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The Island of Doctor Moreau (Annotated)

出版	Amazon Digital Services LLC - KDP Print US, 2018
主題	Literary Collections / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh
ISBN	19767772409781976777240
URL	http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=06QitQEACAAJ&hl=&source=gbs_api

註釋This is an annotated version of the book1.contains an updated biography of the author at the end of the book for a better understanding of the text.2.This book has been checked and corrected for spelling errorsON February the First 1887, the Lady Vain was lost by collisionwith a derelict when about the latitude 1 degree S. and longitude107 degrees W.On January the Fifth, 1888--that is eleven months and four days after--myuncle, Edward Prendick, a private gentleman, who certainly wentaboard the Lady Vain at Callao, and who had been considered drowned, was picked up in latitude 5 degrees 3' S. and longitude 101 degrees W.in a small open boat of which the name was illegible, but which issupposed 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 momentof his escape 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 by the undersigned, his nephew and heir, but unaccompanied by any definite requestfor publication.The only island known to exist in the region in which my uncle waspicked up is Noble's Isle, a small volcanic islet and uninhabited.It was visited in 1891 by H. M. S. Scorpion. A party of sailorsthen landed, but found nothing living thereon except certain curiouswhite moths, some hogs and rabbits, and some rather peculiar rats.So that this narrative is without confirmation in its mostessential particular. With that understood, there seems no harmin putting this strange story before the public in accordance, as I believe, with my uncle's intentions. There is at least thismuch in its behalf: my uncle passed out of human knowledge aboutlatitude 5 degrees S. and longitude 105 degrees E., and reappearedin 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 thata schooner called the Ipecacuanha with a drunken captain, John Davies, did start from Africa with a puma and certain other animals aboardin January, 1887, that the vessel was well known at several portsin the South Pacific, and that it finally disappeared from those seas(with a considerable amount of copra aboard), sailing to its unknownfate from Bayna in December, 1887, a date that tallies entirely with myuncle's story.I DO not propose to add anything to what has already been writtenconcerning the loss of the "Lady Vain." As everyone knows, she collided with a derelict when ten days out from Callao.The longboat, with seven of the crew, was picked up eighteen days afterby H. M. gunboat "Myrtle," and the story of their terrible privationshas become quite as well known as the far more horrible "Medusa" case.But I have to add to the published story of the "Lady Vain"another, possibly as horrible and far stranger. It has hithertobeen supposed that the four men who were in the dingey perished, but this is incorrect. I have the best of evidence for this assertion: I was one of the four men.But in the first place I must state that there never were four menin the dingey, --the number was three. Constans, who was "seenby the captain to jump into the gig,"{1} luckily for us and unluckilyfor himself did not reach us. He came down out of the tangleof ropes under the stays of the smashed bowsprit, some small ropecaught his heel as he let go, and he hung for a moment head downward, and then fell and struck a block or spar floating in the water.We pulled towards him, but he never came up.