ing 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 Kanaka--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.
The man had a rifle; and when his body was found, one of the barrels
was curved into the shape of an S and very nearly bitten through.
Montgomery shot the thing. After that I stuck to the ideal of
humanity--except for little things."

He became silent. I sat in silence watching his face.

"So for twenty years altogether--counting nine years in England--I
have been going on; and there is still something in everything I do
that defeats me, makes me dissatisfied, challenges me to further effort.
Sometimes I rise above my level, sometimes I fall below it; but always
I fall short of the things I dream. The human shape I can get now,
almost with ease, so that it is lithe and graceful, or thick and strong;
but often there is trouble with the hands and the claws,--painful things,
that I dare not shape too freely. But it is in the subtle grafting
and