The H.G. Wells Reader (11 page)

‘You must tell me about your farm in South Africa. It always stimulates my imagination to think of these places. I can fancy all the tall ostriches being driven out by a black herd to—graze, I suppose. How do ostriches feed?'

‘Well,' said Hoopdriver. ‘That's rather various. They have their fancies, you know. There's fruit, of course, and that kind of thing; and chicken food, and so forth. You have to use judgment.'

‘Did you ever see a lion?'

‘They weren't very common in our district,' said Hoopdriver, quite modestly. ‘But I've seen them of course. Once or twice.'

‘Fancy seeing a lion! Weren't you frightened?'

Mr. Hoopdriver was now thoroughly sorry he had accepted that offer of South Africa. He puffed his cigarette and regarded the Solent languidly as he settled the fate of that lion in his mind. ‘I scarcely had time,' he said. ‘It all happened in a minute.'

‘Go on,' she said.

‘I was going across the inner paddock where the fatted ostriches were.'

‘Did you
eat
ostriches, then? I did not know—'

‘Eat them! —often. Very nice they
are
too, properly stuffed. Well, we—I, rather—was going across this paddock, and I saw something standing up in the moonlight and looking at me.' Mr. Hoopdriver was in a hot perspiration now. His invention seemed to have gone limp. ‘Luckily I had my father's gun with me. I
was
scared, though, I can tell you.
(Puff.)
I just aimed at the end that I thought was the head. And let fly.
(Puff.)
And over it went, you know.'

‘Dead?'

‘
As
dead. It was one of the luckiest shots I ever fired. And I wasn't much over nine at the time neither.'

‘
I
should have screamed and run away.'

‘There's some things you can't run away from,' said Mr. Hoopdriver. ‘To run would have been Death.'

‘I don't think I ever met a lion-killer before,' she remarked, evidently with a heightened opinion of him.

There was pause. She seemed meditating further questions. Mr. Hoopdriver drew his watch hastily. ‘I say,' said Mr. Hoopdriver, showing it to her, ‘don't you think we ought to be getting on?'

His face was flushed, his ears bright red. She ascribed his confusion to modesty. He rose with a lion added to the burthens of his conscience, and held out his hand to assist her. They walked down into Cosham again, resumed their machines, and went on at a leisurely pace along the northern shore of the big harbor. But Mr. Hoopdriver was no longer happy. This horrible, this fulsome lie, stuck in his memory. Why
had
he done it! She did not ask for any more South African stories, happily—at least until Porchester was reached—but talked instead of Living One's Own Life, and how custom hung on people like chains. She talked wonderfully, and set Hoopdriver's mind fermenting. By the Castle, Mr. Hoopdriver caught several crabs in little shore pools. At Fareham they stopped for a second tea, and left the place towards the hour of sunset, under such invigorating circumstances as you shall in due course hear.

For some stretches
The Island of Doctor Moreau
is sheer horror story. It is also a meditation on evolution and on the nature of the human animal. By calling it a “theological grotesque,” and thereby drawing attention to how much Moreau takes on the creative possibilities of a god, Wells himself pointed to important thematic issues at play. Beyond the issues of Moreau's science there lurk profound questions about Prendick's, the narrator's, own responsibility in this bizarre situation: how much has he compromised his own moral standing by going along with Moreau? The novel is told through the eyes of Prendick, a man who has been saved from shipwreck and then stranded on Moreau's island by the vindictive captain. Prendick has slowly become aware that most of the “men” on the island are strange. At first he thinks they are humans whom Moreau has changed into beasts. The two brief selections come from the middle of the novel, as Prendick comes to a clearer understanding of the actual state of affairs on the island. The novel raises its thematic issues in an artful fashion. Humans may claim to speak for “the law,” but they are no more responsible or moral than the beast men with their recitations of “the law,” the obedience to which supposedly makes them human
.

Then 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 its knotted flow 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 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—had half a mind to bolt the way I had come—and then, determined to go
through with the adventure, 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 bee-hive, and against the rocky wall that formed the inner side of it was a pile of variegated fruits, cocoa-nuts and 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 spilt cocoa-nut 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 my tense 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 live man, like me.”

“Shut up!' said the voice from the dark, and grunted. I gnawed my cocoa-nut amid an impressive silence. I peered hard into the blackness, but could distinguish nothing. “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 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 sing-song.

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 realized 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, and beat their hands upon their knees, and I followed their example. I could have imagined I was already dead and in another world. The 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:

“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 Flesh or Fish;
that
is the Law. Are we not Men?”

“Not to claw 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 fervor fell on all of us; we gabbled and swayed faster and faster, repeating this amazing law. Superficially the contagion of these brute men was upon me, but deep down within me 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 animalizing these men, had infected their 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 the 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 gray 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 gray 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 gray hair, with three shadowy overarchings to mark the eyes and mouth.

“He has little nails,” said the grisly creature in his hairy beard. “It is well. Many are troubled with big nails.”

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 gray 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 each other.

“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 great creature in the corner.

“None escape,” said the Beast People, looking askance at one another.

“For every one the want that is bad,” said the gray 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 nor Fish: that is the Law.
Are we not Men?
' ”

“None escape,” said a dappled brute standing in the doorway.

“For every one the want that is bad,” said the gray Sayer of the Law. “Some want to go tearing with 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 it was big and clumsy, and covered with silvery hair, and I was left alone.