in the wrong place. The dogs were still snarling, and strained at their chains after these men, as the white-haired man landed with them.
The three big fellows spoke to one another in odd gutteral tones, and the man who had waited for us on the beach, began chattering to them excitedly — a foreign language, as I fancied — as they laid handss on some bales piled near the stern. Somewhere I had heard such a voice before, and I could not think where. The white-haired man stood holding in a tumult of six dogs and bawling orders over their din. Montgomery, having unshipped the rudder, landed likewise, and all set to work unloading. I was too faint, what with my long fast and the sun beating down on my bare head, to offer any assistance.
Presently the white-haired man seemed to recollect my presence, and came up to me. `You look,’ said he, `as though you had not breakfasted.’
His little eyes were a brilliant black under his heavy brows. `I must apologise for that. Now you are our guest, we must make you comfortable — though you are uninvited, you know.’
He looked keenly into my face. `Montgomery says you are an educated man, Mr Prendick — says you know something of science. May I ask what that signifies?’
I told him I had spent some years at the Royal College of Science, and had done some research in biology under Huxley. He raised his eyebrows slightly at that.
`That alters the case a little, Mr Prendick,’ he said, with a trifle more respect in his manner. `As it happens, we are biologists here. This is a biological station — of a sort.’ His eye rested on the men in white, who were busily hauling the puma, on rollers, towards the walled yard. `I and Montgomery, at least,’ he added.
Then, `When you will be able to get away, I can’t say. We’re off the track to anywhere. We see a ship once in a twelvemonth or so.’
He left me abruptly and went up the beach past this group, and, I think, entered the enclosure. The other two men were with Montgomery erecting a pile of smaller packages on a low-wheeled truck. The llama was still on the launch with the rabbit-hutches; the staghounds still lashed to the thwarts. The pile of things completed, all three men laid hold of the truck, and began shoving the ton-weight or so upon it after the puma. Presently Montgomery left them, and, coming back to me, held out his hand.
`I’m glad,’ said he, `for my own part. That captain was a silly ass. He’d have made things lively for you.’
`It was you,’ said I, `that saved me again.’
`That depends. You’ll find this island an infernally rum place, I promise you. I’d watch my goings carefully if I were you. He — ‘ He hesitated, and seemed to alter his mind about what was on his lips. `I wish you’d help me with these rabbits,’ he said.
His procedure with the rabbits was singular. I waded in with him and helped him lug one of the hutches ashore. No sooner was that done than he opened the door of it, and tilting the thing on one end, turned its living contents out on the ground. They fell in a struggling heap one on the top of the other. He clapped his hands, and forthwith they went off with that hopping run of theirs, fifteen or twenty of them, I should think, up the beach. `Increase and multiply, my friends,’ said Montgomery. `Replenish the island. Hitherto we’ve had a certain lack of meat here.’
As I watched them disappearing, the white-haired man returned with a brandy flask and some biscuits. `Something to go on with, Prendick,’ said he in a far more familiar tone than before.
I made no ado, but set to work on the biscuits at once, while the white-haired man helped Montgomery to release about a score more of the rabbits. Three big hutches, however, went up to the house with the puma. The brandy I did not touch, for I have been an abstainer from my birth.
CHAPTER 7
THE LOCKED DOOR
The reader will perhaps understand that at first everything was so strange about me, and my position was the outcome of such unexpected adventures, that I had no discernment of the relative strangeness of this or that thing about me. I followed the llama up the beach, and was overtaken by Montgomery who asked me not to enter the stone enclosure. I noticed then that the puma in its cage and the pile of packages had been placed outside the entrance to this quadrangle.
I turned and saw that the launch had now been unloaded, run out again, and beached, and the white-haired man was walking towards us. He addressed Montgomery.
`And now comes the problem of this uninvited guest. What are we to do with him?’
`He knows something of science,’ said Montgomery.
`I’m itching to get to work again — with this new stuff,’ said the greyhaired man, nodding towards the enclosure. His eyes grew brighter.
`I daresay you are,’ said Montgomery, in anything but a cordial tone.
`We can’t send him over there, and we can’t spare the time to build him a new shanty. And we certainly can’t take him into our confidence just yet.’
`I’m in your hands,’ said I. I had no idea of what he meant by `over there.’
`I’ve been thinking of the same things,’ Montgomery answered. `There’s my room with the outer door — ‘
`That’s it,’ said the elder man promptly, looking at Montgomery, and all three of us went towards the enclosure. `I’m sorry to make a mystery, Mr Prendick — but you’ll remember you’re uninvited. Our little establishment here contains a secret or so, is a kind of Bluebeard’s Chamber, in fact. Nothing very dreadful really — to a sane man. But just now — as we don’t know you
`Decidedly,’ said I; `I should be a fool to take offence at any want of confidence.
He twisted his heavy mouth into a faint smile — he was one of those saturnine people who smile with the corners of the mouth down — and bowed his acknowledgement of my complaisance. The main entrance to the enclosure was passed; it was a heavy wooden gate, framed in iron and locked, with the cargo of the launch piled outside it; and at the corner we came to a small doorway I had not previously observed. The greyhaired man produced a bundle of keys from the pocket of his greasy blue jacket, opened this door, and entered. His keys and the elaborate locking up of the place, even while it was still under his eye, struck me as peculiar.
I followed him, and found myself in a small apartment, plainly but not uncomfortably furnished, and with its inner door, which was slightly ajar, opening into a paved courtyard. This inner door Montgomery at once closed. A hammock was slung across the darker corner of the room, and a small unglazed window, defended by an iron bar, looked out towards the sea.
This, the greyhaired man told me, was to be my apartment, and the inner door, which, `for fear of accidents,’ he said, he would lock on the other side, was my limit inward. He called my attention to a convenient deckchair before the window, and to an array of old books chiefly, I found, surgical works and editions of the Latin and Greek classics — languages I cannot read with any comfort — on a shelf near the hammock. He left the room by the outer door, as if to avoid opening the inner one again.
`We usually have our meals in here,’ said Montgomery, and then, as if in doubt, went out after the other. `Moreau,’ I heard him call, and for the moment I do not think
