“Go,” said he, with a wave of the hand,—“go, tell your captain that he may cut wood to-day, but not to-morrow. He must come ashore,—I want to have a palaver with him.”
As we left the house to return to the woods, Bill shook his head:
“There’s mischief brewin’ in that black rascal’s head. I know him of old. But what comes here?”
As he spoke, we heard the sound of laughter and shouting in the wood, and presently there issued from it a band of savages, in the midst of whom were a number of men bearing burdens on their shoulders. At first I thought that these burdens were poles with something rolled round them, the end of each pole resting on a man’s shoulder. But on a nearer approach I saw that they were human beings, tied hand and foot, and so lashed to the poles that they could not move. I counted twenty of them as they passed.
“More murder!” said Bill, in a voice that sounded between a hoarse laugh and a groan.
“Surely they are not going to murder them?” said I, looking anxiously into Bill’s face.
“I don’t know, Ralph,” replied Bill, “what they’re goin’ to do with them; but I fear they mean no good when they tie fellows up in that way.”
As we continued our way towards the wood-cutters, I observed that Bill looked anxiously over his shoulder, in the direction where the procession had disappeared. At last he stopped, and turning abruptly on his heel, said,—
“I tell ye what it is, Ralph, I must be at the bottom o’ that affair. Let us follow these black scoundrels and see what they’re goin’ to do.”
I must say I had no wish to pry further into their bloody practices; but Bill seemed bent on it, so I turned and went. We passed rapidly through the bush, being guided in the right direction by the shouts of the savages. Suddenly there was a dead silence, which continued for some time, while Bill and I involuntarily quickened our pace until we were running at the top of our speed across the narrow neck of land previously mentioned. As we reached the verge of the wood, we discovered the savages surrounding the large war-canoe, which they were apparently on the point of launching. Suddenly the multitude put their united strength to the canoe; but scarcely had the huge machine begun to move, when a yell, the most appalling that ever fell upon my ear, rose high above the shouting of the savages. It had not died away when another and another smote upon my throbbing ear; and then I saw that these inhuman monsters were actually launching their canoe over the living bodies of their victims. But there was no pity in the breasts of these men. Forward they went in ruthless indifference, shouting as they went, while high above their voices rang the dying shrieks of those wretched creatures, as, one after another, the ponderous canoe passed over them, burst the eyeballs from their sockets, and sent the life’s blood gushing from their mouths. Oh, reader, this is no fiction. I would not, for the sake of thrilling you with horror, invent so terrible a scene. It was witnessed. It is true; true as that accursed sin which has rendered the human heart capable of such diabolical enormities!