"In one of these fits of lunacy or distraction I fell down and struck my
face against the corner of a pallet-bed, in 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 came from me I came to myself, and the violence of the flame or
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 food. 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 a while, and then waking, thought myself dying, being light
with vapours from an empty stomach. I recommended my soul then to God,
and then earnestly wished that somebody would throw me into the sea.
"All this while my mistress lay by me, just, as I thought, expiring, but
she 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 when I awoke I fell into a violent
passion of crying, and after that had a second fit of violent hunger. I
got up ravenous, and in a most dreadful condition; 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 wondered nobody had
taken it before, and afraid it should be taken from me now. After it was
down, though the thoughts of it filled me with horror, yet it checked the
fit of hunger, and I took another draught of water, and was composed and
refreshed for some hours after. This was the fourth day; and this I kept
up till towards night, when, within the compass of three hours, I had all
the several circumstances over again, one after another, viz. sick,
sleepy, eagerly hungry, pain in the stomach, then ravenous again, then
sick, then lunatic, then crying, then ravenous again, and so every
quarter of an hour, and my strength wasted exceedingly; at night I lay me
down, having no comfort but in the hope that I should die before morning.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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