ir skulls were beaten flat with clubs. The legs
were amputated at the knees, hands off at the wrists, hair cut off the
head, &c., preparatory to cooking them." The doctor made bold to express
his disgust at this horrible sight, but the natives, by way of
extenuation, gave him to understand that it was "eatee for eatee," and
that if they fell into the hands of their enemies, they would be converted
into collops and forthwith dined upon. Four of them had been captured that
morning, and would soon, if not rescued, be in the hands of the cook. To
save them from this unpleasant alternative, twenty men advanced stealthily
into the hostile territory, accompanied by Rownaa and Dr Coulter. The
doctor was curious to see the fun, and thought himself safest with his
friend the prince. After a short march they fell in with the prisoners,
guarded by forty or fifty savages; a sharp fight ensued, in which the
doctor at first took no part, thinking, not without reason, that he had no
right to take the lives of men who had done him no injury. At last,
however, "a serious consideration for my personal safety, and the
necessity for self-defence, compelled me to fire both barrels of my gun
into the advancing crowd." The ice thus broken, the double-barrelled rifle
spoke out boldly and decided the day--the doctor celebrating his triumph
by a stentorian hurrah that completed the panic of the discomfited foe.
And thenceforward he shot savages at a handsome allowance. The apologetic
and deprecatory tone in which he records his exploits is amusing enough.
He pleads expediency and necessity, and tries to make it out justifiable
homicide; whilst he evidently has a lurking consciousness that he need not
have thrust himself into scenes and places where it became necessary or
advisable to shed blood. To return to his ship, he had to coast the
island, and to pass the territory of a tribe hostile to his friends.
Canoes came out to assail those on which Dr Coulter and his allies were
embarked. He was again compelled to smother humanity, prime, load, and
fire as fast as he could, although "it grieved me afterwards to think I
used such a death-dealing weapon with so much earnestness." Touching
repentance! Compassionate Coulter! But "his dander was up," he says, and
he thought no more, but acted. As anybody else would probably have done,
on finding himself assailed by a flotilla of howling savages, with
blood-coloured teeth, poisoned arrows, and a decided tast