Nearly the whole village awaited us on the sandy shore, and once again the ceremony of rubbing noses was performed with the chief and several of the head men. Leaving two of the men to guard the boat, with instructions to lie a few yards off shore and to fire their rifles should they hear the report of ours, we made our way towards the village, accompanied by the chief men and followed by the shouting throng.
There was a broad but winding path through the dense scrub, which, ascending a gentle rise, presently entered a thick belt of palm-trees. On one side of the road was a bubbling stream, but from the "Fortuna" there were no signs of its entering the sea, so we concluded it fed a lake in the depths of the brushwood.
On emerging from the palm-wood half an hour later we came upon a large clearing, in the centre of which was a stockade surrounding the village. A narrow gateway gave access to the huts, which were substantially built and roofed with palm-leaves. The chief led the way to his house, a long structure built of trimmed trunks of trees, decorated in many vivid colours.
Outside was a kind of veranda, under which rugs of coco-fibre were placed, and squatting down on his heels, the chief motioned us to do likewise, while pieces of baked meat, yams, and coco-nuts were placed before us.
"I don't think we had better touch the meat," remarked the doctor. "It might be——" and a suggestive shrug of his shoulders completed the sentence.
"Do you think it possible that these men are cannibals?" I asked.
"Possible and highly probable," replied Dr. Conolly. "But that we shall soon find out."
Presently the chief clapped his hands, and the crowd in front of us, who were regarding us with the greatest curiosity, fell back, forming a large semicircle. Into the space sprang two men, dressed in full native armour of thick fibre with fish-skin helmets, and without a moment's hesitation they attacked each other with large clubs of heavy wood.
Yelling and shouting, they jumped about with marvellous agility, their ponderous weapons clashing with a dull thud so frequently that the sound resembled the beating of a rattle.
"Don't worry, Reggie," said my father, noticing the anxious look on my face; "they are only playing to amuse us—a sort of return on the part of the chief for showing him——"