“Joe!”
“Did you see it?”
“Yes. Human bones! These savages are cannibals!”
It was night—a dark, lowering night. The moon was nowhere in sight. Not a star twinkled down from the heavy jungle sky. Huge, roaring fires blazed in front of the chief’s large hut, while about them danced scores of painted savages, shouting and screaming and gesticulating.
It was a scene wild enough to strike terror to the heart of anyone. Bob and Joe gazed fearfully into the raging mob, wondering if the lives of them and their companions would be taken for the feast.
The boys moved over to their elders, who were standing at the other side of their thatched dwelling.
“Cannibals!” Professor Bigelow was muttering. He had seen too.
Mr. Holton and Mr. Lewis nodded, on their faces a grave expression. They were so taken aback as to be almost speechless.
“I think perhaps we had better get away from here,” said the professor, who, although deeply attentive to scientific work, knew when he was in a dangerous situation. “I know enough of the ways of primitive people to surmise what they’ll probably do to us if we stay. Their appetites for human flesh will be so stimulated that they will no doubt kill us also. Lucky that this happened as late as it did. I wouldn’t have wanted to leave so soon if I had not secured about all the information there is to be obtained about them.”