The Indian caught it eagerly, and began to devour it as though he had eaten nothing.
“He’s tightening up like a drum,” observed Jeffson, handing him a greasy wedge off a raw flitch of bacon.
“Him vill boost,” said Meyer, staring at the Indian and smoking slowly, owing to the strength of his amazement.
“Jack the Giant Killer was a joke to him,” muttered Graddy.
“A bottomless pit,” observed Rance, referring to his stomach.
The Indian, however, proved that Rance was wrong by suddenly coming to a dead halt and dropping the last morsel he was in the act of raising to his mouth. He then heaved a deep sigh and looked round on the whole party with a radiant smile, which was literally sparkling by reason of the firelight which glittered on his greasy countenance.
“What! stuffed full at last?” exclaimed Jeffson, as they all burst into a fit of laughter.
“Ay, chock full to the beams,” said Joe Graddy; “moreover, hatches battened down, topsails shook out, anchor up, and away!”
This was indeed the case. Having eaten as much as he could hold, the poor Indian attempted to rise and walk off, but he suddenly fell down, and rolled about groaning and rubbing himself as if in great agony. The alarmed travellers began to fear that the poor little man had absolutely, as Joe said, eaten himself to death. He recovered, however, in a few minutes, rose again with some difficulty, and went off in the midst of a splendid burst of moonlight which appeared to have come out expressly to light him on his way! His gait was awkward, and he was obliged to sit down every twenty or thirty yards like a man resting under a heavy load. When last seen on his diminutive legs he looked like a huge bloated spider waddling into the obscurity of the forest.
“How disgusting!” perhaps exclaims the reader. True, yet not much more disgusting than the gormandising which goes on among too many civilised men, who, besides possessing better knowledge, have got dyspepsia to inform them that they daily act the part of the Californian savage, while many learned doctors, we believe, tell them that it is not so much quality as quantity that kills.