THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS
good fortune. Somehow the first success gave me a feeling that I should pull through. My chief trouble was that I was desperately hungry. When a Jew shoots himself in the City and there is an inquest, the newspapers usually report that the deceased was "well nourished." I remember thinking that they would not call me well-nourished if I broke my neck in a bog-hole. I lay and tortured myself—for the ginger biscuits merely emphasised the aching void—with the memory of all the good food I had thought so little of in London. There were Paddock's crisp sausages and fragrant shavings of bacon, and shapely poached eggs—how often I had turned up my nose at them! There were the cutlets they did at the club, and a particular ham that stood on the cold table, for which my soul lusted. My thoughts hovered over all the varieties of mortal edible, and finally settled on a porter-house steak and a quart of bitter with a Welsh rabbit to follow. In longing hopelessly for these dainties I fell asleep.
I woke very cold and stiff about an hour
118
