"That is not at all strange. Many people are known to sacrifice their own, and among the most degraded, they are known to kill and eat their own."
"That is the first time I have heard of such a thing."
"Don't you remember that the Bible tells about Abraham about to offer up his own son as a sacrifice?"
"Yes; but not to eat him."
"Of course not; but it is not an uncommon thing for tribes in Africa to sell their own children for this purpose. One of the greatest sacrificial rites of the ancient Mexicans, was to offer up the most handsome youth each year, as a propitiation to the gods."
"So they do not always depend on their enemies to furnish the feast?"
"By no means. Many of the tribes have a superstition that if they eat a brave enemy it will impart to them his spirit of valor, and the fact that they are to have sacrifices here does not mean that there are various tribes on the island; but that is something we[p. 20] shall have to investigate. It is my opinion that we shall find other tribes, but that, I am inclined to think, depends upon the size of the island."
The preceding volume, "Adventures Among Strange Islands," states the conditions under which the two boys, Harry and George, found themselves on a strange island, in the southern Pacific. Accompanying them were John L. Varney, and about sixty natives from Wonder Island, together with the two Chiefs Uraso and Muro.
Nearly three years previously the boys, George Mayfield and Harry Crandall, who were members of the crew of a school-ship, the Investigator sailed from New York, and while on board, met a professor, who, when the ship was blown up at sea, became their companion in the life boat in which they sought refuge. Together they finally were stranded upon an unknown island, less than a hundred miles from the island which was the scene of the adventures with which we are now concerned.