Moreau After Dark

H.G. Wells was not a man to shy away from the most intimate aspects of humanity. However, writing in the late Victorian Era, he could not be as explicit as he may have wished to be. For instance, in The Island of Doctor Moreau, you have a situation where three men are living on an island full of uplifted animals of both sexes. If the uplifted female animals are sufficiently human, the men are going to be sexually attracted to them. Wells never actually comes right out and says that any of his human men are banging the animal girls, but if you read between the lines, it becomes clear that, yeah, they are.

In chapter XV, "Concerning the Beast Folk", for instance, Prendick makes an odd observation about Montgomery: "I fancied even then that he had a sneaking kindness for some of these metamorphosed brutes, a vicious sympathy with some of their ways, but that he attempted to veil it from me at first." This sentence is sufficiently opaque that Prendick/Wells might have been talking about anything, but given the attitudes of the time, the only subject he would need to be opaque about would be sex. In addition, a few paragraphs earlier, Prendick/Wells states that "The females were less numerous than the males, and liable to much furtive persecution in spite of the monogamy the Law enjoined." In other words, the Law included a prohibition against rape and sexual promiscuity, but most of the male uplifted animals ignored it, and it doesn't require a great stretch of the imagination to believe that this was the "vicious sympathy with some of their ways" that Montgomery exhibited.

As for Prendick himself, after Moreau and Montgomery are killed, he takes to living in the village established by the uplifted animals. As the uplifts slowly revert to animalism, Prendick remarks on "how the quasi-human intimacy I had permitted myself with some of them in the first month of my loneliness became a shuddering horror to recall." Again, this is sufficiently vague that Prendick/Wells could be talking about anything; it is suggestive because there is only one topic he would need to be this vague about.

A few decades later, when Hollywood made its first film version of this novel, "Island of Lost Souls" it was made explicit that the Prendick character (named Parker in the film) was attracted to an uplifted panther woman named Lota. Every subsequent dramatization of the novel includes a romance between the variously-named Prendick character and an uplifted animal woman, because every Hollywood movie needs a romance plotline, and the writers can't resist the idea of a match between a human man and an uplifted animal woman.

Moreau XXII: The Man Alone

As chapter XXII: "The Man Alone" opens, Prendick sets out from the island of Doctor Moreau on board a ship's boat. As he drifts along, eating and drinking sparingly from his stores, he finds that he doesn't particularly want to return to the company of his fellow humans. He remains adrift for three days before being rescued by a brig sailing from Apia to San Francisco.

In his introduction, Prendick's nephew states that his uncle was rescued on January 5, 1888. Working backwards from this, we find that Prendick first saw the boat's sail on December 31, 1887. He first boarded it, dumped its deceased occupants on the beach, and sailed off on January 1, 1888; the next day he made his last visit to the island for food and water, then set out for the open sea.

Prendick tells his story to the captain and first mate of the brig, but they refuse to believe him and decide he must have been driven mad by solitude. After that, he keeps his story to himself, feigning amnesia to avoid explaining how he spent the eleven months after the wreck of the Lady Vain.

Although he of course doesn't use the term, it is clear that Prendick is suffering from post-traumatic stress. He observes, "My memory of the Law, of the two dead sailors, of the ambuscades of the darkness, of the body in the canebrake, haunted me; and, unnatural as it seems, with my return to mankind came, instead of that confidence and sympathy I had expected, a strange enhancement of the uncertainty and dread I had experienced during my stay upon the island. No one would believe me; I was almost as queer to men as I had been to the Beast People. I may have caught something of the natural wildness of my companions. They say that terror is a disease, and anyhow I can witness that for several years now a restless fear has dwelt in my mind,—such a restless fear as a half-tamed lion cub may feel."

Prendick's PTSD results in his being unable to relax around other people. He can't rid himself of the feeling that they, too, are uplifted animals (as in a sense they are, though due to natural evolution rather than Moreau's brutal surgery), and that at any time they may start to revert to animalism as Moreau's experimental subjects did. Once back in London, Prendick tells his story one more time, to a psychiatrist who knew Moreau, and who is inclined to give Prendick the benefit of the doubt. The psychiatrist is able to help Prendick come to terms with his experience, though he is never entirely free from the terror. In the end. Prendick leaves London and takes up residence in the unpopulated countryside, where he reads and conducts chemical and astronomical research. His greatest solace is to look up into the night sky and contemplate the stars.

Prendick's nephew notes that the only island known in the region his uncle was picked up was Noble's Isle, "a small volcanic islet and uninhabited. It was visited in 1891 by H. M. S. Scorpion. A party of sailors then landed, but found nothing living thereon except certain curious white moths, some hogs and rabbits, and some rather peculiar rats." Noble's Isle is an invention of Wells; the area where he places it is an open stretch of the Pacific Ocean about 500 miles west of the Galapagos Islands.

Moreau XXI: The Reversion of the Beast Folk

As chapter XXI: "The Reversion of the Beast Folk" opens, Prendick acknowledges that he has "became one among the Beast People in the Island of Doctor Moreau." He awakens at night to find that the uplifted St. Bernard dog has joined him in his hut. The uplifted dog declares himself Prendick's slave, and Prendick accepts him. With a faithful servant at his side, Prendick's courage revives. Together, the two of them join a score of the other uplifted animals who have gathered together around a fire. Prendick repeats that Moreau is not dead, and is still watching over them.

“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.

Over the course of the next hour, Prendick manages to convince a few of the uplifted animals, and sow enough doubt in the minds of the others to ensure his own safety and maintain the force of the Law.

However, Moreau's surgical uplifting was not permanent. By slow degrees, his experimental subjects lose their grip on humanity and revert to animalism. As they do so, Prendick and the uplifted dog move out of the uplift village and set up a separate hut in the ruins of the burned-out compound. "Some memory of pain, I found, still made that place the safest from the Beast Folk."

Prendick keeps watch for ships, especially the Ipecacuanha, but the few he sees never come close enough for him to signal them. By September or October, after his arm has healed, Prendick starts to build a raft, but he is severely hampered by his own lack of mechanical skill. After his first attempt fails, Prendick is moping in his hut when the uplifted sloth -- by now almost completely reverted -- returns. Prendick eventually realizes that the sloth wants him to follow it, and he does. The sloth leads him to a clearing in the jungle where he finds that the hyena-swine has killed the St. Bernard. The predator growls at Prendick, and simultaneously Prendick shoots it as it leaps at him. The hyena-swine knocks Prendick down, but it is already dead from his shot, and he is able to crawl out from underneath it.

With the animals almost completely reverted, Prendick realizes that he has to leave the island to save himself from them, and he makes another attempt to build a raft. Before he can launch it into the sea, he sees a sail slowly approaching the island. Prendick builds a signal fire, but the boat ignores it. The next day, the boat is close enough for Prendick to see that its two passengers are dead. The boat beaches itself, and Prendick goes aboard. He finds that one of the dead men has red hair like the captain of the Ipecacuanha. (In his introduction, Prendick's nephew states that the Ipecacuanha had gone missing.)

Prendick tilts the boat over and drags the corpses out. This immediately attracts three of the remaining carnivores, two wolves and a bear-bull hybrid. Prendick pushes the boat out to sea and climbs in. He sails around to a stream near the former village of the uplifted animals, fills an empty keg from the boat, collects some fruit, and kills two rabbits with the last of his cartridges. Prendick is ready at last to leave the island of Doctor Moreau.

Moreau XX: Alone with the Beast Folk

As chapter XX: "Alone with the Beast Folk" opens, Prendick faces three of Moreau's uplifted animals single-handed -- literally, since his left arm was broken the day before. Observing that "There was nothing for it but courage," he decides -- again literally -- that he needs to have the whip hand. He retrieve's Montgomery's whip from the beach and uses it to cow the three uplifted animals into submission. He then orders them to carry the bodies of Montgomery and the uplifts into the sea for disposal.

While the first three uplifted animals are carrying bodies into the sea, a fourth comes onto the beach. This is an uplifted hyena-swine hybrid, currently the biggest, most dangerous carnivore on the island. Prendick orders the uplifted hyena-swine to submit, but he refuses. Prendick does not mean to leave up alive, and fires the revolver at him, but, regrettably, misses. The uplifted hybrid runs off, but Prendick knows he doesn't dare fire and miss a second time lest his mystique as "the Man with the Whip" be damaged.

The first three uplifted animals finish taking the bodies into the sea, and Prendick dismisses them. With the crisis past, he suffers a failure of nerve. It occurs to him that there is no place on the island that he can rest or sleep. He knows that he ought to go among the uplifted animals and firmly establish his dominion over them, especially with the hyena-swine uncowed, but by this time he is exhausted. He has been up for over 24 hours, his arm is broken, and he never fully recovered his strength from the ordeal of being shipwrecked. Instead, he retreats to a point where the beach runs out to a coral reef, and sits down facing the island.

Prendick's fears overwhelm him. He notices that one of the bodies has washed up on the beach to his left, but he cannot deal with it. Instead, he moves away from it. As he does so, one of the three uplifted animals he had gained control of, an uplifted St. Bernard dog, approaches him. Prendick pulls out his pistol and yells for the uplifted dog to go away. "May I not come near you?" the uplifted dog asks, but Prendick is too fearful to allow it. He picks up a stone and drives the dog 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 might have grasped the vacant sceptre of Moreau and ruled over the Beast People. As it was I lost the opportunity, and sank to the position of a mere leader among my fellows.

Driven by hunger, Prendick approaches some of the uplifted animals and asks where he can find food. An uplifted ox-boar hybrid tells him, “There is food in the huts." Prendick enters one of the huts, eats some fruit he finds there, cleans it out, and builds a barricade across the entrance. Then he falls asleep.

Moreau XIX: Montgomery's Bank Holiday

Chapter XIX: "Montgomery's Bank Holiday"

Once they've finished piling the corpses of Moreau's victims atop Moreau himself, Prendick and Montgomery sit down together to plan out their future. Prendick wants them to leave the island, but Montgomery insists that's out of the question. Whatever it was that Montgomery did to get himself exiled from England, he's convinced that there's no going back for him.

Montgomery starts drinking again, and while he's sozzled, he decides to share his brandy with the uplifted animals. When Prendick tries to stop him, Montgomery pulls a pistol on him, and Prendick relents. After Montgomery leaves, Prendick starts making plans to leave the island himself. Under the light of a full moon he goes into the supply shed and starts gathering food and other supplies for the journey.

Prendick's preparations are interrupted when he hears a shot fired outside the compound. In the dawn's early light he finds a crowd of uplifted animals gathered around a bonfire. He fires his pistol and most of them scatter. All that remain are Montgomery and four of the uplifts, all lying on the ground. All but one of the uplifts, including the Speaker of the Law and M'ling, are dead. The only survivors are Montgomery himself and an uplifted wolf who has been so badly burned that Prendick shoots him. Montgomery has been throttled by the Speaker of the Law, and is dying.

While he stares at the scene in front of him, Prendick hears a thud and hiss behind him. He sees that the compound is on fire, and realizes that he must have upset his oil lamp when he ran outside. Then he looks back and realizes that Montgomery built the bonfire by chopping up the boats. Montgomery dies as the sun rises, and Prendick sees three uplifted animals emerge from the brush. Prendick is the last human on the island.

The casual detail of the full moon allows us to assign a date to Montgomery's Bank Holiday.The Lady Vain went down on February 1, 1887. Prendick drifted in the Lady Vain's boat for eight days, and was rescued on February 9. Two days later, Prendick revives, and shares his story with Montgomery. The next day, February 12, Prendick is stranded on the island of Dr. Moreau. Seven or eight weeks later, or possibly more, the puma escapes and Moreau is killed. Seven weeks would bring us to April 2, and eight weeks to April 9. The full moon falls on April 8, so Moreau's death would mostly likely have taken place on Thursday, April 7, and chapter XIX ends with the sun rising on the morning of Friday, April 8, 1887.

Moreau XVIII: The Finding of Moreau

As chapter XVIII, "The Finding of Moreau" opens, Montgomery is ready to drown himself in brandy, but Prendick won't let him. He insists they have to go out and find out what happened to Moreau. Prendick overrides Montgomery's feeble protests, and after a quick meal, the two men and M'ling go out.

We learn for the first time that it was Prendick's left arm that was broken when the puma freed herself. One can picture how it happened. Prendick would have been staring out at the sea holding his cigarette in his right hand. He hears the sound of the puma pulling her chain out of the wall and knocking down Moreau, he turns and sees her running toward the entrance. He raises his left arm, because even as startled as he is, he won't risk any damage to his precious cigarette. The puma knocks him down, breaking his left arm, and runs off. Presumably, Prendick's care for his cigarette comes to naught in the end, and he drops it at this point as the force of the puma's blow sends him rolling over and over in the sand.

Prendick ignores whatever pain he is suffering in his left arm, which was broken by the puma only hours before, and leads the others out of the compound, carrying a pistol in his good hand. M'ling had lost his hatchet earlier in the day when he was grappling with the uplifted swine, and he doesn't bother replacing it. As Prendick observes, "Teeth were his weapons, when it came to fighting." Montgomery carries the other pistol, but he does not have it at the ready -- he simply follows the others with his hands in his pockets.

M'ling leads the group through the jungle, "his shoulder hunched, his strange black head moving with quick starts as he peered first on this side of the way and then on that." Montgomery follows him, still half-sozzled, and Prendick brings up the rear, revolver in hand. After making their way for some time, M'ling suddenly stops, and Montgomery almost runs into him.

Half a dozen uplifted animals emerge from the jungle, led by the Speaker of the Law, a gray-haired uplift whose animal origins Prendick never mentions. The uplifts are in shock, and they reveal to Prendick's group that Moreau is dead. The next question the uplifts have for Montgomery is whether there is still a Law.

Prendick, thinking fast, steps in front of Montogmery and says:

“Children of the Law, he is not dead!” M'ling turned his sharp eyes on me. “He has changed his shape; he has changed his body,” I went on. “For a time you will not see him. He is—there,” I pointed upward, “where he can watch you. You cannot see him, but he can see you. Fear the Law!”

I looked at them squarely. They flinched.

Having re-asserted control over the uplifts,  Prendick inquires about the puma, and learns that she is also dead. He orders the uplifts to lead them to Moreau's body, and the group sets out.

During their journey, they are interrupted by a disturbance:

Then came a yelling, a crashing among the branches, and a little pink homunculus rushed by us shrieking. Immediately after appeared a monster in headlong pursuit, blood-bedabbled, who was amongst us almost before he could stop his career. The grey Thing leapt aside. M'ling, with a snarl, flew at it, and was struck aside. Montgomery fired and missed, bowed his head, threw up his arm, and turned to run. I fired, and the Thing still came on; fired again, point-blank, into its ugly face. I saw its features vanish in a flash: its face was driven in. Yet it passed me, gripped Montgomery, and holding him, fell headlong beside him and pulled him sprawling upon itself in its death-agony.

I found myself alone with M'ling, the dead brute, and the prostrate man. Montgomery raised himself slowly and stared in a muddled way at the shattered Beast Man beside him. It more than half sobered him. He scrambled to his feet. Then I saw the grey Thing returning cautiously through the trees.

“See,” said I, pointing to the dead brute, “is the Law not alive? This came of breaking the Law.”

He peered at the body. “He sends the Fire that kills,” said he, in his deep voice, repeating part of the Ritual. The others gathered round and stared for a space.

When the party reaches the site of Moreau's final battle with the puma, it is clear that both are indeed dead. Moreau shot the puma in the shoulder, but the puma was able to  brain Moreau with its chain. The puma is half-devoured.

The uplifts assist Prendick in carrying Moreau's body back to the compound. They all leave, and M'ling leaves with them. Prendick locks the gate, then he and Montgomery go into Moreau's laboratory, where they "put an end to all we found living there."

This chapter ends with Prendick and Montgomery in a precarious position. Moreau is dead, and their control over the uplifts is on shaky ground. Prendick is able to salvage the situation for the time being by spinning a tale of Moreau's spirit keeping watch over the island, and by killing one uplift who is breaking the Law (and incidentally keeping an uplifted sloth from being killed and eaten). However, the situation is clearly unstable. How long will the uplifts allow themselves to be cowed by an invisible Moreau, when they clearly saw Moreau dead?

Moreau's death also marks a change in Prendick's fortunes. Montgomery is incapable of dealing with the sudden crisis. It is Prendick who insists on going out to learn Moreau's fate, and it is Prendick whose quick thinking prevents the collapse of the Law that keeps the uplifts docile. With Moreau gone and Montgomery sinking into an alcoholic stupor, Prendick is now the de facto leader of the island's bizarre society. To see how he deals with his perilous situation, tune in for chapter XIX, "Montgomery's Bank Holiday".

Moreau XVII: A Catastrophe

The first uplifted animal we encounter in The Island of Doctor Moreau is M'ling, who had accompanied Montgomery on board the Ipecacuanha on the alcoholic doctor's annual expedition to acquire more animal subjects for Moreau. He had assisted Montgomery in carrying Prendick out of the boat he had been marooned in, though Prendick had been delirious at that point and had no reliable memory of the event. Prendick first encounters him in chapter III, "The Strange Face":

He was standing on the ladder with his back to us, peering over the combing of the hatchway. He was, I could see, a misshapen man, short, broad, and clumsy, with a crooked back, a hairy neck, and a head sunk between his shoulders. He was dressed in dark-blue serge, and had peculiarly thick, coarse, black hair. I heard the unseen dogs growl furiously, and forthwith he ducked back,—coming into contact with the hand I put out to fend him off from myself. He turned with animal swiftness.

In some indefinable way the black face thus flashed upon me shocked me profoundly. It was a singularly deformed one. The facial part projected, forming something dimly suggestive of a muzzle, and the huge half-open mouth showed as big white teeth as I had ever seen in a human mouth. His eyes were blood-shot at the edges, with scarcely a rim of white round the hazel pupils. There was a curious glow of excitement in his face.

Later on in the book, Prendick describes M'ling's origins: "It was a complex trophy of Moreau's horrible skill,—a bear, tainted with dog and ox, and one of the most elaborately made of all his creatures." M'ling is Moreau's greatest success. He looks more human than any of the other uplifted animals, and lives with the humans in Moreau's compound rather than in the ramshackle village the other uplifted animals have built for themselves. Montgomery has trained M'ling to act as a servant, and he seems to be the only one of the uplifted animals with a name (or at least the only one whose name Prendick learns). He is also the only one of the uplifted animals who is allowed to carry a weapon.

The catastrophe that the title of chapter XVII refers to occurs at least eight weeks, probably more, after Prendick arrives at the island, which would put it in April or May of 1887. Prendick has risen early, eaten breakfast, and is smoking a cigarette while standing outside the open doorway of Moreau's compound. He sees --

Hang on, let's pause a moment. How does Prendick come to be smoking a cigarette? He had absolutely no possessions when he arrived on the island. Even his clothing consists of Montgomery's hand-me-downs (which don't fit well, since Montgomery is several inches taller than Prendick). Everything he consumes presumably comes from supplies that Moreau sends Montgomery to fetch on his annual excursions, except perhaps for whatever food grows on the island. If there are cigarettes on hand for Prendick to smoke, it can only be because one of the other two men is a smoker and has generously allowed Prendick to poach on his stash. Prendick doesn't seem to do anything on the island to earn his keep, even though Moreau only let him stay because of his scientific training. Prendick himself admits, "I spent an increasing proportion of my time upon the beach, looking for some liberating sail that never appeared." It's no wonder if Moreau is getting annoyed at having this freeloader mooching off of him.

Anyway, one day in late April or early May of 1887, Prendick is hanging around the entrance to the compound smoking one of the other men's cigarettes, and he sees Moreau walk by, they greet each other, and Moreau goes in and unlocks the door to his laboratory. After all this time, he's still working on a puma that Montgomery brought to the island on the Ipecacuanha. Prendick continues to stare out to sea while behind him the puma "met its persecutor with a shriek, almost exactly like that of an angry virago."

The puma has had enough of this shit. She manages to pull the chain binding her from the wall it is attached to, knocks down Moreau, and runs out of the compound, knocking Prendick out of the way as she does do. Prendick suffers a broken forearm and falls to the ground, where he watches the puma, "swathed in lint and with red-stained bandages fluttering about it," run off. Moreau, armed with a pistol, chases after the puma, and the two disappear inland into the island's foliage.

Prendick painfully regains his feet, and Montgomery appears, also armed with a pistol. Prendick explains what he saw while Montgomery sets his broken arm and puts it in a sling. Then Montgomery goes off in search of Moreau and the puma, while Prendick paces back and forth by the compound.

Several hours pass, during which Prendick hears three shots. Montgomery returns in a disheveled state, accompanied by M'ling.

“My God!” The man was panting, almost sobbing. “Go back in,” he said, taking my arm. “They're mad. They're all rushing about mad. What can have happened? I don't know. I'll tell you, when my breath comes. Where's some brandy?”

He tells Prendick that he has been unable to find Moreau or the puma. While he was searching, he was joined by M'ling, who had been out with a hatchet chopping wood. The two went to the village of the uplifted animals, and found it deserted.

Montgomery, becoming afraid, decided to return to the compound. On the way there, he encountered two uplifted swine with blood-stains around their mouths. The two uplifts attacked Montgomery and M'ling. Montgomery shot one, while M'ling grappled with the other. M'ling had his teeth in his opponent's throat when Montgomery shot it as well. When Montgomery wanted to resume the trip back to the compound, M'ling resisted for a time before agreeing to go with him. On the way, M'ling flushed an uplifted ocelot from the brush, and Montgomery shot it as well, "with a certain wantonness," as Prendick observed.

Chapter XVII ends with Prendick asking, "What does it all mean?" Montgomery can only shake his head and down some more brandy.

Clearly, all is not well on the island. It sounds as though something has happened to cause the uplifted animals to reject Moreau's Law and revert to their natural states. Moreau's hunt for the escaped puma seems like the proximate cause. Did the puma attack and injure him? And would that break the hold that Moreau exercises over them? Tune in tomorrow for chapter XVIII, "The Finding of Moreau".

The Island of Doctor Moreau: a progress report

Although he spent pretty much his entire adult life writing books, H.G. Wells is best known for half a dozen "scientific romances" he wrote in his late 20s and 30s. These books are now considered classics of the science fiction genre, and I suspect that they share the fate of all classic books: everybody has heard of them, but hardly anybody has actually read them.

I myself read The War of the Worlds in the sixth grade when Scholastic Books published a discount edition for schoolchildren in 1974. I had already seen the film version by George Pal, and I found the novel a bit of a slog and hardly anything like the movie. A few years later, in high school, I borrowed and read a classmate's copy of The Time Machine. I had not seen the Pal version at that point, so I didn't have that comparison in mind, but I did find it kind of slow and tame compared to later, more sophisticated time travel stories I had already read by that point.

And that was basically it for my Wells reading until I came upon a copy of In the Days of the Comet in a used bookstore, bought it, and eventually read it. I found it moderately interesting, but it turns out this was not so much a scientific romance as a utopian novel in which the Earth passes through a comet's tail and everybody suddenly loses their irrational beliefs and realizes that H.G. Wells was right all along.

The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) is best known for introducing the now-common SF trope of biological uplift, the practice of raising animals to human intelligence. Modern uplift stories involve the use of genetic engineering, but almost nothing was known about genetics when Wells was writing, and his Dr. Moreau is a vivisectionist who uses brutal surgical methods to refashion animals into near-humans.

An odd, perverse impulse has led me to start reading this book at Project Gutenberg. I'm currently most of the way through chapter XVI; this blog post is by way of being a progress report on my reading of the book.

As was common with 19th century works of fantastic fiction, there is a framing story that tells how the main narrative came to be presented to the public. In the framing story, a man named Charles Edward Prendick finds a manuscript written by his late uncle, Edward Prendick, relating the story of what happened to him after he was shipwrecked in February 1887. Charles Edward states that his uncle disappeared for eleven months after the shipwreck, and after he was rescued the story he told was so strange that he was regarded as demented. He also notes that almost nothing in his uncle's story can be independently verified.

Edward Prendick is an independently wealthy man who studied biology under T.H. Huxley. After the wreck of the Lady Vain, he is marooned on one of the ship's boats until being rescued by a passing tramp freighter called the Ipecacuanha. His rescuer is a passenger on the Ipecacuanha, a disgraced alcoholic English medical doctor named Montgomery, who is overseeing the shipment of a cargo of animals to a mysterious island. The even-more-alcoholic captain of the Ipecacuanha takes a dislike to Prendick, and after dropping off Montgomery and his animals at the island, leaves Prendick marooned there.

Montgomery's boss, a vivisectionist named Moreau, is initially reluctant to allow Prendick ashore, but changes his mind after he learns about Prendick's scientific background. Prendick is deeply disturbed by the various inhabitants of the island, who are all misshapen and distinctly beastial. He initially concludes that Moreau is surgically altering people into animals, and flees into the jungle. Moreau eventually convinces Prendick that he has it backwards: Moreau is actually surgically altering animals into people.

Moreau's surgical technique is imperfect, and he is troubled by the fact that his uplifted animals invariably start backsliding as soon as he creates them. To hold off the backsliding, Moreau has instilled a religion called the Law in his uplifted animals, a series of prohibitions against reversion to animal behaviors:

 “Not to go on all-fours; that is the Law. Are we not Men?
“Not to suck up Drink; that is the Law. Are we not Men?
“Not to eat Fish or Flesh; that is the Law. Are we not Men?
“Not to claw the Bark of Trees; that is the Law. Are we not Men?
“Not to chase other Men; that is the Law. Are we not Men?”

 Trouble raises its biologically uplifted head when Prendick discovers that one of the animal people, an uplifted leopard, has killed and partially eaten a rabbit, a violation of the Law. When Moreau learns about the violation, he calls the animals to a council where he accuses the leopard, and sentences him to be returned to his laboratory (known to the uplifted as "the House of Pain") for additional surgery. The leopard flees, and is hunted by Moreau, Montgomery, Prendick, and the rest of the uplifted animals. When the leopard is finally cornered, Prendick chooses to shoot him rather than allow him to be returned to the laboratory.

“Confound you, Prendick!” said Moreau. “I wanted him.”
“I'm sorry,” said I, though I was not.

Moreau is presented as being utterly amoral. He specifically tells Prendick, "To this day I have never troubled about the ethics of the matter." He is contemptuous of humanity for its preoccupation with pain and pleasure, which he regards as an unworthy holdover from its own animal origins, and he is indifferent to the pain he inflicts on his experimental subjects. Victor Frankenstein may be the original Mad Scientist, but I'm sure Dr. Moreau gave the trope a healthy boost.
Prendick, the viewpoint character and the person Wells' audience (and likely Wells himself) would identify with, does not accept Moreau's dismissal of pain. He is unwilling to allow the uplifted leopard to be further tormented by Moreau, and he views the scientist's uplifted experimental subjects more sympathetically than their creator.

Poor brutes! I began to see the viler aspect of Moreau's cruelty. I had not thought before of the pain and trouble that came to these poor victims after they had passed from Moreau's hands. I had shivered only at the days of actual torment in the enclosure. But now that seemed to me the lesser part. Before, they had been beasts, their instincts fitly adapted to their surroundings, and happy as living things may be. Now they stumbled in the shackles of humanity, lived in a fear that never died, fretted by a law they could not understand; their mock-human existence, begun in an agony, was one long internal struggle, one long dread of Moreau—and for what? It was the wantonness of it that stirred me.

And that's where I've left off the story for now. How will the conflicting beliefs of Prendick and Moreau play out? We shall see.