Edward Prendick, the narrator of The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) by H. G. Wells, is shipwrecked in the Pacific and rescued by a ship bound for the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) with a cargo of wild animals and revived by a passenger named Montgomery. En route they approach a small island to discharge Montgomery and his strange companion M’ling, at which time the captain insists on discharging Prendick, who is cast adrift in a dinghy after offloading his cargo and passengers. Montgomery again comes to the rescue and puts him up in a compound on the island belonging to a Doctor Moreau. Prendick, who is trained in the sciences, recalls the public outcry in London occasioned by the exposure of Moreau’s experiments in vivisection, and soon discovers the island is populated by humans with marked bestial characteristics. He stumbles across Moreau and a humanoid figure in his operating room and flees, fearing he is next in line. Moreau apprehends him and explains his mission to humanize animals, not the reverse, and that efforts were progressing but marred by an unfortunate tendency of the subjects to revert to animal form. This is made evident when the Leopard-Man and Hyena-Swine bear the prohibition against eating meat. Eventually a subject breaks free and attempts to kill the good doctor. Both are killed in the conflict, and shortly thereafter the compound is destroyed. The animals revert to nature, and Prendick manages to escape when a boat drifts on the beach. His account of the story is greeted as the ravings of a lunatic. Upon his return to civilization he sees many of his fellow men reverting to an animal state and retires to a reclusive life in the country studying astronomy and chemistry.

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