An Island Called Moreau Read Online Free

though thinly enough for a pattern of sunlight and shadow to be cast where we walked. Occasionally we caught glimpses of the bright sea to our left, through a trellis of leaves.
    At one point, I almost tripped over one of the large shells. Kicking it aside, I observed that it was the whitened and empty shell of a tortoise. We seemed almost to be walking through a tortoise graveyard, so thick did the shells lie; there was never a sign of a live one.
    Boulders lay close on either side, some of them as tall as we were. Then we had to thread our way between them, and George came uncomfortably close to my vulnerable neck. Two of these big boulders virtually formed a gateway; beyond them, more of George’s uncouth breed of native were lurking.
    I saw them among the thickets ahead and halted despite myself.
    Turning to George, I said, “Why are they in hiding? What’s the matter with them?”
    With a crafty look, at once furtive and menacing, George said, “‘Four Limbs Long—Wrong Kind of Song.… Four Limbs Short—Right Kind of Sport!’” His feet began a kind of shuffle in the dust. His eyes would not meet mine. There was no point in trying to make conversation with him. Now that his own kind were close, he looked more dangerous than ever.
    â€œGeorge, you take me straight to HQ, savvy? You no stop, you no cause trouble, you no let anybody cause trouble, okay? You savvy?”
    He began to pant in a doggy way, his tongue hanging out. “You no got carbine, Cal—” Perhaps he struggled to recall my surname; if so he failed, and his use of my given name carried an unwelcome familiarity.
    I was remembering what Maastricht had said, “ Master got carbine!”
    He moved one burly shoulder at me, looking away, mumbling, “Yes, savvy Master got carbine …”
    â€œCome on, then!” Advancing between the boulders, I called, “Stand back ahead. We are in a hurry.”
    An amazing array of faces peered out of the bushes. They bore a family resemblance to George, although there was great variety in their deformity. Here were snouts that turned up and proboscises that turned down; mouths with no lips, mouths with serrated lips; hairless faces and faces covered almost completely with hair or stubble; eyes that glared with no visible lids, eyes that dreamed under heavy lids like horses’. All these faces were turned suspiciously toward me, noses twitching in my direction, and all managed to avoid my direct gaze by a hairbreadth. From some eyes in the deeper shadows, I caught the red or green blank glare of iridescence, as if I were confronted by animals from a ludicrous fairy tale.
    Indeed, I recalled series of drawings by artists like Charles Le Brun and Thomas Rowlandson, in which the physiognomies of men and women merged through several transformations into the physiognomies of animals—bulls, lions, leopards, dogs, oxen, and pigs. The effect was absurd as well as alarming. I moved forward, clapping my hands slowly, and slowly they gave way.
    But they were calling to George, who still followed me.
    â€œHas he not Four Limbs Long?”
    â€œIs he from the Lab’raty?”
    â€œWhere is the one with the bottle?”
    â€œHas he a carbine?”
    And other things I could not understand, for I was soon to learn that George’s diction was a marvel of distinctness among his friends, and he a creature of genius among morons. He still followed stubbornly behind me, saying, or rather chanting—most of their sentences were in singsong—“He find in big water. He Four Limbs Long. He Five Fingers Long—Not Wise or Strong. No stop, no cause trouble. Plenty beat at HQ.”
    He chanted. I staggered beside him. They fell back or hopped back, letting us through—but hands with maimed stubs of fingers, hands more like paws or hooves, reached out and touched me as I went by.
    Now I caught a strong rank smell, like the whiff of a