I woke one morning from a profound sleep,with one of my hands very painful.The back of it was much swollen,and in the centre of the swelling was a triangular wound,like the bite of a leech.As the day went on,the swelling subsided,and by the evening the hurt was all but healed.I searched the cave,turning over every stone of any size,but discovered nothing I could imagine capable of injuring me.
Slowly the days passed,and still the body never moved,never opened its eyes.It could not be dead,for assuredly it manifested no sign of decay,and the air about it was quite pure.Moreover,Icould imagine that the sharpest angles of the bones had begun to disappear,that the form was everywhere a little rounder,and the skin had less of the parchment-look:if such change was indeed there,life must be there!the tide which had ebbed so far toward the infinite,must have begun again to flow!Oh joy to me,if the rising ripples of life's ocean were indeed burying under lovely shape the bones it had all but forsaken!Twenty times a day Ilooked for evidence of progress,and twenty times a day I doubted--sometimes even despaired;but the moment I recalled the mental picture of her as I found her,hope revived.
Several weeks had passed thus,when one night,after lying a long time awake,I rose,thinking to go out and breathe the cooler air;for,although from the running of the stream it was always fresh in the cave,the heat was not seldom a little oppressive.The moon outside was full,the air within shadowy clear,and naturally Icast a lingering look on my treasure ere I went."Bliss eternal!"I cried aloud,"do I see her eyes?"Great orbs,dark as if cut from the sphere of a starless night,and luminous by excess of darkness,seemed to shine amid the glimmering whiteness of her face.I stole nearer,my heart beating so that I feared the noise of it startling her.I bent over her.Alas,her eyelids were close shut!Hope and Imagination had wrought mutual illusion!my heart's desire would never be!I turned away,threw myself on the floor of the cave,and wept.Then I bethought me that her eyes had been a little open,and that now the awful chink out of which nothingness had peered,was gone:it might be that she had opened them for a moment,and was again asleep!--it might be she was awake and holding them close!
In either case,life,less or more,must have shut them!I was comforted,and fell fast asleep.
That night I was again bitten,and awoke with a burning thirst.
In the morning I searched yet more thoroughly,but again in vain.
The wound was of the same character,and,as before,was nearly well by the evening.I concluded that some large creature of the leech kind came occasionally from the hot stream."But,if blood be its object,"I said to myself,"so long as I am there,I need hardly fear for my treasure!"That same morning,when,having peeled a grape as usual and taken away the seeds,I put it in her mouth,her lips made a slight movement of reception,and I KNEW she lived!
My hope was now so much stronger that I began to think of some attire for her:she must be able to rise the moment she wished!Ibetook myself therefore to the forest,to investigate what material it might afford,and had hardly begun to look when fibrous skeletons,like those of the leaves of the prickly pear,suggested themselves as fit for the purpose.I gathered a stock of them,laid them to dry in the sun,pulled apart the reticulated layers,and of these had soon begun to fashion two loose garments,one to hang from her waist,the other from her shoulders.With the stiletto-point of an aloe-leaf and various filaments,I sewed together three thicknesses of the tissue.
During the week that followed,there was no farther sign except that she more evidently took the grapes.But indeed all the signs became surer:plainly she was growing plumper,and her skin fairer.
Still she did not open her eyes;and the horrid fear would at times invade me,that her growth was of some hideous fungoid nature,the few grapes being nowise sufficient to account for it.
Again I was bitten;and now the thing,whatever it was,began to pay me regular visits at intervals of three days.It now generally bit me in the neck or the arm,invariably with but one bite,always while I slept,and never,even when I slept,in the daytime.Hour after hour would I lie awake on the watch,but never heard it coming,or saw sign of its approach.Neither,I believe,did I ever feel it bite me.At length I became so hopeless of catching it,that I no longer troubled myself either to look for it by day,or lie in wait for it at night.I knew from my growing weakness that Iwas losing blood at a dangerous rate,but I cared little for that:
in sight of my eyes death was yielding to life;a soul was gathering strength to save me from loneliness;we would go away together,and I should speedily recover!
