第33章 XVI. HOW THE BEAST FOLK TASTE BLOOD.(1)

MY inexperience 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 and the source of the hot spring into whose scalding waters I had blundered on the previous day.

Both of us carried whips and 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 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 rabbit-like habit of devouring their young had defeated this intention. I had already encountered some of these creatures,--once during 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 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.

It seemed to me rather a pretty little creature; and as Montgomery stated that it never destroyed the turf by burrowing, and 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 bark of trees, that is the Law," he said.

"Much some 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 ovine in expression, like the coarser Hebrew type; his voice a harsh bleat, his nether extremities Satanic.

He was gnawing the husk of a pod-like fruit as he passed us.

Both of them saluted Montgomery.

"Hail," said they, "to the Other with the Whip!""There's a Third with a Whip now," said Montgomery. "So you'd better mind!""Was he not made?" said the Ape-man. "He said--he said he was made."The Satyr-man looked curiously at me. "The Third with the Whip, he that walks weeping into the sea, has a thin white face.""He has a thin long whip," said Montgomery.

"Yesterday he bled and wept," said the Satyr. "You never bleed nor weep.

The Master does not bleed or weep."

"Ollendorffian 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, Prendick," said Montgomery, taking my arm; and I went on with him.

The Satyr and the Ape-man stood watching us and making other remarks to each other.

"He says nothing," said the Satyr. "Men have voices.""Yesterday he asked me of things to eat," said the Ape-man. "He did not know."Then they spoke inaudible things, and I heard the Satyr 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 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 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 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 which of your brutes did the thing.

It's only a suspicion, you know. Before I came on the rabbit I saw one of your monsters drinking in the stream.""Sucking his drink?"

"Yes."

"'Not to suck your drink; that is the Law.' Much the brutes care for the Law, eh? when Moreau's not about!""It was the brute who chased me."

"Of course," said Montgomery; "it's just the way with carnivores.

After a kill, they drink. It's the taste of blood, you know.--What was the brute like?" he continued. "Would you know him again?"He glanced about us, standing astride over the mess of dead rabbit, his eyes roving among the shadows and screens of greenery, the lurking-places and ambuscades of the forest that bounded us in.

"The taste 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.

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 wish I'd never brought the things 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 distance that the rabbit's remains were hidden.

"Come on!" I said.

Presently he woke up and came towards me. "You see," he said, almost in a whisper, "they are all supposed to have a fixed idea against eating anything that runs on land. If some brute has by any accident tasted blood He 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.

That servant of mine--I showed him how to skin and cook a rabbit.

It's odd--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.