which he had told me—had come by
violent ends. In answer to my question, Montgomery
said that they actually bore offspring, but that these
generally died. When they lived, Moreau took them
and stamped the human form upon them. There was
no evidence of the inheritance of their acquired human
characteristics. The females were less numerous than
the males, and liable to much furtive persecution in
spite of the monogamy the law enjoined.
It would be impossible for me to describe these
beast people in detail; my eye has had no training
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in details, and unhappily I cannot sketch. Most

striking, perhaps, in their general appearance was
the disproportion between the legs of these creatures
and the length of their bodies; and yet—so relative is
our idea of grace—my eye became habituated to their
forms, and at last I even fell in with their persuasion
that my own long thighs were ungainly. Another
point was the forward carriage of the head and the
clumsy and inhuman curvature of the spine. Even
the ape-man lacked that inward sinuous curve of
the back which makes the human figure so graceful.
Most had their shoulders hunched clumsily, and their
short forearms hung weakly at their sides. Few of
them were conspicuously hairy, at least until the end
of my time upon the island.
The next most obvious deformity was in their faces,
almost all of which were prognathous, malformed
about the ears, with large and protuberant noses,
very furry or very bristly hair, and often strangely-
coloured or strangely-placed eyes. None could laugh,
though the ape-man had a chattering titter. Beyond
these general characters their heads had little in
common; each preserved the quality of its particular
species: the human mark distorted but did not hide
the leopard, the ox, or the sow, or other animal or
animals, from which the creature had been moulded.
The voices, too, varied exceedingly. The hands were
always malformed; and though some surprised me by
their unexpected human appearance, almost all were
deficient in the number of the digits, clumsy about
the fingernails, and lacking any tactile sensibility.
The two most formidable animal men were
my leopard-man and a creature made of hyena
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and swine. Larger than these were the three bull-

creatures who pulled in the boat. Then came the
silvery-hairy-man, who was also the sayer of the
law, M’ling, and a satyr-like creature of ape and
goat. There were three swine-men and a swine-
woman, a mare-rhinoceros-creature, and several
other females whose sources I did not ascertain.
There were several wolf-creatures, a bear-bull, and
a Saint-Bernard-man. I have already described the
ape-man, and there was a particularly hateful (and
evil-smelling) old woman made of vixen and bear,
whom I hated from the beginning. She was said to
be a passionate votary of the law. Smaller creatures
were certain dappled youths and my little sloth-
creature. But enough of this catalogue.
At first I had a shivering horror of the brutes,
felt all too keenly that they were still brutes; but
insensibly I became a little habituated to the idea of
them, and moreover I was affected by Montgomery’s
attitude towards them. He had been with them so
long that he had come to regard them as almost
normal human beings. His London days seemed a
glorious, impossible past to him. Only once in a
year or so did he go to Arica to deal with Moreau’s
agent, a trader in animals there. He hardly met the
finest type of mankind in that seafaring village
of Spanish mongrels. The men aboard-ship, he
told me, seemed at first just as strange to him as
the beast men seemed to me—unnaturally long in
the leg, flat in the face, prominent in the forehead,
suspicious, dangerous, and cold-hearted. In fact,
he did not like men: his heart had warmed to me,
he thought, because he had saved my life. I fancied
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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 it from me at first.
M’ling, the black-faced man, Montgomery’s
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
his 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 whiskey, kicking it, beating it,
pelting it with stones or lighted fusees. 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 which 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
clumsy bovine-creatures who worked the launch
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treading heavily through the undergrowth, and

find myself asking, 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 she 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 bye, 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
decency and decorum of extensive costume.

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How the
Beast Folk
Taste Blood

M y 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—
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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 weeping into
the sea, has a thin white face.”
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“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 or 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.”
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“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 went out in the
evening. The head was completely wrung off.”
He gave a long, 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 continued. “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 in. “The taste of blood,” he said again.
He took out his revolver, examined the cartridges
in it and replaced it. Then he began to pull at his
dropping lip.
“I think I should know the brute again,” I said. “I
stunned him. He ought to have a handsome bruise
on the forehead of him.”
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“But then we have to prove that he killed the

rabbit,” said Montgomery. “I wish I’d never brought
the things here.”
I should have gone on, but he stayed there
thinking over the mangled rabbit in a puzzle-
headed way. As it was, I went to such a distance
that the rabbit’s remains were hidden.
“Come on!” I said.
Presently he woke up and came towards me.
“You see,” he said, almost in a whisper, “they are
all supposed to have a fixed idea against eating
anything that runs on land. If some brute has by
any accident tasted blood—”
We went on some way in silence. “I wonder
what can have happened,” he said to himself. Then,
after a pause again: “I did a foolish thing the other
day. That servant of mine—I showed him how to
skin and cook a rabbit. It’s odd—I saw him licking
his hands—It never occurred to me.”
Then: “We must put a stop to this. I must tell
Moreau.”
He could think of nothing else on our homeward
journey.
Moreau took the matter even more seriously
than Montgomery, and I need scarcely say that I
was affected by their evident consternation.
“We must make an example,” said Moreau. “I’ve
no doubt in my own mind that the leopard-man
was the sinner. But how can we prove it? I wish,
Montgomery, you had kept your taste for meat in
hand, and gone without these exciting novelties.
We may find ourselves in a mess yet, through it.”
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“I was a silly ass,” said Montgomery. “But the

thing’s done now; and you said I might have them,
you know.”
“We must see to the thing at once,” said Moreau.
“I suppose if anything should turn up, M’ling can
take care of himself?”
“I’m not so sure of M’ling,” said Montgomery. “I
think I ought to know him.”
In the afternoon, Moreau, Montgomery, myself,
and M’ling went across the island to the huts in
the ravine. We three were armed; M’ling carried
the little hatchet he used in chopping firewood, and
some coils of wire. Moreau had a huge cowherd’s
horn slung over his shoulder.
“You will see a gathering of the beast people,”
said Montgomery. “It is a pretty sight!”
Moreau said not a word on the way, but the
expression of his heavy, white-fringed face was
grimly set.
We crossed the ravine down which smoked the
stream of hot water, and followed the winding
pathway through the canebrakes until we reached
a wide area covered over with a thick, powdery
yellow substance which I believe was sulphur. Above
the shoulder of a weedy bank the sea glittered. We
came to a kind of shallow natural amphitheatre, and
here the four of us halted. Then Moreau sounded
the horn, and broke the sleeping stillness of the
tropical afternoon. He must have had strong lungs.
The hooting note rose and rose amidst its echoes,
to at last an ear-penetrating intensity.
“Ah!” said Moreau, letting the curved instrument
fall to his side again.
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Immediately there was a crashing through the

yellow canes, and a sound of voices from the dense
green jungle that marked the morass through which
I had run on the previous day. Then at three or four
points on the edge of the sulphurous area appeared
the grotesque forms of the beast people hurrying
towards us. I could not help a creeping horror, as I
perceived first one and then another trot out from
the trees or reeds and come shambling along over
the hot dust. But Moreau and Montgomery stood
calmly enough; and, perforce, I stuck beside them.
First to arrive was the satyr, strangely unreal for
all that he cast a shadow and tossed the dust with his
hoofs. After him from the brake came a monstrous
lout, a thing of horse and rhinoceros, chewing a
straw as it came; then appeared the swine-woman
and two wolf-women; then the fox-bear witch,
with her red eyes in her peaked red face, and then
others—all hurrying eagerly. As they came forward
they began to cringe towards Moreau and chant,
quite regardless of one another, fragments of the
latter half of the litany of the law—“His is the
hand that wounds; His is the hand that heals,” and
so forth. As soon as they had approached within
a distance of perhaps thirty yards they halted, and
bowing on knees and elbows began flinging the
white dust upon their heads.
Imagine the scene if you can! We three blue-clad
men, with our misshapen black-faced attendant,
standing in a wide expanse of sunlit yellow dust
under the blazing blue sky, and surrounded by this
circle of crouching and gesticulating monstrosities—
some almost human save in their subtle expression
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and gestures, some like cripples, some so strangely

distorted as to resemble nothing but the denizens of
our wildest dreams; and, beyond, the reedy lines of
a canebrake in one direction, a dense tangle of palm
trees on the other, separating us from the ravine
with the huts, and to the north the hazy horizon of
the Pacific Ocean.
“Sixty-two, sixty-three,” counted Moreau.
“There are four more.”
“I do not see the leopard-man,” said I.
Presently Moreau sounded the great horn again,
and at the sound of it all the beast people writhed
and grovelled in the dust. Then, slinking out of the
canebrake, stooping near the ground and trying
to join the dust-throwing circle behind Moreau’s
back, came the leopard-man. The last of the beast
people to arrive was the little ape-man. The earlier
animals, hot and weary with their grovelling, shot
vicious glances at him.
“Cease!” said Moreau, in his firm, loud voice;
and the beast people sat back upon their hams and
rested from their worshipping.
“Where is the sayer of the law?” said Moreau,
and the hairy-grey monster bowed his face in the
dust.
“Say the words!” said Moreau.
Forthwith all in the kneeling assembly, swaying
from side to side and dashing up the sulphur with
their hands—first the right hand and a puff of dust,
and then the left—began once more to chant their
strange litany. When they reached, “Not to eat
flesh or fish, that is the law,” Moreau held up his
lank white hand.
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“Stop!” he cried, and there fell absolute silence

upon them all.
I think they all knew and dreaded what was
coming. I looked round at their strange faces.
When I saw their wincing attitudes and the furtive
dread in their bright eyes, I wondered that I had
ever believed them to be men.
“That law has been broken!” said Moreau.
“None escape,” from the faceless creature with
the silvery hair. “None escape,” repeated the
kneeling circle of beast people.
“Who is he?” cried Moreau, and looked round at
their faces, cracking his whip. I fancied the hyena-
swine looked dejected, so too did the leopard-man.
Moreau stopped, facing this creature, who cringed
towards him with the memory and dread of infinite
torment.
“Who is he?” repeated Moreau, in a voice of
thunder.
“Evil is he who breaks the law,” chanted the sayer
of the law.
Moreau looked into the eyes of the leopard-man,
and seemed to be dragging the very soul out of the
creature.
“Who breaks the law—” said Moreau, taking his
eyes off his victim, and turning towards us (it seemed
to me there was a touch of exultation in his voice).
“Goes back to the house of pain,” they all
clamoured—“goes back to the house of pain,
O master!”
“Back to the house of pain—back to the house of
pain,” gabbled the ape-man, as though the idea was
sweet to him.
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“Do you hear?” said Moreau, turning back to the

criminal, “my friend—Hullo!”
For the leopard-man, released from Moreau’s eye,
had risen straight from his knees, and now, with eyes
aflame and his huge feline tusks flashing out from
under his curling lips, leapt towards his tormentor. I
am convinced that only the madness of unendurable
fear could have prompted this attack. The whole
circle of threescore monsters seemed to rise about us.
I drew my revolver. The two figures collided. I saw
Moreau reeling back from the leopard-man’s blow.
There was a furious yelling and howling all about
us. Everyone was moving rapidly. For a moment I
thought it was a general revolt. The furious face of
the leopard-man flashed by mine, with M’ling close
in pursuit. I saw the yellow eyes of the hyena-swine
blazing with excitement, his attitude as if he were
half resolved to attack me. The satyr, too, glared
at me over the hyena-swine’s hunched shoulders. I
heard the crack of Moreau’s pistol, and saw the pink
flash dart across the tumult. The whole crowd seemed
to swing round in the direction of the glint of fire,
and I too was swung round by the magnetism of the
movement. In another second I was running, one
of a tumultuous shouting crowd, in pursuit of the
escaping leopard-man.
That is all I can tell definitely. I saw the leopard-
man strike Moreau, and then everything spun
about me until I was running headlong. M’ling was
ahead, close in pursuit of the fugitive. Behind, their
tongues already lolling out, ran the wolf-women
in great leaping strides. The swine folk followed,
squealing with excitement, and the two bull-men
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in their swathings of white. Then came Moreau

in a cluster of the beast people, his wide-brimmed
straw hat blown off, his revolver in hand, and his
lank white hair streaming out. The hyena-swine
ran beside me, keeping pace with me and glancing
furtively at me out of his feline eyes, and the others
came pattering and shouting behind us.
The leopard-man went bursting his way through
the long canes, which sprang back as he passed, and
rattled in M’ling’s face. We others in the rear found a
trampled path for us when we reached the brake. The
chase lay through the brake for perhaps a quarter of
a mile, and then plunged into a dense thicket, which
retarded our movements exceedingly, though we
went through it in a crowd together—fronds flicking
into our faces, ropy creepers catching us under the
chin or gripping our ankles, thorny plants hooking
into and tearing cloth and flesh together.
“He has gone on all fours through this,” panted
Moreau, now just ahead of me.
“None escape,” said the wolf-bear, laughing into
my face with the exultation of hunting. We burst
out again among rocks, and saw the quarry ahead
running lightly on all fours and snarling at us over his
shoulder. At that the wolf folk howled with delight.
The thing was still clothed, and at a distance its face
still seemed human; but the carriage of its four limbs
was feline, and the furtive droop of its shoulder was
distinctly that of a hunted animal. It leapt over some
thorny yellow-flowering bushes, and was hidden.
M’ling was halfway across the space.
Most of us now had lost the first speed of the
chase, and had fallen into a longer and steadier
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stride. I saw as we traversed the open that the pursuit

was now spreading from a column into a line. The
hyena-swine still ran close to me, watching me as it
ran, every now and then puckering its muzzle with a
snarling laugh. At the edge of the rocks the leopard-
man, realising that he was making for the projecting
cape upon which he had stalked me on the night
of my arrival, had doubled in the undergrowth; but
Montgomery had seen the manoeuvre, and turned
him again. So, panting, tumbling against rocks,
torn by brambles, impeded by ferns and reeds, I
helped to pursue the leopard-man who had broken
the law, and the hyena-swine ran, laughing savagely,
by my side. I staggered on, my head reeling and my
heart beating against my ribs, tired almost to death,
and yet not daring to lose sight of the chase lest I
should be left alone with this horrible companion.
I staggered on in spite of infinite fatigue and the
dense heat of the tropical afternoon.
At last the fury of the hunt slackened. We
had pinned the wretched brute into a corner of
the island. Moreau, whip in hand, marshalled us
all into an irregular line, and we advanced now
slowly, shouting to one another as we advanced
and tightening the cordon about our victim.
He lurked noiseless and invisible in the bushes
through which I had run from him during that
midnight pursuit.
“Steady!” cried Moreau, “steady!” as the ends of
the line crept round the tangle of undergrowth and
hemmed the brute in.
“ ’Ware a rush!” came the voice of Montgomery
from beyond the thicket.
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I was on the slope above the bushes; Montgomery

and Moreau beat along the beach beneath. Slowly
we pushed in among the fretted network of branches
and leaves. The quarry was silent.
“Back to the house of pain, the house of pain,
the house of pain!” yelped the voice of the ape-man,
some twenty yards to the right.
When I heard that, I forgave the poor wretch
all the fear he had inspired in me. I heard the
twigs snap and the boughs swish aside before
the heavy tread of the horse-rhinoceros upon my
right. Then suddenly through a polygon of green,
in the half darkness under the luxuriant growth,
I saw the creature we were hunting. I halted. He
was crouched together into the smallest possible
compass, his luminous green eyes turned over his
shoulder regarding me.
It may seem a strange contradiction in me—I
cannot explain the fact—but now, seeing the
creature there in a perfectly animal attitude, with
the light gleaming in its eyes and its imperfectly
human face distorted with terror, I realised again the
fact of its humanity. In another moment other of its
pursuers would see it, and it would be overpowered
and captured, to experience once more the horrible
tortures of the enclosure. Abruptly I slipped out my
revolver, aimed between its terror-struck eyes, and
fired. As I did so, the hyena-swine saw the thing,
and flung itself upon it with an eager cry, thrusting
thirsty teeth into its neck. All about me the green
masses of the thicket were swaying and cracking as
the beast people came rushing together. One face
and then another appeared.
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“Don’t kill it, Prendick!” cried Moreau. “Don’t

kill it!” and I saw him stooping as he pushed through
under the fronds of the big ferns.
In another moment he had beaten off the
hyena-swine with the handle of his whip, and he
and Montgomery were keeping away the excited
carnivorous beast people, and particularly M’ling,
from the still quivering body. The hairy-grey
thing came sniffing at the corpse under my arm.
The other animals, in their animal ardour, jostled
me to get a nearer view.
“Confound you, Prendick!” said Moreau. “I
wanted him.”
“I’m sorry,” said I, though I was not. “It was the
impulse of the moment.” I felt sick with exertion
and excitement. Turning, I pushed my way out of
the crowding beast people and went on alone up
the slope towards the higher part of the headland.
Under the shouted directions of Moreau I heard the
three white-swathed bull-men begin dragging the
victim down towards the water.
It was easy now for me to be alone. The beast
people manifested a quite human curiosity about the
dead body, and followed it in a thick knot, sniffing
and growling at it as the bull-men dragged it down
the beach. I went to the headland and watched the
bull-men, black against the evening sky as they
carried the weighted dead body out to sea; and like
a wave across my mind came the realisation of the
unspeakable aimlessness of things upon the island.
Upon the beach among the rocks beneath me were
the ape-man, the hyena-swine, and several other
of the beast people, standing about Montgomery
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and Moreau. They were all still intensely excited,

and all overflowing with noisy expressions of their
loyalty to the law; yet I felt an absolute assurance in
my own mind that the hyena-swine was implicated
in the rabbit-killing. A strange persuasion came
upon me, that, save for the grossness of the line,
the grotesqueness of the forms, I had here before
me the whole balance of human life in miniature,
the whole interplay of instinct, reason, and fate in
its simplest form. The leopard-man had happened
to go under: that was all the difference. Poor brute!
Poor brutes! I began to see the viler aspect of
Moreau’s cruelty. I had not thought before of the
pain and trouble that came to these poor victims after
they had passed from Moreau’s hands. I had shivered
only at the days of actual torment in the enclosure.
But now that seemed to me the lesser part. Before,
they had been beasts, their instincts fitly adapted to
their surroundings, and happy as living things may
be. Now they stumbled in the shackles of humanity,
lived in a fear that never died, fretted by a law they
could not understand; their mock-human existence,
begun in an agony, was one long internal struggle,
one long dread of Moreau—and for what? It was the
wantonness of it that stirred me.
Had Moreau had any intelligible object, I could
have sympathised at least a little with him. I am not
so squeamish about pain as that. I could have forgiven
him a little even, had his motive been only hate.
But he was so irresponsible, so utterly careless! His
curiosity, his mad, aimless investigations, drove him
on; and the things were thrown out to live a year or
so, to struggle and blunder and suffer, and at last to
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die painfully. They were wretched in themselves; the

old animal hate moved them to trouble one another;
the law held them back from a brief hot struggle and
a decisive end to their natural animosities.
In those days my fear of the beast people went the
way of my personal fear for Moreau. I fell indeed
into a morbid state, deep and enduring, and alien
to fear, which has left permanent scars upon my
mind. I must confess that I lost faith in the sanity
of the world when I saw it suffering the painful
disorder of this island. A blind fate, a vast pitiless
mechanism, seemed to cut and shape the fabric of
existence and I, Moreau (by his passion for research),
Montgomery (by his passion for drink), the beast
people with their instincts and mental restrictions,
were torn and crushed, ruthlessly, inevitably, amid
the infinite complexity of its incessant wheels. But
this condition did not come all at once: I think
indeed that I anticipate a little in speaking of it now.

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A C at a st rophe

S carsely six weeks passed before I had lost every

feeling but dislike and abhorrence for this
infamous experiment of Moreau’s. My one idea was
to get away from these horrible caricatures of my
maker’s image, back to the sweet and wholesome
intercourse of men. My fellow-creatures, from
whom I was thus separated, began to assume
idyllic virtue and beauty in my memory. My first
friendship with Montgomery did not increase. His
long separation from humanity, his secret vice of
drunkenness, his evident sympathy with the beast
people, tainted him to me. Several times I let him
go alone among them. I avoided intercourse with
them in every possible way. I spent an increasing
proportion of my time upon the beach, looking
for some liberating sail that never appeared—until
one day there fell upon us an appalling disaster,
which put an altogether different aspect upon my
strange surroundings.
It was about seven or eight weeks after my
landing—rather more, I think, though I had not
troubled to keep account of the time—when this
catastrophe occurred. It happened in the early
morning—I should think about six. I had risen and
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breakfasted early, having been aroused by the noise

of three beast men carrying wood into the enclosure.
After breakfast I went to the open gateway of
the enclosure, and stood there smoking a cigarette
and enjoying the freshness of the early morning.
Moreau presently came round the corner of the
enclosure and greeted me. He passed by me,
and I heard him behind me unlock and enter his
laboratory. So indurated was I at that time to the
abomination of the place, that I heard without a
touch of emotion the puma victim begin another
day of torture. It met its persecutor with a shriek,
almost exactly like that of an angry virago.
Then suddenly something happened—I do not
know what, to this day. I heard a short, sharp cry
behind me, a fall, and turning saw an awful face
rushing upon me—not human, not animal, but
hellish, brown, seamed with red branching scars,
red drops starting out upon it, and the lidless eyes
ablaze. I threw up my arm to defend myself from
the blow that flung me headlong with a broken
forearm; and the great monster, swathed in lint and
with red-stained bandages fluttering about it, leapt
over me and passed. I rolled over and over down
the beach, tried to sit up, and collapsed upon my
broken arm. Then Moreau appeared, his massive
white face all the more terrible for the blood that
trickled from his forehead. He carried a revolver in
one hand. He scarcely glanced at me, but rushed off
at once in pursuit of the puma.
I tried the other arm and sat up. The muffled
figure in front ran in great striding leaps along the
beach, and Moreau followed her. She turned her
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head and saw him, then doubling abruptly made

for the bushes. She gained upon him at every stride.
I saw her plunge into them, and Moreau, running
slantingly to intercept her, fired and missed as she
disappeared. Then he too vanished in the green
confusion. I stared after them, and then the pain
in my arm flamed up, and with a groan I staggered
to my feet. Montgomery appeared in the doorway,
dressed, and with his revolver in his hand.
“Great god, Prendick!” he said, not noticing that
I was hurt, “that brute’s loose! Tore the fetter out
of the wall! Have you seen them?” Then sharply,
seeing I gripped my arm, “What’s the matter?”
“I was standing in the doorway,” said I.
He came forward and took my arm. “Blood on
the sleeve,” said he, and rolled back the flannel. He
pocketed his weapon, felt my arm about painfully, and
led me inside. “Your arm is broken,” he said, and then,
“Tell me exactly how it happened—what happened?”
I told him what I had seen; told him in broken
sentences, with gasps of pain between them, and
very dexterously and swiftly he bound my arm
meanwhile. He slung it from my shoulder, stood
back and looked at me.
“You’ll do,” he said. “And now?”
He thought. Then he went out and locked the
gates of the enclosure. He was absent some time.
I was chiefly concerned about my arm. The
incident seemed merely one more of many horrible
things. I sat down in the deck chair, and I must
admit swore heartily at the island. The first dull
feeling of injury in my arm had already given way
to a burning pain when Montgomery reappeared.
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His face was rather pale, and he showed more of his

lower gums than ever.
“I can neither see nor hear anything of him,” he
said. “I’ve been thinking he may want my help.” He
stared at me with his expressionless eyes. “That was a
strong brute,” he said. “It simply wrenched its fetter
out of the wall.” He went to the window, then to the
door, and there turned to me. “I shall go after him,”
he said. “There’s another revolver I can leave with
you. To tell you the truth, I feel anxious somehow.”
He obtained the weapon, and put it ready to my
hand on the table; then went out, leaving a restless
contagion in the air. I did not sit long after he left, but
took the revolver in hand and went to the doorway.
The morning was as still as death. Not a whisper
of wind was stirring; the sea was like polished glass,
the sky empty, the beach desolate. In my half-
excited, half-feverish state, this stillness of things
oppressed me. I tried to whistle, and the tune died
away. I swore again—the second time that morning.
Then I went to the corner of the enclosure and
stared inland at the green bush that had swallowed
up Moreau and Montgomery. When would they
return, and how? Then far away up the beach a little
grey beast man appeared, ran down to the water’s
edge and began splashing about. I strolled back to
the doorway, then to the corner again, and so began
pacing to and fro like a sentinel upon duty. Once
I was arrested by the distant voice of Montgomery
bawling, “Coo-ee—Mor-eau!” My arm became less
painful, but very hot. I got feverish and thirsty.
My shadow grew shorter. I watched the distant
figure until it went away again. Would Moreau and
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Montgomery never return? Three seabirds began

fighting for some stranded treasure.
Then from far away behind the enclosure I
heard a pistol-shot. A long silence, and then came
another. Then a yelling cry nearer, and another
dismal gap of silence. My unfortunate imagination
set to work to torment me. Then suddenly a shot
close by. I went to the corner, startled, and saw
Montgomery—his face scarlet, his hair disordered,
and the knee of his trousers torn. His face expressed
profound consternation. Behind him slouched the
beast man, M’ling, and round M’ling’s jaws were
some queer dark stains.
“Has he come?” said Montgomery.
“Moreau?” said I. “No.”
“My god!” The man was panting, almost sobbing.
“Go back in,” he said, taking my arm. “They’re
mad. They’re all rushing about mad. What can
have happened? I don’t know. I’ll tell you, when my
breath comes. Where’s some brandy?”
Montgomery limped before me into the room
and sat down in the deck chair. M’ling flung himself
down just outside the doorway and began panting
like a dog. I got Montgomery some brandy-and-
water. He sat staring in front of him at nothing,
recovering his breath. After some minutes he began
to tell me what had happened.
He had followed their track for some way. It was
plain enough at first on account of the crushed and
broken bushes, white rags torn from the puma’s
bandages, and occasional smears of blood on the
leaves of the shrubs and undergrowth. He lost the
track, however, on the stony ground beyond the
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stream where I had seen the beast man drinking,

and went wandering aimlessly westward shouting
Moreau’s name. Then M’ling had come to him
carrying a light hatchet. M’ling had seen nothing of
the puma affair; had been felling wood, and heard
him calling. They went on shouting together. Two
beast men came crouching and peering at them
through the undergrowth, with gestures and a
furtive carriage that alarmed Montgomery by their
strangeness. He hailed them, and they fled guiltily.
He stopped shouting after that, and after wandering
some time farther in an undecided way, determined
to visit the huts.
He found the ravine deserted.
Growing more alarmed every minute, he began
to retrace his steps. Then it was he encountered the
two swine-men I had seen dancing on the night of
my arrival; bloodstained they were about the mouth,
and intensely excited. They came crashing through
the ferns, and stopped with fierce faces when they
saw him. He cracked his whip in some trepidation,
and forthwith they rushed at him. Never before had
a beast man dared to do that. One he shot through
the head; M’ling flung himself upon the other, and
the two rolled grappling. M’ling got his brute under
and with his teeth in its throat, and Montgomery
shot that too as it struggled in M’ling’s grip. He
had some difficulty in inducing M’ling to come
on with him. Thence they had hurried back to me.
On the way, M’ling had suddenly rushed into a
thicket and driven out an undersized ocelot-man,
also bloodstained, and lame through a wound in
the foot. This brute had run a little way and then
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turned savagely at bay, and Montgomery—with a

certain wantonness, I thought—had shot him.
“What does it all mean?” said I.
He shook his head, and turned once more to the
brandy

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The Finding
of Moreau

W hen I saw Montgomery swallow a third

dose of brandy, I took it upon myself to
interfere. He was already more than half fuddled.
I told him that some serious thing must have
happened to Moreau by this time, or he would
have returned before this, and that it behoved us to
ascertain what that catastrophe was. Montgomery
raised some feeble objections, and at last agreed.
We had some food, and then all three of us started.
It is possibly due to the tension of my mind,
at the time, but even now that start into the hot
stillness of the tropical afternoon is a singularly vivid
impression. M’ling went first, his shoulder hunched,
his strange black head moving with quick starts as
he peered first on this side of the way and then on
that. He was unarmed; his axe he had dropped when
he encountered the swine-man. Teeth were his
weapons, when it came to fighting. Montgomery
followed with stumbling footsteps, his hands in
his pockets, his face downcast; he was in a state
of muddled sullenness with me on account of the
brandy. My left arm was in a sling (it was lucky it
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was my left), and I carried my revolver in my right.

Soon we traced a narrow path through the wild
luxuriance of the island, going northwestward; and
presently M’ling stopped, and became rigid with
watchfulness. Montgomery almost staggered into
him, and then stopped too. Then, listening intently,
we heard coming through the trees the sound of
voices and footsteps approaching us.
“He is dead,” said a deep, vibrating voice.
“He is not dead; he is not dead,” jabbered another.
“We saw, we saw,” said several voices.
“Hul-lo!” suddenly shouted Montgomery, “Hul-
lo, there!”
“Confound you!” said I, and gripped my pistol.
There was a silence, then a crashing among the
interlacing vegetation, first here, then there, and
then half-a-dozen faces appeared—strange faces,
lit by a strange light. M’ling made a growling
noise in his throat. I recognised the ape-man: I
had indeed already identified his voice, and two
of the white-swathed brown-featured creatures I
had seen in Montgomery’s boat. With these were
the two dappled brutes and that grey, horribly
crooked creature who said the law, with grey hair
streaming down its cheeks, heavy grey eyebrows,
and grey locks pouring off from a central parting
upon its sloping forehead—a heavy, faceless thing,
with strange red eyes, looking at us curiously from
amidst the green.
For a space no one spoke. Then Montgomery
hiccoughed, “Who—said he was dead?”
The monkey-man looked guiltily at the hairy-grey
thing. “He is dead,” said this monster. “They saw.”
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There was nothing threatening about this

detachment, at any rate. They seemed awestricken
and puzzled.
“Where is he?” said Montgomery.
“Beyond,” and the grey creature pointed.
“Is there a law now?” asked the monkey-man. “Is
it still to be this and that? Is he dead indeed?”
“Is there a law?” repeated the man in white. “Is
there a law, thou other with the whip?”
“He is dead,” said the hairy-grey thing. And
they all stood watching us.
“Prendick,” said Montgomery, turning his dull
eyes to me. “He’s dead, evidently.”
I had been standing behind him during this
colloquy. I began to see how things lay with them.
I suddenly stepped in front of Montgomery and
lifted up my voice:—“Children of the law,” I said,
“he is not dead!” M’ling turned his sharp eyes on
me. “He has changed his shape; he has changed
his body,” I went on. “For a time you will not see
him. He is—there,” I pointed upward, “where he
can watch you. You cannot see him, but he can see
you. Fear the law!”
I looked at them squarely. They flinched.
“He is great, he is good,” said the ape-man,
peering fearfully upward among the dense trees.
“And the other thing?” I demanded.
“The thing that bled, and ran screaming and
sobbing—that is dead too,” said the grey thing, still
regarding me.
“That’s well,” grunted Montgomery.
“The other with the whip—” began the grey
thing.
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“Well?” said I.
“Said he was dead.”
But Montgomery was still sober enough to
understand my motive in denying Moreau’s death.
“He is not dead,” he said slowly, “not dead at all. No
more dead than I am.”
“Some,” said I, “have broken the law: they will
die. Some have died. Show us now where his old
body lies—the body he cast away because he had no
more need of it.”
“It is this way, man who walked in the sea,” said
the grey thing.
And with these six creatures guiding us, we went
through the tumult of ferns and creepers and tree
stems towards the northwest. Then came a yelling,
a crashing among the branches, and a little pink
homunculus rushed by us shrieking. Immediately
after appeared a monster in headlong pursuit, blood-
bedabbled, who was amongst us almost before he
could stop his career. The grey thing leapt aside.
M’ling, with a snarl, flew at it, and was struck aside.
Montgomery fired and missed, bowed his head,
threw up his arm, and turned to run. I fired, and
the thing still came on; fired again, point-blank,
into its ugly face. I saw its features vanish in a flash:
its face was driven in. Yet it passed me, gripped
Montgomery, and holding him, fell headlong
beside him and pulled him sprawling upon itself in
its death-agony.
I found myself alone with M’ling, the dead brute,
and the prostrate man. Montgomery raised himself
slowly and stared in a muddled way at the shattered
beast man beside him. It more than half sobered
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him. He scrambled to his feet. Then I saw the grey

thing returning cautiously through the trees.
“See,” said I, pointing to the dead brute, “is the
law not alive? This came of breaking the law.”
He peered at the body. “He sends the fire that
kills,” said he, in his deep voice, repeating part of
the ritual. The others gathered round and stared for
a space.
At last we drew near the westward extremity of
the island. We came upon the gnawed and mutilated
body of the puma, its shoulder bone smashed by a
bullet, and perhaps twenty yards farther found at
last what we sought. Moreau lay face downward
in a trampled space in a canebrake. One hand was
almost severed at the wrist and his silvery hair was
dabbled in blood. His head had been battered in by
the fetters of the puma. The broken canes beneath
him were smeared with blood. His revolver we could
not find. Montgomery turned him over. Resting at
intervals, and with the help of the seven beast people
(for he was a heavy man), we carried Moreau back
to the enclosure. The night was darkling. Twice
we heard unseen creatures howling and shrieking
past our little band, and once the little pink sloth-
creature appeared and stared at us, and vanished
again. But we were not attacked again. At the gates
of the enclosure our company of beast people left
us, M’ling going with the rest. We locked ourselves
in, and then took Moreau’s mangled body into the
yard and laid it upon a pile of brushwood. Then we
went into the laboratory and put an end to all we
found living there.

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Mont g omer y ’s
Bank Holiday

W hen this was accomplished, and we had

washed and eaten, Montgomery and I
went into my little room and seriously discussed
our position for the first time. It was then near
midnight. He was almost sober, but greatly
disturbed in his mind. He had been strangely
under the influence of Moreau’s personality: I do
not think it had ever occurred to him that Moreau
could die. This disaster was the sudden collapse of
the habits that had become part of his nature in the
ten or more monotonous years he had spent on the
island. He talked vaguely, answered my questions
crookedly, wandered into general questions.
“This silly ass of a world,” he said; “what a muddle
it all is! I haven’t had any life. I wonder when it’s
going to begin. Sixteen years being bullied by
nurses and schoolmasters at their own sweet will;
five in London grinding hard at medicine, bad
food, shabby lodgings, shabby clothes, shabby vice,
a blunder—I didn’t know any better—and hustled
off to this beastly island. Ten years here! What’s it
all for, Prendick? Are we bubbles blown by a baby?”
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It was hard to deal with such ravings. “The thing

we have to think of now,” said I, “is how to get
away from this island.”
“What’s the good of getting away? I’m an
outcast. Where am I to join on? It’s all very well
for you, Prendick. Poor old Moreau! We can’t leave
him here to have his bones picked. As it is—And
besides, what will become of the decent part of the
beast folk?”
“Well,” said I, “that will do tomorrow. I’ve been
thinking we might make the brushwood into a
pyre and burn his body—and those other things.
Then what will happen with the beast folk?”
“I don’t know. I suppose those that were made
of beasts of prey will make silly asses of themselves
sooner or later. We can’t massacre the lot—can we? I
suppose that’s what your humanity would suggest?
But they’ll change. They are sure to change.”
He talked thus inconclusively until at last I felt
my temper going.
“Damnation!” he exclaimed at some petulance
of mine; “can’t you see I’m in a worse hole than
you are?” And he got up, and went for the brandy.
“Drink!” he said returning, “you logic-chopping,
chalky-faced saint of an atheist, drink!”
“Not I,” said I, and sat grimly watching his face
under the yellow paraffin flare, as he drank himself
into a garrulous misery.
I have a memory of infinite tedium. He wandered
into a maudlin defence of the beast people and of
M’ling. M’ling, he said, was the only thing that
had ever really cared for him. And suddenly an idea
came to him.
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“I’m damned!” said he, staggering to his feet and

clutching the brandy bottle.
By some flash of intuition I knew what it was he
intended. “You don’t give drink to that beast!” I said,
rising and facing him.
“Beast!” said he. “You’re the beast. He takes
his liquor like a Christian. Come out of the way,
Prendick!”
“For God’s sake,” said I.
“Get—out of the way!” he roared, and suddenly
whipped out his revolver.
“Very well,” said I, and stood aside, half-minded to
fall upon him as he put his hand upon the latch, but
deterred by the thought of my useless arm. “You’ve
made a beast of yourself—to the beasts you may go.”
He flung the doorway open, and stood half facing
me between the yellow lamplight and the pallid glare
of the moon; his eye sockets were blotches of black
under his stubbly eyebrows.
“You’re a solemn prig, Prendick, a silly ass! You’re
always fearing and fancying. We’re on the edge of
things. I’m bound to cut my throat tomorrow. I’m
going to have a damned bank holiday tonight.” He
turned and went out into the moonlight. “M’ling!”
he cried; “M’ling, old friend!”
Three dim creatures in the silvery light came
along the edge of the wan beach—one a white-
wrapped creature, the other two blotches of
blackness following it. They halted, staring. Then
I saw M’ling’s hunched shoulders as he came round
the corner of the house.
“Drink!” cried Montgomery, “drink, you brutes!
Drink and be men! Damme, I’m the cleverest.
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Moreau forgot this; this is the last touch. Drink,

I tell you!” And waving the bottle in his hand he
started off at a kind of quick trot to the westward,
M’ling ranging himself between him and the three
dim creatures who followed.
I went to the doorway. They were already
indistinct in the mist of the moonlight before
Montgomery halted. I saw him administer a dose of
the raw brandy to M’ling, and saw the five figures
melt into one vague patch.
“Sing!” I heard Montgomery shout—“sing all
together, ‘Confound old Prendick!’ That’s right;
now again, ‘Confound old Prendick!’ ”
The black group broke up into five separate
figures, and wound slowly away from me along the
band of shining beach. Each went howling at his
own sweet will, yelping insults at me, or giving
whatever other vent this new inspiration of brandy
demanded. Presently I heard Montgomery’s voice
shouting, “Right turn!” and they passed with their
shouts and howls into the blackness of the landward
trees. Slowly, very slowly, they receded into silence.
The peaceful splendour of the night healed
again. The moon was now past the meridian and
travelling down the west. It was at its full, and
very bright riding through the empty blue sky.
The shadow of the wall lay, a yard wide and of
inky blackness, at my feet. The eastward sea was a
featureless grey, dark and mysterious; and between
the sea and the shadow the grey sands (of volcanic
glass and crystals) flashed and shone like a beach of
diamonds. Behind me the paraffin lamp flared hot
and ruddy.
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Then I shut the door, locked it, and went into

the enclosure where Moreau lay beside his latest
victims—the staghounds and the llama and some
other wretched brutes—with his massive face calm
even after his terrible death, and with the hard
eyes open, staring at the dead white moon above.
I sat down upon the edge of the sink, and with
my eyes upon that ghastly pile of silvery light and
ominous shadows began to turn over my plans. In
the morning I would gather some provisions in the
dingey, and after setting fire to the pyre before me,
push out into the desolation of the high sea once
more. I felt that for Montgomery there was no help;
that he was, in truth, half akin to these beast folk,
unfitted for human kindred.
I do not know how long I sat there scheming. It
must have been an hour or so. Then my planning
was interrupted by the return of Montgomery to
my neighbourhood. I heard a yelling from many
throats, a tumult of exultant cries passing down
towards the beach, whooping and howling, and
excited shrieks that seemed to come to a stop near
the water’s edge. The riot rose and fell; I heard heavy
blows and the splintering smash of wood, but it did
not trouble me then. A discordant chanting began.
My thoughts went back to my means of escape.
I got up, brought the lamp, and went into a shed to
look at some kegs I had seen there. Then I became
interested in the contents of some biscuit tins, and
opened one. I saw something out of the tail of my
eye—a red figure—and turned sharply.
Behind me lay the yard, vividly black-and-white
in the moonlight, and the pile of wood and faggots
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on which Moreau and his mutilated victims lay,

one over another. They seemed to be gripping one
another in one last revengeful grapple. His wounds
gaped, black as night, and the blood that had
dripped lay in black patches upon the sand. Then
I saw, without understanding, the cause of my
phantom—a ruddy glow that came and danced and
went upon the wall opposite. I misinterpreted this,
fancied it was a reflection of my flickering lamp,
and turned again to the stores in the shed. I went on
rummaging among them, as well as a one-armed
man could, finding this convenient thing and that,
and putting them aside for tomorrow’s launch. My
movements were slow, and the time passed quickly.
Insensibly the daylight crept upon me.
The chanting died down, giving place to a
clamour; then it began again, and suddenly broke
into a tumult. I heard cries of, “More! more!” a
sound like quarrelling, and a sudden wild shriek.
The quality of the sounds changed so greatly that
it arrested my attention. I went out into the yard
and listened. Then cutting like a knife across the
confusion came the crack of a revolver.
I rushed at once through my room to the little
doorway. As I did so I heard some of the packing
cases behind me go sliding down and smash
together with a clatter of glass on the floor of the
shed. But I did not heed these. I flung the door open
and looked out.
Up the beach by the boathouse a bonfire was
burning, raining up sparks into the indistinctness
of the dawn. Around this struggled a mass of black
figures. I heard Montgomery call my name. I began
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to run at once towards this fire, revolver in hand. I saw

the pink tongue of Montgomery’s pistol lick out once,
close to the ground. He was down. I shouted with all
my strength and fired into the air. I heard someone
cry, “The master!” The knotted black struggle broke
into scattering units, the fire leapt and sank down. The
crowd of beast people fled in sudden panic before me,
up the beach. In my excitement I fired at their retreating
backs as they disappeared among the bushes. Then I
turned to the black heaps upon the ground.
Montgomery lay on his back, with the hairy-grey
beast-man sprawling across his body. The brute was
dead, but still gripping Montgomery’s throat with
its curving claws. Near by lay M’ling on his face and
quite still, his neck bitten open and the upper part of
the smashed brandy bottle in his hand. Two other
figures lay near the fire—the one motionless, the
other groaning fitfully, every now and then raising
its head slowly, then dropping it again.
I caught hold of the grey man and pulled him
off Montgomery’s body; his claws drew down
the torn coat reluctantly as I dragged him away.
Montgomery was dark in the face and scarcely
breathing. I splashed seawater on his face and
pillowed his head on my rolled-up coat. M’ling
was dead. The wounded creature by the fire—it
was a wolf-brute with a bearded grey face—lay, I
found, with the fore part of its body upon the still
glowing timber. The wretched thing was injured
so dreadfully that in mercy I blew its brains out
at once. The other brute was one of the bull-men
swathed in white. He too was dead. The rest of the
beast people had vanished from the beach.
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I went to Montgomery again and knelt beside

him, cursing my ignorance of medicine. The
fire beside me had sunk down, and only charred
beams of timber glowing at the central ends and
mixed with a grey ash of brushwood remained.
I wondered casually where Montgomery had got
his wood. Then I saw that the dawn was upon us.
The sky had grown brighter, the setting moon
was becoming pale and opaque in the luminous
blue of the day. The sky to the eastward was
rimmed with red.
Suddenly I heard a thud and a hissing behind me,
and, looking round, sprang to my feet with a cry of
horror. Against the warm dawn great tumultuous
masses of black smoke were boiling up out of the
enclosure, and through their stormy darkness shot
flickering threads of blood-red flame. Then the
thatched roof caught. I saw the curving charge of
the flames across the sloping straw. A spurt of fire
jetted from the window of my room.
I knew at once what had happened. I remembered
the crash I had heard. When I had rushed out to
Montgomery’s assistance, I had overturned the lamp.
The hopelessness of saving any of the contents of
the enclosure stared me in the face. My mind came
back to my plan of flight, and turning swiftly I
looked to see where the two boats lay upon the beach.
They were gone! Two axes lay upon the sands beside
me; chips and splinters were scattered broadcast,
and the ashes of the bonfire were blackening and
smoking under the dawn. Montgomery had burnt
the boats to revenge himself upon me and prevent
our return to mankind!
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A sudden convulsion of rage shook me. I was

almost moved to batter his foolish head in, as he
lay there helpless at my feet. Then suddenly his
hand moved, so feebly, so pitifully, that my wrath
vanished. He groaned, and opened his eyes for a
minute. I knelt down beside him and raised his
head. He opened his eyes again, staring silently at
the dawn, and then they met mine. The lids fell.
“Sorry,” he said presently, with an effort. He
seemed trying to think. “The last,” he murmured,
“the last of this silly universe. What a mess—”
I listened. His head fell helplessly to one side. I
thought some drink might revive him; but there
was neither drink nor vessel in which to bring
drink at hand. He seemed suddenly heavier. My
heart went cold. I bent down to his face, put my
hand through the rent in his blouse. He was dead;
and even as he died a line of white heat, the limb
of the sun, rose eastward beyond the projection of
the bay, splashing its radiance across the sky and
turning the dark sea into a weltering tumult of
dazzling light. It fell like a glory upon his death-
shrunken face.
I let his head fall gently upon the rough pillow I
had made for him, and stood up. Before me was the
glittering desolation of the sea, the awful solitude
upon which I had already suffered so much; behind
me the island, hushed under the dawn, its beast
people silent and unseen. The enclosure, with all
its provisions and ammunition, burnt noisily, with
sudden gusts of flame, a fitful crackling, and now
and then a crash. The heavy smoke drove up the
beach away from me, rolling low over the distant
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treetops towards the huts in the ravine. Beside me

were the charred vestiges of the boats and these five
dead bodies.
Then out of the bushes came three beast
people, with hunched shoulders, protruding heads,
misshapen hands awkwardly held, and inquisitive,
unfriendly eyes and advanced towards me with
hesitating gestures.

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Alone with
the Beast Folk

I faced these people, facing my fate in them,

single-handed now—literally single-handed, for
I had a broken arm. In my pocket was a revolver
with two empty chambers. Among the chips
scattered about the beach lay the two axes that
had been used to chop up the boats. The tide was
creeping in behind me. There was nothing for it
but courage. I looked squarely into the faces of the
advancing monsters. They avoided my eyes, and
their quivering nostrils investigated the bodies
that lay beyond me on the beach. I took half-a-
dozen steps, picked up the bloodstained whip that
lay beneath the body of the wolf-man, and cracked
it. They stopped and stared at me.
“Salute!” said I. “Bow down!”
They hesitated. One bent his knees. I repeated
my command, with my heart in my mouth, and
advanced upon them. One knelt, then the other two.
I turned and walked towards the dead bodies,
keeping my face towards the three kneeling beast
men, very much as an actor passing up the stage
faces the audience.
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“They broke the law,” said I, putting my foot on

the sayer of the law. “They have been slain—even
the sayer of the law; even the other with the whip.
Great is the law! Come and see.”
“None escape,” said one of them, advancing and
peering.
“None escape,” said I. “Therefore hear and do as
I command.” They stood up, looking questioningly
at one another.
“Stand there,” said I.
I picked up the hatchets and swung them by
their heads from the sling of my arm; turned
Montgomery over; picked up his revolver still loaded
in two chambers, and bending down to rummage,
found half-a-dozen cartridges in his pocket.
“Take him,” said I, standing up again and
pointing with the whip; “take him, and carry him
out and cast him into the sea.”
They came forward, evidently still afraid of
Montgomery, but still more afraid of my cracking
red whiplash; and after some fumbling and hesitation,
some whip-cracking and shouting, they lifted him
gingerly, carried him down to the beach, and went
splashing into the dazzling welter of the sea.
“On!” said I, “on! Carry him far.”
They went in up to their armpits and stood
regarding me.
“Let go,” said I; and the body of Montgomery
vanished with a splash. Something seemed to
tighten across my chest.
“Good!” said I, with a break in my voice; and they
came back, hurrying and fearful, to the margin of the
water, leaving long wakes of black in the silver. At
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the water’s edge they stopped, turning and glaring

into the sea as though they presently expected
Montgomery to arise therefrom and exact vengeance.
“Now these,” said I, pointing to the other bodies.
They took care not to approach the place where
they had thrown Montgomery into the water, but
instead, carried the four dead beast people slantingly
along the beach for perhaps a hundred yards before
they waded out and cast them away.
As I watched them disposing of the mangled
remains of M’ling, I heard a light footfall behind
me, and turning quickly saw the big hyena-
swine perhaps a dozen yards away. His head was
bent down, his bright eyes were fixed upon me,
his stumpy hands clenched and held close by his
side. He stopped in this crouching attitude when I
turned, his eyes a little averted.
For a moment we stood eye to eye. I dropped the
whip and snatched at the pistol in my pocket; for
I meant to kill this brute, the most formidable of
any left now upon the island, at the first excuse. It
may seem treacherous, but so I was resolved. I was
far more afraid of him than of any other two of the
beast folk. His continued life was I knew a threat
against mine.
I was perhaps a dozen seconds collecting myself.
Then cried I, “Salute! Bow down!”
His teeth flashed upon me in a snarl. “Who are
you that I should—”
Perhaps a little too spasmodically I drew my
revolver, aimed quickly and fired. I heard him yelp,
saw him run sideways and turn, knew I had missed,
and clicked back the cock with my thumb for the
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next shot. But he was already running headlong,

jumping from side to side, and I dared not risk
another miss. Every now and then he looked back
at me over his shoulder. He went slanting along the
beach, and vanished beneath the driving masses of
dense smoke that were still pouring out from the
burning enclosure. For some time I stood staring
after him. I turned to my three obedient beast folk
again and signalled them to drop the body they still
carried. Then I went back to the place by the fire
where the bodies had fallen and kicked the sand until
all the brown bloodstains were absorbed and hidden.
I dismissed my three serfs with a wave of the
hand, and went up the beach into the thickets. I
carried my pistol in my hand, my whip thrust with
the hatchets in the sling of my arm. I was anxious
to be alone, to think out the position in which I
was now placed. A dreadful thing that I was only
beginning to realise was, that over all this island
there was now no safe place where I could be alone
and secure to rest or sleep. I had recovered strength
amazingly since my landing, but I was still inclined
to be nervous and to break down under any great
stress. I felt that I ought to cross the island and
establish myself with the beast people, and make
myself secure in their confidence. But my heart
failed me. I went back to the beach, and turning
eastward past the burning enclosure, made for a
point where a shallow spit of coral sand ran out
towards the reef. Here I could sit down and think,
my back to the sea and my face against any surprise.
And there I sat, chin on knees, the sun beating
down upon my head and unspeakable dread in my
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mind, plotting how I could live on against the hour

of my rescue (if ever rescue came). I tried to review
the whole situation as calmly as I could, but it was
difficult to clear the thing of emotion.
I began turning over in my mind the reason of
Montgomery’s despair. “They will change,” he said;
“they are sure to change.” And Moreau, what was
it that Moreau had said? “The stubborn beast-flesh
grows day by day back again.” Then I came round
to the hyena-swine. I felt sure that if I did not kill
that brute, he would kill me. The sayer of the law
was dead: worse luck. They knew now that we of
the whips could be killed even as they themselves
were killed. Were they peering at me already out
of the green masses of ferns and palms over yonder,
watching until I came within their spring? Were
they plotting against me? What was the hyena-
swine telling them? My imagination was running
away with me into a morass of unsubstantial fears.
My thoughts were disturbed by a crying of
seabirds hurrying towards some black object that
had been stranded by the waves on the beach near
the enclosure. I knew what that object was, but I had
not the heart to go back and drive them off. I began
walking along the beach in the opposite direction,
designing to come round the eastward corner of the
island and so approach the ravine of the huts, without
traversing the possible ambuscades of the thickets.
Perhaps half a mile along the beach I became
aware of one of my three beast folk advancing
out of the landward bushes towards me. I was
now so nervous with my own imaginings that
I immediately drew my revolver. Even the
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propitiatory gestures of the creature failed to

disarm me. He hesitated as he approached.
“Go away!” cried I.
There was something very suggestive of a dog
in the cringing attitude of the creature. It retreated
a little way, very like a dog being sent home, and
stopped, looking at me imploringly with canine
brown eyes.
“Go away,” said I. “Do not come near me.”
“May I not come near you?” it said.
“No; go away,” I insisted, and snapped my whip.
Then putting my whip in my teeth, I stooped for a
stone, and with that threat drove the creature away.
So in solitude I came round by the ravine of the
beast people, and hiding among the weeds and reeds
that separated this crevice from the sea I watched
such of them as appeared, trying to judge from their
gestures and appearance how the death of Moreau
and Montgomery and the destruction of the house of
pain had affected them. I know now the folly of my
cowardice. Had I kept my courage up to the level of
the dawn, had I not allowed it to ebb away in solitary
thought, I might have grasped the vacant sceptre of
Moreau and ruled over the beast people. As it was I
lost the opportunity, and sank to the position of a
mere leader among my fellows.
Towards noon certain of them came and squatted
basking in the hot sand. The imperious voices of
hunger and thirst prevailed over my dread. I came
out of the bushes, and, revolver in hand, walked
down towards these seated figures. One, a wolf-
woman, turned her head and stared at me, and then
the others. None attempted to rise or salute me.
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I felt too faint and weary to insist, and I let the

moment pass.
“I want food,” said I, almost apologetically, and
drawing near.
“There is food in the huts,” said an ox-boar-man,
drowsily, and looking away from me.
I passed them, and went down into the shadow
and odours of the almost deserted ravine. In an empty
hut I feasted on some specked and half-decayed fruit;
and then after I had propped some branches and
sticks about the opening, and placed myself with my
face towards it and my hand upon my revolver, the
exhaustion of the last thirty hours claimed its own,
and I fell into a light slumber, hoping that the flimsy
barricade I had erected would cause sufficient noise
in its removal to save me from surprise.

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The Reversion of the

Beast Folk

I n this way I became one among the beast people

in the island of Doctor Moreau. When I awoke, it
was dark about me. My arm ached in its bandages. I
sat up, wondering at first where I might be. I heard
coarse voices talking outside. Then I saw that my
barricade had gone, and that the opening of the hut
stood clear. My revolver was still in my hand.
I heard something breathing, saw something
crouched together close beside me. I held my
breath, trying to see what it was. It began to move
slowly, interminably. Then something soft and
warm and moist passed across my hand. All my
muscles contracted. I snatched my hand away. A
cry of alarm began and was stifled in my throat.
Then I just realised what had happened sufficiently
to stay my fingers on the revolver.
“Who is that?” I said in a hoarse whisper, the
revolver still pointed.
“I—master.”
“Who are you?”
“They say there is no master now. But I know,
I know. I carried the bodies into the sea, O walker
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in the sea! the bodies of those you slew. I am your

slave, master.”
“Are you the one I met on the beach?” I asked.
“The same, master.”
The thing was evidently faithful enough, for it
might have fallen upon me as I slept. “It is well,” I said,
extending my hand for another licking kiss. I began
to realise what its presence meant, and the tide of my
courage flowed. “Where are the others?” I asked.
“They are mad; they are fools,” said the dog-man.
“Even now they talk together beyond there. They
say, ‘The master is dead. The other with the whip is
dead. That other who walked in the sea is as we are.
We have no master, no whips, no house of pain, any
more. There is an end. We love the law, and will keep
it; but there is no pain, no master, no whips forever
again.’ So they say. But I know, master, I know.”
I felt in the darkness, and patted the dog-man’s
head. “It is well,” I said again.
“Presently you will slay them all,” said the dog-
man.
“Presently,” I answered, “I will slay them all—
after certain days and certain things have come to
pass. Every one of them save those you spare, every
one of them shall be slain.”
“What the master wishes to kill, the master
kills,” said the dog-man with a certain satisfaction
in his voice.
“And that their sins may grow,” I said, “let them
live in their folly until their time is ripe. Let them
not know that I am the master.”
“The master’s will is sweet,” said the dog-man,
with the ready tact of his canine blood.
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“But one has sinned,” said I. “Him I will kill,

whenever I may meet him. When I say to you, ‘That
is he,’ see that you fall upon him. And now I will go
to the men and women who are assembled together.”
For a moment the opening of the hut was blackened
by the exit of the dog-man. Then I followed and stood
up, almost in the exact spot where I had been when
I had heard Moreau and his staghound pursuing me.
But now it was night, and all the miasmatic ravine
about me was black; and beyond, instead of a green,
sunlit slope, I saw a red fire, before which hunched,
grotesque figures moved to and fro. Farther were the
thick trees, a bank of darkness, fringed above with
the black lace of the upper branches. The moon was
just riding up on the edge of the ravine, and like a
bar across its face drove the spire of vapour that was
forever streaming from the fumaroles of the island.
“Walk by me,” said I, nerving myself; and side
by side we walked down the narrow way, taking
little heed of the dim things that peered at us out
of the huts.
None about the fire attempted to salute me. Most
of them disregarded me, ostentatiously. I looked
round for the hyena-swine, but he was not there.
Altogether, perhaps twenty of the beast folk squatted,
staring into the fire or talking to one another.
“He is dead, he is dead! the master is dead!” said
the voice of the ape-man to the right of me. “The
house of pain—there is no house of pain!”
“He is not dead,” said I, in a loud voice. “Even
now he watches us!”
This startled them. Twenty pairs of eyes
regarded me.
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“The house of pain is gone,” said I. “It will come

again. The master you cannot see; yet even now he
listens among you.”
“True, true!” said the dog-man.
They were staggered at my assurance. An animal
may be ferocious and cunning enough, but it takes
a real man to tell a lie.
“The man with the bandaged arm speaks a
strange thing,” said one of the beast folk.
“I tell you it is so,” I said. “The master and the
house of pain will come again. Woe be to him who
breaks the law!”
They looked curiously at one another. With an
affectation of indifference I began to chop idly at
the ground in front of me with my hatchet. They
looked, I noticed, at the deep cuts I made in the turf.
Then the satyr raised a doubt. I answered him.
Then one of the dappled things objected, and an
animated discussion sprang up round the fire. Every
moment I began to feel more convinced of my
present security. I talked now without the catching
in my breath, due to the intensity of my excitement,
that had troubled me at first. In the course of about
an hour I had really convinced several of the beast
folk of the truth of my assertions, and talked most of
the others into a dubious state. I kept a sharp eye for
my enemy the hyena-swine, but he never appeared.
Every now and then a suspicious movement would
startle me, but my confidence grew rapidly. Then as
the moon crept down from the zenith, one by one the
listeners began to yawn (showing the oddest teeth in
the light of the sinking fire), and first one and then
another retired towards the dens in the ravine; and I,
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dreading the silence and darkness, went with them,

knowing I was safer with several of them than with
one alone.
In this manner began the longer part of my sojourn
upon this island of Doctor Moreau. But from that
night until the end came, there was but one thing
happened to tell save a series of innumerable small
unpleasant details and the fretting of an incessant
uneasiness. So that I prefer to make no chronicle for
that gap of time, to tell only one cardinal incident
of the ten months I spent as an intimate of these
half-humanised brutes. There is much that sticks in
my memory that I could write—things that I would
cheerfully give my right hand to forget; but they
do not help the telling of the story.
In the retrospect it is strange to remember how
soon I fell in with these monsters’ ways, and gained
my confidence again. I had my quarrels with them
of course, and could show some of their teeth marks
still; but they soon gained a wholesome respect for my
trick of throwing stones and for the bite of my hatchet.
And my Saint-Bernard-man’s loyalty was of infinite
service to me. I found their simple scale of honour was
based mainly on the capacity for inflicting trenchant
wounds. Indeed, I may say—without vanity, I hope—
that I held something like preeminence among them.
One or two, whom in a rare access of high spirits I had
scarred rather badly, bore me a grudge; but it vented
itself chiefly behind my back, and at a safe distance
from my missiles, in grimaces.
The hyena-swine avoided me, and I was always
on the alert for him. My inseparable dog-man hated
and dreaded him intensely. I really believe that was at
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the root of the brute’s attachment to me. It was soon

evident to me that the former monster had tasted blood,
and gone the way of the leopard-man. He formed a
lair somewhere in the forest, and became solitary.
Once I tried to induce the beast folk to hunt him,
but I lacked the authority to make them cooperate for
one end. Again and again I tried to approach his den
and come upon him unaware; but always he was too
acute for me, and saw or winded me and got away. He
too made every forest pathway dangerous to me and
my ally with his lurking ambuscades. The dog-man
scarcely dared to leave my side.
In the first month or so the beast folk, compared
with their latter condition, were human enough,
and for one or two besides my canine friend I even
conceived a friendly tolerance. The little pink sloth-
creature displayed an odd affection for me, and took
to following me about. The monkey-man bored
me, however; he assumed, on the strength of his
five digits, that he was my equal, and was forever
jabbering at me—jabbering the most arrant nonsense.
One thing about him entertained me a little: he had
a fantastic trick of coining new words. He had an
idea, I believe, that to gabble about names that meant
nothing was the proper use of speech. He called it
“big thinks” to distinguish it from “little thinks,” the
sane everyday interests of life. If ever I made a remark
he did not understand, he would praise it very much,
ask me to say it again, learn it by heart, and go off
repeating it, with a word wrong here or there, to all
the milder of the beast people. He thought nothing
of what was plain and comprehensible. I invented
some very curious “big thinks” for his especial use.
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I think now that he was the silliest creature I ever

met; he had developed in the most wonderful way
the distinctive silliness of man without losing one jot
of the natural folly of a monkey.
This, I say, was in the earlier weeks of my solitude
among these brutes. During that time they respected
the usage established by the law, and behaved with
general decorum. Once I found another rabbit torn
to pieces—by the hyena-swine, I am assured—but
that was all. It was about May when I first distinctly
perceived a growing difference in their speech and
carriage, a growing coarseness of articulation, a
growing disinclination to talk. My monkey-man’s
jabber multiplied in volume but grew less and less
comprehensible, more and more simian. Some of the
others seemed altogether slipping their hold upon
speech, though they still understood what I said to
them at that time. (Can you imagine language, once
clear-cut and exact, softening and guttering, losing
shape and import, becoming mere lumps of sound
again?) And they walked erect with an increasing
difficulty. Though they evidently felt ashamed of
themselves, every now and then I would come upon
one or another running on toes and fingertips, 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.
Some of them—the pioneers in this, I noticed
with some surprise, were all females—began to
disregard the injunction of decency, deliberately
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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-
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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 forever.
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
forefeet, 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,
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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 suchlike work in
my life, and I spent day after day in 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 thunderstorms 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
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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
saw 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
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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 from under its unclean weight
and stood up trembling, staring at its quivering body.
That danger at least was over; but this, I knew was
only the first of the series of relapses that must come.
I burnt both of the bodies on a pyre of brushwood;
but after that I saw that unless I left the island my
death was only a question of time. The beast people
by that time had, with one or two exceptions, left the
ravine and made themselves lairs according to their
taste among the thickets of the island. Few prowled
by day, most of them slept, and the island might have
seemed deserted to a newcomer; but at night the air
was hideous with their calls and howling. I had half
a mind to make a massacre of them; to build traps,
or fight them with my knife. Had I possessed
sufficient cartridges, I should not have hesitated to
begin the killing. There could now be scarcely a
score left of the dangerous carnivores; the braver of
these were already dead. After the death of this poor
dog of mine, my last friend, I too adopted to some
extent the practice of slumbering in the daytime in
order to be on my guard at night. I rebuilt my den
in the walls of the enclosure, with such a narrow
opening that anything attempting to enter must
necessarily make a considerable noise. The creatures
had lost the art of fire too, and recovered their fear of
it. I turned once more, almost passionately now, to
hammering together stakes and branches to form a
raft for my escape.
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I found a thousand difficulties. I am an extremely

unhandy man (my schooling was over before the
days of slöjd); but most of the requirements of a raft
I met at last in some clumsy, circuitous way or other,
and this time I took care of the strength. The only
insurmountable obstacle was that I had no vessel to
contain the water I should need if I floated forth
upon these untravelled seas. I would have even tried
pottery, but the island contained no clay. I used to
go moping about the island trying with all my
might to solve this one last difficulty. Sometimes I
would give way to wild outbursts of rage, and hack
and splinter some unlucky tree in my intolerable
vexation. But I could think of nothing.
And then came a day, a wonderful day, which I
spent in ecstasy. I saw a sail to the southwest, a small
sail like that of a little schooner; and forthwith I lit
a great pile of brushwood, and stood by it in the
heat of it, and the heat of the midday sun, watching.
All day I watched that sail, eating or drinking
nothing, so that my head reeled; and the beasts
came and glared at me, and seemed to wonder,
and went away. It was still distant when night
came and swallowed it up; and all night I toiled to
keep my blaze bright and high, and the eyes of the
beasts shone out of the darkness, marvelling. In
the dawn the sail was nearer, and I saw it was the
dirty lugsail of a small boat. But it sailed strangely.
My eyes were weary with watching, and I peered
and could not believe them. Two men were in
the boat, sitting low down—one by the bows, the
other at the rudder. The head was not kept to the
wind; it yawed and fell away.
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As the day grew brighter, I began waving the last

rag of my jacket to them; but they did not notice
me, and sat still, facing each other. I went to the
lowest point of the low headland, and gesticulated
and shouted. There was no response, and the boat
kept on her aimless course, making slowly, very
slowly, for the bay. Suddenly a great white bird flew
up out of the boat, and neither of the men stirred nor
noticed it; it circled round, and then came sweeping
overhead with its strong wings outspread.
Then I stopped shouting, and sat down on
the headland and rested my chin on my hands
and stared. Slowly, slowly, the boat drove past
towards the west. I would have swum out to it, but
something—a cold, vague fear—kept me back. In
the afternoon the tide stranded the boat, and left
it a hundred yards or so to the westward of the
ruins of the enclosure. The men in it were dead,
had been dead so long that they fell to pieces when
I tilted the boat on its side and dragged them out.
One had a shock of red hair, like the captain of
the Ipecacuanha, and a dirty white cap lay in the
bottom of the boat.
As I stood beside the boat, three of the beasts came
slinking out of the bushes and sniffing towards me.
One of my spasms of disgust came upon me. I thrust
the little boat down the beach and clambered on
board her. Two of the brutes were wolf-beasts, and
came forward with quivering nostrils and glittering
eyes; the third was the horrible nondescript of bear
and bull. When I saw them approaching those
wretched remains, heard them snarling at one
another and caught the gleam of their teeth, a frantic
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horror succeeded my repulsion. I turned my back

upon them, struck the lug and began paddling out
to sea. I could not bring myself to look behind me.
I lay, however, between the reef and the island
that night, and the next morning went round to the
stream and filled the empty keg aboard with water.
Then, with such patience as I could command, I
collected a quantity of fruit, and waylaid and killed
two rabbits with my last three cartridges. While I
was doing this I left the boat moored to an inward
projection of the reef, for fear of the beast people.

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The Man Alone

I n the evening I started, and drove out to sea

before a gentle wind from the southwest,
slowly, steadily; and the island grew smaller and
smaller, and the lank spire of smoke dwindled to
a finer and finer line against the hot sunset. The
ocean rose up around me, hiding that low, dark
patch from my eyes. The daylight, the trailing
glory of the sun, went streaming out of the sky,
was drawn aside like some luminous curtain, and
at last I looked into the blue gulf of immensity
which the sunshine hides, and saw the floating
hosts of the stars. The sea was silent, the sky was
silent. I was alone with the night and silence.
So I drifted for three days, eating and drinking
sparingly, and meditating upon all that had
happened to me—not desiring very greatly then
to see men again. One unclean rag was about me,
my hair a black tangle: no doubt my discoverers
thought me a madman.
It is strange, but I felt no desire to return to
mankind. I was only glad to be quit of the foulness
of the beast people. And on the third day I was
picked up by a brig from Apia to San Francisco.
Neither the captain nor the mate would believe
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my story, judging that solitude and danger had

made me mad; and fearing their opinion might
be that of others, I refrained from telling my
adventure further, and professed to recall nothing
that had happened to me between the loss of the
Lady Vain and the time when I was picked up
again—the space of a year.
I had to act with the utmost circumspection
to save myself from the suspicion of insanity. My
memory of the law, of the two dead sailors, of
the ambuscades of the darkness, of the body in
the canebrake, haunted me; and, unnatural as it
seems, with my return to mankind came, instead
of that confidence and sympathy I had expected,
a strange enhancement of the uncertainty and
dread I had experienced during my stay upon the
island. No one would believe me; I was almost as
queer to men as I had been to the beast people.
I may have caught something of the natural
wildness of my companions. They say that terror
is a disease, and anyhow I can witness that for
several years now a restless fear has dwelt in my
mind—such a restless fear as a half-tamed lion
cub may feel.
My trouble took the strangest form. I could not
persuade myself that the men and women I met
were not also another beast people, animals half
wrought into the outward image of human souls,
and that they would presently begin to revert—to
show first this bestial mark and then that. But I
have confided my case to a strangely able man—a
man who had known Moreau, and seemed half
to credit my story; a mental specialist—and he
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has helped me mightily, though I do not expect

that the terror of that island will ever altogether
leave me. At most times it lies far in the back of
my mind, a mere distant cloud, a memory, and a
faint distrust; but there are times when the little
cloud spreads until it obscures the whole sky.
Then I look about me at my fellow-men; and I
go in fear. I see faces, keen and bright; others
dull or dangerous; others, unsteady, insincere—
none that have the calm authority of a reasonable
soul. I feel as though the animal was surging up
through them; that presently the degradation of
the islanders will be played over again on a larger
scale. I know this is an illusion; that these seeming
men and women about me are indeed men and
women—men and women forever, perfectly
reasonable creatures, full of human desires and
tender solicitude, emancipated from instinct and
the slaves of no fantastic Law—beings altogether
different from the beast folk. Yet I shrink from
them, from their curious glances, their inquiries
and assistance, and long to be away from them
and alone. For that reason I live near the broad
free downland, and can escape thither when this
shadow is over my soul; and very sweet is the
empty downland then, under the windswept sky.
When I lived in London the horror was well-
nigh insupportable. I could not get away from
men: their voices came through windows; locked
doors were flimsy safeguards. I would go out into
the streets to fight with my delusion, and prowling
women would mew after me; furtive, craving men
glance jealously at me; weary, pale workers go
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coughing by me with tired eyes and eager paces,

like wounded deer dripping blood; old people,
bent and dull, pass murmuring to themselves; and,
all unheeding, a ragged tail of gibing children.
Then I would turn aside into some chapel—and
even there, such was my disturbance, it seemed
that the preacher gibbered “big thinks,” even as
the ape-man had done; or into some library, and
there the intent faces over the books seemed but
patient creatures waiting for prey. Particularly
nauseous were the blank, expressionless faces
of people in trains and omnibuses; they seemed
no more my fellow-creatures than dead bodies
would be, so that I did not dare to travel unless I
was assured of being alone. And even it seemed
that I too was not a reasonable creature, but only
an animal tormented with some strange disorder
in its brain which sent it to wander alone, like a
sheep stricken with gid.
This is a mood, however, that comes to me now, I
thank God, more rarely. I have withdrawn myself
from the confusion of cities and multitudes, and
spend my days surrounded by wise books—bright
windows in this life of ours, lit by the shining
souls of men. I see few strangers, and have but a
small household. My days I devote to reading and
to experiments in chemistry, and I spend many of
the clear nights in the study of astronomy. There
is—though I do not know how there is or why
there is—a sense of infinite peace and protection
in the glittering hosts of heaven. There it must
be, I think, in the vast and eternal laws of matter,
and not in the daily cares and sins and troubles of
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men, that whatever is more than animal within

us must find its solace and its hope. I hope, or I
could not live.

And so, in hope and solitude, my story ends.

Edward Prendick.

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