"Герберт Уэллс. Dr. Moreau" - читать интересную книгу автора

"I will not," said I. "They were men: what are they now?
I at least will not be like them."

I looked past my interlocutors. Up the beach were M'ling, Montgomery's
attendant, and one of the white-swathed brutes from the boat.
Farther up, in the shadow of the trees, I saw my little Ape-man,
and behind him some other dim figures.

"Who are these creatures?" said I, pointing to them and raising
my voice more and more that it might reach them. "They were men,
men like yourselves, whom you have infected with some bestial taint,-
men whom you have enslaved, and whom you still fear.
"You who listen," I cried, pointing now to Moreau and shouting past
him to the Beast Men,-" You who listen! Do you not see these men
still fear you, go in dread of you? Why, then, do you fear them?
You are many-"

"For God's sake," cried Montgomery, "stop that, Prendick!"

"Prendick!" cried Moreau.

They both shouted together, as if to drown my voice; and behind
them lowered the staring faces of the Beast Men, wondering,
their deformed hands hanging down, their shoulders hunched up.
They seemed, as I fancied, to be trying to understand me, to remember,
I thought, something of their human past.

I went on shouting, I scarcely remember what,-that Moreau
and Montgomery could be killed, that they were not to be feared:
that was the burden of what I put into the heads of the Beast People.
I saw the green-eyed man in the dark rags, who had met me on
the evening of my arrival, come out from among the trees, and others
followed him, to hear me better. At last for want of breath
I paused.

"Listen to me for a moment," said the steady voice of Moreau;
"and then say what you will."

"Well?" said I.

He coughed, thought, then shouted: "Latin, Prendick! bad Latin,
schoolboy Latin; but try and understand. Hi non sunt homines;
sunt animalia qui nos habemus-vivisected. A humanising process.
I will explain. Come ashore."

I laughed. "A pretty story," said I. "They talk, build houses.
They were men. It's likely I'll come ashore."

"The water just beyond where you stand is deep-and full of sharks."