December 24, 2025 • 30 mins
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Sixteen, how the beast folk taste blood. My experience as
a writer betrays me, and I wander from the thread
of my story. After I had breakfasted with Montgomery, he
took me across the island to see the fumarole in
the source of the hot spring into whose scalding waters
(00:22):
I had blundered on the previous day. Both of us
carried whips in loaded revolvers. While going through a leafy
jungle on our road thither, we heard a rabbit squealing.
We stopped and listened, but we heard no more, and
presently we went on our way, and the incident dropped
(00:42):
out of our minds. Montgomery called my attention to certain
little pink animals with long hind legs that went leaping
through the undergrowth. He told me they were creatures made
of the offspring of the beast people that Moreau had invented.
He had fancied they might serve for meat, but a
(01:03):
rabbit like habit of devouring their young had defeated this intention.
I had already encountered some of these creatures, once string
my moonlight flight from the Leopard Man, and once during
my pursuit by Moreau on the previous day. By chance,
one hopping to avoid us, leapt into the hole caused
by the uprooting of a wind blown tree. Before it
(01:25):
could extricate itself, we managed to catch it. It spat
like a cat, scratched and kicked vigorously with its hind legs,
and made an attempt to bite, but its teeth were
too feeble to inflict more than a painless pinch. Seemed
to me rather a pretty little creature, And as Montgomery
stated that it never destroyed the turf by burrowing, and
(01:48):
was very cleanly in its habits, I should imagine it
might prove a convenient substitute for the common rabbit in
gentlemen's parks. We also saw on our way the trunk
of a tree barked in long strips and splintered deeply.
Montgomery called my attention to this, not to claw the
(02:09):
bark of truth. That is the law, he said, much
thumb of them care for it. It was after this,
I think that we met the satyr and the ape man.
The satyr was a gleam of classical memory on the
part of Moreau. His face so vine an expression like
(02:30):
the coarser Hebrew type, his voice a harsh bleat his
nether extremity satanic. He was gnawing the husk of a
part like fruit. As he passed us. Both of them
saluted Montgomery. Hail, said they to the other with the whip.
(02:50):
They're the third with a whip, now, said Montgomery. Though
you'd better mind worth He not made, said the ape man.
He said, he said he was made. The satire man
looked curiously at me. The third with the whip, he
(03:12):
that walks weeping into the sea, has a thin white face.
He hath a thin long whip, said Montgomery. Yet did
they he bled and wept, said the satier. You never
bleed nor weep. The master does not bleed or weep.
(03:33):
All n dorf hin beggar, said Montgomery. You'll bleed and
weep if you don't look out. He has five fingers.
He is a five man, like me, said the ape man.
Come along, Prindick, said Montgomery, taking my arm, and I
(03:54):
went on with him. The satier and the ape man
stood watching us and making other remarks to each other.
He says nothing, said the satier. Men have voices yeth
to day. He asked me of things to eat, said
the ape man. He did not know. Then they spoke
(04:20):
inaudible things, and I heard the satier laughing. It was
on our way back that we came upon the dead rabbit.
The red body of the wretched little beast was rent
to pieces, many of the ribs stripped white, and the
backbone indisputably gnawed. At that, Montgomery stopped. Good God, said
(04:42):
he stooping down and picking up some of the crushed
vertebrae to examine them more closely. Good God, he repeated,
What can this mean? Some carnivore of yours has remembered
its old habits, I said, after a pause. This backbone
has been bitten through. He stood staring, with his face
(05:07):
white and his lip pulled askew. I don't like this,
he said slowly. I saw something of the same kind,
said I. The first day I came here, the devil
you did. What was it? A rabbit with its head
twisted off the day you came here, The day I
(05:32):
came here, in the undergrowth at the back of the enclosure.
When I went out in the evening, the head was
completely wrung off. He gave a long, low whistle. And
what is more, I have an idea of which your
brutes did the thing. It's only a suspicion, you know.
Before I came on the rabbit, I saw one of
(05:53):
your monsters drinking in the stream, fucking his drink. Yes,
not to Thirk, you'll drink. That is the law. Much
the brutes care for the law, eh, would moreaud not
about it was the brute who chased me, of course,
said Montgomery. It's just the way with the carlive Worth.
(06:16):
After a keel, they'd drink. It's the teeth of blood,
you know. What was the brute like? He continued, Would
you know him again? He glanced about us, standing astride
over the mass of dead rabbit, his eyes roving among
the shadows and screens of greenery, the lurking places and
(06:36):
ambuse gards of the forest that bounded us in The
teethte of blood, he said again. He took out his revolver,
examined the cartridges in it, and replaced it. Then he
began to pull at his dropping lip. I think I
should know the brute again, I said. I stunned him.
(07:00):
He ought to have a handsome bruise on the forehead
of him. But then we have to prove that he
killed the rabbit, said Montgomery, I with, I'd never brought
the thing here. I should have gone on, But he
stayed there, thinking over the mangled rabbit in a puzzle
headed way. As it was, I went to such a
(07:21):
distance that the rabbit's remains were hidden. Come on, I said. Presently,
he woke and came towards me. You see, he said,
almost in a whisper. They are all for both to
have a fixed idea against eating anything that runs on land.
(07:41):
If thumb brute hath by any accident, taithe did blood.
We went on some way in silence. I wonder what
can have happened, he said to himself. Then, after a pause, again,
I did a foolish thing the other day. The servant
(08:03):
of mine. I throwed him how to skin and cook
a rabbit. He thought, I saw him licking his hands.
It never occurred to me. Then we must put a
stop to this. I must tell Moreau. He could think
of nothing else on our homeward journey. Moreau took the
(08:26):
matter even more seriously than Montgomery, and I need scarcely
say that I was affected by the evident consternation. We
must make an example, said Moreau. I've no doubt in
my mind that the leopard man was the sinner, But
how can we prove it? I wish, Montgomery, you had
kept your taste for meat in hand and gone without
(08:49):
these exciting novelties. We may find ourselves in a mess.
Yet through it, I was a thiliath, said Montgomery. But
the thing's done now, and you said I might have them.
You know we must see to the thing at once,
said Moreau. I suppose if anything should turn up, Imling
can take care of himself. I'm not though sure of Imling,
(09:14):
said Montgomery. I think I ought to know him. In
the afternoon, Moreau, Montgomery, myself, and Imling went across the
island to the huts in the ravine. We three were armed.
Imling carried the little hatchet he used in chopping firewood
and some coils of wire. Moreau had a huge coward's
(09:35):
horn slung over his shoulder. You will see a gathering
of the beast people, said Montgomery. It is a pretty fight.
Moreau said, not a word on the way, but the
expression of his heavy, white fringed face was grimly set.
(09:57):
We crossed the ravine down which smoked the dream of
hot water, and followed the winding pathway through the cane
breaks until we reached a wide area covered over with
a thick, powdery yellow substance, which I believe was sulfur,
above the shoulder of a weedy bank, the sea glittered.
We came to a kind of shallow natural amphitheater, and
(10:20):
here the four of us halted. Then Moreau sounded the
horn and broke the sleeping stillness of the tropical afternoon.
He must have had strong lungs. The hooting note rose
and rose amidst its echoes to at last an ear
penetrating intensity, Ah, said Moreau, letting the curved instrument fall
(10:44):
to his side again. Immediately there was a crashing through
the yellow canes, and a sound of voices from the
dinse green jungle that marked the morass through which I
had run on the previous day. Then at three or
four points on the edge of the sulfurous area appeared
the grotesque forms of the beast people hurrying towards us.
(11:07):
I could not help a creeping horror, as I perceived
first one and then another trot out from the trees
or reeds and come shambling along over the hot dust.
But Moreau and Montgomery stood calmly enough and perforce I
stuck beside them. First to arrive was the satyr, strangely
(11:28):
unreal for all that he cast a shadow and tossed
the dust with his hoofs After him from the break
became a monstrous lout, a thing of horse and rhinoceros,
chewing a straw as it came. Then appeared the swine woman,
and two wolf women. Then the fox bare witch with
(11:49):
her red eyes and her peaked red face, and then others,
all hurrying eagerly. As they came forward, they began to
cringe towards moreau enchant, quite regardless of one another, fragments
of the latter half of the litany of the law.
His is the hand that wounds, his is the hand
(12:11):
that heals, and so forth. As soon as they had
approached within a distance of perhaps thirty yards, they halted, and,
bowing on knees and elbows, began flinging the white dust
upon their heads. Imagine the scene, if you can. We
three blue clad men, with our misshapen, black faced attendant,
(12:35):
standing in a wide expanse of sunlit yellow dust under
the blazing blue sky, and surrounded by this circle of
crouching and gesticulating monstrosities, some almost human, save in their
subtle expression and gestures, some like cripples, some so strangely
(12:55):
distorted as to resemble nothing but the dinnizens of our
wildest dreams. And beyond the ready lines of a cane
break in one direction, a dense tangle of palm trees
on the other, separating us from the ravine with the huts,
and to the north the hazy horizon of the Pacific Ocean.
(13:16):
Sixty two sixty three, counted Moreau. There are four more.
I do not see, the leopard Man, said I. Presently
Moreau sounded the great horn again, and at the sound
of it, all the beast people writhed and graveled in
the dust. Then, slinking out of the cane brake, stooping
(13:38):
near the ground and trying to join the dust throwing circle.
Behind Moreau's back, came the leopard Man. The last of
the beast people to arrive was the little ape Man.
The earlier animals, hot and weary with their groveling, shot
vicious glances at him. Cease, said Moreau in his firm,
(14:01):
loud voice, and the beast people sat back upon their
hands and wrested from their worshiping where is the sayer
of the law, said Moreau, And the hairy gray monster
bowed his face in the dust. Say the words, said Moreau,
forthwith all in the kneeling assembly, swaying from side to side,
(14:25):
and dashing up the sulfur with their hands, first the
right hand, and a puff of dust. And that the
left began once more to chant their strange litany. When
they reached not to eat flesh or fish, that is
the law. Moreau held up his lank white hand. Stop,
(14:45):
he cried, and there fell absolute silence upon them all.
I think they all knew and dreaded what was coming.
I looked round at their strange faces. When I saw
their wincing attitudes and the firs of dread in their
bright eyes, I wondered that I had ever believed them
to be men. That law has been broken, said Moreau.
(15:11):
None escape from the faceless creature with the silvery hair.
None escape, repeated the kneeling circle of beast people. Who
is he cried Moreau, and looked round at their faces,
cracking his whip. I fancy the hyena swine looked dejected,
(15:33):
so too did the leopard man. Moreau stopped facing this
creature who cringed towards him with the memory and dread
of infinite torment. Who is he, repeated Moreau in a
voice of thunder. Evil is he who breaks the law?
(15:56):
Chanted the sayer of the law? Moreau looked into the
eyes of the leopard man and seemed to be dragging
the very soul out of the creature. Who breaks the law?
Said Moreau, taking his eyes off his victim and turning
towards us. Seemed to me there was a touch of
exultation in his voice. Goes back to the house of pain,
(16:22):
they all clamored. Goes back to the house of pain,
ol master work, to the house of pain work, to
the house of pain, gabbled the ape man, as though
the idea was sweet to him. Do you hear, said Moreau,
turning back to the criminal, My friend, hullo for the
(16:46):
leopard man, released from Moreau's eye, had risen straight from
his knees, and now, with his eyes aflame and his
huge feline tusks flashing out from under his curling lips,
leaped towards his tormentor. I am convinced that only the
madness of unendurable fear could have prompted this attack, the
(17:07):
whole circle of three score monsters seemed to rise about us.
I drew my revolver, the two figures collided. My saw
Morle reeling back from the leper man's blow. There was
a furious yelling and howling all about us. Every one
was moving rapidly. For a moment I thought it was
(17:29):
a general revolt. The furious face of the leopard man
flashed by mine, with imling close in pursuit. I saw
the yellow eyes of the hyena swine blazing with excitement
his attitude, as if he were half resolved to attack me.
The sat here, too, glared at me over the hyena
Swine's hunched shoulders. I heard the crack of moreause pistol
(17:53):
and saw the pink flash dart across the tumult The
whole crowd seemed to swing round in the direction of
the glint of fire, and I too was swung round
by the magnetism of the movement. In another second, eye
was running one of a tumultuous, shouting crowd in pursuit
of the escaping leopard man. That is all I can tell. Definitely.
(18:18):
I saw the leopard man strike Moreau, and then everything
spun about me until I was running headlong. Immling was ahead,
close in pursuit of the fugitive. Behind their tongues already
lolling out ran the wolf women in great leaping strides.
The swine folk followed, squealing with excitement, and the two
(18:38):
bull men in their swathings of white. Then came a
row and a cluster of the beast people. His wide
brimmed straw had blown off, his revolver in hand, and
his lank white hair streaming out. The hyena swine ran
beside me, keeping pace with me and glancing furtively at
me out of his feline eyes, and the others came
(19:01):
pattering and shouting behind us. The leopard man went bursting
his way through the long canes, which sprang back as
he passed and rattled in Imling's face. We others in
the rear found a trampled path for us when we
reached the break. The chaise lay through the break for
perhaps a quarter of a mile, and then plunged into
(19:23):
a dense thicket which retarded our movements exceedingly, though we
went through it in a crowd together, Franz flicking into
our faces. Ropey creepers, catching us under the chin, or
gripping our ankles, thorny plants, hooking into and tearing cloth
and fleshed together. He has gone on all fours through
(19:44):
this panted morreau, now just ahead of me. None escape,
said the wolf bear, laughing into my face. With the
exultation of hunting. We burst out again among rocks, and
saw saw the quary ahead, running lightly on all fours
and snarling at us over his shoulder. At that, the
(20:06):
wolf folk howled with delight. The thing was still clothed,
and at a distance its face still seemed human, but
the carriage of its four limbs was feline, and the
furtive droop of its shoulder was distinctly that of a
hunted animal. It leaped over some thorny yellow flowering bushes
and was hidden imling was half way across the space.
(20:33):
Most of us now had lost the first speed of
the chase, and had fallen into a longer and steadier stride.
I saw as we traversed the open that the pursuit
was now spreading from a column into a line. The
hyena swine still rang close to me, watching me as
it ran every now and then, puckering its muzzle with
(20:53):
a snarling laugh. At the edge of the rocks, the
leopard man, realizing that he was making for the projector
cape upon which he had stalked me on the night
of my arrival, had doubled in the undergrowth, but Montgomery
had seen the maneuver and turned him again. So, panting,
tumbling against rocks, torn by brambles, impeded by ferns and reeds,
(21:18):
I helped to pursue the leopard man who had broken
the law, and the hyena swine ran, laughing savagely by
my side. I staggered on, my head, reeling and my
heart beating against my ribs, tired almost to death, and
yet not daring to lose sight of the chase lest
(21:39):
I should be left alone with this horrible companion. I
staggered on in spite of infinite fatigue and the dense
heat of the tropical afternoon. At last, the fury of
the hunt slackened. We had pinned the wretched brute into
a corner of the island. Moreau whip hand marshaled us
(22:01):
all into an irregular line, and we advanced, now slowly,
shouting to one another as we advanced, and tightening the
cordon about our victim. He lurked, noiseless and invisible, in
the bushes through which I had run from him during
that midnight pursuit. Steady, cried Moreau. Steady, as the ends
(22:24):
of the line crept round the tangle of undergrowth and
hemmed the brute in where the rush came the voice
of Montgomery from beyond the thicket. I was on the
slope above the bushes. Montgomery and Moreau beat along the
beach beneath. Slowly we pushed in among the fretted network
of branches and leaves. The quarry was silent. Back to
(22:50):
the house of Pain, the house of pain, the house
of Pain. Yelped the voice of the ape man, some
twenty yards to the right. When I heard that, I
forgave the poor wretch all the fear he had inspired
in me. I heard the twigs snap and the boughs
swish aside before the heavy tread of the horse Rhinoceros
(23:12):
upon my right. Then, suddenly, through a polygon of green,
in the half darkness, under the luxuriant growth, I saw
the creature we were hunting. I halted. He was crouched
together into the smallest possible compass. His luminous green eyes
turned over his shoulder. Regarding me. It may seem a
(23:36):
strange contradiction in me I cannot explain the fact. But
now seeing the creature there in a perfectly animal attitude,
with the light gleaming in its eyes and its imperfectly
human face distorted with terror, I realized again the fact
of its humanity. In another moment, other of its pursuers
(23:59):
would see, and it would be overpowered and captured to
experience once more the horrible tortures of the enclosure. Abruptly,
I slipped out my revolver, aimed between its terror struck eyes,
and fired. As I did so, the hyena swine saw
(24:20):
the thing and flung itself upon it with an eager cry,
thrusting thirsty teeth into its neck. All about me, the
green masses of the thicket were swaying and cracking as
the beast. People came rushing together. One face and then
another appeared. Don't kill it, Prindick cried moreau don't kill it,
(24:45):
And I saw him stooping as he pushed through under
the fronds of the big ferns. In another moment, he
had beaten off the hyena swine with the handle of
his whip, and he and Montgomery were keeping away the
excite did carnivorous beast people, and particularly imling from the
still quivering body. The hairy gray thing came sniffing at
(25:09):
the corpse under my arm. The other animals, in their
animal ardor jostled me to get a nearer view. Confound you, prindick,
said Moreau. I wanted him. I'm sorry, said I, though
I was not. It was the impulse of the moment.
(25:33):
I felt sick with exertion and excitement. Turning. I pushed
my way out of the crowding beast people and went
on alone up the slope towards the highest part of
the headland. Under the shouted directions of Moreau. I heard
the three white swathed bull men begin dragging the victim
down towards the water. It was easy now for me
(25:57):
to be alone. The beast people manifested a quite human
curiosity about the dead body and followed it in a
thick knot, sniffing and growling at it as the bull
men dragged it down the beach. I went to the
headland and watched the bull men black against the evening
sky as they carried the weighted dead body out to sea,
(26:21):
and like a wave across my mind came the realization
of the unspeakable aimlessness of things upon the island. Upon
the beach, among the rocks beneath me were the ape man,
the hyena swine, and several other of the beast people
standing about Montgomery and Moreau. They were all still intensely excited,
(26:42):
and all overflowing with noisy expressions of their loyalty to
the law. Yet I felt an absolute assurance in my
own mind that the hyena swine was implicated in the
rabbit killing. A strange persuasion came upon me that, save
for the grossness of the line, the grotesqueness of the forms,
(27:04):
I had here before me, the whole balance of human
life in miniature, the whole interplay of instinct, reason and
fate in its simplest form, the leopard man had happened
to go under. That was all the difference, poor brute,
poor brutes. I began to see the viler aspect of
(27:28):
Moreau's cruelty. I had not thought before of the pain
and trouble that came to these poor victims after they
had passed from Moreau's hands. I had shivered only at
the days of actual torment in the enclosure, but now
that seemed to me the lesser part. Before there had
(27:48):
been beasts, their instincts fitly adapted to their surroundings, and
happy as living things may be. Now they stumbled in
the shackles of humanity, lived in a fear that never died,
fretted by a law they could not understand. Their mock
human existence begun in an agony, was one long internal struggle,
(28:11):
one long dread of Moreau, and for what it was
the wantonness of it that stirred me. Had Moreau had
any intelligible object, I could have sympathized at least a
little with him. I am not so squeamish about pain
as that I could have forgiven him a little, even
(28:33):
had his motive been only hate. But he was so irresponsible,
so utterly careless, His curiosity, his mad aimless investigations drove
him on, and the things were thrown out to live
a year or so, to struggle and blunder and suffer,
and at last to die painfully. They were wretched in themselves.
(28:59):
The old animal hate moved them to trouble one another.
The law held them back from a brief heart struggle
and a decisive end to their natural animosities. In those days,
my fear of the beast people went the way of
my personal fear of Moreau. I fell, indeed into a
morbid state, deep and enduring and alien to fear, which
(29:24):
has left permanent scars upon my mind. I must confess
that I lost faith in the sanity of the world
when I saw it suffering the painful disorder of this island.
A blind fate, a vast, pitiless mechanism seemed to cut
in shape the fabric of existence. And I Moreau, by
(29:47):
his passion for research, Montgomery, by his passion for drink.
The beast people, with their instincts and mental restrictions, were
torn and crushed, ruthless, inevitably amid the infinite complexity of
its incessant wheels. But this condition did not come all
(30:08):
at once. I think, indeed, that I anticipate a little
in speaking of it now,
Sixteen, how the beast folk taste blood. My experience as
a writer betrays me, and I wander from the thread
of my story. After I had breakfasted with Montgomery, he
took me across the island to see the fumarole in
the source of the hot spring into whose scalding waters
(00:22):
I had blundered on the previous day. Both of us
carried whips in loaded revolvers. While going through a leafy
jungle on our road thither, we heard a rabbit squealing.
We stopped and listened, but we heard no more, and
presently we went on our way, and the incident dropped
(00:42):
out of our minds. Montgomery called my attention to certain
little pink animals with long hind legs that went leaping
through the undergrowth. He told me they were creatures made
of the offspring of the beast people that Moreau had invented.
He had fancied they might serve for meat, but a
(01:03):
rabbit like habit of devouring their young had defeated this intention.
I had already encountered some of these creatures, once string
my moonlight flight from the Leopard Man, and once during
my pursuit by Moreau on the previous day. By chance,
one hopping to avoid us, leapt into the hole caused
by the uprooting of a wind blown tree. Before it
(01:25):
could extricate itself, we managed to catch it. It spat
like a cat, scratched and kicked vigorously with its hind legs,
and made an attempt to bite, but its teeth were
too feeble to inflict more than a painless pinch. Seemed
to me rather a pretty little creature, And as Montgomery
stated that it never destroyed the turf by burrowing, and
(01:48):
was very cleanly in its habits, I should imagine it
might prove a convenient substitute for the common rabbit in
gentlemen's parks. We also saw on our way the trunk
of a tree barked in long strips and splintered deeply.
Montgomery called my attention to this, not to claw the
(02:09):
bark of truth. That is the law, he said, much
thumb of them care for it. It was after this,
I think that we met the satyr and the ape man.
The satyr was a gleam of classical memory on the
part of Moreau. His face so vine an expression like
(02:30):
the coarser Hebrew type, his voice a harsh bleat his
nether extremity satanic. He was gnawing the husk of a
part like fruit. As he passed us. Both of them
saluted Montgomery. Hail, said they to the other with the whip.
(02:50):
They're the third with a whip, now, said Montgomery. Though
you'd better mind worth He not made, said the ape man.
He said, he said he was made. The satire man
looked curiously at me. The third with the whip, he
(03:12):
that walks weeping into the sea, has a thin white face.
He hath a thin long whip, said Montgomery. Yet did
they he bled and wept, said the satier. You never
bleed nor weep. The master does not bleed or weep.
(03:33):
All n dorf hin beggar, said Montgomery. You'll bleed and
weep if you don't look out. He has five fingers.
He is a five man, like me, said the ape man.
Come along, Prindick, said Montgomery, taking my arm, and I
(03:54):
went on with him. The satier and the ape man
stood watching us and making other remarks to each other.
He says nothing, said the satier. Men have voices yeth
to day. He asked me of things to eat, said
the ape man. He did not know. Then they spoke
(04:20):
inaudible things, and I heard the satier laughing. It was
on our way back that we came upon the dead rabbit.
The red body of the wretched little beast was rent
to pieces, many of the ribs stripped white, and the
backbone indisputably gnawed. At that, Montgomery stopped. Good God, said
(04:42):
he stooping down and picking up some of the crushed
vertebrae to examine them more closely. Good God, he repeated,
What can this mean? Some carnivore of yours has remembered
its old habits, I said, after a pause. This backbone
has been bitten through. He stood staring, with his face
(05:07):
white and his lip pulled askew. I don't like this,
he said slowly. I saw something of the same kind,
said I. The first day I came here, the devil
you did. What was it? A rabbit with its head
twisted off the day you came here, The day I
(05:32):
came here, in the undergrowth at the back of the enclosure.
When I went out in the evening, the head was
completely wrung off. He gave a long, low whistle. And
what is more, I have an idea of which your
brutes did the thing. It's only a suspicion, you know.
Before I came on the rabbit, I saw one of
(05:53):
your monsters drinking in the stream, fucking his drink. Yes,
not to Thirk, you'll drink. That is the law. Much
the brutes care for the law, eh, would moreaud not
about it was the brute who chased me, of course,
said Montgomery. It's just the way with the carlive Worth.
(06:16):
After a keel, they'd drink. It's the teeth of blood,
you know. What was the brute like? He continued, Would
you know him again? He glanced about us, standing astride
over the mass of dead rabbit, his eyes roving among
the shadows and screens of greenery, the lurking places and
(06:36):
ambuse gards of the forest that bounded us in The
teethte of blood, he said again. He took out his revolver,
examined the cartridges in it, and replaced it. Then he
began to pull at his dropping lip. I think I
should know the brute again, I said. I stunned him.
(07:00):
He ought to have a handsome bruise on the forehead
of him. But then we have to prove that he
killed the rabbit, said Montgomery, I with, I'd never brought
the thing here. I should have gone on, But he
stayed there, thinking over the mangled rabbit in a puzzle
headed way. As it was, I went to such a
(07:21):
distance that the rabbit's remains were hidden. Come on, I said. Presently,
he woke and came towards me. You see, he said,
almost in a whisper. They are all for both to
have a fixed idea against eating anything that runs on land.
(07:41):
If thumb brute hath by any accident, taithe did blood.
We went on some way in silence. I wonder what
can have happened, he said to himself. Then, after a pause, again,
I did a foolish thing the other day. The servant
(08:03):
of mine. I throwed him how to skin and cook
a rabbit. He thought, I saw him licking his hands.
It never occurred to me. Then we must put a
stop to this. I must tell Moreau. He could think
of nothing else on our homeward journey. Moreau took the
(08:26):
matter even more seriously than Montgomery, and I need scarcely
say that I was affected by the evident consternation. We
must make an example, said Moreau. I've no doubt in
my mind that the leopard man was the sinner, But
how can we prove it? I wish, Montgomery, you had
kept your taste for meat in hand and gone without
(08:49):
these exciting novelties. We may find ourselves in a mess.
Yet through it, I was a thiliath, said Montgomery. But
the thing's done now, and you said I might have them.
You know we must see to the thing at once,
said Moreau. I suppose if anything should turn up, Imling
can take care of himself. I'm not though sure of Imling,
(09:14):
said Montgomery. I think I ought to know him. In
the afternoon, Moreau, Montgomery, myself, and Imling went across the
island to the huts in the ravine. We three were armed.
Imling carried the little hatchet he used in chopping firewood
and some coils of wire. Moreau had a huge coward's
(09:35):
horn slung over his shoulder. You will see a gathering
of the beast people, said Montgomery. It is a pretty fight.
Moreau said, not a word on the way, but the
expression of his heavy, white fringed face was grimly set.
(09:57):
We crossed the ravine down which smoked the dream of
hot water, and followed the winding pathway through the cane
breaks until we reached a wide area covered over with
a thick, powdery yellow substance, which I believe was sulfur,
above the shoulder of a weedy bank, the sea glittered.
We came to a kind of shallow natural amphitheater, and
(10:20):
here the four of us halted. Then Moreau sounded the
horn and broke the sleeping stillness of the tropical afternoon.
He must have had strong lungs. The hooting note rose
and rose amidst its echoes to at last an ear
penetrating intensity, Ah, said Moreau, letting the curved instrument fall
(10:44):
to his side again. Immediately there was a crashing through
the yellow canes, and a sound of voices from the
dinse green jungle that marked the morass through which I
had run on the previous day. Then at three or
four points on the edge of the sulfurous area appeared
the grotesque forms of the beast people hurrying towards us.
(11:07):
I could not help a creeping horror, as I perceived
first one and then another trot out from the trees
or reeds and come shambling along over the hot dust.
But Moreau and Montgomery stood calmly enough and perforce I
stuck beside them. First to arrive was the satyr, strangely
(11:28):
unreal for all that he cast a shadow and tossed
the dust with his hoofs After him from the break
became a monstrous lout, a thing of horse and rhinoceros,
chewing a straw as it came. Then appeared the swine woman,
and two wolf women. Then the fox bare witch with
(11:49):
her red eyes and her peaked red face, and then others,
all hurrying eagerly. As they came forward, they began to
cringe towards moreau enchant, quite regardless of one another, fragments
of the latter half of the litany of the law.
His is the hand that wounds, his is the hand
(12:11):
that heals, and so forth. As soon as they had
approached within a distance of perhaps thirty yards, they halted, and,
bowing on knees and elbows, began flinging the white dust
upon their heads. Imagine the scene, if you can. We
three blue clad men, with our misshapen, black faced attendant,
(12:35):
standing in a wide expanse of sunlit yellow dust under
the blazing blue sky, and surrounded by this circle of
crouching and gesticulating monstrosities, some almost human, save in their
subtle expression and gestures, some like cripples, some so strangely
(12:55):
distorted as to resemble nothing but the dinnizens of our
wildest dreams. And beyond the ready lines of a cane
break in one direction, a dense tangle of palm trees
on the other, separating us from the ravine with the huts,
and to the north the hazy horizon of the Pacific Ocean.
(13:16):
Sixty two sixty three, counted Moreau. There are four more.
I do not see, the leopard Man, said I. Presently
Moreau sounded the great horn again, and at the sound
of it, all the beast people writhed and graveled in
the dust. Then, slinking out of the cane brake, stooping
(13:38):
near the ground and trying to join the dust throwing circle.
Behind Moreau's back, came the leopard Man. The last of
the beast people to arrive was the little ape Man.
The earlier animals, hot and weary with their groveling, shot
vicious glances at him. Cease, said Moreau in his firm,
(14:01):
loud voice, and the beast people sat back upon their
hands and wrested from their worshiping where is the sayer
of the law, said Moreau, And the hairy gray monster
bowed his face in the dust. Say the words, said Moreau,
forthwith all in the kneeling assembly, swaying from side to side,
(14:25):
and dashing up the sulfur with their hands, first the
right hand, and a puff of dust. And that the
left began once more to chant their strange litany. When
they reached not to eat flesh or fish, that is
the law. Moreau held up his lank white hand. Stop,
(14:45):
he cried, and there fell absolute silence upon them all.
I think they all knew and dreaded what was coming.
I looked round at their strange faces. When I saw
their wincing attitudes and the firs of dread in their
bright eyes, I wondered that I had ever believed them
to be men. That law has been broken, said Moreau.
(15:11):
None escape from the faceless creature with the silvery hair.
None escape, repeated the kneeling circle of beast people. Who
is he cried Moreau, and looked round at their faces,
cracking his whip. I fancy the hyena swine looked dejected,
(15:33):
so too did the leopard man. Moreau stopped facing this
creature who cringed towards him with the memory and dread
of infinite torment. Who is he, repeated Moreau in a
voice of thunder. Evil is he who breaks the law?
(15:56):
Chanted the sayer of the law? Moreau looked into the
eyes of the leopard man and seemed to be dragging
the very soul out of the creature. Who breaks the law?
Said Moreau, taking his eyes off his victim and turning
towards us. Seemed to me there was a touch of
exultation in his voice. Goes back to the house of pain,
(16:22):
they all clamored. Goes back to the house of pain,
ol master work, to the house of pain work, to
the house of pain, gabbled the ape man, as though
the idea was sweet to him. Do you hear, said Moreau,
turning back to the criminal, My friend, hullo for the
(16:46):
leopard man, released from Moreau's eye, had risen straight from
his knees, and now, with his eyes aflame and his
huge feline tusks flashing out from under his curling lips,
leaped towards his tormentor. I am convinced that only the
madness of unendurable fear could have prompted this attack, the
(17:07):
whole circle of three score monsters seemed to rise about us.
I drew my revolver, the two figures collided. My saw
Morle reeling back from the leper man's blow. There was
a furious yelling and howling all about us. Every one
was moving rapidly. For a moment I thought it was
(17:29):
a general revolt. The furious face of the leopard man
flashed by mine, with imling close in pursuit. I saw
the yellow eyes of the hyena swine blazing with excitement
his attitude, as if he were half resolved to attack me.
The sat here, too, glared at me over the hyena
Swine's hunched shoulders. I heard the crack of moreause pistol
(17:53):
and saw the pink flash dart across the tumult The
whole crowd seemed to swing round in the direction of
the glint of fire, and I too was swung round
by the magnetism of the movement. In another second, eye
was running one of a tumultuous, shouting crowd in pursuit
of the escaping leopard man. That is all I can tell. Definitely.
(18:18):
I saw the leopard man strike Moreau, and then everything
spun about me until I was running headlong. Immling was ahead,
close in pursuit of the fugitive. Behind their tongues already
lolling out ran the wolf women in great leaping strides.
The swine folk followed, squealing with excitement, and the two
(18:38):
bull men in their swathings of white. Then came a
row and a cluster of the beast people. His wide
brimmed straw had blown off, his revolver in hand, and
his lank white hair streaming out. The hyena swine ran
beside me, keeping pace with me and glancing furtively at
me out of his feline eyes, and the others came
(19:01):
pattering and shouting behind us. The leopard man went bursting
his way through the long canes, which sprang back as
he passed and rattled in Imling's face. We others in
the rear found a trampled path for us when we
reached the break. The chaise lay through the break for
perhaps a quarter of a mile, and then plunged into
(19:23):
a dense thicket which retarded our movements exceedingly, though we
went through it in a crowd together, Franz flicking into
our faces. Ropey creepers, catching us under the chin, or
gripping our ankles, thorny plants, hooking into and tearing cloth
and fleshed together. He has gone on all fours through
(19:44):
this panted morreau, now just ahead of me. None escape,
said the wolf bear, laughing into my face. With the
exultation of hunting. We burst out again among rocks, and
saw saw the quary ahead, running lightly on all fours
and snarling at us over his shoulder. At that, the
(20:06):
wolf folk howled with delight. The thing was still clothed,
and at a distance its face still seemed human, but
the carriage of its four limbs was feline, and the
furtive droop of its shoulder was distinctly that of a
hunted animal. It leaped over some thorny yellow flowering bushes
and was hidden imling was half way across the space.
(20:33):
Most of us now had lost the first speed of
the chase, and had fallen into a longer and steadier stride.
I saw as we traversed the open that the pursuit
was now spreading from a column into a line. The
hyena swine still rang close to me, watching me as
it ran every now and then, puckering its muzzle with
(20:53):
a snarling laugh. At the edge of the rocks, the
leopard man, realizing that he was making for the projector
cape upon which he had stalked me on the night
of my arrival, had doubled in the undergrowth, but Montgomery
had seen the maneuver and turned him again. So, panting,
tumbling against rocks, torn by brambles, impeded by ferns and reeds,
(21:18):
I helped to pursue the leopard man who had broken
the law, and the hyena swine ran, laughing savagely by
my side. I staggered on, my head, reeling and my
heart beating against my ribs, tired almost to death, and
yet not daring to lose sight of the chase lest
(21:39):
I should be left alone with this horrible companion. I
staggered on in spite of infinite fatigue and the dense
heat of the tropical afternoon. At last, the fury of
the hunt slackened. We had pinned the wretched brute into
a corner of the island. Moreau whip hand marshaled us
(22:01):
all into an irregular line, and we advanced, now slowly,
shouting to one another as we advanced, and tightening the
cordon about our victim. He lurked, noiseless and invisible, in
the bushes through which I had run from him during
that midnight pursuit. Steady, cried Moreau. Steady, as the ends
(22:24):
of the line crept round the tangle of undergrowth and
hemmed the brute in where the rush came the voice
of Montgomery from beyond the thicket. I was on the
slope above the bushes. Montgomery and Moreau beat along the
beach beneath. Slowly we pushed in among the fretted network
of branches and leaves. The quarry was silent. Back to
(22:50):
the house of Pain, the house of pain, the house
of Pain. Yelped the voice of the ape man, some
twenty yards to the right. When I heard that, I
forgave the poor wretch all the fear he had inspired
in me. I heard the twigs snap and the boughs
swish aside before the heavy tread of the horse Rhinoceros
(23:12):
upon my right. Then, suddenly, through a polygon of green,
in the half darkness, under the luxuriant growth, I saw
the creature we were hunting. I halted. He was crouched
together into the smallest possible compass. His luminous green eyes
turned over his shoulder. Regarding me. It may seem a
(23:36):
strange contradiction in me I cannot explain the fact. But
now seeing the creature there in a perfectly animal attitude,
with the light gleaming in its eyes and its imperfectly
human face distorted with terror, I realized again the fact
of its humanity. In another moment, other of its pursuers
(23:59):
would see, and it would be overpowered and captured to
experience once more the horrible tortures of the enclosure. Abruptly,
I slipped out my revolver, aimed between its terror struck eyes,
and fired. As I did so, the hyena swine saw
(24:20):
the thing and flung itself upon it with an eager cry,
thrusting thirsty teeth into its neck. All about me, the
green masses of the thicket were swaying and cracking as
the beast. People came rushing together. One face and then
another appeared. Don't kill it, Prindick cried moreau don't kill it,
(24:45):
And I saw him stooping as he pushed through under
the fronds of the big ferns. In another moment, he
had beaten off the hyena swine with the handle of
his whip, and he and Montgomery were keeping away the
excite did carnivorous beast people, and particularly imling from the
still quivering body. The hairy gray thing came sniffing at
(25:09):
the corpse under my arm. The other animals, in their
animal ardor jostled me to get a nearer view. Confound you, prindick,
said Moreau. I wanted him. I'm sorry, said I, though
I was not. It was the impulse of the moment.
(25:33):
I felt sick with exertion and excitement. Turning. I pushed
my way out of the crowding beast people and went
on alone up the slope towards the highest part of
the headland. Under the shouted directions of Moreau. I heard
the three white swathed bull men begin dragging the victim
down towards the water. It was easy now for me
(25:57):
to be alone. The beast people manifested a quite human
curiosity about the dead body and followed it in a
thick knot, sniffing and growling at it as the bull
men dragged it down the beach. I went to the
headland and watched the bull men black against the evening
sky as they carried the weighted dead body out to sea,
(26:21):
and like a wave across my mind came the realization
of the unspeakable aimlessness of things upon the island. Upon
the beach, among the rocks beneath me were the ape man,
the hyena swine, and several other of the beast people
standing about Montgomery and Moreau. They were all still intensely excited,
(26:42):
and all overflowing with noisy expressions of their loyalty to
the law. Yet I felt an absolute assurance in my
own mind that the hyena swine was implicated in the
rabbit killing. A strange persuasion came upon me that, save
for the grossness of the line, the grotesqueness of the forms,
(27:04):
I had here before me, the whole balance of human
life in miniature, the whole interplay of instinct, reason and
fate in its simplest form, the leopard man had happened
to go under. That was all the difference, poor brute,
poor brutes. I began to see the viler aspect of
(27:28):
Moreau's cruelty. I had not thought before of the pain
and trouble that came to these poor victims after they
had passed from Moreau's hands. I had shivered only at
the days of actual torment in the enclosure, but now
that seemed to me the lesser part. Before there had
(27:48):
been beasts, their instincts fitly adapted to their surroundings, and
happy as living things may be. Now they stumbled in
the shackles of humanity, lived in a fear that never died,
fretted by a law they could not understand. Their mock
human existence begun in an agony, was one long internal struggle,
(28:11):
one long dread of Moreau, and for what it was
the wantonness of it that stirred me. Had Moreau had
any intelligible object, I could have sympathized at least a
little with him. I am not so squeamish about pain
as that I could have forgiven him a little, even
(28:33):
had his motive been only hate. But he was so irresponsible,
so utterly careless, His curiosity, his mad aimless investigations drove
him on, and the things were thrown out to live
a year or so, to struggle and blunder and suffer,
and at last to die painfully. They were wretched in themselves.
(28:59):
The old animal hate moved them to trouble one another.
The law held them back from a brief heart struggle
and a decisive end to their natural animosities. In those days,
my fear of the beast people went the way of
my personal fear of Moreau. I fell, indeed into a
morbid state, deep and enduring and alien to fear, which
(29:24):
has left permanent scars upon my mind. I must confess
that I lost faith in the sanity of the world
when I saw it suffering the painful disorder of this island.
A blind fate, a vast, pitiless mechanism seemed to cut
in shape the fabric of existence. And I Moreau, by
(29:47):
his passion for research, Montgomery, by his passion for drink.
The beast people, with their instincts and mental restrictions, were
torn and crushed, ruthless, inevitably amid the infinite complexity of
its incessant wheels. But this condition did not come all
(30:08):
at once. I think, indeed, that I anticipate a little
in speaking of it now,
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