After this the
squaw left him, and Crusoe spent the remainder of that night gnawing
the cords that bound him. So diligent was he that he was free before
morning and walked deliberately out of the tent. Then he shook
himself, and with a yell that one might have fancied was intended for
defiance he bounded joyfully away, and was soon out of sight.
To a dog with a good appetite which had been on short allowance for
several days, the mouthful given to him by the old squaw was a mere
nothing. All that day he kept bounding over the plain from bluff to
bluff in search of something to eat, but found nothing until dusk,
when he pounced suddenly and most unexpectedly on a prairie-hen fast
asleep. In one moment its life was gone. In less than a minute its
body was gone too--feathers and bones and all--down Crusoe's ravenous
throat.
On the identical spot Crusoe lay down and slept like a top for four
hours. At the end of that time he jumped up, bolted a scrap of skin
that somehow had been overlooked at supper, and flew straight over the
prairie to the spot where he had had the scuffle with the Indian.
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