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His body falls against the door, and it shuts to with a clang, and I try to open it, and cannot. I beat my hands against its iron nails, and scream, and the dead man grins at me. The light streams in through the chink beneath the massive door, and fades, and comes again, and fades again, and I gnaw at the oaken lids of the iron-bound chests, for the madness of hunger is climbing into my brain.
On and on he passed, and stayed at length by a chalk rock, tall as himself, wrought by the tides into the semblance of a head, a veritable giant's head, with masses of long, intertangled weeds on its top and sides, like the strange, wild unkempt locks of a sea-god; its front showing blurred features like a carven face eaten away by the slow gnaw of a thousand centuries.
Now, however, I set to work calmly to try and release myself, by drawing up one of my hands, hoping that if I could but get my head low enough to reach the thong round my arm, I might in time gnaw it through; but after making a variety of efforts I found that the attempt was vain, and giving it up, I resigned myself to my fate, whatever that might be.
Giant beetles came from every quarter and carried away pieces of offal; small shy beasts stole out to gnaw the white bones upon which savage teeth had left but little; a gaunt hyena, with suspicious looks, snatched at a bone and dashed back into the jungle. Vultures settled down heavily, and with deliberate air sought out the foulest refuse.
The waters of the sea undermine and gnaw off big slices from the land; all, all is motion, vibration; nothing stands still.
But on reading some of the inscriptions, I was surprised to find them very recent; for, in fact, twenty years of this climate suffices to give as much or more antiquity of aspect, whether to gravestone or edifice, than a hundred years of our own, so soon do lichens creep over the surface, so soon does it blacken, so soon do the edges lose their sharpness, so soon does Time gnaw away the records.
He had the agile grace of a leopard; his waistcoat reminded me of one; he was like a piece of machinery in free action. Pleased by my enthusiasm, he gave me a lesson, promising me more. 'He'll be champion some day, said Kiomi, at gnaw upon an apple he had given her. I knocked the apple on the ground, and stamped on it. She slapped my cheek. In a minute we stood in a ring.
My heart was throbbing violently in my breast. I sneaked into one of the passages, where the forges are, as far in as I could go, and stopped outside a dilapidated door leading to a back-yard. There was no light to be seen anywhere, only blessed darkness all around me; and I began to gnaw at the bone.
"I have well earned my day. Serve supper, Calabash; Martial shall gnaw our bones good enough for him. Now let us talk of the customer, 'Quai de Billy, for to-morrow or next day that must come off, if I wish to pocket the money he promised. I am going to tell you, mother; but some drink thunder! let's have some drink. I'll stand some."
When they borrow a chaw they don't generly cut it off with a knife, but set the plug in between their teeth, and gnaw with their teeth and tug at the plug with their hands till they get it in two; then sometimes the one that owns the tobacco looks mournful at it when it's handed back, and says, sarcastic: "Here, gimme the CHAW, and you take the PLUG."
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