202 VARIOUS REMARKS ON THE 



with a hideous look of triumph. It was not hunger like 

 my own about to be satiated, for the wretch had a rotun- 

 dity of stomach which showed me that he was already 

 gorged. It was not poverty about to make gain of me, 

 for I saw it throw coin to a crowd of young monsters 

 standing on naked props, to venture into the water where 

 I lay and seize me. It was sport. That detestable 

 passion which belongs to such two-legged monsters alone \ 

 the unaccountable disregard of others' pain, the unac- 

 countable enjoyment of seeing a creature endowed with a 

 thousand faculties of life and pleasure finishing them all 

 in agony. I was in torture. But the more I writhed 

 the more the monster was evidently delighted. Every 

 fibre of my throat was torn. I felt alternately the dead- 

 liest chill and the most scorching flame. My eyes started 

 from their sockets. My heart panted in wild spasms. 

 My flesh quivered as if poison had been dropped on every 

 scale. A sudden and violent pull, which forced the steel 

 into my very brain, dragged me on the bank. Here I 

 felt a new scene of misery. In the next moment my 

 whole frame burned as if coated in fire. The air, no 

 longer softened by the water, seemed to me all flame. The 

 sun, untempered by the shade, looked a vast furnace 

 stooping from the sky. The horrors of that moment 

 defy all conception. Fortunately they were brief life 

 could bear no more I gave one wild convulsion, and lost 

 all sense of being. Yet as I gave my last groan I could 

 faintly hear a ' hurrah' and the words, ' a five-and-twenty 



