A more fantastic and horrible sight I never saw. The fire was fiercely hot, and evidently made of hard dry old wood. Around it, but at a goodly distance, sat, crouched, or lay fully a score of semi-naked savages, all men, all armed—at least their weapons lay near them—and all silent. Many had hats and garments of our men on; woollen shirts or linen ones, some bloodstained. But their legs and arms were all bare. Every eye was turned towards the fire, where, spitted against the tree up which the red flames were now roaring, were huge masses of flesh that a glance told me was human. There was a hideous grotesqueness about the whole scene that made me draw back and shudder. But some movement on the part of the cannibals made me look again. The feast was about to begin.
Ritchie and I drew back and cautiously took our departure.
We never spoke till near the creek side, and then only in whispers.
“Those are the fellows from the Salamander,” said Ritchie. “The very flesh they are now gorging on is part of their companions that were blown in pieces.”
The Fuegians evidently set no sentries, so their canoes, which we soon came upon drawn up in a row, were entirely at our mercy.
Our mercy was excessively meagre in this instance.
These canoes are merely planks of wood fashioned with knives and fire, and lashed together by means of pieces of skin.
It took us no great length of time to dismember them, nor to launch the pieces into the stream afterwards.
“And now,” said Ritchie, “the forest itself is our principal danger. These chaps’ll be all about us to-morrow morning early, like bluebottles round a dead mouse: more’ll come to help them, and the bush ’ll be their cover. We’ll fire it. The wind is favourable.”
“It really is a pity,” I remarked, half seriously, “to spoil this scenery.”