My snap shot is 146 to the middle of pg.147, “There was nothing for it but courage….. found half a dozen cartridges in his pocket”.
My guiding question was how will Prendick relationship with the beast men change and how will it affect him. This snapshot shows a clue at how Prendick treats these beast people and how he looks at them. It also provides a clue onto how Wells decides to convey the novel through the style of the text. It’s easy to note that Prendick has been having strange thoughts and inferring many things from the beast people but in this snapshot it showed more of his true thoughts and rationalization on how he really saw them. “There was nothing for it but courage”. Even though it doesn’t show any real evidence on how he felt towards them, it was generally just saying that even through his fear he had to do what he had to do to survive and the best way to accomplish that would be to use these beast people and show no signs of doubt. The style also gives us a hint in how the Prendick feels towards the beast men especially since he says “None escape”. Prendick hasn’t recited the prayer with the beast people since the he came back to the enclosure showing not only does he want to keep this Law in place to keep himself safe, he also wants to control these beast people for as long as possible to escape the island and leave these horrors behind.
I think that snapshot that you picked was used by Wells to further develop Prendick. We see throughout the story that he is very weary about the creatures that Moreau created, he never trusted them. He only tolerated the thing because he saw that Moreau and his assistant were keeping them in line. The snapshot shows that with those two gone his safety net is gone, and will take matters into his own hands. He uses the fear of Moreau as a tool to ensure his wellbeing and as the creatures regress abandons them for his own safety.
I agree that Prendick wants to keep “the law” at play. The law is the only thing keeping the beast men in controll and away from killing Prendick if they become wild. As long as Prendick continues convincing the beast men that DR. Moreau is over seeing their actions at all times, it buys him time to create a raft for his escape. Even though Prendick fears the beast men, he has to learn to live among them. He has to adopt beast men like characteristics, and sleep during the day when its safe, and stay awake at night to protect himself. Overtime Prendick begins learning more and more about the beastmen and notices their deevoluation back to wild animals. He is running out of time and has to begin formulating a plan as soon as possible.