company. For
the rest, the only thing to eat--though it didn't look eatable in the
least--I saw in their possession was a few lumps of some stuff like
half-cooked dough, of a dirty lavender color, they kept wrapped in
leaves, and now and then swallowed a piece of, but so small that it
seemed done more for the looks of the thing than for any serious purpose
of sustenance. Why in the name of all the gnawing devils of hunger they
didn't go for us--they were thirty to five--and have a good tuck in for
once, amazes me now when I think of it. They were big powerful men,
with not much capacity to weigh the consequences, with courage, with
strength, even yet, though their skins were no longer glossy and their
muscles no longer hard. And I saw that something restraining, one of
those human secrets that baffle probability, had come into play there.
I looked at them with a swift quickening of interest--not because it
occurred to me I might be eaten by them before very long, though I
own to you that just then I perceived--in a new light, as it were--how
unwholesome the pilgrims looked, and I hoped, yes, I positively hoped,
that my aspect was not so--what shall I say?--so--unappetizing: a touch
of fantastic vanity which fitted well with the dream-sensation that
pervaded all my days at that time. Perhaps I had a little fever too. One
can't live with one's finger everlastingly on one's pulse. I had
often 'a little fever,' or a little touch of other things--the playful
paw-strokes of the wilderness, the preliminary trifling before the more
serious onslaught which came in due course. Yes; I looked at them as you
would on any human being, with a curiosity of their impulses, motives,
capacities, weaknesses, when brought to the test of an inexorable
physical necessity. Restraint! What possible restraint? Was it
superstition, disgust, patience, fear--or some kind of primitive honor?
No fear can stand up to hunger, no patience can wear it out, disgust
simply does not exist where hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs,
and what you may call principles, they are less than chaff in a breeze.
Don't you know the devilry of lingering starvation, its exasperating
torment, its black thoughts, its somber and brooding ferocity? Well,
I do. It takes a man all his inborn strength to fight hunger properly.
It's really easier to face bereavement, dishonor, and the perdition of
one's soul--than this kind of prolonged hunger. Sad, but true. And these
cha