Page:Leskov - The Sentry and other Stories.djvu/311

 Rh joyless. My watch, that I had set by the position of the Pleiades, showed it was nine o'clock. My hunger increased and tormented me past all belief. I no longer felt the oppressive scent of viands, nor the recollection of the taste of food. I only had a hungry pain. My empty stomach was dried up, twisted like a cord, and caused me the most unbearable sufferings.

Without any hope of finding something eatable, I climbed down the tree and began to wander about. At one place I picked up from the snow a fir cone. I thought at first it might be a cedar cone, and would contain nuts, but it proved to be a simple fir cone. I broke it, found a seed, which I swallowed, but the resinous smell was so unpleasant that my empty stomach refused to receive it, and my pains were only increased. At this time I noticed that all round our abandoned sledge there were numberless fresh tracks going in all directions, and that our dead dog had disappeared.

My corpse would evidently be the next to go, and the same wolves would prey on it and divide it among themselves in the same way. But when would it be? Was it possible in another day? It might even be more. No! I remembered one fanatical faster, who starved himself for the honour of Christ. He had the courage to note the days of his anguish and counted nine.