H G Wells

The Island of Doctor Moreau H G Wells

I DO not propose to add anything to what has already been written concerning the loss of the LadyVain. As everyone knows, she collided with a derelict when ten days out from Callao. The longboat, with seven of the crew, was picked up eighteen days after by H. M. gunboat Myrtle, and the story oftheir terrible privations has become quite as well known as the far more horrible Medusa case. But Ihave to add to the published story of the Lady Vain another, possibly as horrible and far stranger. Ithas hitherto been supposed that the four men who were in the dingey perished, but this is incorrect. I have the best of evidence for this assertion: I was one of the four men. But in the first place I must state that there never were four men in the dingey, -the number wasthree. Constans, who was "seen by the captain to jump into the gig,"{1} luckily for us and unluckilyfor himself did not reach us. He came down out of the tangle of ropes under the stays of thesmashed bowsprit, some small rope caught his heel as he let go, and he hung for a moment headdownward, and then fell and struck a block or spar floating in the water. We pulled towards him, buthe never came up.{1} Daily News, March 17, 1887. I say luckily for us he did not reach us, and I might almost say luckily for himself; for we had only asmall beaker of water and some soddened ship's biscuits with us, so sudden had been the alarm, sounprepared the ship for any disaster. We thought the people on the launch would be betterprovisioned (though it seems they were not), and we tried to hail them. They could not have heardus, and the next morning when the drizzle cleared, -which was not until past midday, -we couldsee nothing of them. We could not stand up to look about us, because of the pitching of the boat. The two other men who had escaped so far with me were a man named Helmar, a passenger likemyself, and a seaman whose name I don't know, -a short sturdy man, with a stammer. We drifted famishing, and, after our water had come to an end, tormented by an intolerable thirst, for eight days altogether. After the second day the sea subsided slowly to a glassy calm. It is quiteimpossible for the ordinary reader to imagine those eight days. He has not, luckily for himself, anything in his memory to imagine with. After the first day we said little to one another, and lay inour places in the boat and stared at the horizon, or watched, with eyes that grew larger and morehaggard every day, the misery and weakness gaining upon our companions. The sun became pitiless. The water ended on the fourth day, and we were already thinking strange things and saying themwith our eyes; but it was, I think, the sixth before Helmar gave voice to the thing we had all beenthinking. I remember our voices were dry and thin, so that we bent towards one another and sparedour words. I stood out against it with all my might, was rather for scuttling the boat and perishingtogether among the sharks that followed us; but when Helmar said that if his proposal was acceptedwe should have drink, the sailor came round