He had seen his children grow to manhood and womanhood and become fathers and grandfathers, mothers and grandmothers.

But having known woman, and love, and fatherhood, and the belly-delights of eating, he had passed on beyond.

Food?
Scarcely did he know its meaning, so little did he eat.
Hunger, that bit him like a spur when he was young and lusty, had long since ceased to stir and prod him.

He ate out of a sense of necessity and duty, and cared little for what he ate, save for one thing: the eggs of the megapodes that were, in season, laid in his private, personal, strictly tabooed megapode laying-yard.

Here was left to him his last lingering flesh thrill.