With their arms still bound firmly to their sides, the prisoners, faint with hunger, stumbled through the forest, at the heels of the two leaders, along a well-worn track. It crossed deeply wooded ravines, shallow streams; wound round steep bluffs on which no trees grew. Presently they came to a wide clearing where naked children were running about, and women were busy with cooking. At their appearance, men came scrambling down ladders from the trees beyond, exchanged a few excited words with their escort, and, shouting with delight, joined themselves to the party.
'Quite a Roman triumph,' said Hoole with a sickly smile.
'Roman?' said Trentham, roused from the listlessness into which he had fallen. 'Those fellows in front might almost be Romans, bar the colour.'
'They 're a better breed than the crowd behind. Don't look like cannibals.'
'D' ye hear that?' Meek whispered to Grinson. 'Mr. Hoole says they ain't cannibals.'
'Mr. Hoole won't be the fust,' growled the boatswain.
Meek was half a minute or so in seeing the connection between Grinson's reply and his own statement. When light dawned, he contemplated the boatswain's rotundity with mournful composure.
The procession was swelled by accretions from two more villages during the next hour. Some of the new-comers pressed close to the prisoners, now almost overcome by heat, hunger, and weariness, and discussed them excitedly. Hoole and Trentham walked on with nonchalant disregard; Meek wore a deprecating look; Grinson turned upon them a truculent countenance, disfigured by the mosquitoes' attentions.
Another hour had passed; the captives were on the verge of collapse, even Grinson's face had lost its ruddy hue, when, emerging from the forest, they found themselves in a clearing several acres in extent, divided off into plots on which crops of various kinds were growing. Beyond stood a line of neatly thatched huts, and in the distance was what appeared to be a closely built stockade. A broad road ran through the midst of the settlement. At the approach of the procession, now some sixty strong, women and children flocked from the fields and gathered, wondering spectators, on the road, and men sprang up from the ground in front of the huts, and hastened to meet the new-comers.
The elder of the two leaders turned round and shouted a few words. All but ten of the Papuans halted. The ten continued their march behind the prisoners, through a lane between two of the huts, until they arrived at a narrow gateway in the stockade. This, on nearer view, proved to be a formidable wall of pandanus trunks cemented with earth, and with an earthen parapet that bore a strange resemblance to the machicolations of a mediæval castle.