Capt. (shaking his head mournfully). "Pore young man! Pore young man! It is too bad—too bad indeed! Going to the Navigator Islands! Not married yet, I reckon? No? Ah! so much the better. No wife and children to make widows and orphans of. But it's sad, anyway. A promising young fellow like you! My heart bleeds for you."
S. "What d'you mean?"
Capt. "Oh, nothing. I don't want to frighten you. I know you're doing it from a sense of duty. But I've been there to the Navigator Islands, and I'm acquainted with the people's little ways, and I—well, I—I—the fact is, you see, that—well, sooner'n disguise the truth, I don't mind telling you straight out that the last day I was there the folks et one of my legs—sawed it off an' et it. Now you can see how things are yourself. Those Navigators gobbled that leg right up. It was a leg a good deal like yours, only heavier, I reckon."
S. "You astonish me!"
Capt. "Oh, that's nothing. They did that just for a little bit of fun. The chief told me the day before that they never et anything but human beings. He said his family consumed about three a day all the year round, counting holidays and Sundays. He was a light eater himself, he said, on account of gitting dyspepsia from a tough Australian that he et in 1847, but the girls and the old woman, so he said, were very hearty eaters, and it kept him busy prowling around after human beings to satisfy 'em. The old woman, he said, rather preferred to eat babies, on account of her teeth being poor, but the girls could eat the grizzliest sailor that ever went aboard ship."
S. "This is frightful."
Capt. "And the chief said sometimes the supply was scarce, but lately they had begun to depend more on imported goods than on the home products. And they were better, anyhow, for all the folks preferred white meat. He said the missionary societies were shipping them some nice lots of provender, and the tears came in his eyes when he said how good they were to the poor friendless savage away on a distant island. He said he liked a missionary not too old or too young. But let's see; what's your age, did you say?"
[Illustration: MR. SPOONER IS ALARMED]
S. "I am twenty-eight."
Capt. "I think he mentioned twenty-seven; but howsomedever, he liked 'em old enough to be solid and young enough to be tender. And he said he liked missionaries because they never used rum or tobacco and always kept their flavor. I know I seen one young fellow who came out there from Boston. He got up a camp-meeting in the woods; and while he was giving out the hymn, one of the congregation banged him on the head with a club, and in less than no time he was sizzling over a fire right in front of the pulpit. They lit the fire with his hymn-book and kept her going with his sermons. He was a man just about your build—a little leaner'n you, maybe. And they like a man to be stoutish. He eats more tender."