Page:An account of the natives of the Tonga Islands.djvu/112

46 short squab naked figure, of about fifty years of age, with a seaman's jacket, soaked with blood, thrown over one shoulder, on the other rested his iron-wood club, spattered with blood and brains,—and what increased the frightfulness of his appearance was a constant blinking with one of his eyes, and a horrible convulsive motion on one side of his mouth. On another part of the deck there lay twenty-two bodies perfectly naked, and arranged side by side in even order. They were so dreadfully bruised and battered about the head, that only two or three of them could be recognized. At this time a man had just counted them, and was reporting the number to the chief, who sat in the hammock-nettings; immediately after which they began to throw them overboard. Mr. Mariner and the cooper were now brought into the presence of the chief, who looked at them awhile and smiled, probably on account of their dirty appearance. Mr. Mariner was then given in charge to a petty chief to be taken on shore, but the cooper was detained on board.

In his way to the shore the chief took his shirt from his back. The circumstance of his having just escaped death was by no means a consolation to him: reserved for he knew not what hardships, he felt his mind hardened by a sort of careless indifference as to what might