บทที่ บทที่ 23 · THE MAN ALONE.

. THE MAN ALONE.

In the evening I started, and drove out to sea before a gentle wind

from the southwest, slowly, steadily; and the island grew smaller and

smaller, and the lank spire of smoke dwindled to a finer and finer line

against the hot sunset. The ocean rose up around me, hiding that low,

dark patch from my eyes. The daylight, the trailing glory of the sun,

went streaming out of the sky, was drawn aside like some luminous

curtain, and at last I looked into the blue gulf of immensity which the

sunshine hides, and saw the floating hosts of the stars. The sea was

silent, the sky was silent. I was alone with the night and silence.

So I drifted for three days, eating and drinking sparingly, and

meditating upon all that had happened to me,—not desiring very greatly

then to see men again. One unclean rag was about me, my hair a black

tangle: no doubt my discoverers thought me a madman.

It is strange, but I felt no desire to return to mankind. I was only

glad to be quit of the foulness of the Beast People. And on the third

day I was picked up by a brig from Apia to San Francisco. Neither the

captain nor the mate would believe my story, judging that solitude and

danger had made me mad; and fearing their opinion might be that of

others, I refrained from telling my adventure further, and professed to

recall nothing that had happened to me between the loss of the _Lady

Vain_ and the time when I was picked up again,—the space of a year.

I had to act with the utmost circumspection to save myself from the

suspicion of insanity. My memory of the Law, of the two dead sailors,

of the ambuscades of the darkness, of the body in the canebrake,

haunted me; and, unnatural as it seems, with my return to mankind came,

instead of that confidence and sympathy I had expected, a strange

enhancement of the uncertainty and dread I had experienced during my

stay upon the island. No one would believe me; I was almost as queer to

men as I had been to the Beast People. I may have caught something of

the natural wildness of my companions. They say that terror is a

disease, and anyhow I can witness that for several years now a restless

fear has dwelt in my mind,—such a restless fear as a half-tamed lion

cub may feel.

My trouble took the strangest form. I could not persuade myself that

the men and women I met were not also another Beast People, animals

half wrought into the outward image of human souls, and that they would

presently begin to revert,—to show first this bestial mark and then

that. But I have confided my case to a strangely able man,—a man who

had known Moreau, and seemed half to credit my story; a mental

specialist,—and he has helped me mightily, though I do not expect that

the terror of that island will ever altogether leave me. At most times

it lies far in the back of my mind, a mere distant cloud, a memory, and

a faint distrust; but there are times when the little cloud spreads

until it obscures the whole sky. Then I look about me at my fellow-men;

and I go in fear. I see faces, keen and bright; others dull or

dangerous; others, unsteady, insincere,—none that have the calm

authority of a reasonable soul. I feel as though the animal was surging

up through them; that presently the degradation of the Islanders will

be played over again on a larger scale. I know this is an illusion;

that these seeming men and women about me are indeed men and women,—men

and women for ever, perfectly reasonable creatures, full of human

desires and tender solicitude, emancipated from instinct and the slaves

of no fantastic Law,—beings altogether different from the Beast Folk.

Yet I shrink from them, from their curious glances, their inquiries and

assistance, and long to be away from them and alone. For that reason I

live near the broad free downland, and can escape thither when this

shadow is over my soul; and very sweet is the empty downland then,

under the wind-swept sky.

When I lived in London the horror was well-nigh insupportable. I could

not get away from men: their voices came through windows; locked doors

were flimsy safeguards. I would go out into the streets to fight with

my delusion, and prowling women would mew after me; furtive, craving

men glance jealously at me; weary, pale workers go coughing by me with

tired eyes and eager paces, like wounded deer dripping blood; old

people, bent and dull, pass murmuring to themselves; and, all

unheeding, a ragged tail of gibing children. Then I would turn aside

into some chapel,—and even there, such was my disturbance, it seemed

that the preacher gibbered “Big Thinks,” even as the Ape-man had done;

or into some library, and there the intent faces over the books seemed

but patient creatures waiting for prey. Particularly nauseous were the

blank, expressionless faces of people in trains and omnibuses; they

seemed no more my fellow-creatures than dead bodies would be, so that I

did not dare to travel unless I was assured of being alone. And even it

seemed that I too was not a reasonable creature, but only an animal

tormented with some strange disorder in its brain which sent it to

wander alone, like a sheep stricken with gid.

This is a mood, however, that comes to me now, I thank God, more

rarely. I have withdrawn myself from the confusion of cities and

multitudes, and spend my days surrounded by wise books,—bright windows

in this life of ours, lit by the shining souls of men. I see few

strangers, and have but a small household. My days I devote to reading

and to experiments in chemistry, and I spend many of the clear nights

in the study of astronomy. There is—though I do not know how there is

or why there is—a sense of infinite peace and protection in the

glittering hosts of heaven. There it must be, I think, in the vast and

eternal laws of matter, and not in the daily cares and sins and

troubles of men, that whatever is more than animal within us must find

its solace and its hope. I _hope_, or I could not live.

And so, in hope and solitude, my story ends.

EDWARD PRENDICK.

NOTE.

The substance of the chapter entitled “Doctor Moreau explains,” which

contains the essential idea of the story, appeared as a middle article

in the _Saturday Review_ in January, 1895. This is the only portion of

this story that has been previously published, and it has been entirely

recast to adapt it to the narrative form.