The Island of Doctor Moreau

The Island of Doctor Moreau

By H. G. Wells.

Table of Contents

1. Titlepage
2. Imprint
3. Introduction
4. The Island of Doctor Moreau
   1. I: In the Dingey of the Lady Vain
   2. II: The Man Who Was Going Nowhere
   3. III: The Strange Face
   4. IV: At the Schooner’s Rail
   5. V: The Man Who Had Nowhere to Go
   6. VI: The Evil-Looking Boatmen
   7. VII: The Locked Door
   8. VIII: The Crying of the Puma
   9. IX: The Thing in the Forest
   10. X: The Crying of the Man
   11. XI: The Hunting of the Man
   12. XII: The Sayers of the Law
   13. XIII: A Parley
   14. XIV: Doctor Moreau Explains
   15. XV: Concerning the Beast Folk
   16. XVI: How the Beast Folk Taste Blood
   17. XVII: A Catastrophe
   18. XVIII: The Finding of Moreau
   19. XIX: Montgomery’s Bank Holiday
   20. XX: Alone with the Beast Folk
   21. XXI: The Reversion of the Beast Folk
   22. XXII: The Man Alone
5. Endnotes
6. Colophon
7. Uncopyright

Imprint

This ebook is the product of many hours of hard work by volunteers for Standard Ebooks, and builds on the hard work of other literature lovers made possible by the public domain.

This particular ebook is based on a transcription produced for Project Gutenberg and on digital scans available at the Internet Archive.

The writing and artwork within are believed to be in the U.S. public domain, and Standard Ebooks releases this ebook edition under the terms in the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. For full license information, see the Uncopyright at the end of this ebook.

Standard Ebooks is a volunteer-driven project that produces ebook editions of public domain literature using modern typography, technology, and editorial standards, and distributes them free of cost. You can download this and other ebooks carefully produced for true book lovers at standardebooks.org.

Introduction

On February the first 1887, the Lady Vain was lost by collision with a derelict when about the latitude 1° S. and longitude 107° W.

On January the fifth, 1888⁠—that is eleven months and four days after⁠—my uncle, Edward Prendick, a private gentleman, who certainly went aboard the Lady Vain at Callao, and who had been considered drowned, was picked up in latitude 5° 3′ S. and longitude 101° W. in a small open boat of which the name was illegible, but which is supposed to have belonged to the missing schooner Ipecacuanha. He gave such a strange account of himself that he was supposed demented. Subsequently he alleged that his mind was a blank from the moment of his escape from the Lady Vain. His case was discussed among psychologists at the time as a curious instance of the lapse of memory consequent upon physical and mental stress. The following narrative was found among his papers by the undersigned, his nephew and heir, but unaccompanied by any definite request for publication.

The only island known to exist in the region in which my uncle was picked up is Noble’s Isle, a small volcanic islet and uninhabited. It was visited in 1891 by H.M.S. Scorpion. A party of sailors then landed, but found nothing living thereon except certain curious white moths, some hogs and rabbits, and some rather peculiar rats. So that this narrative is without confirmation in its most essential particular. With that understood, there seems no harm in putting this strange story before the public in accordance, as I believe, with my uncle’s intentions. There is at least this much in its behalf: my uncle passed out of human knowledge about latitude 5° S. and longitude 105° E., and reappeared in the same part of the ocean after a space of eleven months. In some way he must have lived during the interval. And it seems that a schooner called the Ipecacuanha with a drunken captain, John Davies, did start from Africa with a puma and certain other animals aboard in January, 1887, that the vessel was well known at several ports in the South Pacific, and that it finally disappeared from those seas (with a considerable amount of copra aboard), sailing to its unknown fate from Bayna in December, 1887, a date that tallies entirely with my uncle’s story.

Charles Edward Prendick.

(The Story written by Edward Prendick.)

The Island of Doctor Moreau

A Possibility

I

In the Dingey of the Lady Vain

I do not propose to add anything to what has already been written concerning the loss of the Lady Vain. As everyone knows, she collided with a derelict when ten days out from Callao. The longboat, with seven of the crew, was picked up eighteen days after by H.M. gunboat Myrtle, and the story of their terrible privations has become quite as well known as the far more horrible Medusa case. But I have to add to the published story of the Lady Vain another, possibly as horrible and far stranger. It has hitherto been supposed that the four men who were in the dingey perished, but this is incorrect. I have the best of evidence for this assertion: I was one of the four men.

But in the first place I must state that there never were four men in the dingey⁠—the number was three. Constans, who was “seen by the captain to jump into the gig,”1 luckily for us and unluckily for himself did not reach us. He came down out of the tangle of ropes under the stays of the smashed bowsprit, some small rope caught his heel as he let go, and he hung for a moment head downward, and then fell and struck a block or spar floating in the water. We pulled towards him, but