But everyone wondered what was going to happen next.
CHAPTER IV.
On the Cannibal Isle.
STRANSOM, the old blackbirder, was a go-ahead kind of fellow, and as bold as a lion. He was just the man who would “make a spoon or spoil a horn”—“do a deed or perish in the attempt.” There was no fear of failure in his heart.
About a couple of hours before sunset he stuck his revolvers in his belt, nodded to those he was leaving behind, and beckoned to Tootaker to follow him into the canoe. A few minutes after this the white man and the friendly savage stood together in a woodland glade.
“I can trust Tootaker?”
“Tootaker will die for master. Not false, true, true!”
This in the language of the islanders.
“Lead me through the woods, Tootaker. I would speak with your chief.”
The guide darted forward. Stransom looked at his revolvers. He meant to shoot that guide through the head if he exhibited even a trace of treachery or fear. The only thing to dread in this wood was the snakes. Creatures of marvellous beauty, small, slender, green or crimson, they crept and twined everywhere. Among the reeds by pools, in the pools themselves, and in the branches of the trees, Stransom had often to dash them aside with his brown hands. Yet beautiful though they were, a single bite would mean an agonising death.
This jungle was a most intricate one. The trees did not grow from roots underground: the roots were above, so that one had to climb over them, or creep under them. It was a swamp and a labyrinth combined, and if Tootaker had wished to be unfaithful, he had a good chance now, even in spite of Stransom’s revolvers. But the white man had won his affection; and, above all, the wondrous beauty of the child Peggy had so stolen around his savage heart, that he had lost all desire to live longer among his own people.