CHAPTER XXXI.
IN CANNIBAL ISLANDS.

The crew of the derelict brig Resolute had certainly not been idle during the year and a half and over they had been prisoners on the cannibal islands. It was perhaps a lucky day for the natives when their boats drew up upon the beach with the sailors, more dead than alive, without arms or clothes, except what they wore, completely at the mercy of the naked and fierce-looking savages that crowded round them.

Here was a chance for these islanders, such as might not occur again in a score of years. Nothing could be more to their taste than the programme mapped out by their chief, and to be carried out on the following day.

First, Revenge. For they could not forget that long ago a white man's ship had cast anchor in this very bay, and that they had treated the men who landed with kindness and hospitality, albeit they would have preferred picking their bones. They remembered that event, and they did not forget either that in return for their hospitality those white fiends stole their women and their little ones, and put out to sea. Revenge is sweet.

Secondly, a short but bloody massacre of these innocent white men.

And thirdly, a glorious feast of roasted flesh to follow—a feast of white men's flesh, that they should look back to with satisfaction and delight as long as they lived.

So next morning the island had been all en gala. Huge fires were built on which to roast the sailors whole, and big round stones made hot to place in their insides, so that both outside and inside they might be done to a turn.

But, lo! when they had dragged the miserable sailors out of the compound, and everybody was itching to club them, they had found they were little more than skin and bone and grief.

This would never do; they must be fed and fattened. So they were penned in the king's own compound. But somehow they couldn't or wouldn't fatten; and besides, the king began to be mightily entertained with them. Seeing that this was the case, not only the Yankee skipper himself, but his nine men—all the rest of his crew, by the way, had been drowned—set themselves to please. They danced, they sang, and they even boxed with each other, all for this sable and savage King Ota's delectation.

Ota soon found out he had drawn a real prize in the lottery of life, and would now no more have consented to kill and eat his prisoners than you, reader, would your pet and expensive pigeons.