Page:Edgar Huntly, or The Sleep Walker.djvu/211



without difficulty the opposite bank; but the steep was inaccessible. I swam along the edge, in hopes of meeting with some projection or recess, where I might at least rest my weary limbs, and, if it were necessary to recross the river, to lay in a stock of recruited spirits and strength for that purpose. I trusted that the water would speedily become shoal, or that the steep would afford rest to my feet. In both these hopes I was disappointed.

There is no one to whom I would yield the superiority in swimming; but my strength, like that of other human beings, had its limits. My previous fatigues had been enormous, and my clothes, heavy with moisture, greatly encumbered and retarded my movements. I had proposed to free myself from this imprisonment, but I foresaw the inconveniences of wandering over this scene in absolute nakedness; and was willing, therefore, at whatever hazard, to retain them. I continued to struggle with the current, and to search for the means of scaling the steeps. My search was fruitless, and I began to meditate the recrossing of the river

Surely my fate has never been paralleled! Where was this series of hardships and perils to end? No sooner was one calamity eluded, than I was beset by another. I had emerged from abhorred darkness in the heart of the earth, only to endure the extremities of famine, and encounter the fangs of a wild beast; from these I was delivered only to be thrown into the midst of savages, to wage an endless and hopeless war with adepts in killing, with appetites that longed to feast upon my bowels, and to quaff my heart's blood; from these, likewise, was I rescued, but merely to perish in the gulfs of the river, to welter on unvisited shores, or to be washed far away from curiosity or pity.

Formerly, water was not only my field of sport, but my sofa and my bed; I could float for hours on the surface, enjoying its delicious cool, almost without the expense of