Afterwards I do not remember anything except that the stone was not warm, and my stomach craved, until a groan in my ear stabbed sleep. I sat up awake in every nerve. There was nobody in the cell with me. Perhaps the groan had come from a neighboring prisoner.
Then a faint stir of covering could be heard upon the bed.
I rose and pressed as far as I could into my corner. No beast of the wilderness ever had such terror for me as the unknown thing that had been my cell-mate half a night without my knowledge.
Was a vampire—a demon—a witch—a ghost locked in there with me?
It moaned again, so faintly, that compassion instantly got the better of superstition.
"Who is there?" I demanded; as if the knowledge of a name would cure terror of the suffering thing naming itself.
I got no answer, and taking my resolution in hand, moved toward the bed, determined to know what housed with me. The jug of water stood in the way, and I lifted it with instinctive answer to the groan.
The creature heard the splash, and I knew by its mutter what it wanted. Groping darkly, to poise the jug for an unseen mouth, I realized that something helpless to the verge of extinction lay on the bed, and I would have to find the mouth myself or risk drowning it. I held the water on the bed-rail with my right hand, groped with the other, and found a clammy, death-cold forehead, a nose and cavernous cheeks, an open and fever roughened mouth. I poured water on my handkerchief and bathed the face. That would have been my first desire in extreme moments. The poor wretch gave a reviving moan, so I felt emboldened to steady the jug and let drop by drop gurgle down its throat.
Forgetting the horror of the bed I sat there, repeating at intervals this poor ministration until the porthole again dawned, and blackness became the twilight of day.
My cell-mate could not see me. I doubt if he ever knew that a hand gave him water. His eyes were meaningless, and he was so gaunt that his body scarcely made a ridge on the bed.