The cannibal native is invariably shy of displaying his tastes before whites, since people who do not share the "point of view" are so frequently prejudiced. Therefore the talking-man did not open a certain small green parcel tied up with sinnet string, which he had brought down with him from the mountain village. A feast in the hand is worth two in the pandanus-bush, thought the talking-man, so he brought his bonne bouche with him for dessert and said nothing about it. And thereby came the end.
For Lady Victoria, unable to swallow the clawed and chewed morsels pressed upon her by dirt-encrusted hands, began to hunt despairingly about for something that she could really eat, so that she should not offend the dangerous monsters who surrounded her.
"Isn't there anything clean to be had?" she asked the stockbroker anxiously. "I can't eat—and yet we must! What are we to do?"
The stockbroker, who had once been to Honolulu, and thought he knew something about native foods, spied the packet of green banana-leaf, and reached out for it.
"This'll be some of their own boiled yam," he said. "Natives always do it up like this. You can eat it all right if you scrape it with a knife. Allow me."
Before the talking-man could stretch out his filthy claw to stop him, the Englishman had cut the sinnet string, the parcel had burst open, and right into the middle of a half-demolished chicken pie fell a large white foot, cut off at the ankle, nicely browned across the instep and all crackled on the toes.
There was a wild shriek from the women, a splutter of horrified exclamations from the men, a boiling up of white petticoats like to the breaking of a wave on a pebbly shore, and then nothing but a diminishing string of rapidly trotting figures, each woman hand in hand with a man who was dragging her along far away, farther and farther, down the long, black, sandy path into the bush. Then ... they were gone.
Vaiti stood on the bank to look after them, and laughed quietly.
"Now I think we keep Sulphur Bay all our own self," she said.
As for the Tannamen, they rolled on the ground with laughter, and then picked the dainty morsel out of the chicken pie and ate it up.