The Greatest Science Fiction Novels & Stories by H. G. Wells. Герберт Уэллс
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 horrorstruck.
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 toward 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 foward 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 lowlying 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 the undergrowth for some minutes. The air behind me and above 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 up-hill, 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 park — 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.
Presently the ravine grew narrower for a space, and carelessly I stepped into the stream. I jumped out again pretty quickly for the water was almost boiling. I noticed, too, there was a thin sulphurous scum driving upon its coiling water. Almost immediately came a turn in the ravine and the indistinct blue horizon. The nearer sea was flashing the sun from a myriad facts. I saw my death before me.
But I was hot and panting. I felt more than a touch of exultation, too, at having distanced my pursuers. It was not in me then to go out and drown myself. My blood was too warm.
I stared back the way I had come. I listened. Save for the hum of the gnats and the chirp of some small insects that hopped among the thorns, the air was absolutely still.
Then came the yelp of a dog, very faint, and a chattering and gibbering, the snap of a whip and voices. They grew louder, then fainter again. The noise receded up the stream and faded away. For a while the chase was over.
But I knew now how much hope for me lay in the Beast People.
CHAPTER 13
A PARLEY
I turned again and went on down towards the sea. I found the hot stream broadened out to a shallow weedy sand, in which an abundance of crabs, and long-bodied, many-legged creatures started from my footfall. I walked to the very edge of the salt water, and then I felt I was safe. I turned and stared — arms akimbo — at the thick green behind me, into which the streamy ravine cut like a smoking gash. But as I say, I was too full of excitement, and — a true saying, though those who have never known danger may doubt it — too desperate to die.
Then it came into my head that there was one chance before me yet. While Moreau and Montgomery and their bestial rabble chased me through the island, might I not go round the beach until I came to their enclosure? — make a flank march upon them, in fact, and then with aa rock, lugged out of their loosely built wall perhaps smash in the lock of the smaller door and see what I could find — knife, pistol, or what not — to fight them with when they returned? It was at any rate a chance of getting a price for my life.
So I turned to the westward and walked along by the water’s edge. The setting sun flashed his blinding heat into my eyes. The slight Pacific tide was running in with a gentle ripple.
Presently the shore fell away southward and the sun came round upon my right hand. Then suddenly, far in front of me, I saw first one and then several figures emerging from the bushes — Moreau with his grey staghound, then Montgomery, and two others. At that I stopped.
They saw me and began gesticulating and advancing. I stood watching them approach. The two Beast Men came running forward to cut me off from the undergrowth inland. Montgomery came running also, but straight towards me. Moreau followed slower with the dog.
At last I roused myself from inaction, and turning seaward walked straight into the water. The water was very shallow at first. I was thirty yards out before the waves reached to my waist. Dimly I could see the intertidal creatures darting away from my feet.
`What are you doing, man?’ cried Montgomery.
I turned, standing waist-deep, and stared at them.
Montgomery stood panting at the margin of the water. His face was bright red with exertion, his long flaxen hair blown about his head, and his dropping nether lip showed his irregular teeth. Moreau was just coming up, his face pale and firm, and the dog at his hand