midnight
Slowly morning came , and the black wall of forest around became full of purple interstices as the east brightened . Those glimmers of light between bough and trunk turned to yellow and red , the day-shine presently stretched like a canopy from point to point of the treetops on either side of my sleeping-place , and I arose . All my limbs were stiff with cold , my veins emptied by hunger and wounds , and for a space I had not even strength to move . But a little rubbing softened my cramped muscles presently and limping painfully down to the place of combat , I surveyed the traces of that midnight fight . I will not dwell upon it . It was ugly and grim ; the trampled grass , the giant footmarks , each enringing its pool of curdled blood ; the broken bushes , the grooved mud-slides where the unknown brutes had slid in deadly embrace ; the hollows , the splintered boughs , their ragged points tufted with skin and hair -- all was sickening to me . Yet so hungry was I that when I turned towards the odious remnants of the vanquished -- a shapeless mass of abomination -- my thoughts flew at once to breakfasting !