Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/162

 was tortured by fear. He knew that the horror of his surroundings was growing upon the girl; that each visit demanded of her a new and a stronger effort, that other men were wooing her; and that sooner or later she would turn to them, and thrust from her mind the memory of the loathesome creature into which he knew himself to be rapidly degenerating. In that hour he would be robbed alike of his love and of his daily food.

The prisoner in the cage on Talib's left was little more than a skeleton when the latter first entered the gaol. He lay huddled up in a corner, with his hands pressed against his sunken stomach and the sharp angles of his bones peeping through his bed-sores—motionless, miserable, and utterly degraded, but stirred to a sort of frenzy, now and again, by the sight or smell of cooked food. Talib saved a small portion of his own insufficient meal for this man, for he was new to the prison, and had not yet acquired the brutal selfishness and indifference that characterized the other inmates; but the poor wretch was already too far gone for any such tardy aid to avail to save him. Though he snatched avidly at the stuff which Talib passed, in grudging handfuls, through the bars of his cell, it was with difficulty that he could swallow a grain of it. When, too, a little had at last been forced down his shrunken gullet his enfeebled stomach rejected it, and violent spasms and vomitings ensued, which seemed to rend his stricken frame much as a fierce gust of wind rips through the palm-leaf sail of a native fishing-snuck.