The Island of Doctor Moreau | Page 6

weak; and when it was finished he reverted at once
to the topic of Natural History and his own biological studies. He began to question me
closely about Tottenham Court Road and Gower Street. "Is Caplatzi still flourishing?
What a shop that was!" He had evidently been a very ordinary medical student, and
drifted incontinently to the topic of the music halls. He told me some anecdotes.
"Left it all," he said, "ten years ago. How jolly it all used to be! But I made a young ass of
myself,--played myself out before I was twenty-one. I daresay it's all different now. But I
must look up that ass of a cook, and see what he's done to your mutton."
The growling overhead was renewed, so suddenly and with so much savage anger that it
startled me. "What's that?" I called after him, but the door had closed. He came back
again with the boiled mutton, and I was so excited by the appetising smell of it that I
forgot the noise of the beast that had troubled me.
After a day of alternate sleep and feeding I was so far recovered as to be able to get from
my bunk to the scuttle, and see the green seas trying to keep pace with us. I judged the
schooner was running before the wind. Montgomery--that was the name of the
flaxen-haired man-- came in again as I stood there, and I asked him for some clothes. He
lent me some duck things of his own, for those I had worn in the boat had been thrown
overboard. They were rather loose for me, for he was large and long in his limbs. He told
me casually that the captain was three-parts drunk in his own cabin. As I assumed the
clothes, I began asking him some questions about the destination of the ship. He said the
ship was bound to Hawaii, but that it had to land him first.
"Where?" said I.
"It's an island, where I live. So far as I know, it hasn't got a name."
He stared at me with his nether lip dropping, and looked so wilfully stupid of a sudden
that it came into my head that he desired to avoid my questions. I had the discretion to
ask no more.

III. THE STRANGE FACE.
WE left the cabin and found a man at the companion obstructing our way. He was
standing on the ladder with his back to us, peering over the combing of the hatchway. He
was, I could see, a misshapen man, short, broad, and clumsy, with a crooked back, a hairy
neck, and a head sunk between his shoulders. He was dressed in dark-blue serge, and had
peculiarly thick, coarse, black hair. I heard the unseen dogs growl furiously, and
forthwith he ducked back,-- coming into contact with the hand I put out to fend him off
from myself. He turned with animal swiftness.
In some indefinable way the black face thus flashed upon me shocked me profoundly. It
was a singularly deformed one. The facial part projected, forming something dimly

suggestive of a muzzle, and the huge half-open mouth showed as big white teeth as I had
ever seen in a human mouth. His eyes were blood-shot at the edges, with scarcely a rim
of white round the hazel pupils. There was a curious glow of excitement in his face.
"Confound you!" said Montgomery. "Why the devil don't you get out of the way?"
The black-faced man started aside without a word. I went on up the companion, staring at
him instinctively as I did so. Montgomery stayed at the foot for a moment. "You have no
business here, you know," he said in a deliberate tone. "Your place is forward."
The black-faced man cowered. "They--won't have me forward." He spoke slowly, with a
queer, hoarse quality in his voice.
"Won't have you forward!" said Montgomery, in a menacing voice. "But I tell you to go!"
He was on the brink of saying something further, then looked up at me suddenly and
followed me up the ladder.
I had paused half way through the hatchway, looking back, still astonished beyond
measure at the grotesque ugliness of this black-faced creature. I had never beheld such a
repulsive and extraordinary face before, and yet--if the contradiction is credible--I
experienced at the same time an odd feeling that in some way I had already encountered
exactly the features and gestures that now amazed me. Afterwards it occurred to me that
probably I had seen him as I was lifted aboard; and yet that scarcely satisfied my
suspicion of a previous acquaintance. Yet how one could have set eyes on so singular a
face and yet have forgotten the precise occasion, passed my imagination.