After a good deal of pantomime, with which he endeavoured to aid his explanations, at last the horrid truth broke upon me!
She wished my caput as a figure-head to her canoe, for which purpose, after being duly prepared by gums, balms, and herbs, she could make it suitable. Amoo flatteringly added that such had been her desire from the first, as "I was the youngest and best-looking of the prisoners."
Here was a pleasant prospect!
"And it was for this purpose she gave me the long knife to sharpen so carefully?"
"Yah, yah," replied Amoo, while a glow of rage filled my breast; "and even now she is gathering herbs on the borders of the wood to boil in the stone jar with it."
"It—what?"
"Your head."
"I must watch."
"It is of no use to watch," replied Amoo; "sometime, when you are not thinking of it, she will give you some red berries, that will cause you to sleep very sound; and then with her knife or a sharp shell—yah, yah!" he concluded by a guttural laugh, and again pressed his finger round his neck.
"Oh, Heavens!" I exclaimed, "aid me to escape from this atrocious squaw!"