My attention was so particularly attracted to one blear-eyed old savage, who sat cross-legged, blinking demoniacally as he cleverly picked with his teeth the flesh from a human hand, that I asked his name. I was told that he was the head chief of a neighbouring town, who was known by the nickname of “Turtle Pond,” conferred upon him because of his enormous capacity for eating bokola. The turtle pond is a pool of water fenced or walled in to receive captured turtles, until the butcher is ready for them. This old reprobate was said to have eaten in his time 800 men, most of whose skulls formed a ghastly obelisk near his house. Truly, in Shaksperian phrase, “he was a man of an unbounded stomach.”
When the banquet was at its height, a sudden commotion and loud shouting in the direction from which the company had first entered the square, attracted my attention to that quarter. I saw that a procession had been formed, and that what appeared to be a chief of distinction was being borne aloft on a bamboo-litter by four men, while a large crowd circled round, dancing and singing in a high state of delight. The chief was in a sitting posture. His face was painted in four diamond shapes of alternate red and black; what I afterwards discovered to be a huge wig was upon his head; and he bore in his hand the well-known club of Bent-Axe, called “The Disperser,” which had so nearly sent me to my last account, and on which still remained the blood-stains I noticed when it fell at my feet. It was my enemy in full dress, sure enough. What could this mummery mean? Had he surrendered and made his peace with the tribe?
The procession approached me, and I gazed intently at the figure. I was within a few feet of it, and I now saw, horror of horrors! that there were cracks in the face like the fissures in the crackling of baked pork, and that the eyes had disappeared, their places being taken by a clumsy representation in paint and clay! The case was clear. Bent-Axe had been baked whole, and was now being paraded for the amusement of the company preparatory to being eaten! The great chief of yesterday was to-day a scapegoat in grimmest ironic symbol of revelry!
I turned away from the sickening spectacle. There was another wild tattoo beaten on the lali, followed by a shrill scream from the conch-shells, and I knew that the body was about to be divided as a bonne bouche for a few of the leading personages.
I learned afterwards that Bent-Axe was taken prisoner while trying to escape. The gunshot wound I inflicted on him made him an easy prey, however. He was put into the oven while still living.
At the close of the banquet there was a scramble among the common people for the shin bones, which are valued for sail needles. The debauch ended for the greater part of the company in a helpless lethargy, which it took them days to recover from. I was given to understand, however, that this carouse would always be treasured in their minds for all future time as a great and memorable feast, just as the participants in the brilliant tournament of feudal days rejoiced to remember “the gentle and joyous passage of arms at Ashby.”
As I moved away from the revolting picture, the western sky was still suffused with the sun’s last rays; a crimson haze illuminated the sylvan cloisters at the back of the town, and as the colour gradually faded from the gay dracænas and croton shrubs, and the innumerable laughing ripples of the sea made answer to the murmurings of the dreamy palms, I could not but wonder that a country which seemed suited by nature to be the abode of the highest forms of civilisation should be inhabited by a race of what I could only at that moment regard as the most debased and hopeless savages; nor could I help contrasting the magnificent pageant of the tranquil tropic evening, whose beauty is calculated to elevate the soul of man, with the horrible orgie of which I had just been a witness.
CHAPTER XXI.
A FISHING ADVENTURE.
High noon in the tropics! The giant bakas twist and flicker in the mirage, as though they were floating on the sultry air. The glaring slopes roll and welter in the sun, whose convex gleams build up the pearly dome of air. The landscape, viewed through the luminous atmosphere, is adorned with all the enchantments of colour. A hanging rock is clothed with luxuriant masses of the deeply blue clitoria. Tufts and rosy tassels flutter from the dilo trees, and showers of pink stamens illuminate the shadows cast by the boughs. The small grey-green leaflets of the sensitive plant contract in quivering circles over a rood of ground, as I set the nearest one in motion with my foot.
As the sun climbs to the zenith, a great silence reigns. There is a lull in the almost ceaseless buzz and chirp of insect life. The bronze lizards, with bright blue tails and sparkling diamond eyes, lie motionless with heads raised, gasping in the heated air. The coloured tree-snakes, which are hardly distinguishable from the foliage in which they seek their prey, ensconce themselves in cool leafy wrappings. The butterflies—the rare pale yellow, the small white silvery one resembling the silkworm moth, and the richly coloured dark beauty with spots on its wings like those in a peacock’s tail—which so bravely unfolded their charms to the morning sun, have retired from the mid-day glare, and are lying exhausted with outspread wings on glossy leaves. The cooing of the wood-pigeon and the ring-dove is hushed. The hardy hawk no longer skims the upper air. The parrots of splendid garb which animate and adorn the woods—the winged gems which illuminate the atmosphere at every turn—are lazily swinging in the sheltered foliage. The soil appears to undulate with the flickering exhalations of heat. The tree-ferns lean aside in langour. Not even the shrill trumpet of the mosquito is now heard.