August 21, 2025 • 14 mins
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Eleven, The Hunting of the Man. It came before my
mind with an unreasonable hope of escape, that the outer
door of my room was still open to me. I
was convinced, now, absolutely assured, that Moreau had been vivisecting
a human being. All the time since I had heard
(00:23):
his name, I had been trying to link in my
mind in some way the grotesque animalism of the Islanders
with his abominations, and now I thought I saw it all.
The memory of his work on the transfusion of blood
recurred to me. These creatures I had seen were the
victims of some hideous experiment. These sickening scoundrels had merely
(00:49):
intended to keep me back, to fool me with their
display of confidence, and presently to fall upon me with
a fate more horrible than death, with torture, and after torture,
the most hideous degradation it is possible to conceive, to
send me off a lost soul, a beast, to the
(01:11):
rest of their comus route. I looked around for some weapon, nothing,
Then with an inspiration, I turned over the deck chair,
put my foot on the side of it, and tore
away the side rail. It happened that a nail came
away with the wood and projecting gave a touch of
danger to an otherwise petty weapon. I heard a step outside,
(01:36):
and incontinently flung open the door and found Montgomery within
a yard of it. He meant to lock the outer door.
I raised this nailed stick of mine and cut at
his face, but he sprang back. I hesitated a moment,
then turned and fled round the corner of the house
(01:57):
prindic man. I heard his astonished cry, don't be a
thiliath man. Another minute, thought I, and he would have
had me locked in and as ready as a hospital
rabbit for my feet. He emerged behind the corner for
I heard him shout prynd dick. Then he began to
(02:19):
run after me, shouting things as he ran, this time
running blindly. I went northeastward in the direction at right
angles to my previous expedition. Once, as I went running
headlong up the beach, I glanced over my shoulder and
saw his attendant with him. I ran furiously up the
(02:40):
slope over it, then turning eastward along a rocky valley
fringed on either side with jungle, I ran for perhaps
a mile altogether my chest, straining my heart beating in
my ears, and then, hearing nothing of Montgomery or his man,
(03:00):
and feeling upon the verge of exhaustion, I doubled sharply
back towards the beach as I judged, and lay down
in the shelter of a cane brake. There I remained
for a long time, too fearful to move, and indeed
too fearful even to plan a course of action. The
(03:21):
wild scene about me lay sleeping silently under the sun,
and the only sound near me was the thin hum
of some small gnats that had discovered me. Presently I
became aware of a drowsy breathing sound, the sowing of
the sea upon the beach. After about an hour I
(03:43):
heard Montgomery shouting my name far away to the north.
That set me thinking of my plan of action as
I interpreted it. Then this island was inhabited only by
these two vivisectors and their animal lies victims. Some of these,
no doubt they could press into their service against me
(04:05):
if need arose. I knew both Moreau and Montgomery carried revolvers,
and save for a feeble bar of deal spiked with
a small nail, the merest mockery of a mace. I
was unarmed, so I lay still there until I began
to think of food and drink. And at that thought
(04:29):
the real hopelessness of my situation came home to me.
I knew no way of getting anything to eat. I
was too ignorant of botany to discover any resort of
root or fruit that might lie about me. I had
no means of trapping the few rabbits upon the island.
It grew blanker the more I turned the prospect over.
(04:53):
At last, in the desperation of my position, my mind
turned to the animal men I had encountered. I tried
to find some hope in what I remembered of them.
In turn, I recalled each one I had seen, and
tried to draw some augury of assistance from my memory.
(05:13):
Then suddenly I heard a stag hound bay, and at
that realized a new danger. I took little time to think,
or they would have caught me then, but, snatching up
my nailed stick, rushed headlong from my hiding place towards
the sound of the sea. I remember a growth of
(05:34):
thorny plants with spines that stabbed like pin knives. I
emerged bleeding and with torn clothes, upon the lip of
a long creek opening northward, I went straight into the
water without a minute's hesitation, wading up the creek and
presently finding myself knee deep in a little stream, I
(05:54):
scrambled out at last on the westward bank, and with
my heart beating loudly in my ears, crept into a
tangle of ferns to await the issue. I heard the
dog there was only one draw nearer, and yelp when
it came to the thorns. Then I heard no more,
(06:14):
and presently began to think I had escaped. The minutes passed,
the silence lengthened out, and at last, after an hour
of security, my courage began to return to me. By
this time I was no longer very much terrified or
very miserable. I had, as it were, past the limit
(06:38):
of terror and despair. I felt now that my life
was practically lost, and that persuasion made me capable of
daring anything. I had even a certain wish to encounter
mo Row face to face. And as I had waded
into the water, I remembered that if I were too
hard pressed, at least one path of a skin from
(07:00):
torment still lay open to me. They could not very
well prevent my drowning myself. I had half a mind
to drown myself then, but not wished to see the
whole adventure out. A queer impersonal spectacular interest in myself
(07:20):
restrained me. I stretched my limbs, sore and painful from
the pricks of the spiny plants, and stared around me
at the trees, and so suddenly that it seemed to
jump out of the green tracery about it. My eyes
lit upon a black face watching me. I saw that
(07:43):
it was the Simian creature who had met the launch
upon the beach. He was clinging to the oblique stem
of a palm tree. I gripped my stick and stood
up facing him. He began chattering, you, you, You was
all I could distinguish at first. Suddenly he dropped from
(08:05):
the tree, and in another moment was holding the fronds
apart and staring curiously at me. I did not feel
the same repugnance towards this creature which I had experienced
in my encounters with the other beast men. You, he
said in the boat. He was a man, then, at
(08:28):
least as much of a man as Montgomery's attendant, for
he could talk. Yes, I said, I came in the
boat from the ship. Oh, he said, And his bright,
restless eyes traveled over me, to my hands, to the
stick I carried, to my feet, to the tattered places
(08:51):
in my coat, and the cuts and scratches I had
received from the thorns. He seemed puzzled at something. His
eyes came back to my hands. He held out his
own hand and counted his digits slowly, one, two, three, four, five. Ay.
(09:17):
I did not grasp his meaning. Then, afterwards I was
to find that a great proportion of these beast men
had malformed hands, lacking sometimes even three digits. But, guessing
this was in some way a greeting, I did the
same thing by way of reply. He grinned with immense satisfaction.
(09:41):
Then his swift, roving glance went round again. He made
a swift movement and vanished. The fern Franz he had
stood between came swishing together. I pushed out of the
break after him, and was astonished to find him swinging
cheerfully by one lanka from a rope of creepers that
(10:01):
looped down from the foliage overhead. His back was to
me hullo, said I. He came down with a twisting
jump and stood facing me. I say, said I, where
can I get something to eat? Eat? He said, eat
(10:24):
man's food now, and his eye went back to the
swing of ropes at the huts. But where are the huts? Oh,
I'm new, you know? At that, he swung round and
set off at a quick walk. All his motions were
(10:47):
curiously rapid. Come along, said he. I went with him
to see the adventure out. I guessed the huts were
some rough shelter where he and some more of these
beast people lived. I might perhaps find them friendly, find
(11:07):
some handle in their minds to take hold of. I
did not know how far they had forgotten their human heritage.
My ape like companion trotted along by my side, with
his hands hanging down and his jaw thrust forward. I
wondered what memory he might have in him. How long
(11:30):
have you been on this island? Said I? How long?
He asked, and after having the question repeated, he held
up three fingers. The creature was little better than an idiot.
I tried to make out what he meant by that,
and it seems I bored him. After another question or two,
(11:54):
he suddenly left my side and went leaping at some
fruit that hung from a tree. He pulled down a
handful of prickly husks and went on eating the contents.
I noted this with satisfaction, for here, at least was
a hint for feeding. I tried him with some other questions,
(12:15):
but his chattering prompt responses were, as often as not,
quite at cross purposes with my question. Some few were appropriate,
others quite parrot like. I was so intent upon these
peculiarities that I scarcely noticed the path we followed. Presently
(12:36):
we came to trees all charred and brown, and so
to a bare place covered with a yellow white incrustation,
across which a drifting smoke, pungent in wiffs to nose
and eyes. When drifting on our right over a shoulder
of bare rock, I saw the level blue of the sea.
(12:58):
The path coiled down abruptly into a narrow ravine between
two tumbled and knotty masses of blackish scory eye. Into
this we plunged. It was extremely dark this passage. After
the blinding sunlight reflected from the sulfurous ground, Its walls
(13:19):
grew steep and approached each other blotches of green and
crimson drifted across my eyes. My conductor stopped suddenly, home,
said he. And I stood in a floor of a
chasm that was at first absolutely dark to me. I
(13:40):
heard some strange noises and thrust the knuckles of my
left hand into my eyes. I became aware of a
disagreeable odor, like that of a monkey's cage. Ill cleaned
beyond the rock opened again upon a gradual slope of
sunlit greenery, and on either hand the lights smote down
(14:03):
through narrow ways into the central gloom.
Eleven, The Hunting of the Man. It came before my
mind with an unreasonable hope of escape, that the outer
door of my room was still open to me. I
was convinced, now, absolutely assured, that Moreau had been vivisecting
a human being. All the time since I had heard
(00:23):
his name, I had been trying to link in my
mind in some way the grotesque animalism of the Islanders
with his abominations, and now I thought I saw it all.
The memory of his work on the transfusion of blood
recurred to me. These creatures I had seen were the
victims of some hideous experiment. These sickening scoundrels had merely
(00:49):
intended to keep me back, to fool me with their
display of confidence, and presently to fall upon me with
a fate more horrible than death, with torture, and after torture,
the most hideous degradation it is possible to conceive, to
send me off a lost soul, a beast, to the
(01:11):
rest of their comus route. I looked around for some weapon, nothing,
Then with an inspiration, I turned over the deck chair,
put my foot on the side of it, and tore
away the side rail. It happened that a nail came
away with the wood and projecting gave a touch of
danger to an otherwise petty weapon. I heard a step outside,
(01:36):
and incontinently flung open the door and found Montgomery within
a yard of it. He meant to lock the outer door.
I raised this nailed stick of mine and cut at
his face, but he sprang back. I hesitated a moment,
then turned and fled round the corner of the house
(01:57):
prindic man. I heard his astonished cry, don't be a
thiliath man. Another minute, thought I, and he would have
had me locked in and as ready as a hospital
rabbit for my feet. He emerged behind the corner for
I heard him shout prynd dick. Then he began to
(02:19):
run after me, shouting things as he ran, this time
running blindly. I went northeastward in the direction at right
angles to my previous expedition. Once, as I went running
headlong up the beach, I glanced over my shoulder and
saw his attendant with him. I ran furiously up the
(02:40):
slope over it, then turning eastward along a rocky valley
fringed on either side with jungle, I ran for perhaps
a mile altogether my chest, straining my heart beating in
my ears, and then, hearing nothing of Montgomery or his man,
(03:00):
and feeling upon the verge of exhaustion, I doubled sharply
back towards the beach as I judged, and lay down
in the shelter of a cane brake. There I remained
for a long time, too fearful to move, and indeed
too fearful even to plan a course of action. The
(03:21):
wild scene about me lay sleeping silently under the sun,
and the only sound near me was the thin hum
of some small gnats that had discovered me. Presently I
became aware of a drowsy breathing sound, the sowing of
the sea upon the beach. After about an hour I
(03:43):
heard Montgomery shouting my name far away to the north.
That set me thinking of my plan of action as
I interpreted it. Then this island was inhabited only by
these two vivisectors and their animal lies victims. Some of these,
no doubt they could press into their service against me
(04:05):
if need arose. I knew both Moreau and Montgomery carried revolvers,
and save for a feeble bar of deal spiked with
a small nail, the merest mockery of a mace. I
was unarmed, so I lay still there until I began
to think of food and drink. And at that thought
(04:29):
the real hopelessness of my situation came home to me.
I knew no way of getting anything to eat. I
was too ignorant of botany to discover any resort of
root or fruit that might lie about me. I had
no means of trapping the few rabbits upon the island.
It grew blanker the more I turned the prospect over.
(04:53):
At last, in the desperation of my position, my mind
turned to the animal men I had encountered. I tried
to find some hope in what I remembered of them.
In turn, I recalled each one I had seen, and
tried to draw some augury of assistance from my memory.
(05:13):
Then suddenly I heard a stag hound bay, and at
that realized a new danger. I took little time to think,
or they would have caught me then, but, snatching up
my nailed stick, rushed headlong from my hiding place towards
the sound of the sea. I remember a growth of
(05:34):
thorny plants with spines that stabbed like pin knives. I
emerged bleeding and with torn clothes, upon the lip of
a long creek opening northward, I went straight into the
water without a minute's hesitation, wading up the creek and
presently finding myself knee deep in a little stream, I
(05:54):
scrambled out at last on the westward bank, and with
my heart beating loudly in my ears, crept into a
tangle of ferns to await the issue. I heard the
dog there was only one draw nearer, and yelp when
it came to the thorns. Then I heard no more,
(06:14):
and presently began to think I had escaped. The minutes passed,
the silence lengthened out, and at last, after an hour
of security, my courage began to return to me. By
this time I was no longer very much terrified or
very miserable. I had, as it were, past the limit
(06:38):
of terror and despair. I felt now that my life
was practically lost, and that persuasion made me capable of
daring anything. I had even a certain wish to encounter
mo Row face to face. And as I had waded
into the water, I remembered that if I were too
hard pressed, at least one path of a skin from
(07:00):
torment still lay open to me. They could not very
well prevent my drowning myself. I had half a mind
to drown myself then, but not wished to see the
whole adventure out. A queer impersonal spectacular interest in myself
(07:20):
restrained me. I stretched my limbs, sore and painful from
the pricks of the spiny plants, and stared around me
at the trees, and so suddenly that it seemed to
jump out of the green tracery about it. My eyes
lit upon a black face watching me. I saw that
(07:43):
it was the Simian creature who had met the launch
upon the beach. He was clinging to the oblique stem
of a palm tree. I gripped my stick and stood
up facing him. He began chattering, you, you, You was
all I could distinguish at first. Suddenly he dropped from
(08:05):
the tree, and in another moment was holding the fronds
apart and staring curiously at me. I did not feel
the same repugnance towards this creature which I had experienced
in my encounters with the other beast men. You, he
said in the boat. He was a man, then, at
(08:28):
least as much of a man as Montgomery's attendant, for
he could talk. Yes, I said, I came in the
boat from the ship. Oh, he said, And his bright,
restless eyes traveled over me, to my hands, to the
stick I carried, to my feet, to the tattered places
(08:51):
in my coat, and the cuts and scratches I had
received from the thorns. He seemed puzzled at something. His
eyes came back to my hands. He held out his
own hand and counted his digits slowly, one, two, three, four, five. Ay.
(09:17):
I did not grasp his meaning. Then, afterwards I was
to find that a great proportion of these beast men
had malformed hands, lacking sometimes even three digits. But, guessing
this was in some way a greeting, I did the
same thing by way of reply. He grinned with immense satisfaction.
(09:41):
Then his swift, roving glance went round again. He made
a swift movement and vanished. The fern Franz he had
stood between came swishing together. I pushed out of the
break after him, and was astonished to find him swinging
cheerfully by one lanka from a rope of creepers that
(10:01):
looped down from the foliage overhead. His back was to
me hullo, said I. He came down with a twisting
jump and stood facing me. I say, said I, where
can I get something to eat? Eat? He said, eat
(10:24):
man's food now, and his eye went back to the
swing of ropes at the huts. But where are the huts? Oh,
I'm new, you know? At that, he swung round and
set off at a quick walk. All his motions were
(10:47):
curiously rapid. Come along, said he. I went with him
to see the adventure out. I guessed the huts were
some rough shelter where he and some more of these
beast people lived. I might perhaps find them friendly, find
(11:07):
some handle in their minds to take hold of. I
did not know how far they had forgotten their human heritage.
My ape like companion trotted along by my side, with
his hands hanging down and his jaw thrust forward. I
wondered what memory he might have in him. How long
(11:30):
have you been on this island? Said I? How long?
He asked, and after having the question repeated, he held
up three fingers. The creature was little better than an idiot.
I tried to make out what he meant by that,
and it seems I bored him. After another question or two,
(11:54):
he suddenly left my side and went leaping at some
fruit that hung from a tree. He pulled down a
handful of prickly husks and went on eating the contents.
I noted this with satisfaction, for here, at least was
a hint for feeding. I tried him with some other questions,
(12:15):
but his chattering prompt responses were, as often as not,
quite at cross purposes with my question. Some few were appropriate,
others quite parrot like. I was so intent upon these
peculiarities that I scarcely noticed the path we followed. Presently
(12:36):
we came to trees all charred and brown, and so
to a bare place covered with a yellow white incrustation,
across which a drifting smoke, pungent in wiffs to nose
and eyes. When drifting on our right over a shoulder
of bare rock, I saw the level blue of the sea.
(12:58):
The path coiled down abruptly into a narrow ravine between
two tumbled and knotty masses of blackish scory eye. Into
this we plunged. It was extremely dark this passage. After
the blinding sunlight reflected from the sulfurous ground, Its walls
(13:19):
grew steep and approached each other blotches of green and
crimson drifted across my eyes. My conductor stopped suddenly, home,
said he. And I stood in a floor of a
chasm that was at first absolutely dark to me. I
(13:40):
heard some strange noises and thrust the knuckles of my
left hand into my eyes. I became aware of a
disagreeable odor, like that of a monkey's cage. Ill cleaned
beyond the rock opened again upon a gradual slope of
sunlit greenery, and on either hand the lights smote down
(14:03):
through narrow ways into the central gloom.
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