t.

'Hadn't we better go back?' said Jane. 'Go NOW,' she said, and her voice
trembled a little. 'Suppose they eat us.'

'Nonsense, Pussy,' said Cyril, firmly. 'Look, there's a goat tied up.
That shows they don't eat PEOPLE.'

'Let's go on and say we're missionaries,' Robert suggested.

'I shouldn't advise THAT,' said the Phoenix, very earnestly.

'Why not?'

'Well, for one thing, it isn't true,' replied the golden bird.

It was while they stood hesitating on the edge of the clearing that
a tall man suddenly came out of one of the huts. He had hardly any
clothes, and his body all over was a dark and beautiful coppery
colour--just like the chrysanthemums father had brought home on
Saturday. In his hand he held a spear. The whites of his eyes and the
white of his teeth were the only light things about him, except that
where the sun shone on his shiny brown body it looked white, too. If
you will look carefully at the next shiny savage you meet with next to
nothing on, you will see at once--if the sun happens to be shining at
the time--that I am right about this.

The savage looked at the children. Concealment was impossible. He
uttered a shout that was more like 'Oo goggery bag-wag' than anything
else the children had ever heard, and at once brown coppery people leapt
out of every hut, and swarmed like ants about the clearing. There was
no time for discussion, and no one wanted to discuss anything, anyhow.
Whether these coppery people were cannibals or not now seemed to matter
very little.

Without an instant's hesitation the four children turned and ran back
along the forest path; the only pause was Anthea's. She stood back to
let Cyril pass, because he was carrying the Lamb, who screamed with
delight. (He had not whooping-coughed a single once since the carpet
landed him on the island.)

'Gee-up, Squirrel; gee-gee,' he shouted, and Cyril did gee-up. The path
was a shorter cut to the beach than the creeper-covered way by which
they had come, and almost directly they saw through the trees the
shining blue-and-gold-and-opal of sand and sea.

'Stick to it,' cried Cyril, breathlessly.

They did stick to it; they tore down the sands--they could hear behind
them as they ran the patter of feet which they knew, too well, were
copper-coloured.

The sands were golden and opal-coloured--and BARE. There were wreaths of
tropic seaweed, there were rich tropic shells of the kind you would not
buy in the Kentish Town Road