The Island of Doctor Moreau: A Possibility by H. G. Wells

Author:H. G. Wells
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Science fiction, Animal experimentation -- Fiction, Islands -- Fiction, Shipwreck survival -- Fiction
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2017-10-19T17:54:53+00:00

XV

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 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 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.

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