H G Wells Omnibus, page 142
He was evidently satisfied with the frankness of my story, which I told in concise sentences enough, – for I felt horribly weak, – and when it was finished he reverted presently 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!’4 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 used to be! But I made a young ass of myself…. Played myself out before I was twenty–one. I dare say it’s all different now…. But I must look up that ass of a cook and see what he’s doing 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 appetizing smell of it, that I forgot the noise of the beast forthwith.
After a day of alternate sleep and feeding I was so far recovered as to be able to get from my bunk to the scuttle5 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 things6 of his own, for those I had worn in the boat, he said, 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’m ready,’ I said. He led the way out of the cabin.
III
THE STRANGE FACE
At the companion1 was a man obstructing our way. He was standing on the ladder with his back to us, peering over the combing of the hatchway.2 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.
The black face thus flashed upon me startled me profoundly. 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 bloodshot 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, still staring at him almost against my will 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 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 halfway 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 have forgotten the precise occasion passed my imagination.
Montgomery’s movement to follow me released my attention, and I turned and looked about me at the flush deck of the little schooner. I was already half prepared by the sounds I had heard for what I saw. Certainly I never beheld a deck so dirty. It was littered with scraps of carrot, shreds of green stuff, and indescribable filth. Fastened by chains to the mainmast were a number of grisly staghounds, who now began leaping and barking at me, and by the mizzen3 a huge puma was cramped in a little iron cage, far too small even to give it turning-room. Further under the starboard bulwark were some big hutches containing a number of rabbits, and a solitary llama was squeezed in a mere box of a cage forward. The dogs were muzzled by leather straps. The only human being on deck was a gaunt and silent sailor at the wheel.
The patched and dirty spankers4 were tense before the wind, and up aloft the little ship seemed carrying every sail she had. The sky was clear, the sun midway down the western sky; long waves, capped by the breeze with froth, were running with us. We went past the steersman to the taffrail5 and stared side by side for a space at the water foaming under the stern and the bubbles dancing and vanishing in her wake. I turned and surveyed the unsavoury length of the ship.
‘Is this an ocean menagerie?’ said I.
‘Looks like it,’ said Montgomery.
‘What are these beasts for? Merchandise, curios? Does the captain think he is going to sell them somewhere in the South Seas?’
‘It looks like it, doesn’t it?’ said Montgomery, and turned towards the wake again.
Suddenly we heard a yelp and a volley of furious blasphemy coming from the companion hatchway, and the deformed man with the black face clambered up hurriedly. He was immediately followed by a heavy red-haired man in a white cap. At the sight of the former the staghounds, who had all tired of barking at me by this time, became furiously excited, howling and leaping against their chains. The black hesitated before them, and this gave the red-haired man time to come up with him and deliver a tremendous blow between the shoulder-blades with his fist. The poor devil went down like a felled ox, and rolled in the dirt among the furiously excited dogs. It was lucky for him they were muzzled. The red-haired man gave a yawp of exultation and stood staggering and, as it seemed to me, in serious danger of either going backward down the companion hatchway, or forward upon his victim.
So soon as the second man had appeared, Montgomery had started violently. ‘Steady on there!’ he cried, in a tone of remonstrance. A couple of sailors appeared on the forecastle.
The black-faced man, howling in a singular voice, rolled about under the feet of the dogs. No one attempted to help him. The brutes did their best to worry him, butting their muzzles at him. There was a quick dance of their lithe grey bodies over the clumsy prostrate figure. The sailors forward shouted to them as though it was admirable sport. Montgomery gave an angry exclamation, and went striding down the deck. I followed him.
In another second the black-faced man had scrambled up and was staggering forward. He stumbled up against the bulwark by the main shrouds,6 where he remained panting and glaring over his shoulder at the dogs. The red-haired man laughed a satisfied laugh.
‘Look here, captain,’ said Montgomery, with his lisp a little accentuated, gripping the elbows of the red-haired man; ‘this won’t do.’
I stood behind Montgomery. The captain came half round and regarded him with the dull and solemn eyes of a drunken man. ‘Wha’ won’t do?’ he said; and added, after looking sleepily into Montgomery’s face for a minute, ‘Blasted Sawbones!’
With a sudden movement he shook his arms free, and after two ineffectual attempts stuck his freckled fists into his side-pockets.
‘That man’s a passenger,’ said Montgomery. ‘I’d advise you to keep your hands off him.’
‘Go to hell!’ said the captain loudly. He suddenly turned and staggered towards the side. ‘Do what I like on my own ship,’ he said.
I think Montgomery might have left him then – seeing the brute was drunk. But he only turned a shade paler, and followed the captain to the bulwarks.
‘Look here, captain,’ he said. ‘That man of mine is not to be ill-treated. He has been hazed7 ever since he came aboard.’
For a minute alcoholic fumes kept the captain speechless. ‘Blasted Sawbones!’ was all he considered necessary.
I could see that Montgomery had an ugly temper, and I saw too that this quarrel had been some time growing. ‘The man’s drunk,’ said I, perhaps officiously; ‘you’ll do no good.’
Montgomery gave an ugly twist to his dropping lip. ‘He’s always drunk. Do you think that excuses his assaulting his passengers?’
‘My ship,’ began the captain, waving his hand unsteadily towards the cages, ‘was a clean ship. Look at it now.’ It was certainly anything but clean. ‘Crew,’ continued the captain, ‘clean respectable crew.’
‘You agreed to take the beasts.’
‘I wish I’d never set eyes on your infernal island. What the devil… want beasts for on an island like that? Then that man of yours… Understood he was a man. He’s a lunatic. And he hadn’t no business aft. Do you think the whole damned ship belongs to you?’
‘Your sailors began to haze the poor devil as soon as he came aboard.’
‘That’s just what he is – he’s a devil, an ugly devil. My men can’t stand him. I can’t stand him. None of us can’t stand him. Nor you either.’
Montgomery turned away. ‘You leave that man alone, anyhow,’ he said, nodding his head as he spoke.
But the captain meant to quarrel now. He raised his voice: ‘If he comes this end of the ship again I’ll cut his insides out, I tell you. Cut out his blasted insides! Who are you to tell me what I’m to do. I tell you I’m captain of the ship – Captain and Owner. I’m the law here, I tell you – the law and the prophets.8 I bargained to take a man and his attendant to and from Arica and bring back some animals. I never bargained to carry a mad devil and a silly Sawbones, a—’
Well, never mind what he called Montgomery. I saw the latter take a step forward, and interposed. ‘He’s drunk,’ said I. The captain began some abuse even fouler than the last. ‘Shut up,’ I said, turning on him sharply, for I had seen danger in Montgomery’s white face. With that I brought the downpour on myself.
However, I was glad to avert what was uncommonly near a scuffle, even at the price of the captain’s drunken ill-will. I do not think I have ever heard quite so much vile language come in a continuous stream from any man’s lips before, though I have frequented eccentric company enough. I found some of it hard to endure – though I am a mild-tempered man. But certainly when I told the captain to shut up I had forgotten I was merely a bit of human flotsam, cut off from my resources and with my fare unpaid, a mere casual dependant on the bounty -or speculative enterprise – of the ship. He reminded me of it with considerable vigour. But at any rate I prevented a fight.
IV
AT THE SCHOONER’S RAIL
That night land was sighted after sundown, and the schooner hove to. Montgomery intimated that was his destination. It was too far to see any details; it seemed to me then simply a low-lying patch of dim blue in the uncertain blue-grey sea. An almost vertical streak of smoke went up from it into the sky.
The captain was not on deck when it was sighted. After he had vented his wrath on me he had staggered below, and I understand he went to sleep on the floor of his own cabin. The mate practically assumed the command. He was the gaunt, taciturn individual we had seen at the wheel. Apparently he too was in an evil temper with Montgomery. He took not the slightest notice of either of us. We dined with him in a sulky silence, after a few ineffectual efforts on my part to talk. It struck me, too, that the men regarded my companion and his animals in a singularly unfriendly manner. I found Montgomery very reticent about his purpose with these creatures and about his destination, and though I was sensible of a growing curiosity I did not press him.
We remained talking on the quarter-deck until the sky was thick with stars. Except for an occasional sound in the yellow-lit forecastle, and a movement of the animals now and then, the night was very still. The puma lay crouched together, watching us with shining eyes, a black heap in the corner of its cage. The dogs seemed to be asleep. Montgomery produced some cigars.
He talked to me of London in a tone of half-painful reminiscence, asking all kinds of questions about changes that had taken place. He spoke like a man who had loved his life there, and had been suddenly and irrevocably cut off from it. I gossiped as well as I could of this and that. All the time the strangeness of him was shaping itself in my mind, and as I talked I peered at his odd pallid face in the dim light of the binnacle lantern behind me. Then I looked out at the darkling sea, where in the dimness his little island was hidden.
This man, it seemed to me, had come out of Immensity merely to save my life. Tomorrow he would drop over the side and vanish again out of my existence. Even had it been under commonplace circumstances it would have made me a trifle thoughtful. But in the first place was the singularity of an educated man living on this unknown little island, and coupled with that, the extraordinary nature of his luggage. I found myself repeating the captain’s question: What did he want with the beasts? Why, too, had he pretended they were not his when I had remarked about them at first? Then again, in his personal attendant there was a bizarre quality that had impressed me profoundly. These circumstances threw a haze of mystery round the man. They laid hold of my imagination and hampered my tongue.
Towards midnight our talk of London died away, and we stood side by side leaning over the bulwarks, and staring dreamily over the silent starlit sea, each pursuing his own thoughts. It was the atmosphere for sentiment, and I began upon my gratitude.
‘If I may say it,’ said I, after a time, ‘you have saved my life.’
‘Chance,’ he answered; ‘just chance.’
‘I prefer to make my thanks to the accessible agent.’
‘Thank no one. You had the need, and I the knowledge, and I injected and fed you much as I might have collected a specimen. I was bored, and wanted something to do. If I’d been jaded that day, or hadn’t liked your face, well – it’s a curious question where you would have been now.’
This damped my mood a little. ‘At any rate–’ I began.
‘It’s a chance, I tell you,’ he interrupted, ‘as everything is in a man’s life. Only the asses won’t see it. Why am I here now -an outcast from civilization – instead of being a happy man enjoying all the pleasures of London? Simply because – eleven years ago -I lost my head for ten minutes on a foggy night.’
He stopped. ‘Yes?’ said I.
‘That’s all.’
We relapsed into silence. Presently he laughed. ‘There’s something in this starlight that loosens one’s tongue. I’m an ass, and yet somehow I would like to tell you.’
‘Whatever you tell me, you may rely upon my keeping to myself…. If that’s it.’
He was on the point of beginning, and then shook his head doubtfully. ‘Don’t,’ said I. ‘It is all the same to me. After all, it is better to keep your secret. There’s nothing gained but a little relief, if I respect your confidence. If I don’t… well?’
He grunted undecidedly. I felt I had him at a disadvantage, had caught him in the mood of indiscretion; and, to tell the truth, I was not curious to learn what might have driven a young medical student out of London. I have an imagination. I shrugged my shoulders, and turned away. Over the taffrail leaned a silent black figure, staring at the waves. It was Montgomery’s strange attendant. It looked over its shoulder quickly with my movement, then looked away again.
It may seem a little thing to you, perhaps, but it came like a sudden blow to me. The only light near us was a lantern at the wheel. The creature’s face was turned for one brief instant out of the dimness of the stern towards this illumination, and I saw that the eyes that glanced at me shone with a pale-green light.
I did not know then that a reddish luminosity, at least, is not uncommon in human eyes. The thing came to me as a stark inhumanity. That black figure, with its eyes of fire, struck down through all my adult thoughts and feelings, and for a moment the forgotten horrors of childhood came back to my mind. Then the effect passed as it had come. An uncouth black figure of a man, a figure of no particular import, hung over the taffrail, against the starlight, and I found Montgomery was speaking to me.
‘I’m thinking of turning in, then,’ said he; ‘if you’ve had enough of this.’
I answered him incongruously. We went below, and he wished me good night at the door of my cabin.
That night I had some very unpleasant dreams. The waning moon rose late. Its light struck a ghostly faint white beam across my cabin, and made an ominous shape on the planking by my bunk. Then the staghounds woke and began howling and baying, so that I dreamed fitfully and scarcely slept until the approach of dawn.
V
THE LANDING ON THE ISLAND
In the early morning – it was the second morning after my recovery, and I believe the fourth after I was picked up – I awoke through an avenue of tumultuous dreams, dreams of guns and howling mobs, and became sensible of a hoarse shouting above me. I rubbed my eyes, and lay listening to the noise, doubtful for a little while of my whereabouts. Then came a sudden pattering of bare feet, the sound of heavy objects being thrown about, a violent creaking and rattling of chains. I heard the swish of the water as the ship was suddenly brought round, and a foamy yellow-green wave flew across the little round window and left it streaming. I jumped into my clothes and went on deck.
As I came up the ladder I saw against the flushed sky – for the sun was just rising – the broad back and red hair of the captain, and over his shoulder the puma spinning from a tackle rigged on to the mizzen spanker-boom. The poor brute seemed horribly scared, and crouched in the bottom of its little cage. ‘Overboard with ’em!’ bawled the captain. ‘Overboard with ’em! We’ll have a clean ship soon of the whole bilin’ of ’em.’1
