“Where are they?” said I.
“Just where they always land—on the beach, where they held their horrid orgies the last time they were here.”
“Are there many of them?” I asked.
“There’s a whole big canoe full—at least twenty-five or thirty, and they’ve kindled a fire and are getting ready for their revolting feast.”
“Do they look hungry?”
“Very hungry indeed,” replied Mr. Crusoe. “The men are, most all of them, tall and thin, as if they hadn’t been fed for a week.”
“Are they armed?”
“Of course they are. Did you ever know cannibals to go on an excursion without their arms? They have clubs and wooden swords, and bows and arrows—and most likely the arrows are poisoned. We must fight and kill them, or they will kill us.”
Now I didn’t believe that the people who had landed on the island were cannibals, but it didn’t do to tell Mr. Crusoe so. He was very much excited, and his eyes were wilder than I had ever seen them before. I was very much afraid that he would try to fight the people before I could make him understand the difference between cannibals and a Sunday-school picnic. There’s a great deal of difference between them, for the picnic has, as a general rule, nothing but cold victuals and lemonade.
Mr. Crusoe made me collect all the guns together, and he examined them to see if they were loaded. All but the breech-loading rifles were loaded with powder only, for I had loaded them when he first told me about the footprint, and I had been very careful not to put any bullets or shot in them. But the breech-loaders and the pistols were made for copper cartridges, and I couldn’t prevent Mr. Crusoe from loading these himself.