"Gorilla! By Jove!" and the boys stared into the forest, and then at each other. "Perhaps he's gone to call up the others. Will he come back, Muata?"
"Not he," said Mr. Hume. "He's just about as frightened as we were.
What are the signs, Muata?"
"Wow! Bad—bad signs. These be the bones of men;" and he turned over the ashes with his foot. "They were few who made a home here, and the man-eaters marked them for their own. In the night they fell on the village, killed the men, and rested here while they feasted— rested till the last was eaten; then with the women and the children they went back. That much the signs tell me."
"Does he mean," asked Venning, in horror, "that they were cannibals?"
Mr. Hume nodded his head.
"The brutes," muttered Compton, turning white.
"I don't wonder," said Venning, in a whisper. "This place is enough to breed any horror."
"It will be safe to land," said the chief, quietly.
"But what of the arrow?"
"That was not shot by a man-eater. It was the arrow of a river-man; maybe the same man loosened it as tied the fetish cloth to the pole, for one has been here since the man-eaters left."