Chapter 22 - 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.


The End