Both were shrunken in shape, with their garments hanging loosely around their bodies, their eyes sunk in deep cavities, their cheek-bones prominently protruding, their breasts flat and fleshless, the ribs easily discernible,—in short, they appeared more like a pair of skeletons, covered with shrivelled skin, than breathing, living men. Either was but ill-adapted for the purpose to which dire necessity was about to devote one or other of them.
Of the two, Le Gros appeared the less attenuated. This may have arisen from the fact of his greater ascendency over the crew of the raft,—by means of which he had been enabled to appropriate to himself a larger share of the food sparsely distributed amongst them. His ample covering of hair may have had something to do with this appearance,—concealing as it did the unevenness of the surface upon which it grew, and imparting a plumper aspect to his face and features.
If there was a superiority in the quantity of flesh still clinging to his bones, its quality might be questioned,—at all events, in regard to the use that might soon be made of it. In point of tenderness, his muscular integuments could scarcely compare with those of the Irishman, whose bright skin promised—
These are horrid thoughts. They should not be her repeated, were it not to show in its true light the terrible extremes, both of thought and action, to which men may be reduced by starvation. Horrid as they may appear, they were entertained at that crisis by the castaway crew of the Pandora!
Chapter Sixty Nine.
A Challenge declined.
When it came to the last drawing,—for there needed to be only one more,—there was a pause in the proceedings, such as usually precedes an expected climax.
It was accompanied by silence; so profound that, but for the noise made by the waves as they dashed against the hollow hogsheads, a pin might have been heard if dropped upon the planking of the raft. In the sound of the sea there was something lugubrious: a fit accompaniment of the unhallowed scene that was being enacted by those within hearing of it. One might have fancied that spirits in fearful pain were confined within the empty casks, and that the sounds that seemed to issue out of them were groans elicited by their agony.