usly. I looked round for the Hyena-swine,
but he was not there. Altogether, perhaps twenty of the Beast
Folk squatted, staring into the fire or talking to one another.

"He is dead, he is dead! the Master is dead!" said the voice
of the Ape-man to the right of me. "The House of Pain--there
is no House of Pain!"

"He is not dead," said I, in a loud voice. "Even now he watches us!"

This startled them. Twenty pairs of eyes regarded me.

"The House of Pain is gone," said I. "It will come again.
The Master you cannot see; yet even now he listens among you."

"True, true!" said the Dog-man.

They were staggered at my assurance. An animal may be ferocious
and cunning enough, but it takes a real man to tell a lie.

"The Man with the Bandaged Arm speaks a strange thing,"
said one of the Beast Folk.

"I tell you it is so," I said. "The Master and the House of Pain
will come again. Woe be to him who breaks the Law!"

They looked curiously at one another. With an affectation of indifference
I began to chop idly at the ground in front of me with my hatchet.
They looked, I noticed, at the deep cuts I made in the turf.

Then the Satyr raised a doubt. I answered him. Then one of the dappled
things objected, and an animated discussion sprang up round the fire.
Every moment I began to feel more convinced of my present security.
I talked now without the catching in my breath, due to the intensity
of my excitement, that had troubled me at first. In the course of about
an hour I had really convinced several of the Beast Folk of the truth
of my assertions, and talked most of the others into a dubious state.
I kept a sharp eye for my enemy the Hyena-swine, but he never appeared.
Every now and then a suspicious movement would startle me, but my
confidence grew rapidly. Then as the moon crept down from the zenith,
one by one the listeners began to yawn (showing the oddest teeth in
the light of the sinking fire), and first one and then another retired
towards the dens in the ravine; and I, dreading the silence and darkness,
went with them, knowing I was safer with several of them than with
one alone.

In this manner began the longer part of my sojourn upon this
Island of Doctor Moreau. But from that night until the end came,
there was but one thing happened to tell save a series of innumerable
small unpleasant details and the fretting of an incessant uneasiness.
So that I prefer to make no chronicle for that gap of ti