Æpyornis Island
"Æpyornis Island" | |
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Short story by H. G. Wells | |
![]() The cover of Pearson's Magazine that illustrates "Æpyornis Island", 1905. | |
Country | United Kingdom |
Genre(s) | Science fiction |
Publication | |
Published in | Pall Mall Budget |
Media type | |
Publication date | 27 December 1894 |
"Æpyornis Island", or "Aepyornis Island", is a short story by H. G. Wells, first published in 1894 in the Pall Mall Budget.[1] It was included in The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents, the first collection of short stories by Wells, first published in 1895.
In the story, a man looking for eggs of Aepyornis, an extinct flightless bird, passes two years alone on a small island with an Aepyornis that has hatched.
Historical background
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1e/Aepyornis_maximus.jpg/220px-Aepyornis_maximus.jpg)
Aepyornis maximus (the giant elephant-bird) was a giant flightless bird that lived in Madagascar. It became extinct probably in the 17th or 18th century; it is thought that it was hunted excessively by humans. The bird was more than 2 metres (6 ft 7 in) tall, and its egg weighed about 10 kilograms (22 lb). Fragments of the eggs are still found.[2]
Story summary
The narrator starts a conversation with a rough individual named Butcher in an unspecified foreign location. Remembering reports of a court case years earlier, in which Butcher sued his employer for salary accrued while cast away on a desert island for four years, the narrator encourages him to tell the story related to the case:
Butcher, employed by a collector, is engaged in finding Aepyornis eggs. He is looking for them in a swamp on the east coast of Madagascar, helped by two native assistants in a canoe who are probing the mud with iron rods. They find several whole eggs but one is dropped by an assistant who says that he was bitten by a centipede. Butcher beats the assistant, as a result of which both natives conspire to maroon him on the island with three days provisions. When Butcher sees them leaving in the canoe, he shoots the uninjured assistant dead with his revolver. He then swims out to intercept the drifting canoe and reaches it by nightfall, finding that the other assistant has also died of a snake, scorpion, or centipede bite. As the canoe has no paddle, Butcher cannot steer it and drifts for ten days. During this period, he eats two of the Aepyornis eggs, finding that the embryo of the second egg has started developing due to the tropical heat.
The canoe drifts onto an atoll, where the remaining egg hatches. Butcher calls the young bird Man Friday, after the character in Robinson Crusoe, as it is a welcome companion. For two years, Butcher lives with the bird, feeding it and enjoying its company. At the end of the second year the bird, now about fourteen feet high, suddenly becomes aggressive towards Butcher and attacks him, giving him a scar on his face. He escapes the bird's attack by swimming into the lagoon, but subsequently has to spend his time in the lagoon or up a palm tree to avoid attacks. He eventually manages to capture it using a bolas made out of fishing line and coral and then kills it. He feels guilty and misses its companionship, but soon afterwards is rescued from the atoll. He sells the bones of the bird to a collector; since it is larger than Aepyornis maximus, scientists give it the (fictional) scientific name Aepyornis vastus.
References
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg/30px-Commons-logo.svg.png)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4c/Wikisource-logo.svg/38px-Wikisource-logo.svg.png)
- ^ Æpyornis Island title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, accessed 16 Sept 2014.
- ^ "Aepyornis maximus"Prehistoric Fauna. Retrieved 11 March 2020.
External links
- The complete short fiction of H. G. Wells at Standard Ebooks
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- The Wonderful Visit (1895)
- The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896)
- The Wheels of Chance (1896)
- The Invisible Man (1897)
- The War of the Worlds (1898)
- When the Sleeper Wakes (1899)
- Love and Mr Lewisham (1900)
- The First Men in the Moon (1901)
- The Sea Lady (1902)
- The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth (1904)
- Kipps (1905)
- A Modern Utopia (1905)
- In the Days of the Comet (1906)
- The War in the Air (1908)
- Tono-Bungay (1909)
- Ann Veronica (1909)
- The History of Mr Polly (1910)
- The Sleeper Awakes (1910)
- The New Machiavelli (1911)
- Marriage (1912)
- The Passionate Friends (1913)
- The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman (1914)
- The World Set Free (1914)
- Bealby (1915)
- Boon (1915)
- The Research Magnificent (1915)
- Mr. Britling Sees It Through (1916)
- The Soul of a Bishop (1917)
- Joan and Peter (1918)
- The Undying Fire (1919)
- The Secret Places of the Heart (1922)
- Men Like Gods (1923)
- The Dream (1924)
- Christina Alberta's Father (1925)
- The World of William Clissold (1926)
- Meanwhile (1927)
- Mr. Blettsworthy on Rampole Island (1928)
- The Autocracy of Mr. Parham (1930)
- The Bulpington of Blup (1932)
- The Shape of Things to Come (1933)
- The Croquet Player (1936)
- Brynhild (1937)
- Star Begotten (1937)
- The Camford Visitation (1937)
- Apropos of Dolores (1938)
- The Brothers (1938)
- The Holy Terror (1939)
- Babes in the Darkling Wood (1940)
- All Aboard for Ararat (1940)
- You Can't Be Too Careful (1941)
- Anticipations
- Certain Personal Matters
- Crux Ansata
- The Discovery of the Future
- An Englishman Looks at the World
- Experiment in Autobiography
- The Fate of Man
- First and Last Things
- Floor Games
- The Future in America
- God the Invisible King
- In the Fourth Year
- Little Wars
- Mankind in the Making
- Mind at the End of Its Tether
- Mr. Belloc Objects to "The Outline of History"
- The New America
- The New World Order
- New Worlds for Old
- The Open Conspiracy
- The Outline of History
- Russia in the Shadows
- The Science of Life
- A Short History of the World
- The Story of a Great Schoolmaster
- This Misery of Boots
- Travels of a Republican Radical in Search of Hot Water
- War and the Future
- The Way the World Is Going
- The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind
- World Brain
- A Year of Prophesying
- "Æpyornis Island"
- "The Argonauts of the Air"
- "The Beautiful Suit"
- "The Chronic Argonauts"
- "The Cone"
- "The Country of the Blind"
- "The Crystal Egg"
- "A Deal in Ostriches"
- "The Diamond Maker"
- "The Door in the Wall"
- "A Dream of Armageddon"
- "The Empire of the Ants"
- "In the Abyss"
- "The Land Ironclads"
- "Mr. Ledbetter's Vacation"
- "The Lord of the Dynamos"
- "The Man Who Could Work Miracles"
- "The New Accelerator"
- "The Pearl of Love"
- "The Plattner Story"
- "The Queer Story of Brownlow's Newspaper"
- "The Red Room"
- "The Sea Raiders"
- "The Star"
- "The Stolen Body"
- "A Story of the Days to Come"
- "A Story of the Stone Age"
- "Triumphs of a Taxidermist"
- "The Truth About Pyecraft"
- "A Vision of Judgment"
- Things to Come (1936)
- The Man Who Could Work Miracles (1937)
- Political views
- G. P. Wells
- Anthony West (son)
- Joseph Wells (father)
- Simon Wells (great-grandson)
- H. G. Wells Society
- Lunar crater
- Time After Time (1979 film)
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