He cut up and smoke-dried the flesh, and the intolerable
pangs of hunger compelled me to share the loathsome food with
him. We were not only indecent, it seemed to me, but cannibals
to feed on the faithful servant that had been our butcher. "But
what does it matter?" I argued with myself. "All flesh, clean
and unclean, should be, and is, equally abhorrent to me, and
killing animals a kind of murder. But now I find myself
constrained to do this evil thing that good may come. Only to
live I take it now--this hateful strength-giver that will enable
me to reach Rima, and the purer, better life that is to be."
During all that time, when we toiled onwards league after league
in silence, or sat silent by the nightly fire, I thought of many
things; but the past, with which I had definitely broken, was
little in my mind. Rima was still the source and centre of all
my thoughts; from her they rose, and to her returned. Thinking,
hoping, dreaming, sustained me in those dark days and nights of
pain and privation. Imagination was the bread that gave me
strength, the wine that exhilarated. What sustained old Nuflo's
mind I know not.
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