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The Island of DoctorMoreau
H. G. Wells
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INTRODUCTION.
ON February the First 1887, the Lady Vain was lost bycollision with a derelict when about the latitude 1’ S. andlongitude 107’ W.On January the Fifth, 1888—that is eleven months andfour days after— my uncle, Edward Prendick, a privategentleman, who certainly went aboard the Lady Vain atCallao, and who had been considered drowned, waspicked up in latitude 5’ 3’ S. and longitude 101’ W. in asmall open boat of which the name was illegible, butwhich is supposed to have belonged to the missingschooner Ipecacuanha. He gave such a strange account of himself that he was supposed demented. Subsequently healleged that his mind was a blank from the moment of hisescape from the Lady Vain. His case was discussed amongpsychologists at the time as a curious instance of the lapseof memory consequent upon physical and mental stress.The following narrative was found among his papers bythe undersigned, his nephew and heir, but unaccompaniedby any definite request for publication.The only island known to exist in the region in whichmy uncle was picked up is Noble’s Isle, a small volcanicislet and uninhabited. It was visited in 1891 by H. M. S.
 
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209Scorpion. A party of sailors then landed, but foundnothing living thereon except certain curious whitemoths, some hogs and rabbits, and some rather peculiar rats. So that this narrative is without confirmation in itsmost essential particular. With that understood, thereseems no harm in putting this strange story before thepublic in accordance, as I believe, with my uncle’sintentions. There is at least this much in its behalf: myuncle 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 hemust have lived during the interval. And it seems that aschooner called the Ipecacuanha with a drunken captain, John Davies, did start from Africa with a puma and certainother animals aboard in January, 1887, that the vessel waswell known at several ports in the South Pacific, and thatit finally disappeared from those seas (with a considerableamount of copra aboard), sailing to its unknown fate fromBayna in December, 1887, a date that tallies entirely withmy uncle’s story.CHARLES EDWARD PRENDICK.(The Story written by Edward Prendick.)
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