first time. It was then near midnight.
He was almost sober, but greatly disturbed in his mind.
He had been strangely under the influence of Moreau's personality:
I do not think it had ever occurred to him that Moreau could die.
This disaster was the sudden collapse of the habits that had become part of
his nature in the ten or more monotonous years he had spent on the island.
He talked vaguely, answered my questions crookedly, wandered into
general questions.

"This silly ass of a world," he said; "what a muddle it all is!
I haven't had any life. I wonder when it's going to begin.
Sixteen years being bullied by nurses and schoolmasters at
their own sweet will; five in London grinding hard at medicine,
bad food, shabby lodgings, shabby clothes, shabby vice, a blunder,--I
didn't know any better,--and hustled off to this beastly island.
Ten years here! What's it all for, Prendick? Are we bubbles blown by
a baby?"

It was hard to deal with such ravings. "The thing we have to think
of now," said I, "is how to get away from this island."

"What's the good of getting away? I'm an outcast.
Where am _I_ to join on? It's all very well for _you_, Prendick.
Poor old Moreau! We can't leave him here to have his bones picked.
As it is--And besides, what will become of the decent part of the
Beast Folk?"

"Well," said I, "that will do to-morrow. I've been thinking we might make
the brushwood into a pyre and burn his body--and those other things.
Then what will happen with the Beast Folk?"

"_I_ don't know. I suppose those that were made of beasts of prey will
make silly asses of themselves sooner or later. We can't massacre
the lot--can we? I suppose that's what _your_ humanity would suggest?
But they'll change. They are sure to change."

He talked thus inconclusively until at last I felt my temper going.

"Damnation!" he exclaimed at some petulance of mine; "can't you see I'm
in a worse hole than you are?" And he got up, and went for the brandy.
"Drink!" he said returning, "you logic-chopping, chalky-faced saint
of an atheist, drink!"

"Not I," said I, and sat grimly watching his face under the yellow
paraffine flare, as he drank himself into a garrulous misery.

I have a memory of infinite tedium. He wandered into a maudlin
defence of the Beast People and of M'ling. M'ling, he said,
was the only thing that had ever really cared for him.
And suddenly an idea came to him.

"I'm damned!" said he, staggering