(if it can be dignified by that word) in no way calmed my fear of George. He was monstrous, and his close physical presence remained abhorrent. Something in his posture inspired distrust. That jackal sneer on his face seemed at war all the time with a boarish element in his composition, so that I was in permanent doubt as to whether he was going to turn round and run away or charge at me; and a certain nervous shuffle in his step kept that doubt uppermost in my mind.
‘You lead, I’ll follow, George.’
I thought he was about to dash away into the bushes. I tried again.
‘All right. I’ll go ahead and you can follow me.’
I thought he was about to rush at me.
‘You no drive me?’
‘I want to get to HQ, George. I must have water. There’s no danger, is there?’
He shook his great head to and fro, saying, ‘Danger, yes. No. No stop on way, no cause any trouble. Go with him to Master.’
I began to walk. He darted forward immediately and remained exactly one pace behind, his little piggy eyes glaring into mine whenever I turned my head. Had I not felt so exhausted, I should have been more frightened or more amused than I was.
In my condition and in this company, I was not well equipped to appreciate scenery. It presented, however, an immediate solid impression to me, an impression formidable and silent. Underfoot was that broken marginal territory which marks the division between ocean and land, even on so precarious a wedge of land as this. Just ahead were bleached rocks and the sombre greens of palm and thorn bushes. The ocean was at its eternal stir; the foliage hung silent and waiting, and far from welcoming.
The undergrowth came down close to the water’s edge. I saw a track leading among the trees, and took it.
George had evidently summed me up by now, for he said, ‘He got Four Limbs Long. You got Four Limbs Long.’
‘That’s how it happens to be with mankind,’ I said sharply.
George said, or rather chanted, ‘Four Limbs Long – Wrong Kind of Song!’
‘Where did you get that idea from?’ I asked. But I did not stand and wait for his answer. I set off along the path, and he sprang to follow on my heels, one pace behind. It was a relief to be among trees again, in shade. After all the days in the boat, my walk was uncertain, although I felt strength returning as we proceeded.
My mind was preoccupied with many things, not least with my weakness and the contrasting strength of the moronic brute behind me. I was also puzzled by what Maastricht – whom I took for a Netherlander from his name and his accent – had said: ‘Welcome to Moreau Island.’ The name meant something to me, yet I could not place it at all. Moreau Island? Had some scandal been connected with it?
Despite these preoccupations, I took care to keep alert to my surroundings, for there had been something threatening in Maastricht’s warning to George. What or whom were we likely to meet?
This strip of the island had little to offer, apart from the singular virtue of being terra firma. The rock to our right hand, sculptured as if by water at some earlier period of history, harboured many scuttling things, though probably nothing more exotic than birds and lizards. Bamboos were all about us, growing from cavities in the rock and from the ground, which was littered with stones and large shells. They grew thickly enough to obstruct our passage, though thinly enough for a pattern of sunlight and shadow to be cast where we walked. Occasionally we caught glimpses of the bright sea to our left, through a trellis of leaves.
At one point, I almost tripped over one of the large shells. Kicking it aside, I observed that it was the whitened carapace of a tortoise. We seemed almost to be walking through a tortoise graveyard, so thick did the shells lie; there was never a sign of a live one.
Boulders lay close on either side, some of them as tall as we were. Then we had to thread our way between them, and George came uncomfortably close to my vulnerable neck. Two of these big boulders virtually formed a gateway; beyond them more of George’s uncouth breed of native were lurking.
I saw them among the thickets ahead and halted despite myself.
Turning to George, I said, ‘Why are they in hiding? What’s the matter with them?’
With a crafty look, at once furtive and menacing, George said, ‘Four Limbs Long – Wrong Kind of Song … Four Limbs Short – Right Kind of Sport!’ His feet began a kind of shuffle in the dust. His eyes would not meet mine.
There was no point in trying to make conversation with him. Now that his own kind were close, he looked more dangerous than ever.
‘George, you take me straight to HQ, savvy? You no stop, you no cause trouble, you no let anybody cause trouble, OK? You savvy?’
He began to pant in a doggy way, his tongue hanging out. ‘You no got carbine, Cal—.’ Perhaps he struggled to recall my surname; if so he failed, and his use of my given name carried an unwelcome familiarity.
I was remembering what Maastricht had said: ‘Master got carbine!’
He moved one burly shoulder at me, looking away, mumbling, ‘Yes, savvy Master got carbine …’
‘Come on, then!’ Advancing between the boulders, I called, ‘Stand back ahead. We are in a hurry.’
An amazing array of faces peered out of the bushes at me. They bore a family resemblance to George, although there was great variety in their deformity. Here were snouts that turned up and proboscises that turned down; mouths with no lips, mouths with serrated lips; hairless faces and faces covered almost completely with hair or stubble; eyes that glared with no visible lids, eyes that dreamed under heavy lids like horses’. All these faces were turned suspiciously towards me, noses twitching in my direction, and all managed to avoid my direct gaze by a hair’s breadth.
From some eyes in the deeper shadows, I caught the red or green blank glare of iridescence, as if I were confronted by animals from a ludicrous fairy tale.
Indeed, I recalled series of drawings by artists like Charles Le Brun and Thomas Rowlandson, in which the physiognomies of men and women merged through several transformations into the physiognomies of animals – bulls, lions, leopards, dogs, oxen and pigs. The effect was ludicrous as well as alarming. I moved forward, clapping my hands slowly, and slowly they gave way.
But they were calling to George, who still followed me.
‘Has he not Four Limbs Long?’
‘Is he from the Lab’raty?’
‘Where is the one with the bottle?’
‘Has he a carbine?’
And other things I could not understand, for I was soon to learn that George’s diction was a marvel of distinctness among his friends, and he a creature of genius among morons. He still followed stubbornly behind me, saying, or rather chanting – most of their sentences were in singsong – ‘He find in big water. He Four Limbs Long. He Five Fingers Long – Not Wise or Strong. No stop, no cause trouble. Plenty beat at HQ.’
He chanted. I staggered beside him. They fell back or hopped back, letting us through – but hands with maimed stubs of fingers, hands more
