I WOKE early. Moreau's explanation stood before my mind, clear and definite, from the moment of my awakening1. I got out of the hammock and went to the door to assure myself that the key was turned. Then I tried the window-bar, and found it firmly fixed2. That these man-like creatures were in truth only bestial3 monsters, mere4 grotesque5 travesties6 of men, filled me with a vague uncertainty7 of their possibilities which was far worse than any definite fear.
A tapping came at the door, and I heard the glutinous8 accents of M'ling speaking. I pocketed one of the revolvers (keeping one hand upon it), and opened to him.
"Good-morning, sair," he said, bringing in, in addition to the customary herb-breakfast, an ill-cooked rabbit. Montgomery followed him. His roving eye caught the position of my arm and he smiled askew9.
The puma10 was resting to heal that day; but Moreau, who was singularly solitary11 in his habits, did not join us. I talked with Montgomery to clear my ideas of the way in which the Beast Folk lived. In particular, I was urgent to know how these inhuman12 monsters were kept from falling upon Moreau and Montgomery and from rending13 one another. He explained to me that the comparative safety of Moreau and himself was due to the limited mental scope of these monsters. In spite of their increased intelligence and the tendency of their animal instincts to reawaken, they had certain fixed ideas implanted by Moreau in their minds, which absolutely bounded their imaginations. They were really hypnotised; had been told that certain things were impossible, and that certain things were not to be done, and these prohibitions14 were woven into the texture15 of their minds beyond any possibility of disobedience or dispute.
Certain matters, however, in which old instinct was at war with Moreau's convenience, were in a less stable condition. A series of propositions called the Law (I had already heard them recited) battled in their minds with the deep-seated, ever-rebellious cravings of their animal natures. This Law they were ever repeating, I found, and ever breaking. Both Montgomery and Moreau displayed particular solicitude16 to keep them ignorant of the taste of blood; they feared the inevitable17 suggestions of that flavour. Montgomery told me that the Law, especially among the feline18 Beast People, became oddly weakened about nightfall; that then the animal was at its strongest; that a spirit of adventure sprang up in them at the dusk, when they would dare things they never seemed to dream about by day. To that I owed my stalking by the Leopard19-man, on the night of my arrival. But during these earlier days of my stay they broke the Law only furtively20 and after dark; in the daylight there was a general atmosphere of respect for its multifarious prohibitions.
And here perhaps I may give a few general facts about the island and the Beast People. The island, which was of irregular outline and lay low upon the wide sea, had a total area, I suppose, of seven or eight square miles.{2} It was volcanic22 in origin, and was now fringed on three sides by coral reefs; some fumaroles to the northward23, and a hot spring, were the only vestiges24 of the forces that had long since originated it. Now and then a faint quiver of earthquake would be sensible, and sometimes the ascent25 of the spire26 of smoke would be rendered tumultuous by gusts27 of steam; but that was all. The population of the island, Montgomery informed me, now numbered rather more than sixty of these strange creations of Moreau's art, not counting the smaller monstrosities which lived in the undergrowth and were without human form. Altogether he had made nearly a hundred and twenty; but many had died, and others--like the writhing28 Footless Thing of which he had told me--had come by violent ends. In answer to my question, Montgomery said that they actually bore offspring, but that these generally died. When they lived, Moreau took them and stamped the human form upon them. There was no evidence of the inheritance of their acquired human characteristics. The females were less numerous than the males, and liable to much furtive21 persecution29 in spite of the monogamy the Law enjoined30.
{2} This description corresponds in every respect to Noble's Isle31. -- C. E. P.
It would be impossible for me to describe these Beast People in detail; my eye has had no training in details, and unhappily I cannot sketch32. Most striking, perhaps, in their general appearance was the disproportion between the legs of these creatures and the length of their bodies; and yet--so relative is our idea of grace--my eye became habituated to their forms, and at last I even fell in with their persuasion33 that my own long thighs34 were ungainly. Another point was the forward carriage of the head and the clumsy and inhuman curvature of the spine35. Even the Ape-man lacked that inward sinuous36 curve of the back which makes the human figure so graceful37. Most had their shoulders hunched38 clumsily, and their short forearms hung weakly at their sides. Few of them were conspicuously39 hairy, at least until the end of my time upon the island.
The next most obvious deformity was in their faces, almost all of which were prognathous, malformed about the ears, with large and protuberant40 noses, very furry41 or very bristly hair, and often strangely-coloured or strangely-placed eyes. None could laugh, though the Ape-man had a chattering42 titter. Beyond these general characters their heads had little in common; each preserved the quality of its particular species: the human mark distorted but did not hide the leopard, the ox, or the sow, or other animal or animals, from which the creature had been moulded. The voices, too, varied43 exceedingly. The hands were always malformed; and though some surprised me by their unexpected human appearance, almost all were deficient44 in the number of the digits45, clumsy about the finger-nails, and lacking any tactile46 sensibility.
The two most formidable Animal Men were my Leopard-man and a creature made of hyena47 and swine. Larger than these were the three bull-creatures who pulled in the boat. Then came the silvery-hairy-man, who was also the Sayer of the Law, M'ling, and a satyr-like creature of ape and goat. There were three Swine-men and a Swine-woman, a mare-rhinoceros-creature, and several other females whose sources I did not ascertain48. There were several wolf-creatures, a bear-bull, and a Saint-Bernard-man. I have already described the Ape-man, and there was a particularly hateful (and evil-smelling) old woman made of vixen and bear, whom I hated from the beginning. She was said to be a passionate49 votary50 of the Law. Smaller creatures were certain dappled youths and my little sloth-creature. But enough of this catalogue.
At first I had a shivering horror of the brutes51, felt all too keenly that they were still brutes; but insensibly I became a little habituated to the idea of them, and moreover I was affected52 by Montgomery's attitude towards them. He had been with them so long that he had come to regard them as almost normal human beings. His London days seemed a glorious, impossible past to him. Only once in a year or so did he go to Arica to deal with Moreau's agent, a trader in animals there. He hardly met the finest type of mankind in that seafaring village of Spanish mongrels. The men aboard-ship, he told me, seemed at first just as strange to him as the Beast Men seemed to me,--unnaturally long in the leg, flat in the face, prominent in the forehead, suspicious, dangerous, and cold-hearted. In fact, he did not like men: his heart had warmed to me, he thought, because he had saved my life. I fancied even then that he had a sneaking54 kindness for some of these metamorphosed brutes, a vicious sympathy with some of their ways, but that he attempted to veil it from me at first.
M'ling, the black-faced man, Montgomery's attendant, the first of the Beast Folk I had encountered, did not live with the others across the island, but in a small kennel55 at the back of the enclosure. The creature was scarcely so intelligent as the Ape-man, but far more docile56, and the most human-looking of all the Beast Folk; and Montgomery had trained it to prepare food, and indeed to discharge all the trivial domestic offices that were required. It was a complex trophy57 of Moreau's horrible skill,--a bear, tainted58 with dog and ox, and one of the most elaborately made of all his creatures. It treated Montgomery with a strange tenderness and devotion. Sometimes he would notice it, pat it, call it half-mocking, half-jocular names, and so make it caper59 with extraordinary delight; sometimes he would ill-treat it, especially after he had been at the whiskey, kicking it, beating it, pelting60 it with stones or lighted fusees. But whether he treated it well or ill, it loved nothing so much as to be near him.
I say I became habituated to the Beast People, that a thousand things which had seemed unnatural53 and repulsive61 speedily became natural and ordinary to me. I suppose everything in existence takes its colour from the average hue62 of our surroundings. Montgomery and Moreau were too peculiar63 and individual to keep my general impressions of humanity well defined. I would see one of the clumsy bovine-creatures who worked the launch treading heavily through the undergrowth, and find myself asking, trying hard to recall, how he differed from some really human yokel64 trudging65 home from his mechanical labours; or I would meet the Fox-bear woman's vulpine, shifty face, strangely human in its speculative66 cunning, and even imagine I had met it before in some city byway.
Yet every now and then the beast would flash out upon me beyond doubt or denial. An ugly-looking man, a hunch-backed human savage67 to all appearance, squatting68 in the aperture69 of one of the dens70, would stretch his arms and yawn, showing with startling suddenness scissor-edged incisors and sabre-like canines71, keen and brilliant as knives. Or in some narrow pathway, glancing with a transitory daring into the eyes of some lithe72, white-swathed female figure, I would suddenly see (with a spasmodic revulsion) that she had slit-like pupils, or glancing down note the curving nail with which she held her shapeless wrap about her. It is a curious thing, by the bye, for which I am quite unable to account, that these weird73 creatures--the females, I mean--had in the earlier days of my stay an instinctive74 sense of their own repulsive clumsiness, and displayed in consequence a more than human regard for the decency75 and decorum of extensive costume.
收听单词发音 |
1
awakening
|
|
| n.觉醒，醒悟 adj.觉醒中的；唤醒的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
fixed
|
|
| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
bestial
|
|
| adj.残忍的；野蛮的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
mere
|
|
| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
grotesque
|
|
| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
travesties
|
|
| n.拙劣的模仿作品，荒谬的模仿，歪曲( travesty的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
uncertainty
|
|
| n.易变，靠不住，不确知，不确定的事物 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
glutinous
|
|
| adj.粘的，胶状的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
askew
|
|
| adv.斜地；adj.歪斜的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
puma
|
|
| 美洲豹 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
solitary
|
|
| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
inhuman
|
|
| adj.残忍的，不人道的，无人性的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
rending
|
|
| v.撕碎( rend的现在分词 )；分裂；（因愤怒、痛苦等而）揪扯（衣服或头发等）；（声音等）刺破 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
prohibitions
|
|
| 禁令，禁律( prohibition的名词复数 )； 禁酒； 禁例 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
texture
|
|
| n.(织物)质地；(材料)构造；结构；肌理 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
solicitude
|
|
| n.焦虑 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
inevitable
|
|
| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
feline
|
|
| adj.猫科的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
leopard
|
|
| n.豹 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
furtively
|
|
| adv. 偷偷地, 暗中地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
furtive
|
|
| adj.鬼鬼崇崇的，偷偷摸摸的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
volcanic
|
|
| adj.火山的；象火山的；由火山引起的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
northward
|
|
| adv.向北；n.北方的地区 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
vestiges
|
|
| 残余部分( vestige的名词复数 )； 遗迹； 痕迹； 毫不 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
ascent
|
|
| n.(声望或地位)提高；上升，升高；登高 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
spire
|
|
| n.(教堂)尖顶，尖塔，高点 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
gusts
|
|
| 一阵强风( gust的名词复数 )； （怒、笑等的）爆发； （感情的）迸发； 发作 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
writhing
|
|
| （因极度痛苦而）扭动或翻滚( writhe的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
persecution
|
|
| n. 迫害,烦扰 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
enjoined
|
|
| v.命令( enjoin的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
isle
|
|
| n.小岛，岛 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
sketch
|
|
| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
persuasion
|
|
| n.劝说；说服；持有某种信仰的宗派 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
thighs
|
|
| n.股，大腿( thigh的名词复数 )；食用的鸡（等的）腿 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
spine
|
|
| n.脊柱，脊椎；(动植物的)刺；书脊 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
sinuous
|
|
| adj.蜿蜒的，迂回的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
37
graceful
|
|
| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
38
hunched
|
|
| （常指因寒冷、生病或愁苦）耸肩弓身的，伏首前倾的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
39
conspicuously
|
|
| ad.明显地，惹人注目地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
40
protuberant
|
|
| adj.突出的，隆起的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
41
furry
|
|
| adj.毛皮的；似毛皮的；毛皮制的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
42
chattering
|
|
| n. （机器振动发出的）咔嗒声，(鸟等)鸣，啁啾 adj. 喋喋不休的，啾啾声的 动词chatter的现在分词形式 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
43
varied
|
|
| adj.多样的，多变化的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
44
deficient
|
|
| adj.不足的，不充份的，有缺陷的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
45
digits
|
|
| n.数字( digit的名词复数 )；手指，足趾 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
46
tactile
|
|
| adj.触觉的，有触觉的，能触知的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
47
hyena
|
|
| n.土狼，鬣狗 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
48
ascertain
|
|
| vt.发现，确定，查明，弄清 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
49
passionate
|
|
| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
50
votary
|
|
| n.崇拜者；爱好者；adj.誓约的，立誓任圣职的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
51
brutes
|
|
| 兽( brute的名词复数 )； 畜生； 残酷无情的人； 兽性 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
52
affected
|
|
| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
53
unnatural
|
|
| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
54
sneaking
|
|
| a.秘密的，不公开的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
55
kennel
|
|
| n.狗舍，狗窝 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
56
docile
|
|
| adj.驯服的，易控制的，容易教的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
57
trophy
|
|
| n.优胜旗，奖品，奖杯，战胜品，纪念品 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
58
tainted
|
|
| adj.腐坏的；污染的；沾污的；感染的v.使变质( taint的过去式和过去分词 )；使污染；败坏；被污染，腐坏，败坏 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
59
caper
|
|
| v.雀跃，欢蹦；n.雀跃，跳跃；续随子，刺山柑花蕾；嬉戏 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
60
pelting
|
|
| 微不足道的，无价值的，盛怒的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
61
repulsive
|
|
| adj.排斥的，使人反感的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
62
hue
|
|
| n.色度；色调；样子 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
63
peculiar
|
|
| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
64
yokel
|
|
| n.乡下人；农夫 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
65
trudging
|
|
| vt.& vi.跋涉，吃力地走（trudge的现在分词形式） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
66
speculative
|
|
| adj.思索性的，暝想性的，推理的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
67
savage
|
|
| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
68
squatting
|
|
| v.像动物一样蹲下( squat的现在分词 )；非法擅自占用（土地或房屋）；为获得其所有权；而占用某片公共用地。 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
69
aperture
|
|
| n.孔，隙，窄的缺口 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
70
dens
|
|
| n.牙齿，齿状部分；兽窝( den的名词复数 )；窝点；休息室；书斋 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
71
canines
|
|
| n.犬齿( canine的名词复数 )；犬牙；犬科动物 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
72
lithe
|
|
| adj.(指人、身体)柔软的，易弯的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
73
weird
|
|
| adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
74
instinctive
|
|
| adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
75
decency
|
|
| n.体面，得体，合宜，正派，庄重 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |