Free The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells Page A

vanished; my Ape-man
rushed out; the thing that had sat in the dark followed him
(I only observed that it was big and clumsy, and covered with silvery
hair), and I was left alone. Then before I reached the aperture I heard
the yelp of a staghound.
    In another moment I was standing outside the hovel, my chair-rail
in my hand, every muscle of me quivering. Before me were the clumsy
backs of perhaps a score of these Beast People, their misshapen heads
half hidden by their shoulder-blades. They were gesticulating excitedly.
Other half-animal faces glared interrogation out of the hovels.
Looking in the direction in which they faced, I saw coming through
the haze under the trees beyond the end of the passage of dens the dark
figure and awful white face of Moreau. He was holding the leaping
staghound back, and close behind him came Montgomery revolver
in hand.
    For a moment I stood horror-struck. I turned and saw the passage
behind me blocked by another heavy brute, with a huge grey
face and twinkling little eyes, advancing towards me.
I looked round and saw to the right of me and a half-dozen yards
in front of me a narrow gap in the wall of rock through which a ray
of light slanted into the shadows.
    "Stop!" cried Moreau as I strode towards this, and then, "Hold him!"
    At that, first one face turned towards me and then others.
Their bestial minds were happily slow. I dashed my shoulder
into a clumsy monster who was turning to see what Moreau meant,
and flung him forward into another. I felt his hands fly round,
clutching at me and missing me. The little pink sloth-creature
dashed at me, and I gashed down its ugly face with the nail
in my stick and in another minute was scrambling up a steep
side pathway, a kind of sloping chimney, out of the ravine.
I heard a howl behind me, and cries of "Catch him!" "Hold him!"
and the grey-faced creature appeared behind me and jammed
his huge bulk into the cleft. "Go on! go on!" they howled.
I clambered up the narrow cleft in the rock and came out upon
the sulphur on the westward side of the village of the Beast Men.
    That gap was altogether fortunate for me, for the narrow chimney,
slanting obliquely upward, must have impeded the nearer pursuers.
I ran over the white space and down a steep slope,
through a scattered growth of trees, and came to a low-lying
stretch of tall reeds, through which I pushed into a dark,
thick undergrowth that was black and succulent under foot.
As I plunged into the reeds, my foremost pursuers emerged from the gap.
I broke my way through this undergrowth for some minutes.
The air behind me and about me was soon full of threatening cries.
I heard the tumult of my pursuers in the gap up the slope, then the
crashing of the reeds, and every now and then the crackling crash
of a branch. Some of the creatures roared like excited beasts of prey.
The staghound yelped to the left. I heard Moreau and Montgomery shouting
in the same direction. I turned sharply to the right. It seemed
to me even then that I heard Montgomery shouting for me to run for
my life.
    Presently the ground gave rich and oozy under my feet; but I was
desperate and went headlong into it, struggled through kneedeep,
and so came to a winding path among tall canes. The noise of my
pursuers passed away to my left. In one place three strange, pink,
hopping animals, about the size of cats, bolted before my footsteps.
This pathway ran up hill, across another open space covered
with white incrustation, and plunged into a canebrake again.
Then suddenly it turned parallel with the edge of a steep-walled gap,
which came without warning, like the ha-ha of an English park,—turned
with an unexpected abruptness. I was still running with all
my might, and I never saw this drop until I was flying headlong through
the air.
    I fell on my forearms and head, among thorns, and rose with a torn
ear and bleeding face. I had fallen into a precipitous ravine,
rocky and thorny, full of a hazy mist which drifted about me in