They were horribly near when they sighted the cannibals. Van Wyck saw them first. He was puffing and wailing, and he had been swimming on his back, and when he turned over and sighted them his face took on the aspect of an open wound. His mouth became an awful gash in a grotesque, streaked horror of countenance.
"Bill," he called hoarsely. "It's worse than we thought. There are hundreds of 'em!"
Fixing his frightened and horrified eyes on the shore, Bill trod water, and became suddenly very angry. The scene before him burned itself on his brain, and robbed him of his victory. He felt that the fates had taken an indecent advantage of him. His anger mounted, and flushed his neck and throat. "Damn their black hides!" he muttered.
A clamor and a stench arose from the rocks. The cannibals seemed to be recovering from a drinking-bout. They writhed in the sun like wounded snakes. Bill counted sixty or seventy. Their bodies were hideously tattooed, and they wore monstrous shell rings through their ears and noses. The women joined with the men in dancing and spitting venom. The hubbub was deafening. Ages of savagery and blood had shaped them into capering devils. They were all the more terrible because they had seen other white men. Bill did not expect much from them. He confessed a frank horror at the situation.
"If we only had something to give 'em," he groaned.
Van Wyck had somehow expected Bill to rally and come to his support. He needed a moral prop and he noted with horror that Bill had lost his solid, comforting manner. Van Wyck's lips were so dry that he could scarcely get his tongue to shape words of rebuff.
"I don't like it," he finally blurted out. "They certainly mean business. You might swim in and test 'em!"
"Don't be an ass!" roared Bill.
"All right, then. But if one of us doesn't swim in, both of us are goners. And since I've never talked with savages I'm hardly the man. You have a way with you. You could pacify a Java ape-man! Get 'em laughing—tell 'em a funny story!"
Bill protested venomously. "Those cannibals aren't children," he groaned. "You can't spoof 'em. This is serious business, Van Wyck."