Chapter 19 - Montgomery's "Bank Holiday"


WHEN this was accomplished, and we had washed and eaten,
Montgomery and I went into my little room and seriously discussed
our position for the first time. It was then near midnight.
He was almost sober, but greatly disturbed in his mind.
He had been strangely under the influence of Moreau's personality:
I do not think it had ever occurred to him that Moreau could die.
This disaster was the sudden collapse of the habits that had become part of
his nature in the ten or more monotonous years he had spent on the island.
He talked vaguely, answered my questions crookedly, wandered into
general questions.

"This silly ass of a world," he said; "what a muddle it all is!
I haven't had any life. I wonder when it's going to begin.
Sixteen years being bullied by nurses and schoolmasters at
their own sweet will; five in London grinding hard at medicine,
bad food, shabby lodgings, shabby clothes, shabby vice, a blunder,--
I didn't know any better,--and hustled off to this beastly island.
Ten years here! What's it all for, Prendick? Are we bubbles blown by
a baby?"

It was hard to deal with such ravings. "The thing we have to think
of now," said I, "is how to get away from this island."

"What's the good of getting away? I'm an outcast.
Where am I to join on? It's all very well for you, Prendick.
Poor old Moreau! We can't leave him here to have his bones picked.
As it is--And besides, what will become of the decent part of the
Beast Folk?"

"Well," said I, "that will do to-morrow. I've been thinking we might make
that brushwood into a pyre and burn his body--and those other things.
Then what will happen with the Beast Folk?"

"I don't know. I suppose those that were made of beasts of prey will
make silly asses of themselves sooner or later. We can't massacre
the lot--can we? I suppose that's what your humanity would suggest?
But they'll change. They are sure to change."

He talked thus inconclusively until at last I felt my temper going.

"Damnation!" he exclaimed at some petulance of mine; "can't you see I'm
in a worse hole than you are?" And he got up, and went for the brandy.
"Drink!" he said returning, "you logic-chopping, chalky-faced saint
of an atheist, drink!"

"Not I," said I, and sat grimly watching his face under the yellow
paraffine flare, as he drank himself into a garrulous misery.

I have a memory of infinite tedium. He wandered into a maudlin
defence of the Beast People and of M'ling. M'ling, he said,
was the only thing that had ever really cared for him.
And suddenly an idea came to him.

"I'm damned!" said he, staggering to his feet and clutching
the brandy bottle.

By some flash of intuition I knew what it was he intended.
"You don't give drink to that beast!" I said, rising and facing him.

"Beast!" said he. "You're the beast. He takes his liquor
like a Christian. Come out of the way, Prendick!"

"For God's sake," said I.

"Get--out of the way!" he roared, and suddenly whipped out his revolver.

"Very well," said I, and stood aside, half-minded to fall upon him
as he put his hand upon the latch, but deterred by the thought
of my useless arm. "You've made a beast of yourself,--to the beasts
you may go."

He flung the doorway open, and stood half facing me between
the yellow lamp-light and the pallid glare of the moon;
his eye-sockets were blotches of black under his stubbly eyebrows.

"You're a solemn prig, Prendick, a silly ass! You're always fearing
and fancying. We're on the edge of things. I'm bound to cut my
throat to-morrow. I'm going to have a damned Bank Holiday to-night."
He turned and went out into the moonlight. "M'ling!" he cried;
"M'ling, old friend!"

Three dim creatures in the silvery light came along the edge
of the wan beach,--one a white-wrapped creature, the other two
blotches of blackness following it. They halted, staring.
Then I saw M'ling's hunched shoulders as he came round the corner
of the house.

"Drink!" cried Montgomery, "drink, you brutes! Drink and be men!
Damme, I'm the cleverest. Moreau forgot this; this is the last touch.
Drink, I tell you!" And waving the bottle in his hand he started
off at a kind of quick trot to the westward, M'ling ranging himself
between him and the three dim creatures who followed.

I went to the doorway. They were already indistinct in the mist
of the moonlight before Montgomery halted. I saw him administer
a dose of the raw brandy to M'ling, and saw the five figures melt
into one vague patch.

"Sing!" I heard Montgomery shout,--"sing all together, `Confound
old Prendick!' That's right; now again, `Confound old Prendick!'"

The black group broke up into five separate figures,
and wound slowly away from me along the band of shining beach.
Each went howling at his own sweet will, yelping insults at me,
or giving whatever other vent this new inspiration of brandy demanded.
Presently I heard Montgomery's voice shouting, "Right turn!"
and they passed with their shouts and howls into the blackness
of the landward trees. Slowly, very slowly, they receded
into silence.

The peaceful splendour of the night healed again.
The moon was now past the meridian and travelling down the west.
It was at its full, and very bright riding through the empty blue sky.
The shadow of the wall lay, a yard wide and of inky blackness, at my feet.
The eastward sea was a featureless grey, dark and mysterious;
and between the sea and the shadow the grey sands (of volcanic
glass and crystals) flashed and shone like a beach of diamonds.
Behind me the paraffine lamp flared hot and ruddy.

Then I shut the door, locked it, and went into the enclosure where
Moreau lay beside his latest victims,--the staghounds and the llama
and some other wretched brutes,--with his massive face calm even
after his terrible death, and with the hard eyes open, staring at
the dead white moon above. I sat down upon the edge of the sink,
and with my eyes upon that ghastly pile of silvery light and ominous
shadows began to turn over my plans. In the morning I would gather
some provisions in the dingey, and after setting fire to the pyre
before me, push out into the desolation of the high sea once more.
I felt that for Montgomery there was no help; that he was, in truth,
half akin to these Beast Folk, unfitted for human kindred.

I do not know how long I sat there scheming. It must have been
an hour or so. Then my planning was interrupted by the return of
Montgomery to my neighbourhood. I heard a yelling from many throats,
a tumult of exultant cries passing down towards the beach,
whooping and howling, and excited shrieks that seemed to come to a stop
near the water's edge. The riot rose and fell; I heard heavy blows
and the splintering smash of wood, but it did not trouble me then.
A discordant chanting began.

My thoughts went back to my means of escape. I got up, brought the lamp,
and went into a shed to look at some kegs I had seen there.
Then I became interested in the contents of some biscuit-tins, and
opened one. I saw something out of the tail of my eye,--a red figure,--
and turned sharply.

Behind me lay the yard, vividly black-and-white in the moonlight,
and the pile of wood and faggots on which Moreau and his mutilated
victims lay, one over another. They seemed to be gripping one another
in one last revengeful grapple. His wounds gaped, black as night,
and the blood that had dripped lay in black patches upon the sand.
Then I saw, without understanding, the cause of my phantom,--
a ruddy glow that came and danced and went upon the wall opposite.
I misinterpreted this, fancied it was a reflection of my
flickering lamp, and turned again to the stores in the shed.
I went on rummaging among them, as well as a one-armed man could,
finding this convenient thing and that, and putting them
aside for to-morrow's launch. My movements were slow,
and the time passed quickly. Insensibly the daylight crept
upon me.

The chanting died down, giving place to a clamour; then it
began again, and suddenly broke into a tumult. I heard cries of,
"More! more!" a sound like quarrelling, and a sudden wild shriek.
The quality of the sounds changed so greatly that it arrested
my attention. I went out into the yard and listened.
Then cutting like a knife across the confusion came the crack of
a revolver.

I rushed at once through my room to the little doorway.
As I did so I heard some of the packing-cases behind me go sliding down
and smash together with a clatter of glass on the floor of the shed.
But I did not heed these. I flung the door open and looked out.

Up the beach by the boathouse a bonfire was burning, raining up
sparks into the indistinctness of the dawn. Around this struggled
a mass of black figures. I heard Montgomery call my name.
I began to run at once towards this fire, revolver in hand. I saw the pink
tongue of Montgomery's pistol lick out once, close to the ground.
He was down. I shouted with all my strength and fired into the air.
I heard some one cry, "The Master!" The knotted black struggle
broke into scattering units, the fire leapt and sank down.
The crowd of Beast People fled in sudden panic before me, up the beach.
In my excitement I fired at their retreating backs as they
disappeared among the bushes. Then I turned to the black heaps upon
the ground.

Montgomery lay on his back, with the hairy-grey Beast-man
sprawling across his body. The brute was dead, but still
gripping Montgomery's throat with its curving claws.
Near by lay M'ling on his face and quite still, his neck bitten
open and the upper part of the smashed brandy-bottle in his hand.
Two other figures lay near the fire,--the one motionless, the other
groaning fitfully, every now and then raising its head slowly,
then dropping it again.

I caught hold of the grey man and pulled him off Montgomery's body;
his claws drew down the torn coat reluctantly as I dragged him away.
Montgomery was dark in the face and scarcely breathing. I splashed
sea-water on his face and pillowed his head on my rolled-up coat.
M'ling was dead. The wounded creature by the fire--it was a Wolf-brute
with a bearded grey face--lay, I found, with the fore part of its
body upon the still glowing timber. The wretched thing was injured
so dreadfully that in mercy I blew its brains out at once.
The other brute was one of the Bull-men swathed in white.
He too was dead. The rest of the Beast People had vanished from
the beach.

I went to Montgomery again and knelt beside him, cursing my ignorance
of medicine. The fire beside me had sunk down, and only charred
beams of timber glowing at the central ends and mixed with a grey
ash of brushwood remained. I wondered casually where Montgomery
had got his wood. Then I saw that the dawn was upon us.
The sky had grown brighter, the setting moon was becoming pale
and opaque in the luminous blue of the day. The sky to the eastward
was rimmed with red.

Suddenly I heard a thud and a hissing behind me, and, looking round,
sprang to my feet with a cry of horror. Against the warm dawn
great tumultuous masses of black smoke were boiling up out of
the enclosure, and through their stormy darkness shot flickering
threads of blood-red flame. Then the thatched roof caught.
I saw the curving charge of the flames across the sloping straw.
A spurt of fire jetted from the window of my room.

I knew at once what had happened. I remembered the crash I had heard.
When I had rushed out to Montgomery's assistance, I had overturned
the lamp.

The hopelessness of saving any of the contents of the enclosure
stared me in the face. My mind came back to my plan of flight,
and turning swiftly I looked to see where the two boats lay upon
the beach. They were gone! Two axes lay upon the sands beside me;
chips and splinters were scattered broadcast, and the ashes
of the bonfire were blackening and smoking under the dawn.
Montgomery had burnt the boats to revenge himself upon me and prevent our
return to mankind!

A sudden convulsion of rage shook me. I was almost moved to batter
his foolish head in, as he lay there helpless at my feet.
Then suddenly his hand moved, so feebly, so pitifully, that my
wrath vanished. He groaned, and opened his eyes for a minute.
I knelt down beside him and raised his head. He opened his
eyes again, staring silently at the dawn, and then they met mine.
The lids fell.

"Sorry," he said presently, with an effort. He seemed trying to think.
"The last," he murmured, "the last of this silly universe.
What a mess--"

I listened. His head fell helplessly to one side. I thought some drink
might revive him; but there was neither drink nor vessel in which to
bring drink at hand. He seemed suddenly heavier. My heart went cold.
I bent down to his face, put my hand through the rent in his blouse.
He was dead; and even as he died a line of white heat, the limb
of the sun, rose eastward beyond the projection of the bay,
splashing its radiance across the sky and turning the dark sea into
a weltering tumult of dazzling light. It fell like a glory upon his
death-shrunken face.

I let his head fall gently upon the rough pillow I had made for him,
and stood up. Before me was the glittering desolation of the sea,
the awful solitude upon which I had already suffered so much; behind me
the island, hushed under the dawn, its Beast People silent and unseen.
The enclosure, with all its provisions and ammunition, burnt noisily,
with sudden gusts of flame, a fitful crackling, and now and then a crash.
The heavy smoke drove up the beach away from me, rolling low
over the distant tree-tops towards the huts in the ravine.
Beside me were the charred vestiges of the boats and these four
dead bodies.

Then out of the bushes came three Beast People, with hunched shoulders,
protruding heads, misshapen hands awkwardly held, and inquisitive,
unfriendly eyes and advanced towards me with hesitating gestures.