, and occasionally wolves, as
ferocious and hungry as their captors; and such was the extremity to
which they were often reduced, that they sat down on the spot where the
animals were caught, divided the smoking limbs among their number, and
devoured them without any culinary preparation.

This supply very soon ceased--the animals in the neighbourhood having
either been consumed or frightened away to more inaccessible places. The
wretched beings, like others in their situation, had recourse to the
woods for acorns; but the time of the year had passed, and no nuts were
to be found. Weakness preyed on their limbs; and several of their
number, unable longer to go in search of food, which was nowhere to be
found, lay on the floor of the cavern in the agonies of a hunger which
their stronger companions, concerned for their own fate, would not
alleviate. All ties between the members of the association began to give
way before the despair of absolute famine. They ceased all personal
communication; silence, feeding on the morbid forms of misery called up
by diseased imaginations, reigned throughout the society of skeletons,
and hollow eyes, which spoke unutterable things, glanced through the
gloom of the cavern, where a glimmering fire, on which they had, for a
time, prepared the little meat they had procured, was still kept up, by
adding a few pieces of wood from the neighbouring forest. No notice was
taken of each other's agonies, nor could the groans which mixed and
sounded with a hollow noise through the dark recess, have been
distinguished by the ear of sympathy; an occasional scream from a female
sufferer who experienced a paroxysm of more than her ordinary agony, was
only capable of fixing the attention for an instant, till individual
pain laid hold again of the tortured feelings.

A person of the name of Andrew Christie, a butcher, originally from
Perth, had endeavoured, at first, to organise the society, with a view
to save himself and his fellow-sufferers. He was a strong, hardy man;
and, if any of the number could be said to retain a small portion of
self-command, in the midst of the horrible scene of suffering which
surrounded them, it was this man. He was still able to walk, though with
difficulty, and continued to feed the fire, going out occasionally and
seizing on grubs that were to be found about the mouth of the cavern.
The others were unable to follow his example, and even he latterly was
unfitted for his lo