by H. G. Wells
I saw that 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 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 that I had experienced in my encounters with the other Beast Men. ‘You,’ he said, ‘in the boat.’ He was a man then – at 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 travelled over me, to my hands, to the stick I carried, to my feet, to the tattered places 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 his own hand out, and counted his digits slowly, ‘One, Two, Three, Four, Five – eh?’
I did not grasp his meaning then. Afterwards I was to find that a great proportion of these Beast People 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. Then his quick roving glance went round again. He made a swift movement, and vanished. The fern fronds he had stood between came swishing together.
I pushed out of the brake after him, and was astonished to find him swinging cheerfully by one lank arm from a rope of creepers that 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 man’s food now.’ And his eyes 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 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 some handle in their minds to take hold of. I did not know yet how far they were from the human heritage I ascribed to them.
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 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, he suddenly left my side and sprang 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, but his chattering prompt responses were, as often as not, at cross-purposes with my question. Some few were appropriate, others quite parrot-like.
I was so intent upon these peculiarities that I scarcely noted the path we followed. Presently we came to trees, all charred and brown, and so to a bare place covered with a yellow-white incrustation, across which went a drifting smoke, pungent in whiffs to nose and eyes. On our right, over a shoulder of bare rock, I saw the level blue of the sea. The path coiled down abruptly into a narrow ravine between two tumbled and knotty masses of blackish scoriae.2 Into this we plunged.
It was extremely dark, this passage, after the blinding sunlight reflected from the sulphurous ground. Its walls grew steep, and approached one another. Blotches of green and crimson drifted across my eyes. My conductor stopped suddenly. ‘Home,’ said he, and I stood on the floor of a chasm that was at first absolutely dark to me. I heard some strange noises, and thrust the knuckles of my left hand into my eyes. I became aware of a disagreeable odour 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 light smote down through a narrow channel into the central gloom.
XII
THE SAYERS OF THE LAW
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.
This 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 beehive, and against the rocky wall that formed the inner side of it was a pile of variegated fruits, coconuts 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 split coconut 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 coconut 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 singsong.
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 fervour 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.’1
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 that 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 grey hair almost like a Skye terrier. What was it? What were they all? Imagine yourself surrounded by 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 grey creature in the corner leaned 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 grey hair, with three shadowy over-archings to mark the eyes and mouth.
‘He has little nails,’ said this 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 grey 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 burned, branded in the hand. He is great, he is good!’
‘None escape,’ said the grey creature in the corner.
‘None escape,’ said the Beast People, looking askance at one another.
‘For everyone the want that is bad,’ said the grey 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 or Fish; that is the Law. Are we not Men?” ’
‘None escape,’ said a dappled brute standing in the doorway.
‘For everyone the want that is bad,’ said the grey 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.
Then before I reached the aperture I heard the yelp of a staghound.
In another moment I was standing outside the hovel, my chair-rail in my hand, every muscle of me quivering. Before me were the clumsy backs of perhaps a score of these Beast People, their misshapen heads half hidden by their shoulder-blades. They were gesticulating excitedly. Other half-animal faces glared interrogation out of the hovels. Looking in the direction in which they faced I saw coming through the haze under the trees beyond the end of the passage of dens the dark figure and awful white face of Moreau. He was holding the leaping staghound back, and close behind him came Montgomery, revolver in hand.
For a moment I stood horror-struck.
I turned and saw the passages behind me blocked by another heavy brute with a huge grey face and twinkling little eyes, advancing towards me. I looked round and saw to the right of me, and half a dozen yards in front of me, a narrow gap in the wall of rock through which a ray of light slanted into the shadows. ‘Stop!’ cried Moreau, as I strode towards this, and then, ‘Hold him!’ At that, first one face turned towards me, and then others. Their bestial minds were happily slow.
I dashed my shoulder into a clumsy monster who was turning to see what Moreau meant, and flung him forward into another. I felt his hands fly round, clutching at me and missing me. The little pink sloth creature dashed at me and I cut it over, gashed down its ugly face with the nail in my stick, and in another minute I was scrambling up a steep side pathway, a kind of sloping chimney out of the ravine. I heard a howl behind me, and cries of ‘Catch him!’ ‘Hold him!’ and the grey-faced creature appeared behind me and jammed his huge bulk into the cleft. ‘Go on, go on!’ they howled. I clambered up the narrow cleft in the rock, and came out upon the sulphur on the westward side of the village of the Beast Men.
I ran over the white space and down a steep slope through a scattered growth of trees, and came to a low-lying stretch of tall reeds. Through this I pushed into a dark thick undergrowth that was black and succulent under foot. That gap was altogether fortunate for me, for the narrow way slanting obliquely upward must have impeded the nearer pursuers. As I plunged into the reeds the foremost had only just emerged from the gap. I broke my way through this undergrowth for some minutes. The air behind me and about me was soon full of threatening cries. I heard the tumult of my pursuers in the gap up the slope, then the crashing of the reeds, and every now and then the crackling of a branch
. Some of the creatures roared like excited beasts of prey. The staghound yelped to the left. I heard Moreau and Montgomery shouting in the same direction. I turned sharply to the right. It seemed to me even then that I heard Montgomery shouting for me to run for my life.
Presently the ground gave, rich and oozy, under my feet; but I was desperate, and went headlong into it, struggled through knee-deep, and so came to a winding path among tall canes. The noise of my pursuers passed away to my left. In one place three strange pink hopping animals, about the size of cats, bolted before my footsteps. This pathway ran uphill, across another open space covered with white incrustation, and plunged into a cane-brake again.
Then suddenly it turned parallel with the edge of a steep walled gap which came without warning like the haha of an English park2 – turned with unexpected abruptness. I was still running with all my might, and I never saw this drop until I was flying headlong through the air.
I fell on my forearms and head, among thorns, and rose with a torn ear and bleeding face. I had fallen into a precipitous ravine, rocky and thorny, full of a hazy mist that drifted about me in wisps, and with a narrow streamlet, from which this mist came, meandering down the centre. I was astonished at this thin fog in the full blaze of daylight, but I had no time to stand wondering then. I turned to my right downstream, hoping to come to the sea in that direction, and so have my way open to drown myself. It was only later I found that I had dropped my nailed stick in my fall.
