On arriving at the house we found Romata sitting on a mat, in the midst of a number of large bales of native cloth and other articles, which had been brought to him as presents from time to time by inferior chiefs. He received us rather haughtily; but on Bill explaining the nature of our errand, he became very condescending, and his eyes glistened with satisfaction when he received the whale’s teeth, although he laid them aside with an assumption of kingly indifference.
“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 woodcutters, 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.”