Don and Jem again exchanged looks full of misery and despair, and then gazed with wonder and loathing at the new comers, who walked slowly about for a few minutes, and then went and leaned their backs against the palisading of the pah, and partially supported themselves upon their spears.
“Ugh!” ejaculated Jem with a shudder as he turned away. “You wretches! Mas’ Don, I felt as I lay here last night, all dull and miserable and sick, and hardly able to bear myself—I felt so miserable because I knew I must have shot some of those chaps.”
“So did I, Jem,” sighed Don; “so did I.”
“Well, just now, Mas’ Don, I’m just ’tother way; ay, for I wish with all my heart I’d shot the lot. Hark, there!”
They listened, and could hear a burst of shouting and laughing.
“That’s them sentries gone down now to the feast. I say, Mas’ Don, look at these here fellows.”
“Yes, Jem, I’ve been looking at them. It’s horrible, and we must escape.”
They sat gazing at their guards again, to see that they were flushed, their eyes full, heavy, and starting, and that they were absolutely stupefied and torpid as some huge serpent which has finished a meal.
“They must be all drunk, Jem,” whispered Don, with a fresh shudder of horror and loathing.
“No, Mas’ Don, ’tarn’t that,” said Jem, with a look of disgust. “Old Mike used to tell us stories, and most of ’em was yarns as I didn’t believe; but he told us one thing as I do believe now. He said as some of the blacks in Africa would go with the hunters who killed the hippipperpothy-mouses, and when they’d killed one, they’d light a fire, and then cut off long strips of the big beast, hold ’em in the flame for a bit, and then eat ’em, and cut off more strips and eat them, and go on eating all day till they could hardly see or move.”