To abate, if possible, the aching, racking pains in all his limbs, he strove to increase his rate of walking, but that expedient, by increasing the languid circulation of his half-thickened blood, caused his wounds from the shot to burst out bleeding afresh, and the horrible faintness that came over him for want of food made him reel along like a drunken man.
It might have been the lingering effects of the opiate that had been so freely administered to him, or it might be his huge draughts of water upon an empty stomach, but, from whatever cause it arose, a deadly sickness came over him just as he neared some cottages at the base of the hill, leading to what is now a pretty collection of suburban cottages, which was then a swampy hollow, with a few miserable huts, occupied by people who sold bundles of dry sticks for firewood ostensibly, but who were in reality had characters, not averse to anything, so that it promised the smallest gain.
Jacob Gray held with a shivering, nervous grasp by one of the palings which divided the patch of garden ground belonging to one of these hovels from the waste common, and was dreadfully sick—sick until what little strength had been left to him was frustrated, and he fell, a breathing, but scarcely animate mass, by the side of the palings.
His situation was an unfavourable one for attracting the attention of any person who might be in the hut, for the palings hid him, and he had not strength, had he the inclination, to cry for help. How long he remained there he knew not, but it was quite dark, when, the awful sickness having subsided, he made an effort to rise again. With much difficulty he gained his feet, and the moment he did, the horrible feeling of hunger—maddening hunger—came across him with twice its former intensity of pain.
“I—I can go no further,” he gasped. “I shall die on the road side if I attempt to reach London from here with—without food, I—I cannot—cannot.”
He staggered along the palings till he came to a wide gate which had no fastening, and there, with a feeling of desperation, he crawled through, determined to risk all by craving charity of the cottagers.
As he went on by the inner-side of the wide palings, which he was obliged to cling to for support, he struck against some projection which threw him down and very much bruised his knee. As he lay there he put up his hands, to feel what it was, and by the shape of the projection, as well as dipping his hand into its contents, he thought in a moment what it was, and he rose with alacrity to eat greedily from a pig-trough the loathsome remainder of the last meal that had been given to the swine.
What will hunger not induce persons to do? Jacob Gray thought he had never so much enjoyed a meal in his life, and when he had devoured the remnants of the mash in the trough, he sat down by the palings, and in about half an hour was sufficiently recovered to make his project of proceeding to the house of Learmont at Westminster not so wild and impracticable.
The night was now fairly set in, and there was not much chance of Gray’s ragged, wounded, and emaciated appearance attracting the notice of any one along the dimly lighted road from Hampstead to London.
Although his strength was now a little restored, he still felt very ill at every step of his progress, and his only hope became entirely founded upon the chance of finding Learmont within, and inducing in him a belief that his (Gray’s) strange and disordered appearance arose merely from some accident on his road, and not from any circumstances which had put it out of his power to be half so noxious and dangerous as he had been.