I began with a sheep, and killed it after a day and a half by a slip of the scalpel. I took another sheep, and made a thing of pain and fear and left it bound up to heal. It looked quite human to me when Ihad finished it; but when I went to it I was discontented with it.
It remembered me, and was terrified beyond imagination; and it had no more than the wits of a sheep. The more I looked at it the clumsier it seemed, until at last I put the monster out of its misery.
These animals without courage, these fear-haunted, pain-driven things, without a spark of pugnacious energy to face torment,--they are no good for man-making.
"Then I took a gorilla I had; and upon that, working with infinite care and mastering difficulty after difficulty, I made my first man.
All the week, night and day, I moulded him. With him it was chiefly the brain that needed moulding; much had to be added, much changed.
I thought him a fair specimen of the negroid type when I had finished him, and he lay bandaged, bound, and motionless before me.
It was only when his life was assured that I left him and came into this room again, and found Montgomery much as you are.
He had heard some of the cries as the thing grew human,--cries like those that disturbed you so. I didn't take him completely into my confidence at first. And the Kanakas too, had realised something of it. They were scared out of their wits by the sight of me. I got Montgomery over to me--in a way;but I and he had the hardest job to prevent the Kanakas deserting.
Finally they did; and so we lost the yacht. I spent many days educating the brute,--altogether I had him for three or four months.
I taught him the rudiments of English; gave him ideas of counting;even made the thing read the alphabet. But at that he was slow, though I've met with idiots slower. He began with a clean sheet, mentally; had no memories left in his mind of what he had been.
When his scars were quite healed, and he was no longer anything but painful and stiff, and able to converse a little, I took him yonder and introduced him to the Kanakas as an interesting stowaway.
"They were horribly afraid of him at first, somehow,--which offended me rather, for I was conceited about him; but his ways seemed so mild, and he was so abject, that after a time they received him and took his education in hand. He was quick to learn, very imitative and adaptive, and built himself a hovel rather better, it seemed to me, than their own shanties. There was one among the boys a bit of a missionary, and he taught the thing to read, or at least to pick out letters, and gave him some rudimentary ideas of morality; but it seems the beast's habits were not all that is desirable.
"I rested from work for some days after this, and was in a mind to write an account of the whole affair to wake up English physiology.
Then I came upon the creature squatting up in a tree and gibbering at two of the Kanakas who had been teasing him. I threatened him, told him the inhumanity of such a proceeding, aroused his sense of shame, and came home resolved to do better before I took my work back to England.
I have been doing better. But somehow the things drift back again: the stubborn beast-flesh grows day by day back again.
But I mean to do better things still. I mean to conquer that.
This puma--
"But that's the story. All the Kanaka boys are dead now;one fell overboard of the launch, and one died of a wounded heel that he poisoned in some way with plant-juice. Three went away in the yacht, and I suppose and hope were drowned.
The other one--was killed. Well, I have replaced them.
Montgomery went on much as you are disposed to do at first, and then--"What became of the other one?" said I, sharply,--"the other Kanaka who was killed?""The fact is, after I had made a number of human creatures I made a Thing." He hesitated.
"Yes," said I.
"It was killed." "I don't understand," said I; do you mean to say--""It killed the Kanakas--yes. It killed several other things that it caught. We chased it for a couple of days. It only got loose by accident--I never meant it to get away. It wasn't finished.
It was purely an experiment. It was a limbless thing, with a horrible face, that writhed along the ground in a serpentine fashion.
It was immensely strong, and in infuriating pain. It lurked in the woods for some days, until we hunted it; and then it wriggled into the northern part of the island, and we divided the party to close in upon it. Montgomery insisted upon coming with me.
