I fell off into a doze. It was not sleep, but it served the purpose,
and when in an hour or two a draught of cool air roused me, I awoke,
feeling more myself again.

Slowly morning came, and the black wall of forest around became full
of purple interstices as the east brightened. Those glimmers of light
between bough and trunk turned to yellow and red, the day-shine presently
stretched like a canopy from point to point of the treetops on either
side of my sleeping-place, and I arose.

All my limbs were stiff with cold, my veins emptied by hunger and wounds,
and for a space I had not even strength to move. But a little rubbing
softened my cramped muscles presently and limping painfully down to the
place of combat, I surveyed the traces of that midnight fight. I will
not dwell upon it. It was ugly and grim; the trampled grass, the giant
footmarks, each enringing its pool of curdled blood; the broken bushes,
the grooved mud-slides where the unknown brutes had slid in deadly
embrace; the hollows, the splintered boughs, their ragged points tufted
with skin and hair--all was sickening to me. Yet so hungry was I that
when I turned towards the odious remnants of the vanquished--a shapeless
mass of abomination--my thoughts flew at once to breakfasting! I went
down and inspected the victim cautiously--a huge rat-like beast as far
as might be judged from the bare uprising ribs--all that was left of him
looking like the framework of a schooner yacht. His heart lay amongst
the offal, and my knife came out to cut a meal from it, but I could not
do it. Three times I essayed the task, hunger and disgust contending
for mastery; three times turned back in loathing. At last I could stand
the sight no more, and, slamming the knife up again, turned on my heels,
and fairly ran for fresh air and the shore, where the sea was beginning to
glimmer in the light a few score yards through the forest stems. There,