Page:Edgar Huntly, or The Sleep Walker.djvu/162

 offered, and hunger was capable of being appeased even by a banquet so detestable.

If this appetite has sometimes subdued the sentiments of nature, and compelled the mother to feed upon the flesh of her offspring, it will not excite amazement that I did not turn from the yet warm blood and reeking fibres of a brute.

One evil was now removed only to give place to another. The first sensations of fulness had scarcely been felt, when my stomach was seized by pangs whose acuteness exceeded all that I ever before experienced. I bitterly lamented my inordinate avidity; the excruciations of famine were better than the agonies which this abhorred meal had produced. Death was now impending with no less proximity and certainty, though in a different form: death was a sweet relief for my present miseries, and I vehemently longed for its arrival. I stretched myself on the ground—I threw my. self into every posture that promised some alleviation of this evil—I rolled along the pavement of the cavern, wholly inattentive to the dangers that environed me: that I did not fall into the pit whence I had just emerged, must be ascribed to some miraculous chance.

How long my miseries endured, it is not possible to tell; I cannot even form a plausible conjecture: judging by the lingering train of my sensations, I should suppose that some days elapsed in this deplorable condition; but nature could not have so long sustained a conflict like this.

Gradually my pains subsided, and I fell into a deep sleep. I was visited by dreams of a thousand hues; they led me to flowing streams and plenteous banquets, which, though placed within my view, some power forbade me to approach. From this sleep I recovered to the fruition of solitude and darkness; but my frame was in a state less feeble than before: that which I had eaten had produced temporary distress, but on the whole had been of use. If this food had not been provided for me, I should scarcely have avoided death; I had reason, therefore, to congratulate myself on the danger that had lately occurred.

I had acted without foresight; and yet no wisdom could have prescribed more salutary measures. The panther was slain, not from a view to the relief of my hunger, but from