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

and yet so incredibly unreal. Montgomery cracked his whip at them,
and forthwith they all turned and fled helter-skelter into the trees;
and when Montgomery and Moreau were at a distance I judged sufficient,
I waded ashore, and picked up and examined the revolvers.
To satisfy myself against the subtlest trickery, I discharged one at
a round lump of lava, and had the satisfaction of seeing the stone
pulverised and the beach splashed with lead. Still I hesitated for
a moment.

"I'll take the risk," said I, at last; and with a revolver in each
hand I walked up the beach towards them.

"That's better," said Moreau, without affectation. "As it is, you have
wasted the best part of my day with your confounded imagination."
And with a touch of contempt which humiliated me, he and Montgomery
turned and went on in silence before me.

The knot of Beast Men, still wondering, stood back among the trees.
I passed them as serenely as possible. One started to follow me,
but retreated again when Montgomery cracked his whip. The rest
stood silent-watching. They may once have been animals; but I never
before saw an animal trying to think.




XIV. DOCTOR MOREAU EXPLAINS.


"AND now, Prendick, I will explain," said Doctor Moreau,
so soon as we had eaten and drunk. "I must confess that
you are the most dictatorial guest I ever entertained.
I warn you that this is the last I shall do to oblige you.
The next thing you threaten to commit suicide about, I shan't do,-
even at some personal inconvenience."

He sat in my deck chair, a cigar half consumed in his white,
dexterous-looking fingers. The light of the swinging lamp fell on his
white hair; he stared through the little window out at the starlight.
I sat as far away from him as possible, the table between us
and the revolvers to hand. Montgomery was not present.
I did not care to be with the two of them in such a little room.

"You admit that the vivisected human being, as you called it, is,
after all, only the puma?" said Moreau. He had made me visit
that horror in the inner room, to assure myself of its inhumanity.

"It is the puma," I said, "still alive, but so cut and mutilated
as I pray I may never see living flesh again. Of all vile-"