"Why, in the absence of any positive knowledge, you can let the imagination run free," said the cooper, rising to light his pipe at the hanging lamp, and striking an attitude. "You may just suppose yourself neatly transfixed by the javelin of a barbaric chieftain, and your spirit passing gently away to the music of tomtoms, blending with melodious voices chanting the wild 'hula-hula.' Then," he continued, shaking his immense beard, as he warmed with his subject, "you are laid out in state in the halls of the Marquesan Cæsars (or Montezumas, if you prefer that), to grace a 'Kava feast' of princes of the blood; you are done to a turn at the hands of the chief doctor of the palace; and served up in curry as the leading dish at a right royal banquet, flanked by immense bunches of the golden banana at one end, and pyramids of bread-fruit at the other."
"Delightful!" said I. "There's nothing in Fox's Book of Martyrs half as satisfactory—to the narrator. But, being the hero of the adventure myself, I should vote for the calaboose and the ransom. Besides, it would be some satisfaction to know one's precise value in this market; just how many old flint-locks you are worth, or whether you could be quoted at par, with old nigger-head tobacco, pound for pound."
"But, joking aside," said the cooper, "I don't, of course, know whether that particular tribe are cannibals or not, but it is pretty well established that there are tribes on this Marquesan group, who deserve that name. The tribe of Taipi, in the island of Nukahiva, are somewhat notorious in that line."
"That is the island where the French are planting a colony now, or trying to, isn't it?" said I.
"Yes," answered the cooper. "Jim, the white man, told me they had quite a force of troops there, and a frigate or two on this station. But I think they will have their hands full, for these islanders are a naturally savage race, particularly so, and warlike, too. It will not be an easy thing to civilize them, or to subdue them either, in their native mountains."
"Did you ever, in your own experience, have any proofs that they really eat men at any of this group?" I asked.
"No," he replied, "I can't say that I ever did, I only give the reports at second-hand."
"Well, Cooper," said I, "I am disappointed in you this time. I had made up my mind to listen to marvellous tales of
'Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders,'"
"No," said the cooper conscientiously, "I cannot swear to the cannibals, and I have never seen men with their heads under their shoulders; but I've seen a tribe in New Holland with their faces looking behind them, or the spinal column in front of them, which ever you choose to have it."