an turning over in my mind the reason of Montgomery's despair.
"They will change," he said; "they are sure to change." And Moreau,
what was it that Moreau had said? "The stubborn beast-flesh grows
day by day back again." Then I came round to the Hyena-swine. I
felt sure that if I did not kill that brute, he would kill me.
The Sayer of the Law was dead: worse luck. They knew now that we
of the Whips could be killed even as they themselves were killed.
Were they peering at me already out of the green masses of ferns
and palms over yonder, watching until I came within their spring?
Were they plotting against me? What was the Hyena-swine telling them?
My imagination was running away with me into a morass of unsubstantial
fears.

My thoughts were disturbed by a crying of sea-birds hurrying
towards some black object that had been stranded by the waves
on the beach near the enclosure. I knew what that object was,
but I had not the heart to go back and drive them off.
I began walking along the beach in the opposite direction,
designing to come round the eastward corner of the island and so
approach the ravine of the huts, without traversing the possible
ambuscades of the thickets.

Perhaps half a mile along the beach I became aware of one of my three
Beast Folk advancing out of the landward bushes towards me. I was now
so nervous with my own imaginings that I immediately drew my revolver.
Even the propitiatory gestures of the creature failed to disarm me.
He hesitated as he approached.

"Go away!" cried I.

There was something very suggestive of a dog in the cringing attitude
of the creature. It retreated a little way, very like a dog being
sent home, and stopped, looking at me imploringly with canine
brown eyes.

"Go away," said I. "Do not come near me."

"May I not come near you?" it said.

"No; go away," I insisted, and snapped my whip. Then putting
my whip in my teeth, I stooped for a stone, and with that threat
drove the creature away.

So in solitude I came round by the ravine of the Beast People,
and hiding among the weeds and reeds that separated this
crevice from the sea I watched such of them as appeared,
trying to judge from their gestures and appearance how the death
of Moreau and Montgomery and the destruction of the House of Pain
had affected them. I know now the folly of my cowardice.
Had I kept my courage up to the level of the dawn, had I not
allowed it to ebb away in solitary thought, I