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

H. G. Wells Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946) was an English writer, prolific in many genres. He wrote more than fifty novels and dozens of short stories. His non-fiction output included works of social commentary, politics, hist ...

, first published in 1894 in the ''Pall Mall Budget''. It was included in ''

The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents ''The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents'' is a collection of fifteen fantasy and science fiction Short story, short stories written by the English author H. G. Wells between 1893 and 1895. It was first published by Methuen Publishing, Methuen ...

'', 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 Flightless birds are birds that cannot Bird flight, fly, as they have, through evolution, lost the ability to. There are over 60 extant species, including the well-known ratites (ostriches, emus, cassowary, cassowaries, Rhea (bird), rheas, an ...

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

Historical background

Aepyornis maximus ''Aepyornis'' is an extinct genus of elephant bird formerly Endemism, endemic to Madagascar. The genus had two species, the smaller ''A. hildebrandti'' and the larger ''A. maximus'', which is possibly the largest bird ever to have lived. Its clo ...

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

Madagascar Madagascar, officially the Republic of Madagascar, is an island country that includes the island of Madagascar and numerous smaller peripheral islands. Lying off the southeastern coast of Africa, it is the world's List of islands by area, f ...

. They became extinct sometime around 1000 AD, probably as a result of human activity. 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 ( , ) is a brownish crimson color that takes its name from the French word , meaning chestnut. ''Marron'' is also one of the French translations for "brown". Terms describing interchangeable shades, with overlapping RGB ranges, inc ...

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 the initial stage of development for 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 sp ...

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. There may be coral islands or cays on the rim. Atolls are located in warm tropical or subtropical parts of the oceans and seas where corals can develop. Most ...

, where the remaining egg hatches. Butcher calls the young bird Man Friday, after the character in ''

Robinson Crusoe ''Robinson Crusoe'' ( ) is an English adventure novel by Daniel Defoe, first published on 25 April 1719. Written with a combination of Epistolary novel, epistolary, Confessional writing, confessional, and Didacticism, didactic forms, the ...

'', 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'') an ...

, 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 colloquially c ...

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

bolas Bolas or bolases (: 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 entangling ...

made out of

fishing line A fishing line is any 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 att ...

and

coral Corals are colonial marine invertebrates within the subphylum Anthozoa of the phylum Cnidaria. They typically form compact Colony (biology), colonies of many identical individual polyp (zoology), polyps. Coral species include the important 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 In Taxonomy (biology), taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, both of which use Latin gramm ...

''Aepyornis vastus''.

References

External links

* 1894 short stories Short stories by H. G. Wells Fictional islands {{1890s-sf-story-stub