Part 11 (1/2)

”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 some one, 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 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage 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 b.e.s.t.i.a.l 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 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 s.p.a.ce 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 cras.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.p.a.ce 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 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 th.o.r.n.y, 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, down-stream, 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.