Part 20 (1/2)

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 s.p.a.ce 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.

XIX. MONTGOMERY'S ”BANK HOLIDAY.”

WHEN 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 a.s.s 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, Prend.i.c.k? Are we bubbles blown by a baby?”

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_, Prend.i.c.k.

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 to-morrow. 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 a.s.ses of themselves sooner or later. We can't ma.s.sacre 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.

”d.a.m.nation!” 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 paraffine 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.