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Their relative size and appearance are shown by the figures; but it may be added that she is very handsome; the fore part of her body, which, being composed of the head and chest soldered together, is termed cephalothorax, is glossy-black and covered, except in spots, with white hairs; she has also upon six of her legs one or two brushes of black hairs; while he is an insignificant-looking insect of a dull-brown color and half-starved look, with only a few scattered bristles upon his slender limbs.

I stood a moment; the night was dark; lights gleamed far out on the river from the battleships. The strains of their bands fell and rose, faintly heard in the distance. I saw as it were before me with distinctness the camp on the windy hill, the half-starved, ragged men, the face of the great chief they loved.

The greatest service ever done by an English fleet had been thus successfully accomplished by men whose wages had not been paid from the time of their engagement, half-starved, with their clothes in rags, and so ill-found in the necessaries of war that they had eked out their ammunition by what they could take in action from the enemy himself.

Where they pick the black up is a mystery I cannot solve, as in the case of the willingest girl that ever came into a house half-starved poor thing, a girl so willing that I called her Willing Sophy down upon her knees scrubbing early and late and ever cheerful but always smiling with a black face.

The tribes looted the castle of everything portable, and then retired from whence they had come. For this Kheyr-ed-Din cared nothing; they were welcome to the poor possessions of some hundreds of half-starved Italian soldiers let them take the shell, for him remained the kernel in the shape of a strong place of arms.

I found him wrapped in an old, greasy, ragged, great-coat, sitting in a wretched apartment, without either glass, paper, or boards in the windows; and there was no sort of furniture but a couple of broken chairs and a miserable truckle-bed. He looked pale, and meagre, and had more the air of a half-starved prisoner than of a magistrate.

He saw the half-starved girl leaning forward, her lips parted as she listened to the big captain. He saw an old squaw, wrinkled and toothless, venom in her eyes, crouching beside the hungered girl. Suddenly the girl took an eager step forward. As if it were a signal a full half of the band started in the same direction.

Meantime the army, disappointed, discontented, half-starved, unpaid, passed their days and nights as before, in the sloppy trenches, while deep and earnest were the complaints and the curses which succeeded to the momentary exultation of Christmas eve.

Then the cat let out a horrible beginning of a sound, and its poor, half-starved body seemed to turn inside out, with a churning motion that Hawkes could barely see. Blood and gore spattered from it, striking his face and clothes. He froze, unable to move. Either they were outside in the yard, or whatever frightful weapon they used could work through a closed door.

About twenty of his canoes had got separated from the rest of the fleet in a squall, while returning from the unsuccessful attempt on the Reef, and they were never heard of more; or, if heard of, it was in uncertain rumours, which gave an account of the arrival of three or four canoes at some islands a long way to-leeward, with a handful of half-starved warriors on board.