The Island of Doctor Moreau Read Online Free PDF Page A

which I found
subsequently was built partly of coral and partly of pumiceous lava.
Two thatched roofs peeped from within this enclosure.
A man stood awaiting us at the water's edge. I fancied while we
were still far off that I saw some other and very grotesque-looking
creatures scuttle into the bushes upon the slope; but I saw nothing
of these as we drew nearer. This man was of a moderate size,
and with a black negroid face. He had a large, almost lipless,
mouth, extraordinary lank arms, long thin feet, and bow-legs,
and stood with his heavy face thrust forward staring at us.
He was dressed like Montgomery and his white-haired companion,
in jacket and trousers of blue serge. As we came still nearer,
this individual began to run to and fro on the beach, making the most
grotesque movements.
    At a word of command from Montgomery, the four men in the launch
sprang up, and with singularly awkward gestures struck the lugs.
Montgomery steered us round and into a narrow little dock excavated
in the beach. Then the man on the beach hastened towards us.
This dock, as I call it, was really a mere ditch just long
enough at this phase of the tide to take the longboat.
I heard the bows ground in the sand, staved the dingey off the rudder
of the big boat with my piggin, and freeing the painter, landed.
The three muffled men, with the clumsiest movements, scrambled out
upon the sand, and forthwith set to landing the cargo, assisted by
the man on the beach. I was struck especially by the curious
movements of the legs of the three swathed and bandaged boatmen,—not
stiff they were, but distorted in some odd way, almost as if they
were jointed in the wrong place. The dogs were still snarling,
and strained at their chains after these men, as the white-haired
man landed with them. The three big fellows spoke to one another
in odd guttural tones, and the man who had waited for us on
the beach began chattering to them excitedly—a foreign language,
as I fancied—as they laid hands on some bales piled near the stern.
Somewhere I had heard such a voice before, and I could not think where.
The white-haired man stood, holding in a tumult of six dogs, and bawling
orders over their din. Montgomery, having unshipped the rudder,
landed likewise, and all set to work at unloading. I was too faint,
what with my long fast and the sun beating down on my bare head, to offer
any assistance.
    Presently the white-haired man seemed to recollect my presence,
and came up to me.
    "You look," said he, "as though you had scarcely breakfasted."
His little eyes were a brilliant black under his heavy brows.
"I must apologise for that. Now you are our guest, we must
make you comfortable,—though you are uninvited, you know."
He looked keenly into my face. "Montgomery says you are an educated man,
Mr. Prendick; says you know something of science. May I ask what
that signifies?"
    I told him I had spent some years at the Royal College of Science,
and had done some researches in biology under Huxley. He raised
his eyebrows slightly at that.
    "That alters the case a little, Mr. Prendick," he said,
with a trifle more respect in his manner. "As it happens,
we are biologists here. This is a biological station—of a sort."
His eye rested on the men in white who were busily hauling the puma,
on rollers, towards the walled yard. "I and Montgomery, at least,"
he added. Then, "When you will be able to get away, I can't say.
We're off the track to anywhere. We see a ship once in a twelve-month
or so."
    He left me abruptly, and went up the beach past this group, and I
think entered the enclosure. The other two men were with Montgomery,
erecting a pile of smaller packages on a low-wheeled truck.
The llama was still on the launch with the rabbit hutches;
the staghounds were still lashed to the thwarts.
The pile of things completed, all three men laid hold of the truck
and began shoving the ton-weight or so upon it after the puma.
Presently Montgomery left them, and coming back to me held