In his possession remained not a single article that
he might have pawned for a morsel of food. And he had already stripped
his body of every shred of clothing except the few garments he was
compelled by an inborn sense of the fitness of things to retain. Bodily
starvation, as a consequence, was added to hunger, and his misery was
complete.
It chanced that an extraordinary happening awaited Silas Carringer that
night in Mexico; otherwise he would either have drowned himself in the
river within twenty-four hours or died of pneumonia within three days.
He had been without food for seventy hours, and his mental desperation
had driven him far in its race with his physical needs to consume the
remaining strength of his emaciated body. Pale, weak, and tottering, he
took what comfort he could find in the savoury odours which came
streaming up from the basement kitchens of the restaurants in the main
streets. He lacked the courage to beg or steal. For he had been reared
as a gentleman, and was accordingly out of place in the world.
His teeth chattered, his eyes had dark, ugly lines under them, he
shambled, stooped, and gasped.
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