Page:Bill the minder.djvu/74

 THE ANCIENT MARINER completely hidden for some long time. Presently, however, one black head appeared for an instant above the rock, and gazed in the direction of the thoughtful creature by the sea. This head was very quickly withdrawn from view and another popped up,—only to disappear as quickly. Then the first appeared again, and so on. This continued until they had regained a little of their nerve, when I could see them once more crawling back to the abstracted figure on the shore. Again they drew very close to him, and now that they had sufficiently mastered their fears, they approached and examined him very closely, and proceeded at once to prepare their evening meal. First of all they lit the fire, then they carefully placed their unresisting victim in the saucepan, after filling it with water from the sea, and were just about to lift it on to the range when I lost all patience, and shouted from my hiding-place, "Hold!" so many times in quick succession, and each time in a different tone of voice, that the cannibals must have thought there were at least thirty men or more in hiding. At any rate, they fled in the most abject terror, never to return.

'Giving them good time to disappear, I now emerged from my hiding-place and approached the absentminded creature, gently lifting him from the saucepan, in which I found him still sitting and gazing out to sea. Gathering together many sea-urchins, rockbeetles, and branches of a succulent sea-weed, with 46