"What!—all?"
"Every thing."
"What shall we do when my powder is done?"
"I know not, and I care not."
"There are but ten charges left," said he, gloomily, as he opened the tin case.
"What is that to me?" I asked, with growing anger.
"It is this much to you, that if provisions fall short, I shall eat you!" he replied, with a fiendish grin, accompanied by an emphatic oath. "Now, my fine fellow, what do you think of that?"
The words of the wretch, his herculean frame and ferocious aspect, which the wild life he had lately spent among the woods of Alphonso had not improved, made me shudder.
On remembering the manner in which we first found him floating in the open boat at sea, the suspicions of Weston, Hislop, and Lambourne regarding the disappearance of a companion who had probably been with him—suspicions which all his future conduct seemed to confirm, and knowing all he was capable of committing, my heart sickened with disgust and apprehension; but the imminence of my own danger made me dissemble.
While pretending to smile and to disbelieve him, I mentally considered how to arm myself, or how to deprive him of those weapons which, when added to his muscular strength and singularly brutal nature, rendered him an enemy so formidable.