00 - Introduction - The Island of Dr Moreau - H G Wells

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells introduction
on February the first, eighteen eighty seven. The Lady Vain
was lost by collision with a derelict when about the
latitude one degree south and longitude one hundred seven degrees
west on January the fifth, eighteen eighty seven, that is,

(00:23):
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 five degrees three minutes south and longitude
one hundred one degrees west, in a small open boat
of which the name was illegible, but which is supposed

(00:46):
to have belonged to the missing schooner, a Pecaquana. He
gave such a strange account of himself that he was
supposed to minted. 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

(01:06):
consequence upon physical and mental stress. The following narrative was
found among his papers by the undersigned, his nephew an heir,
but unaccompanied by any definite request for publication. The only
island known to exist in the region at which my
uncle was picked up is Noble's Isle, a small volcanic

(01:28):
islet and uninhabited. It was visited in eighteen ninety one
by each Ams 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.

(01:48):
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 five degrees south and longitude one hundred five
degrees east, and reappeared in the same part of the

(02:08):
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 Ipecacuana, with the drunken captain
John Davies, did start from Africa with a puma and
certain other animals aboard in January eighteen eighty seven, and
that the vessel was well known at several ports in

(02:29):
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 eighteen eighty seven, a
date that tallies entirely with my uncle's story. Charles Edward Prendick.
The story written by Edward Prendick,