“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 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 grey 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 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.”
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 one another.
“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 grey 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 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 every one the want 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 some one, 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 that 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 passage 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 a half-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 gashed down its ugly face with the nail in my stick and in another minute 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.
That gap was altogether fortunate for me, for the narrow chimney, slanting obliquely upward, must have impeded the nearer pursuers.
I ran over the white space and down a steep slope, through a scattered growth of trees, and came to a lowlying stretch of tall reeds, through which I pushed into a dark, thick undergrowth that black and succulent under foot.
As I plunged into the reeds, my foremost pursuers 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 crash 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 kneedeep, 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 up hill, across another open space covered with white incrustation, and plunged into a canebrake again.
Then suddenly it turned parallel with the edge of a steep-walled gap, which came without warning, like the ha-ha of an English park,—
turned with an 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 which 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, down-stream, 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.