In other words, he came down from pistols and sharp-edged cutlasses to fists, and felt such an intense longing to get at Ram, that his fists involuntarily clenched and his fingers tingled.
"Wait a bit," he said fiercely,--"wait a bit." "Yes, I shall have to wait a bit," he said sadly, as he rose from the stones.

"Oh, how weak and hungry I am! It's as if I was going to be ill.

I wonder whether I could track where they went out." "Not now," he said,--"not now;" and with some faint hope of finding the place where he had been lying on the old sail, he began to move slowly and laboriously along, his mind dragged over, as it were, to the words of the boy as he taunted him about milk and bread and butter with ham.
It was agonising in his literally starving condition to think of such things, and he tried to keep his mind upon finding the way out, meaning to work desperately after he had lain down for a bit to rest.
But it was impossible to control his thoughts, strive how he would.
Hunger is an overmastering desire, and he crept on step by step with outstretched hands, picturing in the darkness slices of ham, yellow butter, brown crusted loaves, and pure sweet milk, till, as he dragged his feet slowly along, half-fainting now with pain, weariness, and despair, his foot suddenly kicked against something which rolled over and over away from him.
"The lanthorn!" he exclaimed eagerly, and planning at once how he could strike a light with a stone and his knife, and perhaps contrive some tinder, he went down on his hands and knees, feeling about in all directions till he touched the object which he had kicked, and uttered a cry of joy and excitement.
It was not the lanthorn, but a round cross-handled basket with lid, and he trembled as he recalled Ram's words about what his mother had sent.
Was there truth in them, or were they the utterances of a malicious mind which wished to torture one who was in its power?
Archy Raystoke hardly dared to think, and knelt there for a few minutes, with his trembling hands resting upon the basket, which he was afraid to open lest it should not contain that which he looked for.
"Out of my misery at all events," he cried; and he tore off the lid..