The camp that night was at the foot of a mountain, that towered high and steep for full four thousand feet into the blue sky. It was up to the top of this hill he had to march next morning, and very much surprised he was when he found himself in the crater of an extinct volcano. It was fully a mile in diameter, with a very large building in the centre.
The village--a very quaint one--was built around this palace of Gobolohlo. There he had dwelt with his two wives, who if they were not widows already, would very soon be.
The depths of this crater, and even the sides all around, were covered with bushes and verdure, and adorned by Nature with the rarest and most beautiful of flowers.
Now, right to this palace, Kep was dragged, and introduced to the cannibal queens, who were well clad in short, bright-coloured frocks of calico, with feather-fringed skirts. Both were young, both interesting looking, and one really pretty. Their naked ankles and bare arms were encircled with bands of gold set with precious stones.
They evidently admired the boy, just as a farmer or butcher may admire a calf. For they prodded him with their little fat forefingers, then laughed scornfully and shook their heads.
"He not much meat," said the younger queen, in English. She had been captured by the recruiters, when a mere child, and carried to Queensland, but was sent back in a few years to her own wild island.
"I'm no good to eat at all, your lovely majesty."
"In three weeks' time, though," she smiled.
Then Kep's food was brought, his hands were freed, and Gobolohlo's queens screamed with laughter to behold him eat so heartily, which on this occasion he really did, to please them.
He was ordered to sit down till they should study him a little longer.