feasting began, and there was a great chewing, and cracking of
bones. The while I sat and endeavoured calmly to size up the whole
situation. And its accessories were about as wild and grim as the most
startling annals of any romance. Here was I, helpless, in the power and
at the mercy of a score or so of as cut-throat a set of naked and
ochre-smeared savages, as such romance could picture; forcibly brought
here to this probably unknown fastness of theirs, and for what? From
motives of self-preservation alone they could not afford to restore me
to liberty after having once been in this, which was probably one of
their most secure retreats, and I was conscious of a dire and terrible
sinking of heart. Yet there was no war between ourselves and these
people. They would hardly, therefore, go such lengths as to kill me,
and so raise the whole countryside upon them. But as against this came
another thought. There is no declared war between society and the
dangerous and criminal classes in London or New York or Paris, or any
other great city. Yet he who should venture into the innermost haunts
of these and place himself in their power would be extremely unlikely
ever to be seen again by inquiring friends; and my case here was
precisely similar.

Recognising that a well-fed man is likely to be in better humour than a
fasting one, be he savage or civilised, I waited until these had nearly
finished their repast before intimating by signs and such few words as I
knew, that I should like some small share of it. They stared, laughed,
then one took a strip of meat from the fire, and came over to me,
holding it up in a sort of bob-cherry fashion. But I was not to be
taken in so easily as that, and uttered the word for hot. At this they
laughed harder than ever, and having waited long enough, I soon got
outside the mutton, hunger overcoming my repugnance to being fed in so
unappetising, not to say disgusting, a fashion. But the whole episode
seemed to put them into high good humour, from which I had begun to
augur great things, when an interruption occurred which was inauspicious
in the extreme. This was caused by a new arrival, none other than the
evil-looking rascal whom I had rendered temporarily _hors de combat_,
and who, unable to keep up with the others owing to the pain he was
suffering, had now overtaken them.

The first thing this fellow did was to seize a knife which was lying
idle, and rush over to me, utterin