e; an' mayhap, if you stop awhile at this
accursed place and keep a sharp lookout, you'll see it too. They don't
feed it regularly with livin' babies, but they give it one now and then
as a treat.--Bah, you brute!" cried Bill in disgust, giving the reptile
a kick on the snout with his heavy boot that sent it sweltering back in
agony into its loathsome pool. I thought it lucky for Bill--indeed for
all of us--that the native youth's back happened to be turned at the
time, for I am certain that if the poor savages had come to know that we
had so rudely handled their god we should have had to fight our way back
to the ship. As we retraced our steps I questioned my companion further
on this subject.

"How comes it, Bill, that the mothers allow such a dreadful thing to be
done?"

"Allow it? the mothers _do_ it! It seems to me that there's nothing too
fiendish or diabolical for these people to do. Why, in some of the
islands they have an institution called the _Areoi_, and the persons
connected with that body are ready for any wickedness that mortal man
can devise. In fact, they stick at nothing; and one o' their customs is
to murder their infants the moment they are born. The mothers agree to
it, and the fathers do it. And the mildest ways they have of murdering
them is by sticking them through the body with sharp splinters of
bamboo, strangling them with their thumbs, or burying them alive and
stamping them to death while under the sod."

I felt sick at heart while my companion recited these horrors.

"But it's a curious fact," he continued after a pause, during which we
walked in silence towards the spot where we had left our comrades--"it's
a curious fact that wherever the missionaries get a footin' all these
things come to an end at once, an' the savages take to doin' each other
good and singin' psalms, just like Methodists."

"God bless the missionaries," said I, while a feeling of enthusiasm
filled my heart so that I could speak with difficulty. "God bless and
prosper the missionaries till they get a footing in every island of the
sea!"

"I would say Amen to that prayer, Ralph, if I could," said Bill, in a
deep, sad voice; "but it would be a mere mockery for a man to ask a
blessing for others who dare not ask one for himself. But, Ralph," he
continued, "I've not told you half o' the abominations I have seen
durin' my life in these seas. If we pull long together, lad, I'll tell
you more; and if times ha