【英文原著类】The Island of Doctor Moreau(莫洛医生的岛屿).pdf

The Island of Doctor Moreau
The Island of Doctor
Moreau
by H. G. Wells

1
The Island of Doctor Moreau
INTRODUCTION.
ON February the First 1887, the Lady Vain was lost by collision with
a derelict when about the latitude 1' S. and longitude 107' W.
On January the Fifth, 1888--that is eleven months and four days after--
my uncle, Edward Prendick, a private gentleman, who certainly went
aboard the Lady Vain at Callao, and who had been considered drowned,
was picked up in latitude 5' 3" S. and longitude 101' W. in a small open
boat of which the name was illegible, but which is supposed to have
belonged to the missing schooner Ipecacuanha. He gave such a strange
account of himself that he was supposed demented. Subsequently he
alleged that his mind was a blank from the moment of his escape from the
Lady Vain. His case was discussed among psychologists at the time as a
curious instance of the lapse of memory consequent upon physical and
mental stress. The following narrative was found among his papers by the
undersigned, his nephew and heir, but panied by any definite
request for publication.
The only island known to exist in the region in which my uncle was
picked up is 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. So that this narrative is
without confirmation in its most essential particular. With that
understood, there seems no harm in putting this strange story before the
public in accordance, as I believe, with my uncle's intentions. There is at
least this much in its behalf: my uncle passed out of human knowledge
about latitude 5' S. and longitude 105' E., and reappeared in the same part
of the ocean after a space of eleven months. In some way he must have
lived during the interval. And it seems that a schooner called t