At three o'clock it flashed across me like a revelation, that I was hungry. I had eaten a light supper hours ago, and now my stomach was eloquent with emptiness; while the blood which should be doing good service there was pulsing madly about in my brain to no purpose. I went down stairs and inspected the contents of the ice-chest. Roast pork and brown bread make rather a hearty late supper, but breakfast time was so near I thought I would risk them—and a good deal of them.
Returning to my room, I set a lamp upon a stand at the head of the bed and, taking the first book that came to hand—it chanced to be an Italian grammar—I began to read. I had gone as far in the introduction as “CC like t-ch in hatchet,” when I grew drowsy. I laid down the book, my eyelids drooped, and there is good circumstantial evidence that a moment later I fell asleep, lying on my back with the upper half of my body bent into the form of a bow.
My slumbers were visited by a dream—a nightmare, composed, I estimate, of cold roast pork and brown bread, uncomfortable bodily position, the memory of certain occurrences in my past history, and an event to be described later. In this dream Antaeus figured largely. He seemed to come rolling across the bed, and me, until he had stopped upon my chest and stomach.
“What are you doing?” I asked in alarm. “Do you know you are crushing me? Get away!”
“I dare say I am. I weigh fifteen tons,” Antaeus replied, heavily jocose. “I say,” he continued with a burst of anger, “you are an honorable, high-minded sort of person, you are. What do you mean by treating me so? Have you forgotten our compact? I have given you every chance man could ask for with her; what have you done for me in return? Nothing. Even worse than nothing. To faithlessness you have added treachery. Not content with deceiving me, you have sought to destroy me. I suppose you hoped to see my débris strewn along the iron way.”
I was conscience-stricken by his accusations; but I could refute a part of them. “Oh, no! oh, no!” I protested, “it was an accident, I assure you. So far from desiring such a thing, I declare that I cannot even imagine your being reduced to débris. I——”
“Bah!” roared Antaeus, and in his rage he began to belch forth smoke—smoke so thick and black that I thought I should be stifled by it. In another moment I awoke gasping.