So, by degrees, my courage returned to me, and with it something of hope. I tried to think--and it is no simple matter to be reasonable when one is exhausted by starvation and tortured both in body and in mind.
It was manifest, in the first place, that I had no means of communicating with this man. I could neither speak to him nor sign, since I knew no word of any barbarous language, and my hands were bound fast to my sides. But I did the only thing I could do--I moved my mouth as if I were eating, hoping against hope that he would take my meaning: that I was starving and begged for food.
And the more I mouthed at him and made grimaces, the more he stared at me, and the more frightened did he seem. For the better part of five minutes I swear he never moved an inch, and then, quite suddenly, he took to his heels and dived into the woods.
For a little time I could scarce credit it that he had left me to my fate. But when a full hour had passed, and I realised that it was possible that the wild man might not return, my sense of loneliness became even more oppressive than before, and to tell the truth I cried.
I am, in the evening of a long, adventurous life, at times of a reflective disposition, and I have considered often the strange complexities of human nature, for I have seen many men and places in my time. When I first beheld the savage, I was alarmed beyond measure that he would put the life out of me by means of his murderous-looking blow-pipe. I would, at that moment, gladly have had him on the other side of the world. And when he left me so suddenly, without sign or signal of either hostility or friendship, I felt no less dismayed.
I was so utterly alone in that great silence, in the shadow of those mute, majestic trees. Not even the wild inhabitants of that inhospitable region would come and have done with it and kill me.
And thus, indeed, I burst into tears, and cried as children cry. I think sheer weakness and the pain that I had suffered had much to do with it; and in any case it all seemed to me so pitiful and hopeless, for I was over-young to undergo such cruel privations.
I slept again until the evening, when I was awakened of a sudden by a strange noise like the chuckling of a hen.
I opened my eyes and looked upon the same wild man who had regarded me before. But this time he had brought three others with him--all four as like to one another as so many beans. And there they stood, in a row, immediately before me, one of them--as I have just expressed it--chuckling like a hen.
I could not for the life of me make out whether or not he was laughing. He might have been amused, amazed, or angered. There was no expression upon his face. The noise seemed to come from somewhere out of his throat. When I opened my eyes and looked at him, he ceased at once; so I am inclined to think he had behaved thus in order to awaken me.