THE EXTREM OF SUFFERING. 506

which my mistress lay, and with the blow the blood gushed out
of my nose; and the cabin-boy bringing me a little basin, I sat
down and bled into it a great deal, and as the blood ran from me
I came to myself, and the violence of the flame or the fever I was
in abated, and so did the ravenous part of the hunger.

“Then I grew sick, and retched to vomit, but could not, for I
had nothing in my stomach to bring up. After I had bled some
time I swooned, and they all believed I was dead ; but I came to
myself soon after, and then had a most dreadful pain in my
stomach, not to be described—not like the colic, but a gnawing
eager pain for food; and towards night it went off with a kind of
earnest wishing or longing for fool—something like, as I suppose,
the longing of a woman with child. I took another draught of
water with sugar in it, but my stomach loathed the sugar, and
brought it all up again; then I took a draught of water without
sugar, and that stayed with me; and I laid me down upon the
bed, praying most heartily that it would please God to take me
away ; and composing my mind in hopes of it, I slumbered awhile,
and then waking, thought myself dying, being light with vapours
from an empty stomach. I recommended my soul then to God,
and earnestly wished that somebody would throw me into the
sea,

“All this while my mistress lay by me, just, as I thought,
expiring, but bore it with much more patience than I; and gave
the last bit of bread she had left to her child, my young master,
who would not have taken it, but she obliged him to eat it; and
I believe it saved his life.

“Towards the morning I slept again, and first when I awaked
T fell into a violent passion of crying, and after that I had a second
fit of violent hunger. I got up ravenous, and in a most dreadful
condition. Had my mistress been dead, as much as I loved her,
I am certain I should have eaten a piece of her flesh with as much
relish and as unconcerned as ever I did the flesh of any creature
appointed for food; and once or twice I was going to bite my own
arm. At last I saw the basin in which was the blood I had bled
at my nose the day before. I ran to it, and swallowed it with
such haste and such a greedy appetite as if I had wondered