“So it is,” said Bill. “I hope Tom ain’t damaged, and that these beggars won’t make him prisoner. As long as he’s free there’s hope for us.”
“Yes,” I answered, “we can trust Tom not to desert us; but I’m afraid he must be a prisoner, and we shall soon see him here alongside of us.”
We had no time to speak any more, for a party of men came back from the beach, and, under the direction of the three priests, took us up on their shoulders, and carried us away at a trot along a narrow path through the woods.
Occasionally our carriers halted to rest or gave way to others, and sometimes we stopped in the middle of villages like the one we had been first taken to, and were exposed to the curiosity of the women and children (for all the men that were able had gone down to the muster of the warriors of the island), and I am bound to say we received no mercy at their hands. They pinched us, and scratched us, and tore off our clothes to see if we were white all over, not caring how they hurt us in doing so, and pulled out our hair; in fact, they showed themselves experts in all the petty arts of torture, and if it had not been that the priests seemed to be somewhat in a hurry, and never allowed a halt in a village for more than ten minutes or so, I verily believe we should have been pinched and scratched to death.
At last we arrived at a sort of temple, consisting of a thatched roof supported on posts which were rudely fashioned into human figures. In the middle of this building were two idols, a male and a female, on which all the art and industry of the people had been lavished, with a result that combined the grotesque and the horrible in an extraordinary degree.
“In front of these monstrous figures were piles of bones and skulls.” [Page 137].
Their eyes were formed of huge oyster shells pierced in the middle, and in their grinning mouths were double lines of boars’ tusks, so that the faces seemed all eyes and teeth. Large wigs of cocoanut fibre covered their heads, and round necks, arms, and legs were strings of beads, shells, and human bones. In their right hand they held a monster fork, like that used by their worshippers in their cannibal feasts, and on these forks and in their left hands were great pieces of bleeding flesh.