“Rubbish. Tell them I and my friend are coming on shore after breakfast.—Ah, Señor Don; here are the cannibals, you see.”
“What do they say?” asked Ruberta, laughing.
“The dogs!” reiterated the guide. “They say that my people kill and eat them;” and he would have unslung his bow, but that Hutchinson stayed him.
“Tell them we will do them no harm, and that we are only coming to look for flowers; but that if they attempt to injure us we shall kill them.” This menace was more to the Indian’s taste, and he delivered the latter part of it with unction.
“They say they are not afraid of you, gentlemen, because you have no bows. It is I whom they fear.”
The crew had now come on deck, and at their appearance, one by one from the bowels of the boat as it were, the savages retreated still farther. The Zambo cook, as usual, laid the explorers’ breakfast on deck.
“Let’s test them with a little Christian diet,” said Ruberta, flinging a bunch of bananas towards the 333 inquisitive crowd, who at once scrambled for it. Those who succeeded in getting one of the fruits ate it greedily, rind and all, which told a tale: there was no fruit about here, and the savages, not having energy or courage to travel, had never tasted such a delicacy. Hutchinson cut off a thick round of cold ham and threw it after the bananas. The man who captured it took a big bite, and while he coughed and spluttered at it, his neighbour snatched the remainder from him, and was soon coughing in like manner. They had never tasted salt.
“Try them with bread,” said Ruberta to the cook, who took a steaming cake from his frying-pan and threw it on the bank. But no one picked it up. Already the smoke from the engine-funnel had surprised if not terrified them.
“They think it is alive,” said the Quiteño, “because it steams. They are not men, Señors; they are monkeys; they do not understand half what I say to them, and I suggest that your excellencies should kill them all.”
Hutchinson had already taken it for granted that they did not understand all that was said, for accustomed to listening attentively to uncivilised speech, he had detected in theirs that continual repetition of certain sounds, which argues a scanty vocabulary. When breakfast was finished he filled his pipe, and Ruberta rolled up a cigarette; this brought the Indians a pace nearer again, and made them stand on tiptoe; but when one of the white men struck a match they sprang back again, and, at sight of the smoke issuing from the strangers’ lips, they set 334 up a chorus of little shrieks that suggested even more fear than surprise; and was repeated with double vigour when the Quiteño and the crew also “lit up.” That an Indian, of all people, had never seen smoking told a tale in itself.