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

He spoke slowly, with a queer, hoarse quality in his voice.

"Won't have you forward!" said Montgomery, in a menacing voice.
"But I tell you to go!" He was on the brink of saying something further,
then looked up at me suddenly and followed me up the ladder.

I had paused half way through the hatchway, looking back, still astonished
beyond measure at the grotesque ugliness of this black-faced creature.
I had never beheld such a repulsive and extraordinary face before,
and yet-if the contradiction is credible-I experienced at
the same time an odd feeling that in some way I had already
encountered exactly the features and gestures that now amazed me.
Afterwards it occurred to me that probably I had seen him as I
was lifted aboard; and yet that scarcely satisfied my suspicion
of a previous acquaintance. Yet how one could have set eyes on
so singular a face and yet have forgotten the precise occasion,
passed my imagination.

Montgomery's movement to follow me released my attention, and I
turned and looked about me at the flush deck of the little schooner.
I was already half prepared by the sounds I had heard for what I saw.
Certainly I never beheld a deck so dirty. It was littered with
scraps of carrot, shreds of green stuff, and indescribable filth.
Fastened by chains to the mainmast were a number of grisly staghounds,
who now began leaping and barking at me, and by the mizzen a huge puma was
cramped in a little iron cage far too small even to give it turning room.
Farther under the starboard bulwark were some big hutches containing
a number of rabbits, and a solitary llama was squeezed in a mere
box of a cage forward. The dogs were muzzled by leather straps.
The only human being on deck was a gaunt and silent sailor at
the wheel.

The patched and dirty spankers were tense before the wind,
and up aloft the little ship seemed carrying every sail she had.
The sky was clear, the sun midway down the western sky;
long waves, capped by the breeze with froth, were running with us.
We went past the steersman to the taffrail, and saw the water come
foaming under the stern and the bubbles go dancing and vanishing
in her wake. I turned and surveyed the unsavoury length of
the ship.

"Is this an ocean menagerie?" said I.

"Looks like it," said Montgomery.

"What are these beasts for? Merchandise, curios? Does the captain
think he is going to sell them somewhere in the South Seas?"

"It looks like it, doesn't it?" said Montgomery, and turned towards
the wake again.