“They were celebrating Decoration Day … strewing flowers on the graves of departed missionaries.” Chapter IX.
“You didn’t tell us about any graves,” said Diavolo.
“Why certainly I did,” said the Baron. “The cannibals themselves were the only graves those poor departed missionaries ever had. Every one of those five hundred savages was the grave of a missionary, my dears, and having been converted, and
taught that it was not good to eat their fellow-men, they did all in their power afterwards to show their repentance, keeping alive the memory of the men they had treated so badly by decorating themselves on memorial day—and one old fellow, the savagest looking, but now the kindest-hearted being in the world, used always to wear about his neck a huge sign, upon which he had painted in great black letters:
HERE LIES
JOHN THOMAS WILKINS,
SAILOR.
DEPARTED THIS LIFE, MAY 24TH, 1861.
HE WAS A MAN OF SPLENDID TASTE.
“The old cannibal had eaten Wilkins and later when he had been converted and realised that he himself was the grave of a worthy man, as an expiation he devoted his life to the memory of John Thomas Wilkins, and as a matter of fact, on the Cannibal Island Decoration Day he would lie flat on the floor all the day, groaning under the weight of a hundred potted plants, which he placed upon himself in memory of Wilkins.”
Here Mr. Munchausen paused for breath, and the twins went out into the garden to try to imagine with the aid of a few practical experiments how a cannibal would look with a hundred potted plants adorning his person.