him. The matter sounded as though it ended in blows, but in that I thought my ears were mistaken. Then he shouted at the dogs and returned to the cabin.
`Well?’ said he, in the doorway. `You were just beginning to tell me.’
I told him my name, Edward Prendick, and how I had taken to natural history as a relief from the dullness of my comfortable independence. He seemed interested in this. `I’ve done some science myself — I did my Biology at University College, — getting out the ovary of the earthworm and the radula of the snail and all that. Lord! it’s ten years ago. But go on, go on — tell me about the boat.’
He was evidently satisfied with the frankness of my story, which I told in concise sentences enough — for I felt horribly weak, — and when it was finished he reverted presently to the topic of natural history and his own biological studies. He began to question me closely about Tottenhan Court Road and Gower Street. `Is Caplatzi still flourishing? What a shop that was!’ He had evidently been a very ordinary medical student, and drifted incontinently to the topic of the music-halls. He told me some anecdotes. `Left it all,’ he said, `ten years ago. How jolly it all used to be! But I made a young ass of myself…. Played myself out before I was twenty-one. I daresay it’s all different now…. But I must look up that ass of a cook and see what he’s doing to your mutton.
The growling overhead was renewed, so suddenly and with so much savage anger that it startled me. `What’s that?’ I called after him, but the door had closed. He came back again with the boiled mutton, and I was so excited by the appetising smell of it, that I forgot the noise of the beast forthwith.
After a day of alternate sleep and feeding I was so far recovered as to be able to get from my bunk to the scuttle and see the green seas trying to keep pace with us. I judged the schooner was running before the wind. Montgomery — that was the name of the flaxen-haired man — came in again as I stood there, and I asked him for some clothes. He lent me some duck things of his own, for those I had worn in the boat, he said, had been thrown overboard. They were rather loose for me, for he was large and long in his limbs.
He told me casually that the captain was three parts drunk in his own cabin. As I assumed the clothes I began asking him some questions about the destination of the ship. He said the ship was bound for Hawaii, but that it had to land him first.
`Where?’ said I.
`It’s an island…. Where I live. So far as I know, it hasn’t got a name.’
He stared at me with his nether lip dropping, and looked so wilfully stupid of a sudden that it came into my head that he desired to avoid my questions. `I’m ready,’ I said. He lead the way out of the cabin.
CHAPTER 3
THE STRANGE FACE
At the companion was a man obstructing our way. He was standing on the ladder with his back to us, peering over the combing of the hatchway. He was, I could see, a misshapen man, short, broad, and clumsy, with a crooked back, a hairy neck, and a head sunk between his shoulders. He was dressed in dark blue serge, and had peculiarly thick coarse black hair. I heard the unseen dogs growl furiously, and forthwith he ducked back, coming into contact with the hand I put out to fend him off from myself. He turned with animal swiftness.
The black face thus flashed upon me startled me profoundly. It was a singularly deformed one. The facial part projected, forming something dimly suggestive of a muzzle, and the huge half-open mouth showed as big white teeth as I had ever seen in a human mouth. His eyes were bloodshot at the edges, with scarcely a rim of white round the hazel pupils. There was a curious glow of excitement in his face.
`Confound you!’ said Montgomery. Why the devil don’t you get out of the way?’ The blackfaced man started aside without a word.
I went on up the companion, still staring at him almost against my will as I did so. Montgomery stayed at the foot for a moment. `You have no business here, you know,’ he said, in a deliberate tone. `Your place is forward.’
The blackfaced man cowered. `They… won’t have me forward.’ He spoke slowly, with a 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 halfway through the hatchway, looking back, still astonished beyond measure at the grotesque ugliness of this blackfaced 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 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. Further 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 stared side by side for a space at the water foaming under the stern and the bubbles 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.
Suddenly we heard a yelp and a volley of furious blasphemy coming from the companion hatchway, and the deformed man with the black face clambered up hurriedly. He was immediately followed by a heavy red-haired man in a white cap. At the sight of the former the staghounds, who had all tired of barking at me by this time, became furiously excited, howling and leaping against their chains. The black hesitated before them, and this gave the red-haired man time to come up with him and deliver a tremendous blow between the shoulder-blades with his fist. The poor devil went down like a felled ox, and rolled in the dirt among the furiously excited dogs. It was lucky for him they were muzzled. The red-haired man gave a yawp of exultation and stood staggering and, as it seemed to me, in serious danger of either going backwards down the companion hatchway, or forwards upon his victim.
So soon as the second man had appeared, Montgomery had started violently. `Steady on there!’ he cried, in a tone of remonstrance. A couple of sailors appeared on the forecastle.
The
