"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 paraffin 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 to his feet, and clutching the brandy bottle. By some flash of intuition I knew what it was he intended. "You don't
138
