Page:Twenty Thousand Verne Frith 1876.pdf/89

 gestures were becoming threatening. He got up and walked about like a wild beast in a cage, hitting and kicking the walls as he passed. By-and-by his anger evaporated, and hunger began to assail him cruelly, and yet the steward appeared not. Our position, as shipwrecked people, had been forgotten too long if they had really been well-intentioned towards us. Ned Land, really suffering from hunger, got more and more angry; and, notwithstanding his promise, I was afraid of an explosion should any of the crew enter our cabin. For two hours longer Ned’s anger burned. He called, he shouted in vain. The walls were impervious to sound I could not hear any sound within the boat. It was not moving, for we should in that event have felt the throbbings of the screw. Plunged in this state of uncertainty beneath the waves, we seemed to belong to earth no more. The death-like silence was appalling.

I did not dare to contemplate the chances of a lengthened abandonment and isolation in this cell. The hopes I had conceived after our interview with the commander faded by degrees. His kind expression of countenance, pleasant look, and nobility of mien all faded from my memory. I recalled this extraordinary personage, as he had now become, necessarily pitiless and cruel. I put him out of the pale of humanity, inaccessible to every sentiment of pity, the remorseless enemy of his fellow-creatures, against whom he had sworn an undying enmity.

But was this man, then, going to let us perish of hunger, incarcerated in an iron cell, at the mercy of those terrible temptations which assail men under the influence of extreme hunger? This fearful thought