"Æpyornis Island", or "Aepyornis Island", is a short story by

H. G. Wells Herbert George Wells"Wells, H. G."
Revised 18 May 2015. ''

The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents ''The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents'' is a collection of fifteen fantasy and science fiction short stories written by the English author H. G. Wells between 1893 and 1895. It was first published by Methuen & Co. in 1895 and was Wells's fir ...

'', the first collection of short stories by Wells, first published in 1895. In the story, a man looking for eggs of ''

Aepyornis ''Aepyornis'' is a genus of aepyornithid, one of three genera of ratite birds endemic to Madagascar until their extinction sometime around 1000 CE. The species ''A. maximus'' weighed up to , and until recently was regarded as the largest known ...

'', an extinct

flightless bird Flightless birds are birds that through evolution lost the ability to fly. There are over 60 extant species, including the well known ratites (ostriches, emu, cassowaries, rheas, and kiwi) and penguins. The smallest flightless bird is the In ...

, passes two years alone on a small island with an ''Aepyornis'' that has hatched.

Historical background

Aepyornis maximus ''Aepyornis'' is a genus of aepyornithid, one of three genera of ratite birds endemic to Madagascar until their extinction sometime around 1000 CE. The species ''A. maximus'' weighed up to , and until recently was regarded as the largest know ...

'' (the giant elephant-bird) was a giant flightless bird that lived in

Madagascar Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...

. 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 tall, and its egg weighed about . Fragments of the eggs are still found."Aepyornis maximus"
'Prehistoric Fauna''. Retrieved 11 March 2020.

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 Maroon ( US/ UK , Australia ) is a brownish crimson color that takes its name from the French word ''marron'', or chestnut. "Marron" is also one of the French translations for "brown". According to multiple dictionaries, there are var ...

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 An embryo is an initial stage of development of a multicellular organism. In organisms that reproduce sexually, embryonic development is the part of the life cycle that begins just after fertilization of the female egg cell by the male spe ...

of the second egg has started developing due to the tropical heat. The canoe drifts onto an

atoll An atoll () is a ring-shaped island, including a coral rim that encircles a lagoon partially or completely. There may be coral islands or cays on the rim. Atolls are located in warm tropical or subtropical oceans and seas where corals can gr ...

, where the remaining egg hatches. Butcher calls the young bird

Man Friday Friday is one of the main characters of Daniel Defoe's 1719 novel ''Robinson Crusoe'' and its sequel ''The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe''. Robinson Crusoe names the man Friday, with whom he cannot at first communicate, because they fir ...

, after the character in ''

Robinson Crusoe ''Robinson Crusoe'' () is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published on 25 April 1719. The first edition credited the work's protagonist Robinson Crusoe as its author, leading many readers to believe he was a real person and the book a tra ...

'', 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 A lagoon is a shallow body of water separated from a larger body of water by a narrow landform, such as reefs, barrier islands, barrier peninsulas, or isthmuses. Lagoons are commonly divided into ''coastal lagoons'' (or ''barrier lagoons'') a ...

, but subsequently has to spend his time in the lagoon or up a

palm tree The Arecaceae is a family of perennial flowering plants in the monocot order Arecales. Their growth form can be climbers, shrubs, tree-like and stemless plants, all commonly known as palms. Those having a tree-like form are called palm trees ...

to avoid attacks. He eventually manages to capture it using a

bolas Bolas or bolases (singular bola; from Spanish and Portuguese ''bola'', "ball", also known as a ''boleadora'' or ''boleadeira'') is a type of throwing weapon made of weights on the ends of interconnected cords, used to capture animals by entang ...

made out of

fishing line A fishing line is a flexible, high-tensile cord used in angling to tether and pull in fish, in conjunction with at least one hook. Fishing lines are usually pulled by and stored in a reel, but can also be retrieved by hand, with a fixed attachm ...

and

coral Corals are marine invertebrates within the class Anthozoa of the phylum Cnidaria. They typically form compact colonies of many identical individual polyps. Coral species include the important reef builders that inhabit tropical oceans and sec ...

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 In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...

''Aepyornis vastus''.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Aepyornis Island 1894 short stories Short stories by H. G. Wells Fictional islands Elephant birds