Page 86 - THE ISLAND OF DR MOREAU

The Island of Doctor Moreau

XII. THE SAYERS OF THE LAW.

THEN something cold touched my hand. I started
violently, and saw close to me a dim pinkish thing,
looking more like a flayed child than anything else in the
world. The creature had exactly the mild but repulsive
features of a sloth, the same low forehead and slow
gestures.
As the first shock of the change of light passed, I saw
about me more distinctly. The little sloth-like creature was
standing and staring at me. My conductor had vanished.
The place was a narrow passage between high walls of
lava, a crack in the knotted rock, and on either side
interwoven heaps of sea-mat, palm-fans, and reeds leaning
against the rock formed rough and impenetrably dark
dens. The winding way up the ravine between these was
scarcely three yards wide, and was disfigured by lumps of
decaying fruit-pulp and other refuse, which accounted for
the disagreeable stench of the place.
The little pink sloth-creature was still blinking at me
when my Ape-man reappeared at the aperture of the
nearest of these dens, and beckoned me in. As he did so a
slouching monster wriggled out of one of the places,

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