Planet of the Apes Read online

  I was bewildered and hesitant. To be on the safe side, I imitated her in my clumsy fashion. After all, I was a foreign visitor and it was up to me to adopt the customs of the great Betelgeuse system. She appeared satisfied. We had gone thus far in our attempts at communication, myself none too sure how to continue, frightened of committing some blunder with my Earthly manners, when a terrifying hullabaloo made us start up in alarm.

  I found myself with my two companions, whom I had selfishly forgotten, standing bolt upright in the gathering dawn. Nova had sprung to her feet even more quickly and showed signs of the deepest terror. I understood immediately that this din was a nasty surprise not only for us but for all the inhabitants of the forest, for all of them, abandoning their lairs, had started running hither and thither in panic. This was not a game, as on the previous day; their cries expressed sheer terror.

  This din, suddenly breaking the silence of the forest, was enough to make one’s blood run cold, but I felt besides that the men of the jungle knew what was in the offing and that their fear was caused by the approach of a specific danger. It was a strange cacophony, a mixture of rattling sounds like a roll of drums, other more discordant noises resembling a clashing of pots and pans, and also shouts. It was the shouts that made the most impression on us, for although they were in no language familiar to us, they were incontestably human.

  The early morning light revealed a strange scene in the forest: men, women, and children running in all directions, passing and bumping into one another, some of them even climbing into the trees as though to seek refuge there. Soon, however, some of the older ones stopped to prick up their ears and listen. The noise was approaching rather slowly. It came from the region where the forest was thickest and seemed to emanate from a fairly long unbroken line. I compared it to the noise made by beaters in one of our big shoots.

  The elders of the tribe appeared to make a decision. They uttered a series of yelps, which were no doubt signals or orders, then rushed off in the opposite direction from the noise. The rest of them followed, and we saw them galloping all around us like a driven herd of deer. Nova, too, was about to take to her heels, but she paused suddenly and turned around toward us—above all toward me, I felt. She uttered a plaintive whimper, which I assumed to be an invitation to follow her, then took one leap and disappeared.

  The din grew louder and I fancied I heard the undergrowth snapping as though beneath some heavy footsteps. I admit that I lost my composure. Caution prompted me, however, to stay where I was and to face the newcomers who, it became clearer every second, were uttering these human cries. But after my ordeal of the day before, this horrible racket unnerved me. I was infected by the terror of Nova and the others. I did not pause to think; I did not even want to consult my companions; I plunged into the undergrowth and took to my heels in the young girl’s footsteps.

  I ran as fast as I could for several hundred yards without being able to catch up with her, and then noticed that Levain alone had followed me, Professor Antelle’s age precluding such rapid flight. Levain was panting beside me. We looked at each other, ashamed of our behavior, and I was about to suggest going back or at least waiting for our leader, when some other noises made us jump in alarm.

  As to these, I could not be mistaken. They were gunshots echoing through the jungle: one, two, three, then several more, at irregular intervals, sometimes one at a time, at other times two consecutive shots, strangely reminiscent of a double-barreled gun. They were firing in front of us, on the path taken by the fugitives. While we paused, the line from which the first din had come, the line of beaters, drew closer, very close to us, sowing panic in us once again. I do not know why the shooting seemed to me less frightening, more familiar than this hellish din. Instinctively I resumed my headlong flight, taking care nevertheless to keep under cover of the undergrowth and to make as little noise as possible. My companion followed after me.

  We thus reached the region in which the shots had been heard. I slowed down and crept forward, almost on all fours. Still followed by Levain, I clambered up a sort of hillock and came to a halt on the summit, panting for breath. There was nothing in front of me but a few trees and a curtain of scrub. I advanced cautiously, my head on a level with the ground. There I lay for a moment or two as though floored by a blow, overpowered by a spectacle completely beyond my poor human comprehension.

  CHAPTER NINE

  There were several incongruous features in the scene that unfolded before my eyes, some of them horrifying, but my attention was at first drawn exclusively to a figure standing motionless thirty paces away and peering in my direction.

  I almost shouted aloud in amazement. Yes, in spite of my terror, in spite of the tragedy of my own position—I was caught between the beaters and the guns—stupefaction overrode all other emotion when I saw this creature on the lookout, lying in wait for the game. For it was an ape, a large-sized gorilla. It was in vain that I told myself I was losing my reason: I could entertain not the slightest doubt as to his species. But an encounter with a gorillaon on the planet Soror was not the essential outlandishness of the situation. This for me lay in the fact that the ape was correctly dressed, like a man of our world, and above all that he wore his clothes in such an easy manner. This natural aspect was what struck me first of all. No sooner had I seen the animal than I realized that he was not in any way disguised. The state in which I saw him was normal, as normal to him as nakedness was to Nova and her companions.

  He was dressed as you and I are, I mean as you and I would be if we were taking part in one of those drives organized for ambassadors or other distinguished persons at official shooting parties. His dark-brown jacket seemed to be made by the best Paris tailor and revealed underneath a checked shirt of the kind our sportsmen wear. His breeches, flaring out slightly above his calves, terminated in a pair of leggings. There the resemblance ended: instead of boots he wore big black gloves.

  It was a gorilla, I tell you! From his shirt collar emerged a hideous head, its top shaped like a sugar loaf and covered with black hair, with a flattened nose and jutting jaws. There he stood, leaning slightly forward, in the posture of a hunter on the lookout, grasping a rifle in his long hands. He was facing me, on the other side of a large gap cut out of the jungle at right angles to the direction of the drive.

  All of a sudden he stiffened. He had noticed, as I had, a faint sound in the bushes a little to my right. He turned around and at the same time raised his weapon, ready to put it to his shoulder. From my position I could see the furrow left in the undergrowth by one of the fugitives who was running blindly straight ahead. I almost shouted out to warn him, so obvious was the ape’s intention. But I had neither the time nor the strength; the man was already racing like a mountain goat across the open ground. The shot rang out while he was still halfway across the field of fire. He gave a leap in the air, collapsed in a heap on the ground, and after a few convulsions lay motionless.

  But it was only a little later that I noticed the victim’s death agony, my attention being still focused on the gorilla. I had followed the changes in his expression from the moment he was alerted by the noise, and had noted a number of surprising facts: first, the cruelty of the hunter stalking his prey and the feverish pleasure he derived from this pastime; but above all, the human character of his expression in this animal’s eyes there was a spark of understanding that I had sought in vain among the men of Soror.

  The realization of my own position soon roused me from my stupor. The shot made me turn my gaze again toward the victim, and I was the horrified witness of his final twitches. I then noticed with terror that the cleared space in the forest was littered with human bodies. It was no longer possible to delude myself as to the meaning of this scene. I caught sight of another gorilla like the first one, a hundred paces off. I was witnessing a drive—alas, I was taking part in it!—a fantastic drive in which the guns, posted at regular intervals, were apes and the game consisted of men, men like me, men and women whose naked,
punctured bodies, twisted in ridiculous postures, lay bleeding on the ground.

  I turned aside from this unbearable horror. I preferred the sight of the merely grotesque, and I gazed back at the gorilla barring my path. He had taken a step to one side, revealing another ape standing behind him, like a servant beside his master. It was a chimpanzee, a rather small chimpanzee, a young chimpanzee, it seemed to me, but a chimpanzee, I swear, dressed with less elegance than the gorilla, in a pair of trousers and a shirt, and easily playing his part in the meticulous organization that I was beginning to discern. The hunter had just handed him his gun. The chimpanzee exchanged it for another he was holding in his hand. Then, with precise gestures, using the cartridges in the belt he was wearing around his waist and that sparkled in the rays of Betelgeuse, the little chimpanzee reloaded the weapon. Then each resumed his position.

  All these impressions had taken only a few seconds. I should have liked to think about these discoveries, to analyze them; I had no time to do so. Lying beside me, Arthur Levain, numb with terror, was incapable of giving me the slightest help. The danger was increasing at every second. The beaters were approaching from behind. The din they made was now deafening. We were at bay like wild beasts, like those wretched creatures whom I could still see flitting all around us. The size of the colony must have been bigger than I had suspected, for many men were still rushing along the track, to meet there a ghastly death.

  Not all, however. Forcing myself to recover a little composure, from the top of my hillock I studied the behavior of the fugitives. Some of them, completely panic-stricken, rushed along snapping the undergrowth in their flight, thus alerting the apes, who easily shot them down. But others gave evidence of more cunning, like old boars who have been hunted several times and have learned a number of tricks. These crept forward on all fours, paused for a moment on the edge of the clearing, studied the nearest hunter through the leaves, and waited for the moment when his attention was drawn in another direction. Then, in one bound and at full speed, they crossed the deadly alley. Several of them thus succeeded in reaching the opposite side unhurt, and disappeared into the forest.

  Therein perhaps lay a chance of safety. I motioned to Levain to follow me and slipped soundlessly forward as far as the last thicket in front of the path. There I was overwhelmed by a ridiculous scruple. Should I, a man, really resort to such tricks merely to get the better of an ape? Surely the only behavior worthy of my condition was to rise to my feet, advance on the animal, and give it a good beating? The ever-increasing hullabaloo behind me reduced this mad inclination to nought.

  The hunt was ending in an infernal din. The beaters were at our heels. I saw one of them emerge from the foliage. It was an enormous gorilla, laying about him at random with a club and screeching fit to burst his lungs. He made an even more terrifying impression on me than the hunter with the gun. Levain started chattering with fear and trembling from head to foot, while I kept my eye on the newcomer in front of me and waited for an opportune moment.

  My wretched companion unconsciously saved my life by his imprudence. He had gone completely out of his mind. He got up without taking any precaution, started running off at random, and came out into the alley in full view of the hunter’s field of fire. He went no farther. The shot seemed to snap him in two and he collapsed, adding his body to all those that already lay there. I wasted no time in mourning him—what could I do for him?—but waited feverishly for the moment when the gorilla would hand his gun to his servant. As soon as he did so, I sprang out and raced across the alley. I saw the hunter, as though in a dream, hasten to seize his weapon, but I was already under cover by the time he could lift it to his shoulder. I heard an exclamation that sounded like an oath, but had no time for thought about this latest oddity.

  I had got the best of him. I felt a strange joy, which was balm to my humiliation. I went on running at full speed, leaving the carnage behind me, until I could no longer hear the noise of the beaters. I was saved.

  Saved! I was underestimating the maliciousness of the apes on the planet Soror. Hardly had I gone a hundred yards when I stumbled headfirst into an obstacle concealed in the foliage. It was a wide-meshed net stretched above the ground and equipped with large pockets, in one of which I was now entangled. I was not the only captive. The net ran across a large section of the forest, and a crowd of fugitives who had escaped being shot had let themselves be caught as I had. To my right and left frenzied jerks accompanied by furious whines bore witness to their efforts to break free.

  A wild rage overcame me when I felt myself thus imprisoned, a rage stronger than terror, leaving me utterly incapable of thought. I did exactly what my reason advised me not to do—I struggled in an utterly insane manner, with the result that the net became even more tightly wound around me. I was eventually so closely bound that I could not move at all and was at the mercy of the apes I heard approaching.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I was seized by a deadly terror when I saw their troop advancing. After witnessing their cruelty, I thought they were going to engage in wholesale massacre.

  The hunters, all of them gorillas, led the advance. I noticed that they had abandoned their weapons, which gave me a little hope. Behind them came the loaders and beaters, among whom there was a more or less equal number of gorillas and chimpanzees. The hunters seemed to be the masters and their manner was that of aristocrats. They did not appear to be ill-disposed, and chatted among themselves as cheerfully as one could wish. . . .

  In fact, I am now so accustomed to the paradoxes of this planet that I wrote the preceding sentence without thinking of the absurdity it represents. And yet it’s the truth! The gorillas had the manner of aristocrats. They chatted together happily in an articulate language, and each moment their faces expressed human sentiments, not a trace of which I had found in Nova. Alas! What had become of Nova? I shuddered as I recalled the bloodstained alley. I now understood her emotion at the sight of our chimpanzee. There existed a fierce hatred between the two races. To realize this one only had to see the attitude of the captive men at the apes’ approach. They struggled frenziedly, thrashing out with hands and feet, ground their teeth, foamed at the mouth, and gnawed furiously at the strings of the net.

  Without paying attention to this hubbub, the hunter gorillas —I caught myself calling them the nobility—gave some orders to their servants. Some big carts, rather low-lying and completely caged in, were lined up on a track on the other side of the net. Into these we were bundled, ten or so to a vehicle: a fairly lengthy operation, for the prisoners struggled desperately. Two servant gorillas, their hands encased in leather gloves to protect them from bites, took hold of the prisoners one by one, freed them from the trap, and flung them into the cages, the doors of which were then shut fast, white the nobles directed the operation leaning negligently on their walking sticks.

  When it came to my turn, I tried to draw attention to myself by talking. But no sooner had I opened my mouth than one of the apes, no doubt mistaking my action for a menace, brutally stuffed his enormous glove into my face. I was forcibly silenced and thrown like a bundle into a cage together with a dozen men and women who were still too agitated to pay any attention to me.

  When we were all loaded inside, one of the servants checked the lock on each cage and went to report to his master. The latter gave a signal, and a roar of engines echoed through the forest. The carts started to move forward, each one towed by a sort of tractor driven by an ape. I could distinctly see the driver of the vehicle behind mine. He was a chimpanzee. From time to time he made sarcastic remarks at us, and when the engines slowed down I could hear him humming a rather melancholy little tune not altogether lacking in harmony.

  This first stage was so short that I scarcely had time to recover my senses. After driving for a quarter of an hour along a rough track, the convoy came to a halt on a stretch of open ground in front of a house built of stone. It was the edge of the forest; beyond it I could see a plain covered with crops that l
ooked like cereals.

  The house, with its red tiled roof, green shutters, and an inscription on a panel at the entrance, looked like an inn. I realized at once it was a meeting place for the hunt. The she-apes had come here to wait for their lords and masters, who presently arrived in private cars along the same track we had taken. The lady gorillas sat around in armchairs chatting together in the shade of some big trees that looked like palms. One of them was sipping a drink through a straw.

  As soon as the vehicles were parked, the females drew nearer, curious to see the results of the hunt and especially the game that had been shot, which some gorillas, protected by aprons, were extracting from two big vans to display in the shade of the trees.

  It was a classical hunting scene. Here again the apes worked methodically. They placed the bleeding bodies on their backs, side by side, in a long row as though along a chalk line. Then, while the she-apes uttered little cries of admiration, they applied themselves to making the game attractive. They stretched the arms down along the sides of the bodies and opened the hands with the palms facing upward. They straightened the legs, arranging the joints so as to give each body a less corpselike appearance, corrected a clumsily twisted limb, and reduced the contraction of a neck. Then they carefully smoothed down the hair, particularly the women’s, as some hunters smooth down the coat or feathers of an animal they have just shot.