I was just pushing forward to get another peep. The creature was anything but pleasant to look at, or be near, and I was thankful that I was smoking a strong cigar. After it had been hoisted out of the rocket, and placed with tender care on the stretcher, I found myself still staring at this queerest of queer things; so extremely hideous as to be almost fascinating to the gaze; a sort of living satire on a man-beast, which might have been imagined by Jonathan Swift, or drawn by Doré.
He was unclothed, of course, and there was a strong probability that he had never worn any clothes at all, not even a loin cloth. But out of the strange fellow's face gleamed a pair of unusually bright, wondering eyes. His look was suggestive of extreme gratitude for our rescuing him from his perilous plight.
Our first gesture of good-will and hospitality was made by Niki, who had brought from the castle two long-necked bottles, one containing milk, the other, sherry. Just before the creature was lifted out of the rocket, and was held in an upright position by the ropes from the derrick, Niki, at Henry's suggestion, had offered it the choice of the two bottles. To our amazement, the creature's sharp eyes had fastened themselves at once on the bottle containing the sherry, while a hand, that was suggestively like a chimpanzee's, pointed to it. Then he opened his enormous mouth and held it open.
Niki poked the bottle of sherry down his throat, and gave him an inordinately large dose of it, and the creature gulped it down as if it had been a teaspoonful of cough syrup; such a dose would have made me jump; in him, it did not produce the flicker of an eye-lash. The sherry was followed by a small dose of milk.
It is only fair to describe the creature in his natural state, for a few days later, Henry dressed him in custom clothes, under which his hairy ugliness, and revolting uncouthness, were almost completely hidden.
When first discovered, he appeared to be in a coma, his head drooped over to one side; his face was puffed and blotched, a little greenish. Henry had explained this condition as arising from the lassitude of space, for the rocket must have traveled at a frightening speed. At first touch, his body felt cold; there was hardly any pulse.
To my mind he was human, but a separate species, similar to the skeletons of the ancient type of man recovered from deposits in certain sections of our globe. As I studied him, I realized that the term "human" should be employed with reservation.
Judged by a human standard, I placed him at once in my mind as being in the zone between the form of man and ape, a man type but not a fully evolved product. His massive jaws, for one thing, suggested the ape. He was at least six feet in height. His shoulders were broad and massive, and his arms were a little longer in proportion to a man's. He had very broad hands, with short, thick fingers. But the fingers, I noticed, were not united by a web, which is characteristic of apes on the earth, this web often extending to the first finger joint.
His skin was as black as the Negro types of Africa. It was covered with large coarse hair, under which was a coat of short, curly hair; a very ample bodily protection, I figured, provided by nature, against the range of temperatures on his planet. He had a small skull, and enormous canine teeth. The perplexing aspect was his human-like countenance. The skin of his face was a pinkish white, like a baby's, and of a glossy appearance. The beard-line was marked with a light powdery growth of hair, common to boys approaching manhood; under his chin was a real beard, a short and thick one. Judged humanly, he would pass for a man in his late twenties.
While I was studying his general appearance, it struck me as strange that so far he hadn't spoken. When Henry walked over to the stretcher from the rocket, I sounded him on the talk question.