The boldest heart beat more quickly. Suppose they WERE cannibals. It was a long way back to the carpet.
‘Hadn’t we better go back?’ said Jane. ‘Go NOW,’ she said, and her voice trembled a little. ‘Suppose they eat us.’
‘Nonsense, Pussy,’ said Cyril, firmly. ‘Look, there’s a goat tied up. That shows they don’t eat PEOPLE.’
‘Let’s go on and say we’re missionaries,’ Robert suggested.
‘I shouldn’t advise THAT,’ said the Phoenix, very earnestly.
‘Why not?’
‘Well, for one thing, it isn’t true,’ replied the golden bird.
It was while they stood hesitating on the edge of the clearing that a tall man suddenly came out of one of the huts. He had hardly any clothes, and his body all over was a dark and beautiful coppery colour—just like the chrysanthemums father had brought home on Saturday. In his hand he held a spear. The whites of his eyes and the white of his teeth were the only light things about him, except that where the sun shone on his shiny brown body it looked white, too. If you will look carefully at the next shiny savage you meet with next to nothing on, you will see at once—if the sun happens to be shining at the time—that I am right about this.
The savage looked at the children. Concealment was impossible. He uttered a shout that was more like ‘Oo goggery bag-wag’ than anything else the children had ever heard, and at once brown coppery people leapt out of every hut, and swarmed like ants about the clearing. There was no time for discussion, and no one wanted to discuss anything, anyhow. Whether these coppery people were cannibals or not now seemed to matter very little.
Without an instant’s hesitation the four children turned and ran back along the forest path; the only pause was Anthea’s. She stood back to let Cyril pass, because he was carrying the Lamb, who screamed with delight. (He had not whooping-coughed a single once since the carpet landed him on the island.)