Alas, poor Moira! Faithful friend! True heart, and loyal to
death! A thousand times I reproached myself with my neglect of her,
but my regrets were unavailing, and my repentance came too late.
It now became necessary if I would live to provide myself with food,
and in this enforced occupation I obtained some relief from the
dejection which had formerly obsessed me. I found no difficulty in
procuring fish, and I quickly became expert with Moira's bow and
arrows. Salt, also, I gathered from the rocks, and some roots which
Moira had shown me served as vegetables. Of water I had an abundance
from a fresh-water lagoon near by. So that I lacked nothing for my
support. But although my body was nourished, my mind became so
oppressed by solitude that, at times, I even thought of returning to
the blacks and conforming to their ways, and had it not been that I
knew them to be cannibals I might have spent the remainder of my life
among them, so intense had become my longing to meet with others of my
kind.
Another cause for anxiety now made me consider whether I had not better
move my habitation to some cave along the coast. Within a week from the
carrying off of Moira by the sea-spider, I began to miss supplies of
fish and flesh which I kept in the storehouse cave.
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